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BattleMaster => Development => Topic started by: Aldwoni on March 21, 2011, 12:00:40 PM
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Are Religions and Realms separated enough?
Many realms only allow one of a few religions and most religions are based in a few realms.
Why should nobles join one religion and not the other?
Is there an reason to join an religion in the first place?
priests have many option in the messaging system to talk within their own realm but not very much outside it.
I have the feeling religions miss something but I'm not sure what.
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Priest can talk to anyone of their faith, and likewise have all the other option for talking to nobles outside their realm, IE if they travel to another realm they can talk to nobles in whatever region they are in. The fact that most realms only allow one religion is not due to something religion lack, but the fact that too many realms want to ensure they can't fall prey to something like a RTO, so they create a religion to defend their realm against other religions.
Other then that, it takes ALOT of work to establish a religion in even 1 realm. It takes a whole heap of work and several more dedicated nobles to spread it further.
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If you don't think they are separated enough, then what additional steps would you take to separate them?
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If you don't think they are separated enough, then what additional steps would you take to separate them?
If I had good suggestions I had already made a feature request.
Currently Priests are part of a realm maybe they can become a part of their religion instead.
or what if RTO will not switch a region to the new realm but only makes the priest the lord. or gives the priest the option to appoint a follower as lord instead of himself.
What if temples of a certain size become estates for priests which instead of production or authority improves morale?
Or that elder priest can give senior non-priest members an army of their religion which knights of multiple realms can join.
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or what if RTO will not switch a region to the new realm but only makes the priest the lord.
I adore this idea.
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So the priest moves to the realm that owns the region? Sounds like an Insta-BanTM to me.
Or do you mean that the priest stays in his realm, but becomes lord of a region that owes allegiance to another realm? Aside from being a logical impossibility, it's also a coding nightmare. And won't happen.
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No, I meant that as you become Lord of the region, the region stays in the same realm, and you are the one who switches realm.
If the region is a border region of your own realm, you can immediately switch back if that's what you want to do.
But outside of the context of single-realm religion, it's not immediate that it would result in an insta-ban. After all, it means that you do swear allegiance to your new ruler. You are, very much, switching realm. And, in an ideal world, if banned you can take your region with you... that may convince some realms they are better working with you.
If you RTO a region in the middle of enemy territory, sure, you will probably be insta-banned. You shouldn't have RTOed the region in the first place.
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You just usurped the rightful lord of the region, appointed or elected by the realm you just joined. I would think that unless the realm had grown to dislike the lord, a instant ban is certainly on the cards.
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What if religion was *completely* separated from realms, as in priests become separate from their realm in all practical ways except communication? :o
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Better role out the new estates before that happens. Losing priest estates would be rough on a lot of realms. Really if we are going to separate them COMPLETELY do so. Including communications. Come up with a whole new communication system for priest that allows them to talk to the nobles of whatever realm that happen to be "visiting"
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priests could still communicate with all members of the religion.
An option would be that a priest can communicate with nobles who are near a temple of the faith.
or religions could become a sort realm which owns each region which has a temple in it.
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Isn't this all just going a bit overboard? IMHO, this whole separation of church and state thing is a red herring.
Too much separation is why you end up in situations like we had on EC, where you have realms who's leaders/dukes were members/elders of religions who considered the religions of the realms federated ally, a theocracy, as evil. Hello? You're federated with Evil and you're cool with that? Seems to me that's because religions and state are separated just a wee bit too much.
Rather than have separation of church and state, I think the problem we have is that most religions are not political enough. Personally I think that's a major reason why most religions fail at getting player involvement. They don't get involved in the stuff that matters to the players: Politics and War. Religions just want to preach to the peasants, and be content monks who moan about "Why can't we all just get along?". Boring. Thats something that no one will get involved in.
Compare this:
"Hey, want to be a priest of Keplerism?"
"What do you do?"
"Well, all of our priests have assigned preaching circuits. They travel the regions preaching to the peasants to keep our follower percentage at >90%. Then if the region morale goes too low, we calm the population to bring it back up. But then that loses us followers so we have to preach some more. Then we go the next region and do it all again."
"Yeah.... No."
To this:
"Hey, want to be a priest of Keplerism?"
"What do you do?"
"Our goal is to dominate the entire continent, spreading our faith to the farthest shores by the book or by the sword. We hunt down unbelievers and persecute them. We subjugate and destroy the false faiths, cast down their idols, and burn their temples."
"Cool! Where do I sign up?"
Forget that separation of church and state stuff. I want more religions involved in more stuff. I want official state religions. I want realms to use their militarily power to export their faith to other realms. I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
The failing of religion has nothing to do with separation. You can have your religion and your realm as separate as you want. But if your religion doesn't get involved in politics it will remain on the fringe without a lot of influence, gold, or noble support. That doesn't mean you have to be a tool of the state. The key is to work out how to make the state *your* tool. Find a way to do that, and you will have one heck of a fun religion.
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Forget that separation of church and state stuff. I want more religions involved in more stuff. I want official state religions. I want realms to use their militarily power to export their faith to other realms. I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
That's really something I support very much. In some thread I forgot someone was pointing out that of all religions of bm probably SA is one of the least complex theologically-wise, but the fact that stands, from what I could see, is that the religions that are mostly influencial, large and fun are CoI on EC and SA on Dwi. And they have in common the fact that they really tell people what to do, and not stay silent in a corner. That's largely because they have theocracies, but I believe that a bit more seriousness on the religion side even in non-theocratic realms would definitely benefit the game.
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Why link a priest, or even religion, so hard to a realm? If by anything, the medieval system did not work through a centralized state. The concepts of realms as we have it in Battlemaster, be it intended or not, is not at all accurate.
Link it to the lord. Recreate the feudal system. Get rid of "states", it's completely un-medieval. If the priest RTOs a region, the region should join the duchy of his lord. Next to that, it is not the religion that should be subjected to a state, but the other way around.
To add to Peri's post: yes, I am the ruler of Ibladesh but my character (and that's how I play him too) is first of all the High Priest of the Church. The State is completely subjected to the religion and is but a mere tool of the Church. We have strict rules about religion in Ibladesh. Not a good or interested follower? No promotions in the mundane world whatsoever for you! That, and we are on our epic quest to conquer and possibly convert all of EC! ;)
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I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
While I was reading your post, I was thinking the exact same thing.
And I must praise Fleugs for appointing priests and other pious nobles to important positions. Yet, I still believe the Church is not powerful enough. A Duke will always have more influence than a priest. And an elder of the church will have little to say about Ibladesh if he is a noble of DoA for example. However, I am not (yet) part of the elder council, and wouldn't know what is and what isn't being discussed there.
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Yet, I still believe the Church is not powerful enough. A Duke will always have more influence than a priest.
Until that priest has the Duke kicked out of the church for heresy, and then removes the duke form his office via auto da fe.
And if the priest can't get the duke kicked out of his office for heresy or other such offenses against the church, then the priest doesn't deserve to be more powerful than the duke.,
Power in BattleMaster is about the influence you can wield, not the buttons you can push.
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I don't know it is already in the game but isn't it a good idea to punish the player who believe in pagan believes?
for example their unit's morale will not rise above 80% or something like that?
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Until that priest has the Duke kicked out of the church for heresy, and then removes the duke form his office via auto da fe.
And if the priest can't get the duke kicked out of his office for heresy or other such offenses against the church, then the priest doesn't deserve to be more powerful than the duke.,
Power in BattleMaster is about the influence you can wield, not the buttons you can push.
Auto da fe doesn't make you the next Duke. And if you do not have the support of the Judge and Ruler this could mean an instant ban. Beaten again by the feudal hierarchy. Or the charges of heresy must have broad support of the feudal hierarchy. Then it might be possible, but only in a theocracy.
However, when I said that a priest will never have more influence than a Duke is because we do not treat the priests as the speaking-tube of the Gods, the bringers of the Divine word. In medieval history they were more influential. And we do not see them as their medieval counterparts.
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There's no inherent fear in whatever powers the priests represent. It is inconvenient and very annoying to take out a religion and its priests, but there's no damnation, or eternal torture, etc. As far as some players can be concerned, taking on a religion can be a fight against the game mechanics that established a following in certain regions, with certain characters that can make use of such faith. The words exchanged to them would appear to be a funny little embellishment but otherwise mean nothing.
There are also other cases where the priests are actually respected and do hold influence. However, those are rare, and why not? In medieval Europe pretty much only the Catholic Church mattered, I think. Since there have been people clamoring for realism, then here's some realism: Most religions don't get that big. Expect about a 1 in a couple thousand chance that your religion gets any significant amount of followers. But once you do hit that spot, then you have significant power. Up to you how to use it.
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Auto da fe doesn't make you the next Duke.
So you only have more power than the duke if you can kick them out *and* take their lordship for yourself?
And if you do not have the support of the Judge and Ruler this could mean an instant ban.
Or you are protected by your liege lord with +3 or more good marks. Or you're not a member of that duke's realm.
But that's also beside the point. You expect to be able to completely upset the feudal hierarchy by taking action against a Duke of the realm to remove him from his feudal seat without support of the rest of the feudal hierarchy and not suffer any consequences? Do you really think that if some no-name pastoral priest walked into England and tried to drum the peasants up into a rabid mob to kick out the Duke of York that the King of England wouldn't have stopped it and clapped that idiot priest in chains and tossed him in the dungeon?
Beaten again by the feudal hierarchy. Or the charges of heresy must have broad support of the feudal hierarchy.
Again: If you can't do it, then you're demonstrably not more powerful than the duke. Therefore you have no right whatsoever to be able to depose him. As a priest, your power is based on your influence and RP abilities, not the buttons you can push. Just because you happen to be a priest of a religion does NOT give you limitless power. You still have to play the game to get things done.
Then it might be possible, but only in a theocracy.
This is false. I have seen it done in realms other than theocracies.
However, when I said that a priest will never have more influence than a Duke is because we do not treat the priests as the speaking-tube of the Gods, the bringers of the Divine word. In medieval history they were more influential. And we do not see them as their medieval counterparts.
You are the ruler of a realm, correct? (And you have been a ruler of large realms in the past, as well.) So what are you personally doing to give priests this power in your realm? Do you personally give priests this power? If a priest of Triunism, and a noble of Barca, walked into Rettleville and kicked out your Duke, would you go along with it? Or would you have that priest banned?
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I believe we are wandering off. The point I was trying to make is that the word of priests weight little compared to that of a Duke. Because the balance between the feudal hierarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy is disrupted by our modern view on religion. In my opinion, the Church must rule the feudal hierarchy, and not the other way around. The example you gave requires the full support of the feudal hierarchy, meaning they voluntary want to get rid of the Duke. Then the initiative comes from the crown, 'asking' the church to charge the Duke with heresy and to undo him from his feudal seat.
But if the Church finds reason to believe the Duke is a heretic, then there is no way to pressure the crown because the common nobility will always be more loyal to the feudal than the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
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I believe we are wandering off. The point I was trying to make is that the word of priests weight little compared to that of a Duke. Because the balance between the feudal hierarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy is disrupted by our modern view on religion.
That's not the problem of the game. It's a problem with the players. You need to find a way to fix that in-game. I have seen it work in-game, so I know it can be done.
In my opinion, the Church must rule the feudal hierarchy, and not the other way around. The example you gave requires the full support of the feudal hierarchy, meaning they voluntary want to get rid of the Duke. Then the initiative comes from the crown, 'asking' the church to charge the Duke with heresy and to undo him from his feudal seat.
But if the Church finds reason to believe the Duke is a heretic, then there is no way to pressure the crown because the common nobility will always be more loyal to the feudal than the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
If it can't go the other way, with the church pressing charges of heresy (or whatever) against the duke, and making it hold up against the feudal hierarchy, then your church is not strong enough, and has no business trying to kick out the duke.
What you're describing isn't a problem with religion itself. It's a problem of the players' attitude toward religion. Religion can be very powerful, if the players are willing to go along with it. It is up to the religion's players to convince the realm's players to do that. But really, that's the same that it is even with any council positions, too. If the people in the realm don't want to go along with the council, they can ignore them or kick them out of office.
This is not something that game mechanics can fix. It is something that will have to be solved by player attitudes.
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For example, take Sanguis Astroism. At one time, the Church was choosing the Judge position for Xinhai (now Morek Empire). That places the balance of power squarely in the Church's position. This was not a game mechanics thing, but pure RP.
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What you're describing isn't a problem with religion itself. It's a problem of the players' attitude toward religion.
I know it is mostly the players' attitude towards religion. But because guilds and religions are for most part a role-played institution, most players will always be more loyal to the structured hierarchy of the feudal system.
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I know it is mostly the players' attitude towards religion. But because guilds and religions are for most part a role-played institution, most players will always be more loyal to the structured hierarchy of the feudal system.
If you were a part of SA, you would know this to be false. Many nobles are as loyal, if not more, as they are to their realm. I believe that if any ruler of Astrum or Morek were to change the government from a Theocracy to another, the nobles of each would get into a raging fury.
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I know it is mostly the players' attitude towards religion. But because guilds and religions are for most part a role-played institution, most players will always be more loyal to the structured hierarchy of the feudal system.
My theory is that it's communication based. At the basic level, most players identify with the people they communicate closest with. That is primarily done right now through the realm.
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Barring SA when discussing the Prophet's fallibility.
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I confess, I'm a tad biased in my desire to see religion strengthened, but there are two things I would love to see:
1) Giving religions (or rather, the elder priests of said religion) the option to excommunicate a lord. This would make the followers of the lord's faith in that region more likely to revolt against them/increase unrest.
2) Encourage joining a religion by essentially making it so Lords would have to join at least SOME religion to maintain control. Pretty sure most peasants would rather have a lord of a heathen/opposing faith than an atheist in charge. In this period of time, atheism would be simply unheard of. And yes, I've seen people claim to be atheists in game before. Just strikes me as odd for the proposed time period.
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If you aren't part of a Religion, you simply believe in your own pagan beliefs that aren't organized in any way. You still believe in something though, you always do.
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I confess, I'm a tad biased in my desire to see religion strengthened, but there are two things I would love to see:
1) Giving religions (or rather, the elder priests of said religion) the option to excommunicate a lord. This would make the followers of the lord's faith in that region more likely to revolt against them/increase unrest.
Elders already have the option to excommunicate non-priests members, Lords or not.
2) Encourage joining a religion by essentially making it so Lords would have to join at least SOME religion to maintain control. Pretty sure most peasants would rather have a lord of a heathen/opposing faith than an atheist in charge. In this period of time, atheism would be simply unheard of. And yes, I've seen people claim to be atheists in game before. Just strikes me as odd for the proposed time period.
This is already the case: control (or morale or both?) is more difficult to maintain if the religion of the Lord and of the peasants is different.
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Elders already have the option to excommunicate non-priests members, Lords or not.
They can kick someone out, not excommunicate them.
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They can kick someone out, not excommunicate them.
What do you mean by excommunicate then?
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Perhaps you mean you should be able to actively declare someone an enemy of the faith?
I'm not so sure this is really needed. If you want to cause trouble for a lord, then send in a priest to stir things up. Or, do a combination of things.
1) Kick him out of your faith.
2) Declare that your faith's followers should have no dealings with him.
3) Send in a priest to cause problems in his region.
4) Conduct an auto da fe, and kick him out of the lordship.
If you can't manage to get away with any of those, then you don't deserve the right to make trouble for him.
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1) Giving religions (or rather, the elder priests of said religion) the option to excommunicate a lord. This would make the followers of the lord's faith in that region more likely to revolt against them/increase unrest.
While the literally meaning of excommunication, i.e. putting someone out of communion can be compared with kicking someone out of a religion. I believe Draco is implying to the label 'excommunicated'. Much like a ban upon your head which prevents you from joining the said religion again. And if you are a Lord, being 'excommunicated' will cause unrest in your region.
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Much like a ban upon your head which prevents you from joining the said religion again. And if you are a Lord, being 'excommunicated' will cause unrest in your region.
Unfortunately, guilds and religions do not have any kind of ban mechanic. You can easily be kicked out, though. And you can put an entry price on them, so the troublemaker will have to pay to join.
If a lord is not a member of the dominant religion, there can be unrest in the region. Something about "The locals are upset that the lord doesn't belong to their faith." Yes, it is a small effect. If you want more of an effect, then send in a priest to give them some incentive to do more. Or just remove the lord from the region.
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I believe there's an harsher effect if the the major faith of the peasants considers their Lord's Religion evil even, but now I can't check that...
Putting a high entry price and making sure the first Aspirant Rank requires manual promotion does wonders to keep Nobles out or does wonders to fill your Treasury. Not a bad compromise :)
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Relating to religious power; is it only the Elder priests of a religion that can take over regions, or can any priest do it? This might be a limiting factor on the power of religion if it is so.
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Only Elders can Claim Regions (RTO).
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RTO is not a very important part of a priest's power. It's used seldom, and the requirements are pretty steep. Far more useful are the various influence options.
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RTO is not a very important part of a priest's power. It's used seldom, and the requirements are pretty steep. Far more useful are the various influence options.
Granted, but when one is talking about Dwilight it could certainly come in handy!
PS, thanks Telrunya :)
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Eh? You'd still need the infrastructure, and generally speaking on Dwilight you'll definitely want to do the normal military takeover for most situations. I believe the Cult of Orden tried to use the RTO to keep Ordenstaat alive or something. Worked pretty horribly for them. Hredmonath probably tried to supplant SA in Thulsoma. Worked pretty horribly for them.
Religion's major power isn't something direct. It's passive and it's insidious. It acts like a poison that circumvents defenses and alters through manipulation, not a blunt attack that attempts to force down defenses and alters through destruction.
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I always figured that the key to a religions power was converting nobles, especially nobles in positions of power and by doing everything possible to ensure that those who gain positions of power are of the faith. Once that has happened, assuming you have managed to secure the characters loyalty, a role played "excommunication" can be truly painful. In this case I am referring to something along the lines of:
"All members of Religion X. This person has demonstrated themselves to be true heretics. It has been decided that they are to be excommunicated. From this point forward, none shall have any dealings with said individual. None shall support said individual in any way. None are to communicate with said individual in any way. None will allow this individual a platform from which they may influence others with their sinful ways. When this person has demonstrated their loyalty to the faith and has atoned for their wrong doings they will be welcomed back into the faith. Until that has happened any who defies this proclamation will be subject to disciplinary action."
If you have enough influential members this could cause some real issues for that person. If not, then you are kind of out of luck. In all I thin Indirik has it right though I think it could be cool if some features were added to increase the bite a little. Mostly passive things like hits to honor/prestige, negative reactions to peasants of the faith, the ability to ban from a religion, etc...
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4) Conduct an auto da fe, and kick him out of the lordship.
does auto da fe work now?
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It does, yes, albeit I have yet to use it.
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If you can't manage to get away with any of those, then you don't deserve the right to make trouble for him.
Don't forget that SA is a one off thing that many people put lots of work into. You shouldn't hold other religions to the same standard.
It's like (but not a parallel to) saying "shut up and work harder: Albert Einstein came up with e=mc, you can come up with something too."
I think religions do need a little help in the game mechanic department to officialize their power. Yes it's true power can be roleplayed. It's also true that roleplayed power is *always* weaker than roleplayed+game mechanic power.
We need a way for nobles to officially put themselves at the mercy of the religion for certain bonuses and pronounced negatives for being an "anti-religion" guy. With the system we have now, many people just don't want religion because of constraints of freedom: I think this is very counter to SMA (I'm obviously talking about Dwilight here.)
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Huh. That's a way of thinking about it that I hadn't considered before, Shane.
Well, easiest thing I can think of: Honour/Prestige bonuses for being in a religion, possibly in the form of increased rate of gain, possibly in an outright bonus. You follow a noble religion, not some mucky commoner-based set of beliefs, and so your prestige is correspondingly higher, and you are pious and therefore assumed to be more honourable.
Alternatively...What about giving everyone who joins a religion a unique item (with no decay) the exemplifies the religion? Founder could pick what the item would be, everyone who joins gets it, prestige increases over time as per usual, gives people something they can roleplay...
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Alternatively...What about giving everyone who joins a religion a unique item (with no decay) the exemplifies the religion? Founder could pick what the item would be, everyone who joins gets it, prestige increases over time as per usual, gives people something they can roleplay...
This is cool. Perhaps the item can have better bonuses based on the size of the religion.
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Huh. That's a way of thinking about it that I hadn't considered before, Shane.
Well, easiest thing I can think of: Honour/Prestige bonuses for being in a religion, possibly in the form of increased rate of gain, possibly in an outright bonus. You follow a noble religion, not some mucky commoner-based set of beliefs, and so your prestige is correspondingly higher, and you are pious and therefore assumed to be more honourable.
Alternatively...What about giving everyone who joins a religion a unique item (with no decay) the exemplifies the religion? Founder could pick what the item would be, everyone who joins gets it, prestige increases over time as per usual, gives people something they can roleplay...
a religious icon! nice! It would be nice if people could pay to upgrade it, and the funds go to the church without affecting their balance.
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maybe there needs to be some sort of counter called faith. bit like h/p... but it's difficult as faith isn't something easily measurable, especially when it can be so separated to game mechanics.
from that and the size/influence of the religion, they reap some sort of benefit..
i think hero believers should leave their church with a relic (well... ie... bits of their mangled corpse) when they die in battle. lots of uses for those...
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Indirik,
All religions have desire to dominate and convert everyone to their faith, declaring that or not.
I believe people are disinterested for religion because religion is made powerless.
Temple and shrine upkeep feature disabled opportunity for religion to have some net positive earning, making religions dependent on outside fundings, so they are mostly made mere decorations for those who hold all power anyhow.
That only limited possibilities fto create interesting conflicts, as everything is dependant on heavy funding, and funding is in hands of few, who even do not compete each other.
in real middle age, we could for instance say that otoman military had ruthless soldiers, who had never cared so much for funding as west european middle age had.
similar to mongol, huns, etc.
in bm, all power is currently dependent on funding, military cannot do anything without funding, religion cannot, even there is very little way how any kind of diligent work and dedication can compensate lack of funds, which is pity.
currently, diplomats are also given one single feature where priests have monopoly, and that is influencing peasants, so i daresay religion is made futile by design.
even if some religion stories could have been interestingly developed within religions books and roleplays, so few people are interested as there is little or no effect on mundane world.
the only "cool" feature that stayed is RTO, but RTO is rather harsh activities, and gives no opportunity for religions to act behind the scene, with silent, almost invisible influence, which could be the situation, if religions could be able to earn their own funds to at least some extent.
religion for cities balance is also missing. duke can either use religion as his own profane tool, which is mostly not interesting for anyone outside his small circle, otherwise duke can have only troubles with religion, and vast majority of dukes are pagans, which is really unrealistic.
dukes (and all region lords) should be made dependent on religions, to some extent, for instance pagan peasants should make much more troubles than peasants who belong to any religion, so region lords should decide whehther to allow domination of one faith or to take care that several faiths are balanced in their regions rather than simply doing absolutely nothing besides disallowing any preaching.
every single group of mediaval peasants were part of some religions, and it is simply not so ok that pagan peasants are so cooperative and productive in regions.
different competing powers and groups should be given different powers to be forced to cooperate. given all practicable powers to one group (region lords) simply allows them to not care for others, and that stalls the whole game world.
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ah, to add to this, the only exception for this were infiltrators for a while, but as they currently cannot remove anyone with real power, they are made futile too. :-X
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I'll concede that the intents behind making religion so dependent on the outside world (requiring a lord to fund, political support to get established and financial support to survive) are good, but I'll also agree that this results in blander religions that are mostly just tools for the established that seek little innovation.
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All religions have desire to dominate and convert everyone to their faith, declaring that or not.
I agree with the general idea of this. I wouldn't say that everyone wants to "dominate", because I don't think that "dominate" is always quite the right word. But yes, religions want to convert everyone to believe the way they do.
I believe people are disinterested for religion because religion is made powerless.
I disagree. And I think the people that play the Church of Ibladesh would probably disagree. And the Flow of the Balance. (And the people fighting them, too!) And, of course, Sanguis Astroism.
Temple and shrine upkeep feature disabled opportunity for religion to have some net positive earning, making religions dependent on outside fundings, so they are mostly made mere decorations for those who hold all power anyhow.
If religions had the power to have a net positive income, then they would become another tool of the state. They would be just another revenue stream for the realm-based war machine. The need to have powerful patrons is definitely intentional.
That only limited possibilities fto create interesting conflicts, as everything is dependant on heavy funding, and funding is in hands of few, who even do not compete each other.
If you want to have big temples, support lots of followers, and have the big power that comes with it, then you have to have the gold to support it. And you're not going to get that gold by asking farmers and blacksmiths to hand over 10% of their meager incomes. You get the rich, powerful nobles to hand over 10% of *their* incomes.
Power, and the organization and labor that comes with it and that it requires, costs money.
in real middle age, we could for instance say that otoman military had ruthless soldiers, who had never cared so much for funding as west european middle age had.
similar to mongol, huns, etc.
So the mongols, huns, etc., never got a single coin in pay, at all? Never had someone give them a sword/bow and some armor or clothes? Not even through looting the conquered lands?
in bm, all power is currently dependent on funding, military cannot do anything without funding, religion cannot, even there is very little way how any kind of diligent work and dedication can compensate lack of funds, which is pity.
currently, diplomats are also given one single feature where priests have monopoly, and that is influencing peasants, so i daresay religion is made futile by design.
I thought you wanted diversity, and multiple paths to the same ends? Now when you have it, you say that having one makes the other invalid.
However, these two abilities are a bit different. Priests pay a cost in followers, diplomats in gold. Priests also have a wider range of options, while diplomats only affect sympathy.
even if some religion stories could have been interestingly developed within religions books and roleplays, so few people are interested as there is little or no effect on mundane world.
If people aren't interested in what is intended to be an RP heavy mode of play, then we can't force them to be interested. All you'll get is a mouthing of the required phrases to meet the minimum requirements, while they move on and do whatever they wanted to do in the first place. (Interestingly enough, this is what you can claim many people do with real world religions, too. So maybe this would make us more realistic.)
the only "cool" feature that stayed is RTO, but RTO is rather harsh activities, and gives no opportunity for religions to act behind the scene, with silent, almost invisible influence, which could be the situation, if religions could be able to earn their own funds to at least some extent.
RTO and auto da fe are the two most visible, and powerful, of a priests abilities. They are not the only two. The ability to calm population, cause unrest, and influence the commoner's thoughts are also powerful as well, when properly used. All of these can be used to gain influence with the realm, and with the other faithful.
religion for cities balance is also missing. duke can either use religion as his own profane tool, which is mostly not interesting for anyone outside his small circle, otherwise duke can have only troubles with religion,
That is simply ridiculous. A duke that participates in his religion, and has his region converted to his own faith, or a significant part of it, will not suffer any problems from religion. (And, actually, so long as the peasants do not follow some *other* organized religion, he won't have any problems then, either.) Nor is this a "profane tool". Didn't you say at the start that everyone who is in a religion wants to convert everyone to his own faith? How is this profane? You *can* use it for profane purposes. But that doesn't mean you *will* use it that way.
...and vast majority of dukes are pagans, which is really unrealistic.
Stop making baseless, unsubstantiated claims. A quick survey of BT shows that 2/3rds of the dukes of cities follow an established, in-game religion.
dukes (and all region lords) should be made dependent on religions, to some extent, for instance pagan peasants should make much more troubles than peasants who belong to any religion, so region lords should decide whehther to allow domination of one faith or to take care that several faiths are balanced in their regions rather than simply doing absolutely nothing besides disallowing any preaching.
every single group of mediaval peasants were part of some religions, and it is simply not so ok that pagan peasants are so cooperative and productive in regions.
So just because a peasant doesn't follow an "officially established" faith, they are a lazy, unruly, unproductive mob that hates the establishment? I could perhaps see the numbers of pagans being added to the number of peasants that "are upset that their lord doesn't agree with their faith". Unless the lord himself is a "pagan". But to just have "pagan" peasants be unruly mobs makes no sense.
different competing powers and groups should be given different powers to be forced to cooperate. given all practicable powers to one group (region lords) simply allows them to not care for others, and that stalls the whole game world.
Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on this? What type of balancing powers would you like to see?
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ah, to add to this, the only exception for this were infiltrators for a while, but as they currently cannot remove anyone with real power, they are made futile too. :-X
That's no longer true with the implementation of the new wounding system. It's not common, but an infiltrator definitely has a chance to put someone out of action long enough that they will lose their position. I've seen it happen.
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However, these two abilities are a bit different. Priests pay a cost in followers, diplomats in gold. Priests also have a wider range of options, while diplomats only affect sympathy.
Not wanting to shoot myself in the foot, as a regular player of both priests and ambassadors (hell, priest/ambassadors), but the diplomat's option is *much* better than the priest's when it comes to loyalty. The priest's option for loyalty is pretty bad, but I guess the compensation is that he can affect a whole lot of other stuff which the diplomat can't.
And gold is much more accessible than followers, and requires no work to earn. Priest options often cause the loss of months' worth of conversion efforts for very little actual gain (or harm). Which then also leaves the region more vulnerable to conversion by other faiths.
Just sayin'.
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Never having played a diplomat, or done much with influencing the locals, what types of results have you gotten with the two options? I've heard of pretty good results from highly experienced priests with a high percentage of followers.
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With the one high-skill Ambassador I have (Ambassadors get bonuses over regular diplomats for those who don't know) I recently got a 9% loyalty raise in Strombran (Capital city of Carelia) with six hours of talking, and that wasn't even the best text result (Malcolm's words were persuasive rather than compelling).
I know of at least one other instance where he took a region from Disdainful to Loyal in two days, more or less singlehandedly (as the Judge I got to see the work done on the region, and there weren't any other diplomats hanging around). And, of course, in-realm it doesn't cost anything beyond time. I'd say that's a pretty strong ability.
Also, Enthralling regions is awesome. I wonder if there's a way to get above Core and Joyful too...
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They certainly are powerful. Ambassadors work best if they are talking about their own Realm though, and reducing loyalty to a region's current Realm is a lot less effective as well. I wonder if Priests suffer less from that? Also, Diplomat/Ambassadors actions can be 16 hours in one go if you're a Priest :)
I don't believe you receive messages of Diplomats working on a region, right? I know in D'Hara we had a Diplomat causing a lot of trouble in Paisly for a bit, but we couldn't track him.
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If you are in the same region as the diplomat, and possibly adjacent regions, you should get a report that someone has influenced the locals. Not sure about the adjacent regions, though.
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Never having played a diplomat, or done much with influencing the locals, what types of results have you gotten with the two options? I've heard of pretty good results from highly experienced priests with a high percentage of followers.
diplomacy doesn't cost anything (within own realm.. ok.. some gold outside realm) and can go >100% loyalty, also doesn't require following.
priests stuff inevitably require gaining followers, then losing followers, to do stuff
so use a priest diplomat. similar skill set, isn't it?
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If you are in the same region as the diplomat, and possibly adjacent regions, you should get a report that someone has influenced the locals. Not sure about the adjacent regions, though.
Are you certain that works? I have never seen it, and I asked around when I used the option and no one ever told me having seen it. I have used it in regions where people *should* have noticed....
If actions were public, this would remove a big difference between priests and ambassadors.
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don't remember seeing that when my priest/diplo and hero are in same region. only thing shown is preaching.
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I agree with the general idea of this. I wouldn't say that everyone wants to "dominate", because I don't think that "dominate" is always quite the right word. But yes, religions want to convert everyone to believe the way they do.
I disagree. And I think the people that play the Church of Ibladesh would probably disagree. And the Flow of the Balance. (And the people fighting them, too!) And, of course, Sanguis Astroism.
Well, I would remind that you did not find good examples of the subject, as both Astroism and CoI based their power on theocratic states. What I am talking about are competing powers, not jointed powers, that create even more monopoly and less competition, that is religions that will be able to compete other powers and be somewhat independent. Flow could be good example if I did not learn that two rich dukes have their own brothers (what a coincidence among the most important elders, which again lead to few-size-all power instead of competing powers. Again, that is not so much because of power-hungry players, but because of mechanics, where insufficiently powerful positions can only function if bolstered with additional titles, which simply works against idea of team-play, by design.
If religions had the power to have a net positive income, then they would become another tool of the state. They would be just another revenue stream for the realm-based war machine. The need to have powerful patrons is definitely intentional.
On contrary, to the maximum extent! If religions had net positive income, they could influence realms, play their own little games, being not dependent on realms, and to some extent being not dependent on landed lords. Of course, landed lords can limit their influence in many ways, but the sole fact that religions do not need to beg for money, but have some of their own income would provide much more depth to plots, calculations, power plays etc. All of that is non-existent for beggars.
If you want to have big temples, support lots of followers, and have the big power that comes with it, then you have to have the gold to support it. And you're not going to get that gold by asking farmers and blacksmiths to hand over 10% of their meager incomes. You get the rich, powerful nobles to hand over 10% of *their* incomes.
Power, and the organization and labor that comes with it and that it requires, costs money.
If we had competing powers, lot of preaching and bringing lot of followers should bring some funds, I am not advocating funds comparable to region income at all, I am just talking about some funds. While dukes can sit in their region forever, doing very little over basic food arrangement, priests need to endlessly wander around preaching and taking care of follower levels, so why that would not be rewarded with some funds. Mere rank which competes very hard work, competing ways to earn funds.
So the mongols, huns, etc., never got a single coin in pay, at all? Never had someone give them a sword/bow and some armor or clothes? Not even through looting the conquered lands?
Mongols and huns depended on spiritual arrangement much more than on funds, and if game could be designed in way that armies could be self-sustainable by mere looting, that would be indeed fun, but I cannot imagine how complex it would be to find balance. Again, i was trying to talk about having possibility to reach the same goals with different ways instead of being hanged on gold transfers only. the game world is so deep, and I believe tweaks without any revolutionary changes could reach that, not in the case of looting but in come other mentioned examples.
I thought you wanted diversity, and multiple paths to the same ends? Now when you have it, you say that having one makes the other invalid.
I am trying to advocate diversity all the time, and if you see some discrepancy, please be exact.
However, these two abilities are a bit different. Priests pay a cost in followers, diplomats in gold. Priests also have a wider range of options, while diplomats only affect sympathy.
Priests lose lot of followers, and net loss is big compared to what they achieve, while diplomats, again, lose gold only.
I have one priest char that possibly reached all skill available to noble human being, experimented much, but all kind of influences were mostly disappointing. priest can risk his life to cause unrest in region that is on occupied control already, but will not cause revolt, being less influential than simple looting. it is also disappointing that months of influencing rogue regions will rarely raise morale, for instance, as it probably reverts back every day.
If people aren't interested in what is intended to be an RP heavy mode of play, then we can't force them to be interested. All you'll get is a mouthing of the required phrases to meet the minimum requirements, while they move on and do whatever they wanted to do in the first place. (Interestingly enough, this is what you can claim many people do with real world religions, too. So maybe this would make us more realistic.)
As I mentioned, people would be more interested if all that talk would have at least some influence on mundane world, otherwise it really resembles some self-sufficient religious fanaticism
RTO and auto da fe are the two most visible, and powerful, of a priests abilities. They are not the only two. The ability to calm population, cause unrest, and influence the commoner's thoughts are also powerful as well, when properly used. All of these can be used to gain influence with the realm, and with the other faithful.
With religion dependent on outside funding, priests are reduced to some second-grade courtiers, and in many realms they are openly treated that way. Again with religion who beg even RTO is reduced to some attachment to army actions, instead of being tool of elders power-play, which could complicate situation to many.
That is simply ridiculous. A duke that participates in his religion, and has his region converted to his own faith, or a significant part of it, will not suffer any problems from religion. (And, actually, so long as the peasants do not follow some *other* organized religion, he won't have any problems then, either.) Nor is this a "profane tool". Didn't you say at the start that everyone who is in a religion wants to convert everyone to his own faith? How is this profane? You *can* use it for profane purposes. But that doesn't mean you *will* use it that way.
I will try to rephrase in simple way - dukes use faith either as their decorative element or they ignore it. they are not even slightly pushed to take care of it even if they don't like it, at least on level they are pushed to take care of trade (where balance is not so good as well, rural lords are mostly poor beggars, while holding the most important non-city regions)
Stop making baseless, unsubstantiated claims. A quick survey of BT shows that 2/3rds of the dukes of cities follow an established, in-game religion.
ok, that could be one of such, so do not use plural ::) i damit to not have relevant statistics, but my chars are really running around many realms, and all I see is their observation.
to be punctual in 4 realms where i am in, there are only few dukes who follow any religion.
So just because a peasant doesn't follow an "officially established" faith, they are a lazy, unruly, unproductive mob that hates the establishment? I could perhaps see the numbers of pagans being added to the number of peasants that "are upset that their lord doesn't agree with their faith". Unless the lord himself is a "pagan". But to just have "pagan" peasants be unruly mobs makes no sense.
yes, they should have reduced food/gold productivity, say 80% of those who follow any faith, as religion was only real incentive for them, their pay was sufficient for bare living, they could never earn something or create financial reserves, spend their whole life in such a manner, (interestingly some in south america still live that way), i think it could be historically justified
Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on this? What type of balancing powers would you like to see?
I am trying to talk about that all the time, but this is moment to summarize:
- religions, financially independent, self sustainable power , with enough hard work in preaching and taking care of things (not frequent logging, of course, but long dedication to preaching etc.)
- council members, whose mere rank has enough power to oppose landed lord rather than being completely dependent on them
it would be ideal that both mentioned have ability to be powerful enough to not care for landed positions for themselves. that way much more nobles would be in positions on power, and they would naturally compete to each other, as all of them would have limitation to their powers. compare to current situation where almost everything is relied upon landed lord sponsorship.
the only exception are property taxes, but they are very limited currently and can easily be avoided.
i believe one single change, non-revolutionary tweak (which is even accepted by tom if i remember well) - realm council that can directly tax cities would make major difference.
together with influential religions that are not directly dependent on landed lords to the extent they are currently, that would create many natural tensions that we would not need "too much peace" code at all in my opnion as nonone would be able to control everythign as there would be too much competing powers for that.
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If you are in the same region as the diplomat, and possibly adjacent regions, you should get a report that someone has influenced the locals. Not sure about the adjacent regions, though.
I have never seen any such report, or heard of anyone seeing one. The diplomat's tools, as far as I know, is 100% discreet.
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I've been thinking about this topic a lot, because I agree that religion seems to be a bit "flat". the post I agree most with from this thread is Indirik's from the first page, especially:
Forget that separation of church and state stuff. I want more religions involved in more stuff. I want official state religions. I want realms to use their militarily power to export their faith to other realms. I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
I think religions, in the eyes of clergy, exist for two reasons:
1) to spread a set of beliefs
2) to gain power, wealth and influence
The first is purely RP for us. None of us actually believe in the religions, so few of us do much to RP that we have a terror of everlasting Hellfire if we stray from the True Faith. This bit is here just for the RP fun.
The second is where I think we can expand the game a bit. I picture a founder of a major religion to be on par with a Duke, but game mechanics give them almost nothing. I'd like to see a few things added that would make religion an alternative way for characters to climb the power ladder.
Some random ideas, not all of which are good or practical, and are more for brainstorming purposes:
1) church receives taxes from regions, based on what % of believers they have
2) church receives additional taxes from temples, based on level
or, perhaps a temple or shrine allows you to collect taxes?
3) new rulers (maybe only Kings?) must be "crowned" before they take office (could lead to an elder refusing, and the new ruler shopping around until he finds a religion that will rubberstamp him)
4) ruler's religion automatically becomes State religion, with good/bad effects
5) elders of state religion may receive additional votes, like a Duke or Lord would
6) founders/elders may sponsor armies
7) a "founders" channel, like ruler, banker, general's equivalent
There's a few ideas to discuss. I'm sure there are plenty more better ones out there.
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Are you certain that works? I have never seen it, and I asked around when I used the option and no one ever told me having seen it. I have used it in regions where people *should* have noticed....
If actions were public, this would remove a big difference between priests and ambassadors.
If it is not noticed, then it should be. Spending enough time and money to influence the views of a significant enough portion of the regional population to actually make a significant difference should be noticed by other people. Not being noticed definitely sounds like a bug to me.
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Well, I would remind that you did not find good examples of the subject, as both Astroism and CoI based their power on theocratic states. What I am talking about are competing powers, not jointed powers, that create even more monopoly and less competition, that is religions that will be able to compete other powers and be somewhat independent. Flow could be good example if I did not learn that two rich dukes have their own brothers (what a coincidence among the most important elders, which again lead to few-size-all power instead of competing powers. Again, that is not so much because of power-hungry players, but because of mechanics, where insufficiently powerful positions can only function if bolstered with additional titles, which simply works against idea of team-play, by design.
Family affiliation is an important part of the game. Quite a few people use family affiliation as an integral part of their RP. There is nothing wrong with using your family's influence and power to further the political/power goals of other family members. This is, after all, a medieval RP. Family is everything, right? And you can feel free to use that against them, as well.
On contrary, to the maximum extent! If religions had net positive income, they could influence realms, play their own little games, being not dependent on realms, and to some extent being not dependent on landed lords.
So you feel that religions being able to generate significant streams of revenue will make them independent of realm influence? Actually, I'd go the exact opposite path. If this was the case, then you would see realms all over the place start to institute their own pet religions, even more so than now. And these religions would support their realm, and even provide military forces for the realm. Religions that did not do this would not be allowed, and would be replaced with ones that did. Very few realms, if any, would allow a competing power structure to coexist with their realm-based structure. They would be integrated and controlled by the same group. That is exactly why religions do not generate significant sources of their own income. Of course, you can do it yourself by taxing your noble members via monthly fees.
Of course, landed lords can limit their influence in many ways, but the sole fact that religions do not need to beg for money, but have some of their own income would provide much more depth to plots, calculations, power plays etc. All of that is non-existent for beggars.
Religions are not dependent on realms for funding. They are dependent on nobles for funding. There is a significant, and extremely important, difference. You don't have to get the official support of the realm of Keplerstan. All you need is the support of one of their lords. The richer the lord, the better. And it is imperative on the religion to give the nobles a reason to contribute. There are many religions that don't have a funding problem. They offer the nobility something that they feel is worth the contribution. It could be that the religion supports them against their enemies. Or it supports their RP. Or it provides fun for the players. Whatever it is they provide, it works for them. If you can't convince your noble members to contribute to the success of your religion, then your religion is not providing them with something that they want. And I seriously doubt that this has anything at all to do with game mechanics.
And if, for some reason, you think that no realm would allow a new religion to move in anyway, I can guarantee you that you are mistaken. There are many realms that would be willing to allow you to move in and set up shop. On EC alone I can think of at least three, maybe four realms that would let you move in, so long as you didn't cause trouble, or preach a faith that had blatant doctrinal contradictions to the ones already followed. Sanctus Acies and Church of Humanity have always coexisted, and in the past been quit peaceful with Triunism. On BT, Riombara has always had a very lenient policy on new religions. PeL on Dwilight used to be, too. I hear, OOC, that Carelia was shopping around for a new religion to help invigorate some of their RP, too.
If we had competing powers, lot of preaching and bringing lot of followers should bring some funds, I am not advocating funds comparable to region income at all, I am just talking about some funds. While dukes can sit in their region forever, doing very little over basic food arrangement, priests need to endlessly wander around preaching and taking care of follower levels, so why that would not be rewarded with some funds. Mere rank which competes very hard work, competing ways to earn funds.
More followers = more funds. Match your temple to your following, and don't overdo it on shrines, you should get very close to your expenses.
Mongols and huns depended on spiritual arrangement much more than on funds, and if game could be designed in way that armies could be self-sustainable by mere looting, that would be indeed fun, but I cannot imagine how complex it would be to find balance. Again, i was trying to talk about having possibility to reach the same goals with different ways instead of being hanged on gold transfers only. the game world is so deep, and I believe tweaks without any revolutionary changes could reach that, not in the case of looting but in come other mentioned examples.
I am trying to advocate diversity all the time, and if you see some discrepancy, please be exact.
You want more ways to achieve the same ends. That's fine, I'm good with that. But when the diplomat ability to influence regions is implemented, you complain that it duplicates the priest ability, making priests useless.
Priests lose lot of followers, and net loss is big compared to what they achieve, while diplomats, again, lose gold only.
It is quite possible that the two competing methods need some balance and adjustment. Perhaps someone could do some testing of this, and post the results? I honestly don't know the extent of the two effects.
With religion dependent on outside funding, priests are reduced to some second-grade courtiers, and in many realms they are openly treated that way. Again with religion who beg even RTO is reduced to some attachment to army actions, instead of being tool of elders power-play, which could complicate situation to many.
Then refuse to be treated that way. Stick up for yourself. Refuse to profane your religious faith for the benefit of secular authorities. Or ask for a generous contribution to your faith to compensate for your troubles. Of course once you perform the RTO, the region now belongs to you. And guess what? You now have the financial support of a lordship for your religion. Isn't this what you wanted in the first place?
I will try to rephrase in simple way - dukes use faith either as their decorative element or they ignore it. they are not even slightly pushed to take care of it even if they don't like it, at least on level they are pushed to take care of trade (where balance is not so good as well, rural lords are mostly poor beggars, while holding the most important non-city regions)
Trade and food issues are being addressed, albeit slowly, to allow the better balance of gold/food between cities/rurals. And hopefully the new systems will allow the majority of that system to be automated. We want that kind of stuff to be as automatic as possible, if those involved want it to be.
But aside from that, why should they be required to do things on a regular basis to "take care of" their city's religions faith? What should they be required to do, other than to restock the treasuries every now and then? Dukes are not priests, so the "maintenance" of the religious faith of the city is not their responsibility. (Assuming the duke is not also a priest.)
yes, they should have reduced food/gold productivity, say 80% of those who follow any faith, as religion was only real incentive for them, their pay was sufficient for bare living, they could never earn something or create financial reserves, spend their whole life in such a manner, (interestingly some in south america still live that way), i think it could be historically justified
I completely disagree.
I am trying to talk about that all the time, but this is moment to summarize:
- religions, financially independent, self sustainable power , with enough hard work in preaching and taking care of things (not frequent logging, of course, but long dedication to preaching etc.)
This is intentionally not the case, by design.
- council members, whose mere rank has enough power to oppose landed lord rather than being completely dependent on them
I'm not sure what you mean here, especially as relates to religion. Are you saying that there should be a religious council-level office?
it would be ideal that both mentioned have ability to be powerful enough to not care for landed positions for themselves. that way much more nobles would be in positions on power, and they would naturally compete to each other, as all of them would have limitation to their powers. compare to current situation where almost everything is relied upon landed lord sponsorship.
the only exception are property taxes, but they are very limited currently and can easily be avoided.
i believe one single change, non-revolutionary tweak (which is even accepted by tom if i remember well) - realm council that can directly tax cities would make major difference.
While I agree that the realms *should* be able to forcibly tax cities directly, without having to rely on the completely avoidable current duchy tax system, I don't see what this has to do with empowering religions.
together with influential religions that are not directly dependent on landed lords to the extent they are currently, that would create many natural tensions that we would not need "too much peace" code at all in my opnion as nonone would be able to control everythign as there would be too much competing powers for that.
"Competing power" does not directly mean "endless warfare". It sees to me that the system you are proposing would mostly result in political infighting and not direct, large-scale, realm-based conflict that is at the core of BattleMaster.
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I think religions, in the eyes of clergy, exist for two reasons:
1) to spread a set of beliefs
2) to gain power, wealth and influence
I agree. IC/RP-wise, these are the two I'd go with.
The first is purely RP for us. None of us actually believe in the religions, so few of us do much to RP that we have a terror of everlasting Hellfire if we stray from the True Faith. This bit is here just for the RP fun.
True. It does make for some good RP, especially if you're the Church of Ibladesh fighting against those heathen Perdanese, and calling down the wrath of Ramsus upon the unbelievers! And then the heathen Perdanese taunt the Ibladeshians about how their gods have abandoned them, and allowed them to lose, because their faith is false and weak. :)
The second is where I think we can expand the game a bit. I picture a founder of a major religion to be on par with a Duke, but game mechanics give them almost nothing. I'd like to see a few things added that would make religion an alternative way for characters to climb the power ladder.
Yes, game mechanics give religious founders very little. It is up to the players to make that happen, and invest power into their religious leaders. The same thing actually happens with realm rulers, too. Realm rulers really have very little game-mechanics powers. They can talk to people, but so can religion founders. They can exile people, but religious founders can kick people out of their religions. They can set realm diplomacy, but religious founders can set official religious views. In fact, pretty much all the authority of the ruler comes from the other players voluntarily subjugating their characters to the realm ruler's power. In the same vein, true religious power would have to come from players voluntarily subjugating their characters to religious authority.
Some random ideas, not all of which are good or practical, and are more for brainstorming purposes:
1) church receives taxes from regions, based on what % of believers they have
2) church receives additional taxes from temples, based on level
or, perhaps a temple or shrine allows you to collect taxes?
How about if the amount collected reduced the realm's tax collection by that same amount? After all, there's only so much money to go around. The peasants won't stand for endless layers of additional taxation without complaint.
But, as I've said before, this would only provide greater incentive for the realm to subjugate the religion. Any religion who attempted to fight the realm's power structure would be replaced with one that supported the realm. Unless the players are willing to allow the erosion of their character's authority/power, it won't happen.
3) new rulers (maybe only Kings?) must be "crowned" before they take office (could lead to an elder refusing, and the new ruler shopping around until he finds a religion that will rubberstamp him)
I really can't think of any way that would really work.
4) ruler's religion automatically becomes State religion, with good/bad effects
Interesting idea. Perhaps depending on the government type? Monarchy/tyranny/theocracy yes, republic/democracy no. Although I am a firm believer in that in a theocracy, only a member of the official state religion should be able to run for council positions in the first place.
5) elders of state religion may receive additional votes, like a Duke or Lord would
Additional secular authority for religious elders in a realm that has it as their official state religion is an interesting idea. Rather than see religious figures get more votes, though, I'd like to see an option where specific realm positions could be designated as appointed by the church. i.e. the church picks the judge, or the church appoints dukes.
6) founders/elders may sponsor armies
An interesting idea, and one that is often proposed. I understand, though, that this would be a coding nightmare to implement if it allowed the assignment of nobles from multiple realms.
7) a "founders" channel, like ruler, banker, general's equivalent
That has been proposed and rejected. Religious founders are not rulers or council level political offices. They don't get their own channel. The restriction of island-wide communications to realm-based authority positions is intentional.
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I'll leave out the references or this will be too long
Yes, game mechanics give religious founders very little. It is up to the players to make that happen, and invest power into their religious leaders.
yes, but the whole point of this thread is how that really isn't working most of the time, and religion needs some help to spruce it up a bit. Obviously Rulers have something founders don't, cause look at all the Realms we have.
One difference is obviously, you are (nearly) required to be in a realm, and face the consequences good and bad of that. You don't have to join a religion, and no one will be the wiser.
1) (taxes) - yes, I had envisioned taxes coming from the same pot. so the lord isn't happy about it, but what can he do? piss off a powerful church, with its consequences?
3) (crowning) the founder or elder travels to the capitol or same region and clicks "crown", like signing a treaty. Ruler doesn't get some (any?) of his buttons until then. Perhaps after a certain amount of time, anarchy hits or rebellions are easier or etc.. I see there being more RP potential in this than actual game mechanics
6) yes, for now it would have to be a single realm army. I would like to see "army diplomacy", where armies match against armies first, then align by realm, but that's another thread and a complex idea
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One difference is obviously, you are (nearly) required to be in a realm, and face the consequences good and bad of that. You don't have to join a religion, and no one will be the wiser.
That's a large difference, yes, but that's a good thing IMHO. Religion is different, it's not just a second layer of realms.
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If it is not noticed, then it should be. Spending enough time and money to influence the views of a significant enough portion of the regional population to actually make a significant difference should be noticed by other people. Not being noticed definitely sounds like a bug to me.
Noooooh! It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Seriously, I think it's great. The result is not as dramatic as what a priest can do, there is no "Diplomatic Take Over" for example, but it has the advantage of being covert.
It is realist too, talking to the right people without anyone noticing is what spies do.
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Family affiliation is an important part of the game. Quite a few people use family affiliation as an integral part of their RP. There is nothing wrong with using your family's influence and power to further the political/power goals of other family members. This is, after all, a medieval RP. Family is everything, right? And you can feel free to use that against them, as well.
In my point of view this is very questionable despite all that talk about players who make valiant efforts to separate their doubled characters - in game, in 99% of cases i see double characters used as slots who give ooc advantage to players who use it, limit interaction, limit need for players to be more involved in I-G world, and finally severely limits title opportunities, as double chars too often take double titles depriving others from it. i fully belive that is stalls the game as a whole, creating power you cannot compete with. even with such opinion, i would not prefer that to be completely removed, but would always want to see that game mechanics at least allows competing approaches to be implemented. currently, by design, everyone who uses that doubling simply has too huge advantage.
So you feel that religions being able to generate significant streams of revenue will make them independent of realm influence? Actually, I'd go the exact opposite path. If this was the case, then you would see realms all over the place start to institute their own pet religions, even more so than now. And these religions would support their realm, and even provide military forces for the realm. Religions that did not do this would not be allowed, and would be replaced with ones that did. Very few realms, if any, would allow a competing power structure to coexist with their realm-based structure. They would be integrated and controlled by the same group. That is exactly why religions do not generate significant sources of their own income. Of course, you can do it yourself by taxing your noble members via monthly fees.
The main point is in balance, and such scenario you mention is unrealistic. If, say, religion, with 10-15 temples would provide income equal to some small-sized cities, how could any ruler ever bother to found religion, "recruit" enough priests and followers, just to ensure some modest funding? I cannot imagine that. It is intended for those who have no other mans except such one, and no-one who has much more efficient way to earn money would ever bother. Moreover, so much effort is needed that I truly don't believe anybody would found religion and do so much religious job just to take some moderate funds. Net income would be side-effect for those who are fully in religion anyhow, giving them some small power.
Religions are not dependent on realms for funding. They are dependent on nobles for funding. There is a significant, and extremely important, difference. You don't have to get the official support of the realm of Keplerstan. All you need is the support of one of their lords. The richer the lord, the better. And it is imperative on the religion to give the nobles a reason to contribute.
That would be true if lords are absolutely and completely free to do whatever they want, but it is not the case in many realms, and there is straightforward power of judges related to realm laws as well. Nevertheless, what I am advocating is that religion would be somewhat financially independent of everybody, though, their temples, of course still remain dependent on will of region lords. Current financial dependency simply renders religions unattractive.
There are many religions that don't have a funding problem. They offer the nobility something that they feel is worth the contribution. It could be that the religion supports them against their enemies. Or it supports their RP. Or it provides fun for the players. Whatever it is they provide, it works for them. If you can't convince your noble members to contribute to the success of your religion, then your religion is not providing them with something that they want. And I seriously doubt that this has anything at all to do with game mechanics.
I simply do not see it anywhere and I stand firmly behind it unless proved otherwise. Base of religion power comes only from either theocratic state or rich lords, who are not even interactive in-game friends, but are mostly family members. some players are prone to be attracted with anyhow large religions (similar to large realms), but that only further degrades things, as people learned that everything is monopolized and they have no hope to be able to try to compete, as power base is somewhere else, where you cannot touch it.
that is what i am talking about - power is either with state of with rich lords, but that is not religious game, as power comes from the outside, rendering religion mere decorative attachment, so why would people bother? if they want landlords game, they would play it, if they want realm policies, they would play it, they do not need religion, as it does not provide them any alternative. "religious game" is blocked by outside factors, by current tweaks.
And if, for some reason, you think that no realm would allow a new religion to move in anyway, I can guarantee you that you are mistaken. There are many realms that would be willing to allow you to move in and set up shop. On EC alone I can think of at least three, maybe four realms that would let you move in, so long as you didn't cause trouble, or preach a faith that had blatant doctrinal contradictions to the ones already followed. Sanctus Acies and Church of Humanity have always coexisted, and in the past been quit peaceful with Triunism. On BT, Riombara has always had a very lenient policy on new religions. PeL on Dwilight used to be, too. I hear, OOC, that Carelia was shopping around for a new religion to help invigorate some of their RP, too.
I am not sure that i presented such thoughts somewhere. in previous discussions, I hope it is to some extent clear (if i expressed it well), that i care for self-sustaining power of religion more than the fact where it resides.
However, one of your quotes describes much: )...)that would let you move in, so long as you didn't cause trouble(...).
That is the point! If you are so sure that someone will not cause trouble, ever, because he is so weak and will never be able to become very influential, you are taking care to make eternal stall :-[ That is natural behavior of those in power that game mechanics unfortunately endorses. Mechanics should prevent any opportunity for those in power to control everything, so when you play, no matter how strong and influential you are, you should live with that that you cannot predict and control everything. Currently, mechanics allows monopolization of power which is covered by many fancy explanations of use of family influences, long-terms ties etc. all that stuff provides nothing but boredom and i have no sympathy for that.
More followers = more funds. Match your temple to your following, and don't overdo it on shrines, you should get very close to your expenses.
Again, i don't see it in practice after many, many months of silent checking. you either have net negative income because of too many buildings, or permanent loss of followers because of too little buildings. maybe there is some difference to that when some religion totally prevails in wide area, which is the case only with some large theocracies, so you have your balance when you actually don't needed as everything is in your hands anyhow :-X
You want more ways to achieve the same ends. That's fine, I'm good with that. But when the diplomat ability to influence regions is implemented, you complain that it duplicates the priest ability, making priests useless.
These are not competing ways, that is the same way given to diplomat, reducing significance of priests. i am aware that effort has been made to make diplomats more attractive, which would be good in general, but is not good if it comes at costs of priests. competing powers would be that diplomats have some other measure noone else has.
Then refuse to be treated that way. Stick up for yourself. Refuse to profane your religious faith for the benefit of secular authorities. Or ask for a generous contribution to your faith to compensate for your troubles. Of course once you perform the RTO, the region now belongs to you. And guess what? You now have the financial support of a lordship for your religion. Isn't this what you wanted in the first place?
it is exactly what i am doing, but all who join me get bored after a while as nothing can be achieved., only frustration that never ends, one burden after another. the only way why i am in it is because i don't care at all will i ever reach success, i care for storyline more than anything else. i feel, however, that game mechanics forces you to play only in one single manner if you want to achieve something, which is disappointing, as game world initially gives you idea that much more depth is possible, but in reality, such balance tweaks made most of ways really impractical.
RTO's does not work without large addition support of courtiers, police-work etc.. which you will not get if you are not tool of mundane powers.
in general that is ok that region needs different kinds of work to be maintained, but than it should be distributed fairly. with all priest powers i had, i tried to prepare region with about 600 population and lowest stats, to raise morale and loyalty before rto, to have it stable after rto, but did not manage it with rl 6 months of attempts, region that is outside of any route.
if you cannot use your highest power for even such insignificant region, than you really cannot create alternative way.
on the other hand, if we would want fair balance, than pagan peasants should make more troubles. if priests cannot do it without police-workers, than it should be vice-versa at least to some extent, if we want to enforce interaction and cooperation.
the biggest trouble with mentioned power monopolies, and main reason why i am writing all this at all, is that monopolies do not need interaction and cooperation and it is very much visible in many realms.
I completely disagree.
you may not like to see too much religion because of any kind of rl reason, but pagan peasants really did not exist at all at middle ages, religion was core of any kind of hierarchy and control, so reducing productivity for pagan peasants it seems as really mild measure in my humble opinion.
I'm not sure what you mean here, especially as relates to religion. Are you saying that there should be a religious council-level office?
While I agree that the realms *should* be able to forcibly tax cities directly, without having to rely on the completely avoidable current duchy tax system, I don't see what this has to do with empowering religions.
"Competing power" does not directly mean "endless warfare". It sees to me that the system you are proposing would mostly result in political infighting and not direct, large-scale, realm-based conflict that is at the core of BattleMaster.
at the end of my previous post, i tried to extend idea of competing powers to other lever of power, realm council, to show some similarities as to how to achieve it.
that is, of course your opinion, but why do you think competing powers would necessarily create inter-realm wars only?
i think, if it would be properly balanced, noone could predict what would actually happen, and that, exactly that, would make game more interesting.
some competing powers would possible create strong realms who would have expansionist ambitions, other would create endless internal struggles, but that would be up to players to play and achieve something by one means or another, with different success, instead of game mechanics forcing them to use one way only.
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actually... you can have 2 things
a tithe set by banker.
a tithe set by lord.
all out of existing pot.
and no. some religion boss shouldn't be allowed to levy anything themselves. they can exert power to force a levy via another character (riots that loots gold, for example)... but not directly.
and it should be possible for paganistic nobles/gov to get rid of followers of player religion via persecution. afterall, what is paganism in this context? they believe in something, just not the something the player created religions believe in. romans with their many gods are seen as pagans by christians, for example.
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Ah, yes, but paganism in BM relates to unorganized religious beliefs.
In that sense, the domestic roman worship could be seen as paganism, but the organized temples and imperial worship is definitely an organized religion. If you want to act as a religious body, then you need to form yourself into one.
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RTO's does not work without large addition support of courtiers, police-work etc.. which you will not get if you are not tool of mundane powers.
in general that is ok that region needs different kinds of work to be maintained, but than it should be distributed fairly. with all priest powers i had, i tried to prepare region with about 600 population and lowest stats, to raise morale and loyalty before rto, to have it stable after rto, but did not manage it with rl 6 months of attempts, region that is outside of any route.
That sounds highly unlikely and I believe there may have been other factors that caused something to fail. Was the region starving after the RTO (Happened to me once)? Did you get a Knight? Did you set your Estate to Authority? Did you hold the right Courts?
I'm asking, because my experiences are vastly different (Note that all these accounts are from my foggy memory, so reader beware). I personally prepared Aix, a rogue City at that time, for a Colony Takeover using only Priest options (No Diplomat back then) with around 10%-15% followers, starting from next to nothing. It took some time, surely, but we got Sympathy up enough and did the CTO. Keep up loyalty and the rest will follow from my experiences. That was of course with Army Support once the CTO was started and it became the Capital soon after, with Pontifex in the region bonus.
I have RTO'd Az Zarqua and Bisciye on my own, which were highly depopulated with high followers and Worshipful and Indifferent sympathy respectively, but the latter was with Ambassador support of myself. Bisciye was starving right that day so got a huge hit to Loyalty etc. but thanks to my Ambassador options, I barely still managed to get it back on track after some time. If I had properly prepared Food in time, I think I would have made it without the Ambassador aid.
I have also been part of a recent RTO of Bursa, a region of 600 population, done by two Priests. It was already fully converted due previous preachings and sympathy was at the high end of Indifferent. The region was at good stats with low control and still holding fairly stable after 3-4 days, albeit Control is slipping now. This is with the Lord Estate on Authority and no Knights after 1-2 days (He came with the region, then returned to Caligus). There are no Nobles working on repairing the region, nor is the Lord holding Court. If we had done so, I would expect Bursa to be in pretty good shape now.
What I suspect is that something in the preparations or after the RTO caused it to fail, because it's certainly doable from my experiences.
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That sounds highly unlikely and I believe there may have been other factors that caused something to fail. Was the region starving after the RTO (Happened to me once)? Did you get a Knight? Did you set your Estate to Authority? Did you hold the right Courts?
I'm asking, because my experiences are vastly different (Note that all these accounts are from my foggy memory, so reader beware). I personally prepared Aix, a rogue City at that time, for a Colony Takeover using only Priest options (No Diplomat back then) with around 10%-15% followers, starting from next to nothing. It took some time, surely, but we got Sympathy up enough and did the CTO. Keep up loyalty and the rest will follow from my experiences. That was of course with Army Support once the CTO was started and it became the Capital soon after, with Pontifex in the region bonus.
I have RTO'd Az Zarqua and Bisciye on my own, which were highly depopulated with high followers and Worshipful and Indifferent sympathy respectively, but the latter was with Ambassador support of myself. Bisciye was starving right that day so got a huge hit to Loyalty etc. but thanks to my Ambassador options, I barely still managed to get it back on track after some time. If I had properly prepared Food in time, I think I would have made it without the Ambassador aid.
I have also been part of a recent RTO of Bursa, a region of 600 population, done by two Priests. It was already fully converted due previous preachings and sympathy was at the high end of Indifferent. The region was at good stats with low control and still holding fairly stable after 3-4 days, albeit Control is slipping now. This is with the Lord Estate on Authority and no Knights after 1-2 days (He came with the region, then returned to Caligus). There are no Nobles working on repairing the region, nor is the Lord holding Court. If we had done so, I would expect Bursa to be in pretty good shape now.
What I suspect is that something in the preparations or after the RTO caused it to fail, because it's certainly doable from my experiences.
We RTO'd a townsland with the assistance of two priest and a single knight doing police work. So like Telrunya I seriously doubt the orginal statement. But then it is quickly getting to the point were I simply ignore DC's statements due to the unreasonable levels of hyperbole.
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Noooooh! It's not a bug, it's a feature!
No, it's a bug. Or at least I would consider it a bug.
Seriously, I think it's great. The result is not as dramatic as what a priest can do, there is no "Diplomatic Take Over" for example, but it has the advantage of being covert.
It is realist too, talking to the right people without anyone noticing is what spies do.
So, there's a region with 10,000 people in it. And you're going to spend enough time in the region, talking to enough people, and spreading around enough gold, that you're going to convince enough them that Keplerstan isn't really so bad as all that, and the other nobles in the region that run with the same crowd are not going to notice this? But a priest can meet with 30 local peasants, convince maybe two of them to join Keplerism, and everyone in the region, and surrounding regions, notices?
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yes, but the whole point of this thread is how that really isn't working most of the time, and religion needs some help to spruce it up a bit. Obviously Rulers have something founders don't, cause look at all the Realms we have.
And look at all the religions we have, too. Yes, some religions are crap. But so are some realms, too.
6) yes, for now it would have to be a single realm army. I would like to see "army diplomacy", where armies match against armies first, then align by realm, but that's another thread and a complex idea
And thus further erode the power and authority of the ruler, removing one of the few powers that is reserved solely for the ruler. And further obscuring the "team" aspect of the game.
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You should at least be able to try to do it covertly. You are after all meeting with minor nobility and wealthy merchants, in their private houses.
The text says: "You spend your bribe money, and are admitted to the mansion of a wealthy merchant and his family and business partners. You sit down in an elegant parlor with your host and his friends, and talk with them for 6 hours."
If you manage to convince these people of the justness of your cause, and they accept your bribe, then does it not make sense that they would not want this fact known by the authorities? Few politicians publically admit that they are influenced by a free-spending lobbyist; rather they all claim to have come indepentantly to the conclusion that Keplerstan is really a great friend.
I could see the case that it should not always succeed at being covert. The game already has various levels of success ("Your tongue is silver tonight", "Most of your audience is unimpressed", etc). When the action fails, then it could become public, but the successful ones should not.
To compare to the action of a priest is unfair. Priests, by definition, preach in public. That's also why it is free: believers don't ask for bribes!
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Ah, yes, but paganism in BM relates to unorganized religious beliefs.
In that sense, the domestic roman worship could be seen as paganism, but the organized temples and imperial worship is definitely an organized religion. If you want to act as a religious body, then you need to form yourself into one.
but what about the we don't care what they believe as long as it ain't X. isn't it a bit artificial to have to set up Y to get rid of X?
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but what about the we don't care what they believe as long as it ain't X. isn't it a bit artificial to have to set up Y to get rid of X?
You still have to set up Y to define "we".
Unless you do it at the level of the realm; but in that case you do it with the secular tools at your disposal. You don't need to found a religion to arrest and ban priests.
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The main point is in balance, and such scenario you mention is unrealistic. If, say, religion, with 10-15 temples would provide income equal to some small-sized cities, how could any ruler ever bother to found religion, "recruit" enough priests and followers, just to ensure some modest funding? I cannot imagine that. It is intended for those who have no other mans except such one, and no-one who has much more efficient way to earn money would ever bother. Moreover, so much effort is needed that I truly don't believe anybody would found religion and do so much religious job just to take some moderate funds. Net income would be side-effect for those who are fully in religion anyhow, giving them some small power.
Not unrealistic at all. I've seen it. Religions are often founded for the sole purpose of supporting realms. And if that's not the original purpose, they often end up that way, too. And how do they recruit priests? It is quite often those doubled-up characters you mentioned earlier. Could religion be as efficient as realm taxes? Maybe not. But when your realm is already producing as much gold as it can, and you still need more, would you turn down an extra 1,000 gold a week, just because it's not as "efficient" as going out and conquering another city?
Current financial dependency simply renders religions unattractive.
To some people, yes, I agree. But then perhaps these people aren't cut out to play the religion game the way it is done in BattleMaster.
However, one of your quotes describes much: )...)that would let you move in, so long as you didn't cause trouble(...).
That is the point! If you are so sure that someone will not cause trouble, ever, because he is so weak and will never be able to become very influential, you are taking care to make eternal stall :-[
So, wait, you think that religions should be given so much power over the state that any newbie religion should be able to move into a realm against that realm's will, cause as much trouble as they want, and have the realm unable to kick them out without it causing major problems? That's simply ridiculous, and the argument holds absolutely no weight at all.
Again, i don't see it in practice after many, many months of silent checking. you either have net negative income because of too many buildings, or permanent loss of followers because of too little buildings. maybe there is some difference to that when some religion totally prevails in wide area, which is the case only with some large theocracies, so you have your balance when you actually don't needed as everything is in your hands anyhow :-X
How many times do I have to say it? It is intentional that religions are not self-sustaining in gold flow without noble sponsors.
RTO's does not work without large addition support of courtiers, police-work etc.. which you will not get if you are not tool of mundane powers.
This is not correct. I have seen RTOs done by lone priests, or priests with little support.
But even with that ignored, you are again contradicting yourself. You've already complained that priests are relegated to auxiliary attachments to the army. So, you're an attachment to the army. That means you have the support you're just complaining that you can't work without.
in general that is ok that region needs different kinds of work to be maintained, but than it should be distributed fairly. with all priest powers i had, i tried to prepare region with about 600 population and lowest stats, to raise morale and loyalty before rto, to have it stable after rto, but did not manage it with rl 6 months of attempts, region that is outside of any route.
if you cannot use your highest power for even such insignificant region, than you really cannot create alternative way.
Then maybe something was working against you, and you should have given up long before that. These results are so far outside of any that I've seen or heard of that I can't credit it as typical, or even a bit out of the ordinary, without thinking there has to be some serious things working against you.
on the other hand, if we would want fair balance, than pagan peasants should make more troubles.
I'm sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. Pagan does not mean "atheist without religion". It means they don't follow an official game-mechanics-sanctioned organized religion. There is no way that I would ever support a change.
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I'm sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. Pagan does not mean "atheist without religion". It means they don't follow an official game-mechanics-sanctioned organized religion. There is no way that I would ever support a change.
Quick question: does the "The peasants are unhappy that the local Lord does not follow the majority religion" appear if the majority religion is paganism? I think it would make sense that it does, even when the Lord is also pagan: after all, if it's not organized, it's probably not the same brand of paganism.
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Quick question: does the "The peasants are unhappy that the local Lord does not follow the majority religion" appear if the majority religion is paganism? I think it would make sense that it does, even when the Lord is also pagan: after all, if it's not organized, it's probably not the same brand of paganism.
I do not believe it does. As I said in a previous post, that would be a possibility. But it should probably not be as strong as the current effect. If the local lord is a pagan, it's completely possible that he follows some of the local beliefs.
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Quick question: does the "The peasants are unhappy that the local Lord does not follow the majority religion" appear if the majority religion is paganism? I think it would make sense that it does, even when the Lord is also pagan: after all, if it's not organized, it's probably not the same brand of paganism.
When the majority of peasants in a region are pagans, there is no majority belief.
"Paganism" in BM is not a single religion: it simply means the hodgepodge of local superstitions and beliefs that exist outside of organized religions.
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When the majority of peasants in a region are pagans, there is no majority belief.
"Paganism" in BM is not a single religion: it simply means the hodgepodge of local superstitions and beliefs that exist outside of organized religions.
Yes, I know. The point is the current system encourages pagan Lords to simply forbid all preaching and temple building, and this gives them all the same advantages as joining a religion and working on preaching their region to majority belief would. It's a minor point, but it is a factor.
Since there is no majority belief, wouldn't it make sense to say that a majority of the people have a faith different than that of the Lord, whatever it is?
Then aligning the Lords and the peasant's faith would be a bonus, rather than misalignment being a malus that can be negated by not having religions at all.
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You still have to set up Y to define "we".
Unless you do it at the level of the realm; but in that case you do it with the secular tools at your disposal. You don't need to found a religion to arrest and ban priests.
but the thing is.. you can't round up peasants who believe in evil things and kill the lot of them. you can't even get the priests unless you are a follower.
the "we" would be anything but X.. but most typically a religion so minor that it doesn't get founded officially in the game.. i guess part of the pagan stuff.
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Yes, I know. The point is the current system encourages pagan Lords to simply forbid all preaching and temple building, and this gives them all the same advantages as joining a religion and working on preaching their region to majority belief would. It's a minor point, but it is a factor.
Then aligning the Lords and the peasant's faith would be a bonus, rather than misalignment being a malus that can be negated by not having religions at all.
Religions can offer other benefits to their members than just "not causing trouble". Religions can actively aid in maintaining a region, defend against hostile faiths, provide important diplomatic and social connections, provide help in attaining all kinds of political goals, etc. If your religion can't do any of those things, and can't convince the average pagan lord to join your faith, then, frankly, your religion sucks.
Now, I'm not saying that you should be able to convince every lord to join your faith. Or even every *pagan* lord. But you have to be willing to be creative about how you recruit people to your cause. Your religion has to offer them *something* they want.
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but the thing is.. you can't round up peasants who believe in evil things and kill the lot of them. you can't even get the priests unless you are a follower.
This is not correct. Arresting a priest is a diplomatic action available to anyone with a police unit. All it takes is a war declaration against the priest's realm. And a lord can tear down any temple in his region.
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Not unrealistic at all. I've seen it. Religions are often founded for the sole purpose of supporting realms. And if that's not the original purpose, they often end up that way, too. And how do they recruit priests? It is quite often those doubled-up characters you mentioned earlier. Could religion be as efficient as realm taxes? Maybe not. But when your realm is already producing as much gold as it can, and you still need more, would you turn down an extra 1,000 gold a week, just because it's not as "efficient" as going out and conquering another city?
Again, that is issue of balance. If it is not 1000 gold a week, but, say, 200-250 gold of week, noone would make effort to bring 4-5 active priests to run around for sole purpose of collecting money.
Times you were referring about were other opposite of the extreme, which I did not like, and at that time I had only positive feelings about religious upkeep implementation. Now the balance is tilted too much to the other side in my opinion.
When I compare those two circumstances - I was a ruler of the realm where overly rich religion was threatening to bring realm to collapse in some situations; yet, that was incomparably more interesting than now, when religions are so sterilized that they are actually dying.
At that time, even if some religions were indeed interested in money only (while it is not unrealistic, actually), elders were serious political players, did not need clone-relatives to bolster that.
To some people, yes, I agree. But then perhaps these people aren't cut out to play the religion game the way it is done in BattleMaster.
In this discussion, I think we can come to similar conclusion often, even if not agreeing completely. What I am saying most of time is that it is pity if we are forced to play in one way only. Why we are so limited in ways to play in game world that looks so wide and deep? I think it is pity. Earlier, BM was described as a game when you learning as you are playing, and surprises are possible even after long-time play. Now we could make manual "play this way and you will achieve something, other ways do not work, be sure, don't waste time on it" Is it good for the game? I believe no.
So, wait, you think that religions should be given so much power over the state that any newbie religion should be able to move into a realm against that realm's will, cause as much trouble as they want, and have the realm unable to kick them out without it causing major problems? That's simply ridiculous, and the argument holds absolutely no weight at all.
How many times do I have to say it? It is intentional that religions are not self-sustaining in gold flow without noble sponsors.
Here you figure out some extreme scenario which I do not see how it could be realized. New religions take long time to establish themselves in some regions/realms, so by the time they are very influential, they are no newbies at all.
If they hide their true intention for long time - is it not kind of game that could draw interest? If you believe them initially that they are peaceful, but lose your trust after a while, you will try to find new religion to neutralize them, or even form state religion to neutralize such threats forever.
Such activities require some in-game effort, some play and that is what i am advocating.
You dislike new religions and do not trust them? ok: 1. form state religion, 2. disallow any new religions 3. secretly support religion you trust to neutralize them 4. declare war to realm that mostly supports hostile religions and destroy all their temples 5. ban all nobles in your realm found to support hostile religions ... etc, etc. all that option providing some in-game fun and drama
making religions completely powerless deprives us from all of that, why something that can be dealt with in multitude of in-game ways should be blocked by design? i believe that proves how some tweaks degrade gameplay, but that is only my own opinion, of course.
This is not correct. I have seen RTOs done by lone priests, or priests with little support.
One of my chars had at least six or seven successful rto's over two rl years time, and while that experience is not absolute, it is also not to be underestimated. i hold region in the middle of enemy theocracy for more than rl month, completely surrounded by enemy regions. that regions had much of our followers, and we preached around so they were afraid to arrest us fearing of major revolt. even large army could not do anything useful, and they finally recruited bunch of priests to oppose two of us.
that was possible only because religion was established, with ample of religious building still around. that would not be possible any more, because all that buildings would require additional funding and only duke's brother would be interested to do that all, while lot of rp-s, and political negotiations was caused by such situation at those times.
the sole action of rto works best without any help, but i am talking about actually gaining regions for materialistic purpose of religion funding, is that what you proposed as scenario of how to make religion more powerful? it will not work these days. rto's are futile without much of mentioned support. the only regions which could be self-sustainable after rto are the same ones who have too high control level for rto to be possible at all. where will you find region with high stats, province level, major number of your followers to even attempt it? nowhere, though taking regions in good shape would be only thing to create some drama. i am not saying that should be too easy, i am only saying that should be possible, currently it is near to impossible.
But even with that ignored, you are again contradicting yourself. You've already complained that priests are relegated to auxiliary attachments to the army. So, you're an attachment to the army. That means you have the support you're just complaining that you can't work without.
what is contradiction? all the time i am saying some action and life of religions should be possible without so much additional support being necessary.
Then maybe something was working against you, and you should have given up long before that. These results are so far outside of any that I've seen or heard of that I can't credit it as typical, or even a bit out of the ordinary, without thinking there has to be some serious things working against you.
you are completely right, but i am not giving up, because one of main, if not the only interest in BM is finding different ways, and creating interesting interaction and drama. if i give up of it, i am actually giving up of bm. tell the truth, do you think i am the only one who thinks bm needs more competition, more interesting events, more diversity in way how to play and still be around instead of being smashed for most of unusual attempts? all what it takes is some more tweaks, not revoluition
I'm sorry, but that makes no sense whatsoever. Pagan does not mean "atheist without religion". It means they don't follow an official game-mechanics-sanctioned organized religion. There is no way that I would ever support a change.
i think medieval times work similarly to game mechanics, and someone mentioned it on posts - if you have no temples of your beliefs, you are pagan whatever you believe in privately. moreover, peasants donations to religions are as mandatory as all their other taxes, and they go to faith directly, and if we would aim for accuracy, faiths would receive tax shares the same way as realm taxes. and in many countries that made religions richer than landed lords, as they had double income - income from realm-wide taxing plus income from their own estates! at least that is how things work in medieval countries i know about.
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actually... you can have 2 things
a tithe set by banker.
a tithe set by lord.
all out of existing pot.
and no. some religion boss shouldn't be allowed to levy anything themselves. they can exert power to force a levy via another character (riots that loots gold, for example)... but not directly.
and it should be possible for paganistic nobles/gov to get rid of followers of player religion via persecution. afterall, what is paganism in this context? they believe in something, just not the something the player created religions believe in. romans with their many gods are seen as pagans by christians, for example.
Voluntary self-imposed tithes... now that sounds good to me!
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No, it's a bug. Or at least I would consider it a bug.
So, there's a region with 10,000 people in it. And you're going to spend enough time in the region, talking to enough people, and spreading around enough gold, that you're going to convince enough them that Keplerstan isn't really so bad as all that, and the other nobles in the region that run with the same crowd are not going to notice this? But a priest can meet with 30 local peasants, convince maybe two of them to join Keplerism, and everyone in the region, and surrounding regions, notices?
Solution: make priest work invisible.
Or moreso.
And make diplomat work have a generic message, whether it be good or bad, and give diplomats the option to learn move about what was said lately to the people (both by priests and other diplomats).
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Quick question: does the "The peasants are unhappy that the local Lord does not follow the majority religion" appear if the majority religion is paganism? I think it would make sense that it does, even when the Lord is also pagan: after all, if it's not organized, it's probably not the same brand of paganism.
If paganism stops being more profitable for people in terms of game mechanics than joining a religion does (spending money, making sure your region follows your faith, having more people with some authority over you, etc.), then that would be a good thing.
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I believe Lords and Dukes should be allowed to set aside a certain percentage of taxes for their religion.
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Have your religion set up a rank that has a monthly fee, and get yourself assigned to it. We did this in Sanguis Astroism, but I'm not sure how well it went over. Soon after we implemented the ranks, I went back to Aspirant status for a while. It was something that was often requested by the members, though.
Edit: I am fairly certain that Tom was against any kind of automated donation, or automated golf transfer into a religion from a lord. I think his opinion was that if your religion was worthwhile, the players would make it a point to do it themselves.
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I think his opinion was that if your religion was worthwhile, the players would make it a point to do it themselves.
that's the problem, though. Religion has a Catch-22 - the majority of the players in the game don't really roleplay, and without a Game Mechanic there is no reason for them to make the religion worthwhile. At some point if Tom wants religion to be a bigger part of the game, he will need to step in with a Hand of God and add a few things, I guess.
Playing a priest is pretty much like playing an adventurer right now - doesn't matter how much effort you put into roleplaying it, there is no real incentive for anyone to respond to you about anything. So you give up.
Personally, I'm just going to either figure out which religion on Atamara is most active, or create a new one, with the sole purpose of driving out all the "dead" ones. Gives me something interesting to do in religion, when even the Founder and Elder can't be bothered to RP it at all.
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Edit: I am fairly certain that Tom was against any kind of automated donation, or automated golf transfer into a religion from a lord. I think his opinion was that if your religion was worthwhile, the players would make it a point to do it themselves.
But taking your own taxes and giving it directly to the religion is doing that themselves. All you do by forcing them to manually send the gold is make them click more buttons for the same result. I would, of course, restrict this to only the lord's religion and only if the lord's region has an existing temple built.
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Edit: I am fairly certain that Tom was against any kind of automated donation, or automated golf transfer into a religion from a lord. I think his opinion was that if your religion was worthwhile, the players would make it a point to do it themselves.
was it that or was it magic gold disappearing from 1 part of the world and appearing in the opposite side in gold?
thing about tithes... is where does it go. local temple would make sense (at least for the lord's tithes). what happens if there's no local temple? global treasury? but global treasury can't be used for anything other than maintenance... if it could be used for construction / hiring guards, then it might be a useful route.
the worst thing about religion, is basically it's a religion that's not a religion. there's absolutely no reason to believe in most of the drivel. and it's very difficult to come up with good drivel in the 1st place.
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Playing a priest is pretty much like playing an adventurer right now - doesn't matter how much effort you put into roleplaying it, there is no real incentive for anyone to respond to you about anything. So you give up.
I can assure you that this is not the case on the SMA continent.
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But taking your own taxes and giving it directly to the religion is doing that themselves. All you do by forcing them to manually send the gold is make them click more buttons for the same result. I would, of course, restrict this to only the lord's religion and only if the lord's region has an existing temple built.
I worked up a proposal for a system that would allow lords who were members of a religion to automatically fund a temple of their religion that was in their own region, based on a portion of their regional taxes being tithed to that temple. The proposal was rejected.
So what you're proposing has already been proposed, and rejected. Tom wants personal involvement of nobles in religion. If you can't make your religion worthwhile to the players, and something they want to be involved in, then the religion system will not allow your religion to operate on cruise control. Religion will not be a "set it and forget it" thing, the way that realm-wide elections used to be. Because as soon as that happens, then the same people who were here asking for this will be back complaining that someone else's religion is rich and powerful, but there is no player involvement, because they just have a bunch of rich lords who use the automatic tithe system, etc.
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But taking your own taxes and giving it directly to the religion is doing that themselves. All you do by forcing them to manually send the gold is make them click more buttons for the same result. I would, of course, restrict this to only the lord's religion and only if the lord's region has an existing temple built.
We are also forcing them to care enough about the religion they have joined to remember to click the buttons, or to check if the funds are needed etc. There are already enough complaints about people joining a religion just to prop it up and having no input into the group, auto systems will just make it even easier for this to occur.
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Have your religion set up a rank that has a monthly fee, and get yourself assigned to it. We did this in Sanguis Astroism, but I'm not sure how well it went over. Soon after we implemented the ranks, I went back to Aspirant status for a while. It was something that was often requested by the members, though.
Edit: I am fairly certain that Tom was against any kind of automated donation, or automated golf transfer into a religion from a lord. I think his opinion was that if your religion was worthwhile, the players would make it a point to do it themselves.
I think he has, but it might have been over imposed tithes.
The difference between the monthly fee and a tithe is fundamental. One forces the noble to actually travel to a temple and empty his own pockets to do a one-time transfer. The other just involves a lord setting a tithe rate, sharing the costs with everyone of his region in a way that adapts to production levels (low production for a week will result in a less painful tithe) without him having to remember every X days.
One requires more effort, the cost is direct and personal, and the process must regularly be repeated. The second is easy, the cost is shared and impersonal, and the process is automatic. In a world where the law of least effort rules, that really sets it. Plus, it's basic psychology: people would prefer the government give eco-friendly incentives than they further increase gas taxes, even if these incentives will come out of their pockets just the same. As an elder, I am confident I could convince a great number of people to impose thithes upon themselves. Paying their fees, though? It's so much work with such little probabily of success that it's not worth it. Especially if the fee has accumulated for a while...
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... I'd chuck in some gold loss from corruption if I were you if implementing tithes.
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... I'd chuck in some gold loss from corruption if I were you if implementing tithes.
I thought that's what religion maintenance was...?
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I worked up a proposal for a system that would allow lords who were members of a religion to automatically fund a temple of their religion that was in their own region, based on a portion of their regional taxes being tithed to that temple. The proposal was rejected.
So what you're proposing has already been proposed, and rejected. Tom wants personal involvement of nobles in religion. If you can't make your religion worthwhile to the players, and something they want to be involved in, then the religion system will not allow your religion to operate on cruise control. Religion will not be a "set it and forget it" thing, the way that realm-wide elections used to be. Because as soon as that happens, then the same people who were here asking for this will be back complaining that someone else's religion is rich and powerful, but there is no player involvement, because they just have a bunch of rich lords who use the automatic tithe system, etc.
Having some grow passively rich and powerful will force others to actively grow rich and powerful to compensate.
Doesn't take much gold to go wreck religious infrastructure, so taking away from the lords purses will not make a religion an unstoppable thing. Far from it.
This is one of these things were I completely disagree with Tom's reasoning.
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I thought that's what religion maintenance was...?
eh.. isn't that actual upkeep of the temples, rather than corruption?
whole point of corruption is to basically increase cost for auto stuff
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automatic donations would make no substantial difference compared to ordinary gold transfers except they would, yes, allow lords to be more passive.
my idea mostly rotates about current income, that is contribution from peasanats which does not lower region tax income at all, but present separate money inflow already.
before upkeep feature it was far too easy to earn money in religions without any effort. right now i feel it tedious to permanently fill in negative net balance which occurs in majority of regions. if upkeep would, for instance be reduced to one third of the current, mid-size religions could possibly earn 200-250 gold per month, which could not be so big deal, but would provide some fun to religious people.
moreover, if priests would not preach enough, income would fall to negative, so main purpose of upkeep would be intact - that would both punish too passive religious game, and would slightly, just slightly reward active ones.
after two-three months of savings, elders would post large bounty for duke who is very hostile to their faith, and with new feature, assassination would have some chance to remove him. that would be the game, without any revolutionary changes.
net income would be small and would just give some sort of independence to religions, and even that only if priests are preaching enough.
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eh.. isn't that actual upkeep of the temples, rather than corruption?
whole point of corruption is to basically increase cost for auto stuff
I was half sarcastic, as religious infrastructure costs an extreme amount of gold, everything being considered. The costs simply aren't realistic, imo. Feels like we are spending thousands of gold on cardboard temples.
I mean, seriously. Maya temples were overrun by jungle, and after hundreds of years they are still in pretty awesome shape. Catholic cathedrals are doing rather well too. I'm not saying these cost nothing to maintain, but I seriously feel the game exaggerates maintenance costs.
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I was half sarcastic, as religious infrastructure costs an extreme amount of gold, everything being considered. The costs simply aren't realistic, imo. Feels like we are spending thousands of gold on cardboard temples.
I mean, seriously. Maya temples were overrun by jungle, and after hundreds of years they are still in pretty awesome shape. Catholic cathedrals are doing rather well too. I'm not saying these cost nothing to maintain, but I seriously feel the game exaggerates maintenance costs.
They also took years to build, and cost considerably more then a few hundred or even a few thousand gold. I think paying the maintenance is a small price for the wonderful instant build technology of the BM world.
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insofar as them being dead easy to destroy? are believers spawned as strong npc when the temples get razed?
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insofar as them being dead easy to destroy? are believers spawned as strong npc when the temples get razed?
No, they aren't. Sometimes they attack your unit, but they never spawn militia units.
Temples are frigging easy to destroy. I'm not even sure it causes any revolt, as arresting priests does.
Really, we spend thousands of gold on wooden shacks, that would explain a few things...
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well... perhaps they shouldn't be able to be destroyed quite so easily?
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Temples are not so easily destroyed, so much as looted and reduced in size. A level 6 temple would take three full days of looting twice a day to destroy, assuming you are successful every time, and the temple is not guarded. Given that they can be built instantly, I don't think that making you take three days to tear one down is all that unreasonable.
You are correct, I think, in that looting temples doesn't cause unrest among the peasantry. Perhaps it should, based on the number of followers. Looting and burning temples should probably cause the same effects as arresting priests. After all, sacking and closing temples using the lord's options does cause unrest. Quite a lot of it.
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You are correct, I think, in that looting temples doesn't cause unrest among the peasantry. Perhaps it should, based on the number of followers. Looting and burning temples should probably cause the same effects as arresting priests. After all, sacking and closing temples using the lord's options does cause unrest. Quite a lot of it.
In a war, the unrest could end up hurting the target realm instead of the attacking realm... It's not entirely unrealistic (Hey! Nobles razed our beloved temples! Off with their heads, all of them!), but it could be unbalancing.
I would see peasant militia being raised, as with non-religious looting, being a better option.
Arresting priests creates trouble for the realm doing the arresting, usually, not the other way around.
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well.. it wouldn't make much sense to cause unrest in that region against the owner's realm if some foreigner loot it.
if nearby regions belonging to the foreign looters have significant followers, then unrest in those regions would make sense.
mass militia in the form of "angry faithful" may or may not hurt the region... i mean.. it's not like we haven't seen a region looted to hell to get partisan/etc which are then killed, etc to depopulate the region.
would be nice if say... out of a region of 8k pop, let's say 80% following, 2k rise up to fight the looters... whoever left alive out of the 2k then go back into the region's pop after the foreigners get booted out.
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well.. it wouldn't make much sense to cause unrest in that region against the owner's realm if some foreigner loot it.
Hmm...... "unrest" is a pretty broad term. The locals could very easily get upset with the government in general for not protecting them and their faith. Also, mobs are generally not very ... focused.
would be nice if say... out of a region of 8k pop, let's say 80% following, 2k rise up to fight the looters... whoever left alive out of the 2k then go back into the region's pop after the foreigners get booted out.
Seems to me that having 25% of your region take up arms against the foreign invaders would result in a rather large hit to the region's normal operation.
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of course... it'll drain the production/etc.. hence the caveat of those alive go home afterwards to boost the pop back.
only question is whether that mob will do any harm to the infidels to make it worth it
regardless of what happens inside that region.. nearby enemy (i.e. looter's realm) regions with significant following should get hit by unrest. only trouble is the 2+ realm vs 1 thing where you'll get some far away realm who pops in to loot so the nearby one doesn't get hurt. (seen that for TO/sympathy stuff i think) need to figure out how to stop that arising, maybe looter's ally get hit with unrest.
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when you know some feature for rather long, new unexpected tweak brings nasty surprise:
arresting priests was normally bringing disturbance to region stats, and also that of surrounding regions.
knowing that, we prepared arrest by bringing region to top conditions first, but now completely different outcome occurs: with 20-25% followers in region of about 1400 it seems all of them took arms to protect priest (about 300 peasants in report) and attacked my veteran troop of 100 men, wounding 50 of them, while region stats are intact and priest is not arrested.
as it looked really odd, we tried few more times, with the same result, and it seems to be impossible to arrest priest.
this is major change as arresting priest was the only physical measure against his dealings, limited by many other factors as well: possible only against enemy realms, only on your lands etc.
moreover, how realistic is that peasants cause so large casualties to soldiers, not to mention that they remain intact.
making priest major pain in the ass, while being financially dependent as discussed in this post, only pushes more to direction of "duke brother's" game while others would tend to avoid all that stuff.
i don't understand what this change was supposed to bring. weeding out remaining low percent of followers is incredibly harder, and without ability of military troops to interfere, that could end in not so funny game of two duke's brothers preaching one against another eternally, while lord, army and everybody else helplessly look at it. ok, infiltrator can risk his life to stop that process for two days.
generally, why are there so many changes that bring only annoyance, never something positive.
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this is major change as arresting priest was the only physical measure against his dealings, limited by many other factors as well: possible only against enemy realms, only on your lands etc.
That's not a change. It's been happening that way for...I don't know, years?
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That's not a change. It's been happening that way for...I don't know, years?
Don't lie Tim. We all know DC is the oracle of BM who knows all, including all the faults. The fact that people seldom agree with him is just evidence of his genius.
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when you know some feature for rather long, new unexpected tweak brings nasty surprise:
arresting priests was normally bringing disturbance to region stats, and also that of surrounding regions.
knowing that, we prepared arrest by bringing region to top conditions first, but now completely different outcome occurs: with 20-25% followers in region of about 1400 it seems all of them took arms to protect priest (about 300 peasants in report) and attacked my veteran troop of 100 men, wounding 50 of them, while region stats are intact and priest is not arrested.
as it looked really odd, we tried few more times, with the same result, and it seems to be impossible to arrest priest.
this is major change as arresting priest was the only physical measure against his dealings, limited by many other factors as well: possible only against enemy realms, only on your lands etc.
moreover, how realistic is that peasants cause so large casualties to soldiers, not to mention that they remain intact.
making priest major pain in the ass, while being financially dependent as discussed in this post, only pushes more to direction of "duke brother's" game while others would tend to avoid all that stuff.
i don't understand what this change was supposed to bring. weeding out remaining low percent of followers is incredibly harder, and without ability of military troops to interfere, that could end in not so funny game of two duke's brothers preaching one against another eternally, while lord, army and everybody else helplessly look at it. ok, infiltrator can risk his life to stop that process for two days.
generally, why are there so many changes that bring only annoyance, never something positive.
You were serious THAT worried about a hit to region stats that is temporary at best? I think you need to chill and stop playing BM like it is some sort of numbers game.
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Temples are not so easily destroyed, so much as looted and reduced in size. A level 6 temple would take three full days of looting twice a day to destroy, assuming you are successful every time, and the temple is not guarded. Given that they can be built instantly, I don't think that making you take three days to tear one down is all that unreasonable.
You are correct, I think, in that looting temples doesn't cause unrest among the peasantry. Perhaps it should, based on the number of followers. Looting and burning temples should probably cause the same effects as arresting priests. After all, sacking and closing temples using the lord's options does cause unrest. Quite a lot of it.
A level a turn is quite fast, imo, considering some of these levels cost thousands of gold per shot. Not saying "too fast", just saying quite fast.
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You were serious THAT worried about a hit to region stats that is temporary at best? I think you need to chill and stop playing BM like it is some sort of numbers game.
than you should possibly write me exactly how i am to play and i will obey....
if you wrote my post you would at least note that i mentioned how arresting priest sometimes turn region with low stats to inevitable fall.
as regards to "numbers", when you attend to them at least slightly you will easily notice that bm is not overburdened with details and micromanagement, so those small details which exist do not spend much of time, while get many people interested and involved.
actually as we are talking about slight tweaks here, i don't understand where is your interest within discussion if you despise any specific things in bm.
if you prefer personal attacks and flame, there is separate board with such focus, probably. this is discussion about tweaks, not about our personalities, and any useful discussion depends firstly on mutual respect.
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Apologies if my post came across as an attack. I'm Australian and we have a long tradition of "taking the mickey". It doesn't always come across the best in the written form. Maybe I should add some more :) to each post.
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well, i can understand that, i have even more problems when i want to weight style of my english :o
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What about take away the option to "ignore" other religions.
If they only can except each other as Variant, misguided and evil, it could create more game. As you need to have need to have a reason why an religion is a variant or misguided or evil.
If needed you could make another option instead of ignore called "unkown"
as soon as a priest or elder meets an priest of an "unkown" religion the player has a week the time to change the view to variant or misguided and else it will be changed to evil.
another suggestion:
When a priest/elder is in a level 3 temple, he can allow to arrest evil priests in this region.(each member of this faith then can arrest evil priests(the region lord can be against it and tell his militia/knights to arrest nobles who arrest priests. Then you also can add that militia can disobey the orders if a priest(with enough influence) tells them)
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What about take away the option to "ignore" other religions.
If they only can except each other as Variant, misguided and evil, it could create more game. As you need to have need to have a reason why an religion is a variant or misguided or evil.
If needed you could make another option instead of ignore called "unkown"
as soon as a priest or elder meets an priest of an "unkown" religion the player has a week the time to change the view to variant or misguided and else it will be changed to evil.
another suggestion:
When a priest/elder is in a level 3 temple, he can allow to arrest evil priests in this region.(each member of this faith then can arrest evil priests(the region lord can be against it and tell his militia/knights to arrest nobles who arrest priests. Then you also can add that militia can disobey the orders if a priest(with enough influence) tells them)
Complicated and useless, if you ask me. Verdis Elementum, notably, has every other faith on ignore. If this option is taken away, we'll simply have them all put on misguided and continue ignoring them. What would change? Nothing, pretty much. If our gods don't demand that we convert every infidel to our way, why would we bother making a big fuss with the unbelievers? We know we are right but don't really care if others are wrong. Who knows, they might just have whacky ways of worshiping the same gods we do without anyone realizing it. If what they were doing was evil, then the gods would punish them.
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First of all, in my humble opinion religion doesn't miss a thing except players willing to make it work. If a religion fails it is the responsibility of the ones running it. We have several religions that quite obviously show that it works if some energy is put into its growth. That is really all that makes the difference between a successful religion and a failure.
Concerning the tools of the priests and especially the RTO. I did it with one of my priests FOUR times now. I never failed and I always was able to hold the region on my own. So, if you tried and failed that was bad luck and I am sorry but it isn't like this in general or perhaps I was just very, very lucky but I doubt that.
The power of religion. Don't get me started about Sanguis Astroism. I am convinced that SA has more power in Dwilight than any single realm on the continent. If you ask me SA controls 3 + 2 half realms. Yes the realms are "free" but if the Prophet calls there is no question, they will follow. Reason? RP in my opinion, no game mechanics at all. In Corsanctum you can't even become a Lord if you are not of the Faith. How much power needs a religion to be recognized as a power to reckon with?
I said it in the beginning and I say it again. Most religions need more involved players and not more tweaks. That would help tremendously but it is nothing that can be forced.
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First of all, in my humble opinion religion doesn't miss a thing except players willing to make it work.
Amen to that.
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Amen to that.
While I disagree, I do believe it is a very important factor.
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Forget that separation of church and state stuff. I want more religions involved in more stuff. I want official state religions. I want realms to use their militarily power to export their faith to other realms. I want religions to be telling realms what to do.
This a billion times. I am so annoyed with the whole separation of church and state thing. Its not fitting for the period, its not fun, and its not even much more practical in the first place. IMHO, state religions should be coded into the game. Not only would it make things more interesting and make religions more relevant, it would do cool things for monarchies and theocracies. I think a potential appointment system for the ruler where a religion (or the highest-ranking person in that religion) explicitly elects and chooses the ruler would be really interesting, as well as more fitting to what real life was like.
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Until there are real coded, in-game benefits and consequences to religious systems (in some way, I am not sure what way) people will fail to care about religions and put them on the back burner.
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Until there are real coded, in-game benefits and consequences to religious systems (in some way, I am not sure what way) people will fail to care about religions and put them on the back burner.
Easiest change would be a system to causes increasing levels of unrest, the longer the region lord fails to join the dominant religion of the people, or at least A religion. No more atheist/agnostic region lords.
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Easiest change would be a system to causes increasing levels of unrest, the longer the region lord fails to join the dominant religion of the people, or at least A religion. No more atheist/agnostic region lords.
Does that not already happen? The "The local Lord does not believe in the majority faith" message?
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Easiest change would be a system to causes increasing levels of unrest, the longer the region lord fails to join the dominant religion of the people, or at least A religion. No more atheist/agnostic region lords.
Lords should be dictating religion to their serfs, not the other way around.
If you have this, new religions will never be able to grow because any lord who opts out of the stale old national religion will have his region revolt on him.
And sometimes, there is a reason for not being part of an IG religion. It's not always because of atheism/agnosticism.
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Trying to convert a noble, I was replied that it was the tradition in his family to only join religions if they were becoming priests. A.k.a. "I only join a religion when the game mechanics demand it".
Sigh
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Easiest change would be a system to causes increasing levels of unrest, the longer the region lord fails to join the dominant religion of the people, or at least A religion.
There are IG penalties. YOu may be able to argue, though, that they are not enough.
No more atheist/agnostic region lords.
There are no atheists. If you think your character is an atheist, then feel free to let Tom know, and he will disabuse your character of his misconceptions.
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Lords should be dictating religion to their serfs, not the other way around.
Call in a priest, and convert them.
If you have this, new religions will never be able to grow because any lord who opts out of the stale old national religion will have his region revolt on him.
It's not that bad... Unless your new religion is declared Evil. And perhaps you get auto da fe'd.
But still, what do you expect? That the lord of a region of 5,000 superstitious peasants can leave his faith, declare that they should all follow some other new faith, and expect them to all just instantly fervently believe the new faith, without any grumbling or resentment?
And sometimes, there is a reason for not being part of an IG religion. It's not always because of atheism/agnosticism.
This is true.
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Call in a priest, and convert them.
How many priests do we have per continent? And how quickly can a priest convert a region that is 100% whatever? And if that religion views the other as evil? This is not a reasonable solution. If you want religion to matter, then you need to make sure that religion has a LOT more actors involved in promoting it. Leaving it all in the hands of priests, when people willing to play them are so scarce, just ain't gonna work.
It's not that bad... Unless your new religion is declared Evil. And perhaps you get auto da fe'd.
Right now? No. However, he was suggesting to make it precisely that bad. I was commenting his suggestion, not the status quo.
But still, what do you expect? That the lord of a region of 5,000 superstitious peasants can leave his faith, declare that they should all follow some other new faith, and expect them to all just instantly fervently believe the new faith, without any grumbling or resentment?
Violent persecutions like the inquisitions came from the top down. Priests already have a ton of options that give established religions incredible advantage over smaller and newer ones, they don't need a passive new-religion killer bonus as well. Peasant revolts should be limited to player-instigated ones, otherwise you are just favoring the bland boring religions that are the reason people don't care for religions in the first place.
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How many priests do we have per continent? And how quickly can a priest convert a region that is 100% whatever? And if that religion views the other as evil? This is not a reasonable solution. If you want religion to matter, then you need to make sure that religion has a LOT more actors involved in promoting it. Leaving it all in the hands of priests, when people willing to play them are so scarce, just ain't gonna work.
IMO, if people stop playing religions as boring, then people will want to be priests. But the majority of religions *want* to be boring. If people stop with the boring religion garbage, and this nonsensical "separation of church and state", then we'll have better religion overall.
But this does require something that few people are willing to do, apparently: play a character committed to a religion, and willing to follow along with what the leaders of the religion say to do.
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But this does require something that few people are willing to do, apparently: play a character committed to a religion, and willing to follow along with what the leaders of the religion say to do.
And that is what we are trying to solve, by adding something in the game mechanics that appeals to players, motivating them to play religious characters.
Benefits from being in a religion are a must to me, and being a region lord without a religion should be terrible. A pagan lord of a pagan region should get civil unrest, as the population does not share his beliefs, for they are not even formally presented for anyone else to identify with them.
How can a nobleman of prestige not be part of an established (and thus respectable) cult led by fellow noblemen? How can he 'not care about spiritual matters'?
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IMO, if people stop playing religions as boring, then people will want to be priests. But the majority of religions *want* to be boring. If people stop with the boring religion garbage, and this nonsensical "separation of church and state", then we'll have better religion overall.
But this does require something that few people are willing to do, apparently: play a character committed to a religion, and willing to follow along with what the leaders of the religion say to do.
I've never been a part of a religion that wanted anything from me, other than gold. I even went out of my way, several times, to ask a priest what I should do in a situation, and didn't get a real reply in return.
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I've never been a part of a religion that wanted anything from me, other than gold. I even went out of my way, several times, to ask a priest what I should do in a situation, and didn't get a real reply in return.
Wish I had a few like you in the CoH. Yeah, we'd take your gold, but our priests frequently offer guidance and confessionals. No one seems to want to actually RP that bit out, sadly.
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IMO, if people stop playing religions as boring, then people will want to be priests. But the majority of religions *want* to be boring. If people stop with the boring religion garbage, and this nonsensical "separation of church and state", then we'll have better religion overall.
But this does require something that few people are willing to do, apparently: play a character committed to a religion, and willing to follow along with what the leaders of the religion say to do.
That's bull!@#$. If people want to be priests of interesting religions, then they can found the religion to their own liking themselves if the present ones aren't appealing, and be as dynamic as they wish to be. Founding a religion is pretty easy, after all.
The fact is, the people who make the religions "boring" and "garbage" and the only people who care enough about religion to make it happen.
IMO, if people stop playing religions as boring, then people will want to be priests. But the majority of religions *want* to be boring. If people stop with the boring religion garbage, and this nonsensical "separation of church and state", then we'll have better religion overall.
But this does require something that few people are willing to do, apparently: play a character committed to a religion, and willing to follow along with what the leaders of the religion say to do.
If you want to force people to be involved in religion, then you must stop making religions so dependent on priests, as it limits the amount of people who can stimulate and creates religions and therefore leaves us with the little choice we have today.
Wish I had a few like you in the CoH. Yeah, we'd take your gold, but our priests frequently offer guidance and confessionals. No one seems to want to actually RP that bit out, sadly.
That was more my experience. When I was heavily invested in the religion game, it seemed like no one else in the world actually wanted to make priests important figures of counsel and nobody seemed to care what was right or wrong, or what the afterlife involved. There was a time where most of my characters were important priests and most of my time went towards the religious game, but it's really a waste because religions are poorly implemented, so I have long since stopped caring so much. My only priest left feels more like a museum manager than a spiritual leader.
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The fact is, the people who make the religions "boring" and "garbage" and the only people who care enough about religion to make it happen.
On the contrary, these are the people that generally don't care about the religion, about making it prosper, or providing an interesting and varied game experience. These are the people that run the typical, uninspired, statist religions. They're not in the religion game to RP a religion. They're in it to protect their realm from the foreigner religions. And that's the kind of stuff that needs to stop. Even if it means we lose a few religions along the way.
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And that is what we are trying to solve, by adding something in the game mechanics that appeals to players, motivating them to play religious characters.
Adding game mechanics benefits/penalties will not motivate people to "play religious characters". It will motivate people to join the religion, and then go on with their life as before, completely ignoring it, and probably forgetting that they are a part of it. The religion will gain *nothing* from their membership.
How can a nobleman of prestige not be part of an established (and thus respectable) cult led by fellow noblemen? How can he 'not care about spiritual matters'?
He can not care much about it in the way that lots of people don't care much about lots of things.
You cannot force people to participate in things in a meaningful way. IMO, trying to force people to play the religion game is going to result in nothing more than larger raw numbers of characters in religions, with no change in the number of people that are *active and contributing* characters. You'll just have more drones that continue to ignore you.
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Adding game mechanics benefits/penalties will not motivate people to "play religious characters". It will motivate people to join the religion, and then go on with their life as before, completely ignoring it, and probably forgetting that they are a part of it. The religion will gain *nothing* from their membership.
He can not care much about it in the way that lots of people don't care much about lots of things.
You cannot force people to participate in things in a meaningful way. IMO, trying to force people to play the religion game is going to result in nothing more than larger raw numbers of characters in religions, with no change in the number of people that are *active and contributing* characters. You'll just have more drones that continue to ignore you.
Perhaps we should go even further then. Not only do region lords have to join a religion to keep decent region stats; you should actually be put at some sort of game-mechanical service to your religious elders. Maybe official bad marks that severely hit region stats or perhaps an option to fine lords or something. These wouldn't be used often but they would provide the belief that religious superiors mean something.
Basically we can get people to start reacting to religion to put them between a rock and hard place.
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you should actually be put at some sort of game-mechanical service to your religious elders. Maybe official bad marks that severely hit region stats or perhaps an option to fine lords or something. These wouldn't be used often but they would provide the belief that religious superiors mean something.
What you are looking for is called "scare followers" and "auto da fe". They appear in the Religion menu (auto da fe only if you are an elder).
Try clicking them.
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What you are looking for is called "scare followers" and "auto da fe". They appear in the Religion menu (auto da fe only if you are an elder).
Try clicking them.
Agreed. You have the ability to enforce your religious will, provided your religion is strong enough and has enough support from other nobles, provided that you have the guts to push for it. If you're religion isn't strong enough to do it, then there's no reason for the game to do it for you. The game shouldn't be giving you power via game-mechanics-clicky-things. You should get your power via personal interactions with other players.
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A realm where game mechanic clicky things are a top priority is so boring.
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Agreed. You have the ability to enforce your religious will, provided your religion is strong enough and has enough support from other nobles, provided that you have the guts to push for it. If you're religion isn't strong enough to do it, then there's no reason for the game to do it for you. The game shouldn't be giving you power via game-mechanics-clicky-things. You should get your power via personal interactions with other players.
Ugh not this "if-can't-do-it-yourself-then-you-don't-deserve-it" stuff. This whole point of this thread is to fix religion. What I propose is a double-whammy. If you're not in a religion, you get major penalties, but by the very act of signing up to the religion you put yourself in major bind from the religious elders. I'm not talking about making it a "clicking game," the point I'm trying to discuss is to create penalties and for all those who have gamemechanicophobia; I'm sorry but game mechanics are what set up the framework for our gameplay and that is why it is the only thing we can discuss in this forum. Yes, the plenty of problems with the idea I just mentions, none have which have to do with changing game mechanics; in fact thats the only thing we can do.
Unless you think these discussions are going to change peoples attitudes with no change to game mechanics, because it won't. ::)
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Ugh not this "if-can't-do-it-yourself-then-you-don't-deserve-it" stuff. This whole point of this thread is to fix religion. What I propose is a double-whammy. If you're not in a religion, you get major penalties, but by the very act of signing up to the religion you put yourself in major bind from the religious elders. I'm not talking about making it a "clicking game," the point I'm trying to discuss is to create penalties and for all those who have gamemechanicophobia; I'm sorry but game mechanics are what set up the framework for our gameplay and that is why it is the only thing we can discuss in this forum. Yes, the plenty of problems with the idea I just mentions, none have which have to do with changing game mechanics; in fact thats the only thing we can do.
Unless you think these discussions are going to change peoples attitudes with no change to game mechanics, because it won't. ::)
The problem with the idea is that all it will encourage is for people to create more "do nothing" religions to avoid the penalty of not being in a religion, while ensuring that the religion's hierarchy simply leaves the nobility alone. Sure if you get a group of elders that want to enforce their position, that would maybe work, but all you would probably see is a mass exodus from that religion by region lords to a religion that will let them go on as they were.
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The problem with the idea is that all it will encourage is for people to create more "do nothing" religions to avoid the penalty of not being in a religion, while ensuring that the religion's hierarchy simply leaves the nobility alone. Sure if you get a group of elders that want to enforce their position, that would maybe work, but all you would probably see is a mass exodus from that religion by region lords to a religion that will let them go on as they were.
While what you describe would certainly happen, I think through providing the elders lots of power this would at least put people to put more thought into whose religion goes where.
Of course this leaves us with the realm likely sponsoring a religion where the elders match up with the realm's inner circle. !@#$. Back to the drawing board.
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A ban religion for local lords.Oance a religion has been baned fromtheregion any priests ofthe baned who enter the region will be erested on the spot, no questions asked.Naturaly with a chance of failure.This way priests will risk arest before they can preach anything at all.
Also a ban option for dukes-priests get arested on the teritory of the entire duchy.
And ruler would have this option too.This is realm wide ban to priests of a certain religion.Kind of like declaring war on that religion.
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A ban religion for local lords.Oance a religion has been baned fromtheregion any priests ofthe baned who enter the region will be erested on the spot, no questions asked.Naturaly with a chance of failure.This way priests will risk arest before they can preach anything at all.
Also a ban option for dukes-priests get arested on the teritory of the entire duchy.
And ruler would have this option too.This is realm wide ban to priests of a certain religion.Kind of like declaring war on that religion.
That would be nice. Also, the idea that the ability to arrest priests only appears for realms at war, and not for religions declared evil, is a downright encouragement for state-sponsored religions.
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Of course this leaves us with the realm likely sponsoring a religion where the elders match up with the realm's inner circle. !@#$. Back to the drawing board.
Bingo.
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To give the priests some independence how about allowing to build temples without the need of anyone's permision in any realm.Oance a min percentage of foloweres is achieved it can be built.The local lord has the athority to order the temple be destroyed at any time.If not his duke can.And finaly the ruler can order the destroction of any temple in the realm.Naturaly there will penalties to the region in witch the temple was.Penalties depend on the percentage of believers.So basicly the faster you smash the temple the better for your region.
Also penalties for aresting priests depending on believers.
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Bingo.
Simple. In all realms except theocracies, prevent priests from holding council positions.
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Simple. In all realms except theocracies, prevent priests from holding council positions.
Then watch either close friends become priest, or even more likely have 1 character be in the council and another character from the same player be the elder of the religion. This is one reason why penalty/reward systems built into the game mechanics can be so tricky, because once they exist a sizeable part of the player base will look for ways to get all the positives and avoid all the negatives.
Really All I see this doing is encouraging an explosion in realm sponsored religions. The state will use the religion to further their control with threats against region lords from the elders, and the religion will use the state to try and force every region lord to belong. While that would be fun in a few realms, if it becomes the de facto standard things are somewhat less fun.
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On the contrary, these are the people that generally don't care about the religion, about making it prosper, or providing an interesting and varied game experience. These are the people that run the typical, uninspired, statist religions. They're not in the religion game to RP a religion. They're in it to protect their realm from the foreigner religions. And that's the kind of stuff that needs to stop. Even if it means we lose a few religions along the way.
Then who does care, eh? 'cause I don't see many inspiring religions about. If they don't care about religion, then not a damn soul does, as nobody bothers doing anything about it. It's easy to come here on the forums and whine about available religions not being worth anything, but it's nothing more than that, whining. It's like people who complain that a realm is silent, but never write anything themselves nor react to things when they do happen.
Pretty much everyone has the ability to become influence an existing religion or one to be, as founding religions is relatively easy. Yet how many of you people, complaining here and passing judgments on others, are bothering to actually do so?
I've done it, created something quite original, fun, stimulating, and heavily RPed. But with retrospect, it was a lot more effort than it was worth. A lot of other people founded religions, and as few people has as much time as I did back then, they obviously don't get to develop their religion anywhere near as well as I did. Most of those religions I knew started with great intent and ambition, but never really amounted to anything because it required a lot more work and motivation than was anticipated. The lucky of these end up as stale state religion, like those you all pigeonhole and smear. But at least they actually bothered trying something.
IMO, it takes very special circumstances to make religion work. SA was the first religion of the continent, in a theocracy with a favourable geopolitical context, on a continent where and when SMA as really important and everyone was really involved and wanting to make religion matter. A few other detailed religions had some success due to various actors and context as well. But in general? The religion game simply sucks. And the hardline stick "solutions" proposed here so far would only end up in religion being gamed an used as a political tool even more.
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And the hardline stick "solutions" proposed here so far would only end up in religion being gamed an used as a political tool even more.
What's wrong with using religion as a political tool? "Convert or die" is historically accurate, not to mention a great RP excuse for war.
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What's wrong with using religion as a political tool? "Convert or die" is historically accurate, not to mention a great RP excuse for war.
I think the problem is with founding religions as political tools, and not using them as such.
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What's wrong with using religion as a political tool? "Convert or die" is historically accurate, not to mention a great RP excuse for war.
The problem is that they should be more then JUST political tools.
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If you have this, new religions will never be able to grow because any lord who opts out of the stale old national religion will have his region revolt on him.
I am increasingly convinced that what we need is not more new religions, it's fewer old stupid ones.
Now, I know that, as things stand, raising barriers to entry for religion would indeed benefit the old stupid religions. But I'm wondering what would happen if raising the barriers to entry were combined with making it a little easier to destroy a religion, and implementing the sect/schism mechanics that the dev team has been talking about for a while... (short, rough version: any religion can have sects form within it, any religion member can be a member of any of the sects or the mainline religion, any sect can schism from the religion with its followers and associated temples going with it, forming a new religion)
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Then who does care, eh?
Apparently not enough players.
It's easy to come here on the forums and whine about available religions not being worth anything, but it's nothing more than that, whining.
Just like it's easy for people to come to the forums and whine about how their pet religion never got powerful enough to tear down entire realms.
Pretty much everyone has the ability to become influence an existing religion or one to be, as founding religions is relatively easy. Yet how many of you people, complaining here and passing judgments on others, are bothering to actually do so?
That's a very good question. (Assuming I can parse that correctly...) I've often wondered why, if there are so many people here on the forum complaining that no one (other than them) takes religion seriously enough, they don't all get together somewhere and make a religion that they actually take seriously.
Most of those religions I knew started with great intent and ambition, but never really amounted to anything because it required a lot more work and motivation than was anticipated.
The reason that most religions, even the ambitious ones (especially the ambitious ones?), fail to inspire and take hold is the way they are founded. Almost every one of them has the same basic pattern: Some noble rediscovers and ancient religion that used to really big and powerful at some unspecified time in the past, and brings it back. They work hard to create some huge mythology with funny names, and then hand it all en masse to the world as a fait accompli. The entire thing is a completed work, and everyone is expected to study it, and go along with everything that it says, and that's the end of it. No one else bothers picking it up and running with it, because it's not their creation. They're not invested in it. Someone else made it, so it's their responsibility to shepherd it and make it grow. Other people don't want to keep referring back to the wiki to figure out how to spell, for example, Tlaxacoaltitchili-whatsis, so they can swear an oath on the battlefield to the god of war, famine, headaches, apple pie, and the color blue.
(No offense intended with that example. Seriously. You put an incredible amount of work into the Cult, and it's unfortunate that it didn't survive. But the titles you used are so outside my experience, I don't think I could ever get used to them, and thus could never really get into it as an IG organization, let alone trying to become a serious member.)
IMNSHO, that's one of the things that the founders of SA did that guaranteed its success. (And no, I wasn't one of the founders. I didn't get to join for several weeks after it was founded, because I was stuck doing region maintenance, and drafting soldiers... :( But there are only two or three people left that have been in SA longer than Brance.) Yes, it was the only religion on the island at the time, and that helped. But we ran up against other religions before we could spread too far. The Seven right next door in Springdale had quite a few adherents. As did Torenism over in Everguard and the Libero Empire. Plus VE in Caerwyn stopped us cold for several years.
Crap...I drifted away from my point a bit there...
Anyway, what SA did right was that it did not pre-define an entire mythology that it expected everyone to pick up, learn and be enthusiastic about. It used a very simple concept that you could learn as fast as you could read "Austere, Auspicious, Maddening". (OK, maybe a little longer if you needed to look up the definitions of Austere and Auspicious, but still...) Jesse (the player of Deverka) nailed it dead on. And Rick's (Mathurin's player) move to continue along in the same manner of letting the people in the religion develop it, with very little guidance from the top, played right along with it. The simple concept of three stars, each with a simple defining aspect, and nothing else let people feel like they could pick it up and contribute to defining what it is, and what it would be and grow into.
We still have the occasional massive theological debate over the nature of the Stars, the various aspects, etc. Just recently we had a big debate over the possible existence of a fourth star, or the Dark Star, or whatever it was called. That's the kind of stuff I've never seen in any of the predefined packages that most players try to impose on their member nobles.
The key points, as I see it, that lead to SA's success:
- Simple names
- Simple concepts
- Room to grow and for new people to contribute in a meaningful way to the theology
- A willingness to take a friggin' stand on religious matters, instead of "can't we just cooperate and be friends?"
- A few players willing to actually subjugate their influential characters to the faith, instead of demanding the faith do what they wanted.
Those last two items are at least as important, if not more so, than the others. Brance wasn't set on killing Caerwyn. He thought that perhaps if we could force a regime change in Caerwyn that they could be allowed to live, and Allison could be sent to colonize Flowrestown instead. But the Elders of SA demanded that the new colony be in Golden Farrow. Brance had no choice but to go along with it. The Elders of SA were willing to stand up and tell a realm (multiple realms, actually) what to do, and our leaders were willing to go along with it and do what they were told. Even though two of us thought that perhaps that was not necessary.
IMO, it takes very special circumstances to make religion work.
I agree. You have to have good circumstances. I think that the right players, with the right concept, can make it work. But not enough people are willing to do what it takes to make it work. Too many new religions are just the same old realm-supporting faith with a new name and a new set of gods. And the players in the realm know this, and only pay it the minor lip-service they need to give it in order to get on playing "the realm game".
SA was the first religion of the continent, in a theocracy with a favourable geopolitical context, on a continent where and when SMA as really important and everyone was really involved and wanting to make religion matter. A few other detailed religions had some success due to various actors and context as well. But in general? The religion game simply sucks. And the hardline stick "solutions" proposed here so far would only end up in religion being gamed an used as a political tool even more.
Adding new game mechanics to force players to be in a religion, or to give religions a bit more power to hurt regions, is not going to change anything. It will only reinforce the same bland, realm-centric empty shells that we've seen so often. You simply cannot force people to be active, willing participants in the religion aspect of the game.
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You simply cannot force people to be active, willing participants in the religion aspect of the game.
Amen!
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But not enough people are willing to do what it takes to make it work.
And for the record, by "do what it takes", I do not mean "spend craploads of hours RPing, and preaching, writing comprehensive theological essays, and creating entire new pantheons and theologies", etc. I mean play their characters as religiously devoted, and willing to have their characters do something that the character doesn't want to do, because their religious authority tells them to do it. People need to be willing to take the religious authority as the highest authority, with the realm as a mere earthly entity devoted to accomplishing it's goals.
And no that doesn't mean that we all have to play theocracies. But why can't King Kepler have a representative of Goodism on his private council to make sure the realm remains faithful to their tenets, and to look out for Goodism's best interests? And why can't the leaders of Goodism suggest to King Kepler that that treaty he is about to sign with Evilstani is perhaps not the best idea, as the savages of Evilstani still refuse to accept the truth of Goodism, so the treaty should include provisions of the construction of a temple of Goodism in all border regions?
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I am increasingly convinced that what we need is not more new religions, it's fewer old stupid ones.
I've been saying for a long time that we have too many religions in the game.
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That's a very good question. (Assuming I can parse that correctly...) I've often wondered why, if there are so many people here on the forum complaining that no one (other than them) takes religion seriously enough, they don't all get together somewhere and make a religion that they actually take seriously.
I've got a religion that I think would be much easier than most to take seriously (Quintarianism (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Quintarianism)), and a character primed to found it...only trouble is, she's on what appears to be the losingest side of the Atamara war at the moment :-\
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Quintarianism (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Quintarianism)
Quintarianism would probably be a good fit for BattleMaster. It has built-in orders that would be pretty easy for people to fit into. Would be great of there were ways to create subgroups, or sects, inside existing religions. But the four associated orders (there's no associated order for the Bastard, right?) It also has the advantage of being from a popular fantasy series, so you'd probably find quite a few people willing to RP a system they enjoyed reading about.
It also has the advantage of having a built-in competing sect, the Quadrenes, that uses four of the same five gods, but considers the Bastard to be evil.
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I've got a religion
You and everyone else.
We need more players who will join an old religion and invest in it, and fewer who feel that, to play the religion game, they need to found a religion.
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You and everyone else.
We need more players who will join an old religion and invest in it, and fewer who feel that, to play the religion game, they need to found a religion.
Oh, I certainly agree, as you can see from my earlier post.
The problem is, we need that as well as more solid religions that people can get behind.
I have considered the pluses and minuses, and judged that overall, it is better to try to found Quintarianism, because I believe that it will be the kind of religion people can feel is more fulfilling and rewarding than your average state religion. Assuming, of course, that it manages to get off the ground.
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I must say, I did not read the entire topic, so, if I'm telling things other told, please, forgive me.
To me, things that we had on the real religions could be implemented.
First of all, I do believe we have so many religions, and, more, the major of them stupid, based on things out of BM or otherwise, without ways to become something that could matter.
But, for me, this just occured as a consequence of the religion system.
Of course that, as a first thing, you should be able to create a religion. This is the first step and, different of the rel world, you can't start a religion by adding followers to you until you become great enough to be recognized as a religion. On BM, the simple click is something that must be done. Unfortunelly, it brings some troubles.
As the first and most important, anyone can create a religion, by this way (of course, you must be a noble and a lord as requeriments);
The second, as anyone, respected the requiriments can creat a religion, it went on a stupid spree, and most players see it as something you just do not need to play.
To correct this, I believe that this sould be done:
1) Prohibition for create new religions - for a while;
2) Clean up of the religions - religions based on other games being prohibited.
3) Enforced the politics to have religions based on BM and SM things;
4) Limitation at the fantasy of religions: an amorfic god wich lives on the space is acceptable; unknown gods dressed to kill in plate armors, wielding explosive javelins is something over the limit;
5) Put priest as a subclass of the game: much of the historical preachers was warriors and members of the govern;
6) Rise of the requiriments to become a priest;
7) Adaptation of the benefits of being a priest;
8) Change of the rules of the religions: the option to turn it really "evil", "good" ou dicotomized (as the most politheistics religions);
9) Religiousity benefits: random things that could improve the memebership of religions, as the miracles to revive while declared dead (as the thing with newbies), a vision that improve your skill for an action, heavenly help to kill rogue, etc, etc. People worship gods because they do believe they will have some benefit, some help, a thousand virgins to !@#$ in heaven, etc. While characters do not know about their destiny and the gods, players are discouraged to adopt religions, because they see it as a place to put their golds without a benefit, no one.
9) Non limitation for the religions: Despite the limitations we have on BM about emigration, religiousity should be an exception. With a religion to spread at the globe you can start to enforce yours, not search for a new one when you change of continent. The limitation for priests to emigrate should be taken as well.
10) Peasants claimming to their lord become a follower of their religion start to be a thing to matter. Today, it is just a phrase at the notifications, but, when production stops as the people is celebrating a religious hollyday, things should go bad as the lord will ask for workers.
11) Characters be able to become atheistic - today, you just can't be it. If you do not follow an official religion, you are called pagan (for who I don't know), and a follower of the local Folklore. This is wrong. If you think that, even without wanting, your character already have a religion, you will not matter to search a new one.
12) Possibility to merge and tear a religion - Something I really want to see, and that will encourage people to make the roleplay of the religions is the possibility to merge and tear secede. By the choice of the elder members of two Religions, they could make a concilium, to treat the terms to merge their religions as something unique. This was a demeanor of some religions, and a strategy adopted even by Alexander, the great. The catholics, too, are well known to adopt festivals and holy days from "pagans" religions and transmute them on their own parties.
Plus, an elder member should have the option to go out and create an herectic version of the religion he used to follow, but, after sometime, become something he just do not entirely believe.
13) A common class to religious characters - to me, this is something tha could be added: a common preacher.
14) Implement of stupid cool things: a noble could have his funeral made at the temple of his former land or were his family lives. Added by the option of "world wide religions", a family could adopt one as their own, and baptize the new characters there. Do not forget that, for the majority of the world, follow a religion is follow the steps of our fathers and grandfathers.
15) Possibility to hire a crew - a preacher could have the option to hire some men, to his protection, but, as the hero, from the peasants of a place. Perhaps he travels with a party of followers, wich protect him from attacks of believers of the evil religions; perhaps, he travels with his women and men slaves, to make public sex with the people on orgistic celebrations; perhaps, he takes some believers to do the nasty game of miracles, as some guys do tricks with tourists. For me, being unable to take somebody is boring. This will surely grow the price of good travels, but, as a preacher, some people really do not spend any gold.
Well, I believe that this could help :D
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2) Clean up of the religions - religions based on other games being prohibited.
Oh, you mean like the fifty religions with Tyr and Zisa?
Yup. Wipe'em. Ticks me off every time I see it.
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Oh, you mean like the fifty religions with Tyr and Zisa?
Yup. Wipe'em. Ticks me off every time I see it.
Damn. There goes my idea of founding a religion (not now, but way in the future) based upon Khorne and demon worship. Blood for the Blood God and all that jazz.
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Oh, you mean like the fifty religions with Tyr and Zisa?
Yup. Wipe'em. Ticks me off every time I see it.
Or the many Nordic Mythology clone religions, with Odin, Thor and all the merry bunch.
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Oh, you mean like the fifty religions with Tyr and Zisa?
Yup. Wipe'em. Ticks me off every time I see it.
Well, they may not be totally original, but how are they based on other games?
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Damn. There goes my idea of founding a religion (not now, but way in the future) based upon Khorne and demon worship. Blood for the Blood God and all that jazz.
Armok is not happy that you got his name wrong.
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The best point of this forum is people always forget to read and interpretate all. I said games. Sirion has a religion based on Warcraft.
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The best point of this forum is people always forget to read and interpretate all. I said games. Sirion has a religion based on Warcraft.
Is the one based on MechWarrior still around? Probably not...
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it is, don't worry, ppl still follow it :P. Although I must say the priniciple of the "Great Death" thats in there is pretty fun and solid.
but come on people, lets be honest, is there even one original religion? In my oppinion every religion will be based one way or another on something we are familiar with.
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2) Clean up of the religions - religions based on other games being prohibited.
I don't really see a reason to do this. So long as the religion is period-appropriate, what's the problem?
Also, who gets to make the determination as to how much a religion has to be based on something else before it is not allowed? Does a single name count? Or how about no common names, but a common theme? What happens if no one notices, and the religion becomes big and powerful, then someone finds the obscure 1957 sci-fi book on which it was based, do we instantly delete the religion?
This kind of a restriction is impossible to completely enforce, and will almost certainly cause much anger and resentment among the players as they argue over whether or not some triviality constitutes "based on".
3) Enforced the politics to have religions based on BM and SM things;
See above.
4) Limitation at the fantasy of religions: an amorfic god wich lives on the space is acceptable; unknown gods dressed to kill in plate armors, wielding explosive javelins is something over the limit;
Mrh? This doesn't make any sense. A war god that throws explosive javelins is completely within the setting of BattleMaster. It's a simple variation of Zeus and his lightning bolts. OK, if the players try to claim that the javelins are made of C4, that would probably be outside the scope, but what's wrong with a god who wields magic exploding javelins? Heck, the god could very well have created the world. What's wrong with a few magical explosions?
5) Put priest as a subclass of the game: much of the historical preachers was warriors and members of the govern;
I do like the idea of some form of warrior/priest thing. I think it would be rather appropriate for the Priest/Hero combination. It would also reinforce the "no turning back" aspect of becoming a hero.
7) Adaptation of the benefits of being a priest;
Please explain. I'm not sure what you mean.
8) Change of the rules of the religions: the option to turn it really "evil", "good" ou dicotomized (as the most politheistics religions);
Would any religion really consider itself as "evil"? That does not sound very realistic to me. Maybe if you're some extreme devil worshiping cult, maybe. But I don't think that really would work for anything else. I think just about any religion in the game would classify itself as "good".
9) Religiousity benefits: random things that could improve the memebership of religions, as the miracles to revive while declared dead (as the thing with newbies), a vision that improve your skill for an action, heavenly help to kill rogue, etc, etc. People worship gods because they do believe they will have some benefit, some help, a thousand virgins to !@#$ in heaven, etc. While characters do not know about their destiny and the gods, players are discouraged to adopt religions, because they see it as a place to put their golds without a benefit, no one.
This kind of thing is not really appropriate for the low-fantasy world of BattleMaster.
9) Non limitation for the religions: Despite the limitations we have on BM about emigration, religiousity should be an exception. With a religion to spread at the globe you can start to enforce yours, not search for a new one when you change of continent. The limitation for priests to emigrate should be taken as well.
This is a game mechanics limitation. Individual islands are segregated into separate DBs. Trying to enable mechanics support for cross-island religions would be a massive undertaking, prone to all kinds of bugs, probably. I'm fairly certain this has been flat-out rejected.
You are, however, welcome to found the same religion across multiple islands. Or a variant of it. It's been done before.
10) Peasants claimming to their lord become a follower of their religion start to be a thing to matter. Today, it is just a phrase at the notifications, but, when production stops as the people is celebrating a religious hollyday, things should go bad as the lord will ask for workers.
Some kind of religious holiday that affects regions that follow that faith would be an interesting idea. Allowing religions to designate a certain number of holy days. When they occur, the effects (both good and bad) could be based on the percentage of followers of that faith in each region. It's probably completely impractical, though.
11) Characters be able to become atheistic
No. This has been categorically rejected. There are no atheist characters in BattleMaster.
12) Possibility to merge and tear a religion
Schisms are something the devs have planned, and have worked out some ideas about. It's just a big project, with a lot of details. It's "o the drawing board", so to speak. But don't expect it any time soon.
13) A common class to religious characters - to me, this is something tha could be added: a common preacher.
As an extension to the advy game? I doubt this would ever happen. BattleMaster is about nobles, not commoners.
14) Implement of stupid cool things: a noble could have his funeral made at the temple of his former land or were his family lives.
I'm no really sure how this would work, or what it would add. Unless it was some kind of list of people buried at a temple that would persist for as long as the temple was still there.
15) Possibility to hire a crew - a preacher could have the option to hire some men, to his protection, but, as the hero, from the peasants of a place.
Meh, could be interesting to allow priests to hire non-combat guards for personal protection. Keep them from being infiltrator training dummies. There would have to be some disadvantage for it, beyond just some small gold cost. Perhaps longer travel times, or some chance to get detected by any militia or combat troops in a region when traveling in enemy lands, etc.
However, you can RP your character as having any retinue you want them to have. You want your priest to travel with 12 slaved to carry his trunks full of dress robes? Go for it.
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I do like the idea of some form of warrior/priest thing. I think it would be rather appropriate for the Priest/Hero combination. It would also reinforce the "no turning back" aspect of becoming a hero.
I always found this niche was nicely filled with warriors Elders of religion. Being an elder gives you some religious powers: power to expand temple, power to fiddle the ranks of those below you, power to play with people's debts. It's not much, but it is something.
I don't think warriors should be able to preach. Or, if that's the case, then I want to play a priest/ambassador/infil/hero.
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I always found this niche was nicely filled with warriors Elders of religion. Being an elder gives you some religious powers: power to expand temple, power to fiddle the ranks of those below you, power to play with people's debts. It's not much, but it is something.
That's all just administrivia. Anyone can do this, regardless of class.
I don't think warriors should be able to preach. Or, if that's the case, then I want to play a priest/ambassador/infil/hero.
Maybe not preaching. Or at least not as effective preaching as a priest. But there should be something that we could give them that would make the P/H combo some kind of warrior-of-the-faith kid of thing in a way that is more than simply RPing your character that way.
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Two things:
1. The continent separation makes major problems, because people, with good reason, have their characters all follow a religion from their first realm...That doesn't show up anywhere else.
2. Until and unless religions gain the ability to passively gain resources, nothing will change.
If you don't believe me, look at the new tax system. I don't know about all realms, but I haven't heard of any major fights over the Crown suddenly leveling taxes on the Dukes except in connection with ongoing disputes. Why? Because the game now allows it, and it happens passively. Three months ago you couldn't have pried that gold out of the Dukes with a crowbar, because 1. the game didn't say the Crown could, and 2. it took weekly effort.
Weekly effort doesn't happen in this game if there is any way to avoid it, it's just that simple.
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Three months ago you couldn't have pried that gold out of the Dukes with a crowbar, because 1. the game didn't say the Crown could, and 2. it took weekly effort.
This is not really true. The Crown could tax dukes, and do it automatically. But it required the duke to consent to the tax, and set up the automated transfer himself. i.e. he had to tax his own region with a decently large duchy share, then the realm would tax that duchy share. The duke could completely avoid the entire issue by just not setting a duchy tax on his region. From what I understand, Riombara used this method of duchy taxes to generate a rather large realm share, didn't it?
The new system does not add automatic taxation, it adds unavoidable enforcement of the crown's right to tax a duchy.
Weekly effort doesn't happen in this game if there is any way to avoid it, it's just that simple.
I agree. Any system which requires players to do some trivial thing on a regular basis will be something that soon fails to get done at all.
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Two things:
1. The continent separation makes major problems, because people, with good reason, have their characters all follow a religion from their first realm...That doesn't show up anywhere else.
2. Until and unless religions gain the ability to passively gain resources, nothing will change.
1: Perhaps we should work on identifying a religion that would possibly be portable. SA, obviously, although I think it would gain massive resistance. Maybe MAE, Apostles of the Abyss? A lot of wiki documentation would be helpful.
2. Maybe increase the peasant temple contributions, double them?
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Armok is not happy that you got his name wrong.
All will bow before Armok, Khorne, or Khaine. Whichever you prefer.
Anyway, on the subject of portability: I wonder personally whether the CoH would work. I suppose the wiki documentation would need updating and expanding, but it's a thought.
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1: Perhaps we should work on identifying a religion that would possibly be portable. SA, obviously, although I think it would gain massive resistance. Maybe MAE, Apostles of the Abyss? A lot of wiki documentation would be helpful.
2. Maybe increase the peasant temple contributions, double them?
Not MAE under the current implementation, though if Jenred and Arella can ever get things rolling it might work.
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That's all just administrivia. Anyone can do this, regardless of class.
Maybe not preaching. Or at least not as effective preaching as a priest. But there should be something that we could give them that would make the P/H combo some kind of warrior-of-the-faith kid of thing in a way that is more than simply RPing your character that way.
Sorry, I took you meant the warrior class when you mentioned warrior.
What if P/H could fight personally, e.g. in duels? Or can they already? In that case, I think it would keep the balance of having priests unable to have a unit, but still keeping a "warrior" feel to them.
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Sorry, I took you meant the warrior class when you mentioned warrior.
What if P/H could fight personally, e.g. in duels? Or can they already? In that case, I think it would keep the balance of having priests unable to have a unit, but still keeping a "warrior" feel to them.
Priests and Infils cannot duel.
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Apparently not enough players.
Just like it's easy for people to come to the forums and whine about how their pet religion never got powerful enough to tear down entire realms.
That's a very good question. (Assuming I can parse that correctly...) I've often wondered why, if there are so many people here on the forum complaining that no one (other than them) takes religion seriously enough, they don't all get together somewhere and make a religion that they actually take seriously.
The reason that most religions, even the ambitious ones (especially the ambitious ones?), fail to inspire and take hold is the way they are founded. Almost every one of them has the same basic pattern: Some noble rediscovers and ancient religion that used to really big and powerful at some unspecified time in the past, and brings it back. They work hard to create some huge mythology with funny names, and then hand it all en masse to the world as a fait accompli. The entire thing is a completed work, and everyone is expected to study it, and go along with everything that it says, and that's the end of it. No one else bothers picking it up and running with it, because it's not their creation. They're not invested in it. Someone else made it, so it's their responsibility to shepherd it and make it grow. Other people don't want to keep referring back to the wiki to figure out how to spell, for example, Tlaxacoaltitchili-whatsis, so they can swear an oath on the battlefield to the god of war, famine, headaches, apple pie, and the color blue.
(No offense intended with that example. Seriously. You put an incredible amount of work into the Cult, and it's unfortunate that it didn't survive. But the titles you used are so outside my experience, I don't think I could ever get used to them, and thus could never really get into it as an IG organization, let alone trying to become a serious member.)
IMNSHO, that's one of the things that the founders of SA did that guaranteed its success. (And no, I wasn't one of the founders. I didn't get to join for several weeks after it was founded, because I was stuck doing region maintenance, and drafting soldiers... :( But there are only two or three people left that have been in SA longer than Brance.) Yes, it was the only religion on the island at the time, and that helped. But we ran up against other religions before we could spread too far. The Seven right next door in Springdale had quite a few adherents. As did Torenism over in Everguard and the Libero Empire. Plus VE in Caerwyn stopped us cold for several years.
Crap...I drifted away from my point a bit there...
Anyway, what SA did right was that it did not pre-define an entire mythology that it expected everyone to pick up, learn and be enthusiastic about. It used a very simple concept that you could learn as fast as you could read "Austere, Auspicious, Maddening". (OK, maybe a little longer if you needed to look up the definitions of Austere and Auspicious, but still...) Jesse (the player of Deverka) nailed it dead on. And Rick's (Mathurin's player) move to continue along in the same manner of letting the people in the religion develop it, with very little guidance from the top, played right along with it. The simple concept of three stars, each with a simple defining aspect, and nothing else let people feel like they could pick it up and contribute to defining what it is, and what it would be and grow into.
We still have the occasional massive theological debate over the nature of the Stars, the various aspects, etc. Just recently we had a big debate over the possible existence of a fourth star, or the Dark Star, or whatever it was called. That's the kind of stuff I've never seen in any of the predefined packages that most players try to impose on their member nobles.
The key points, as I see it, that lead to SA's success:
- Simple names
- Simple concepts
- Room to grow and for new people to contribute in a meaningful way to the theology
- A willingness to take a friggin' stand on religious matters, instead of "can't we just cooperate and be friends?"
- A few players willing to actually subjugate their influential characters to the faith, instead of demanding the faith do what they wanted.
Those last two items are at least as important, if not more so, than the others. Brance wasn't set on killing Caerwyn. He thought that perhaps if we could force a regime change in Caerwyn that they could be allowed to live, and Allison could be sent to colonize Flowrestown instead. But the Elders of SA demanded that the new colony be in Golden Farrow. Brance had no choice but to go along with it. The Elders of SA were willing to stand up and tell a realm (multiple realms, actually) what to do, and our leaders were willing to go along with it and do what they were told. Even though two of us thought that perhaps that was not necessary.
I agree. You have to have good circumstances. I think that the right players, with the right concept, can make it work. But not enough people are willing to do what it takes to make it work. Too many new religions are just the same old realm-supporting faith with a new name and a new set of gods. And the players in the realm know this, and only pay it the minor lip-service they need to give it in order to get on playing "the realm game".
Adding new game mechanics to force players to be in a religion, or to give religions a bit more power to hurt regions, is not going to change anything. It will only reinforce the same bland, realm-centric empty shells that we've seen so often. You simply cannot force people to be active, willing participants in the religion aspect of the game.
I'm not sore that the Blood Cult didn't progress any further. I shut it down myself because I had gotten bored with it. I consider it a success, really. It attracted many very active people who contributed to establishing a great library of RP and IG dynamics. It failed when it started losing members as they got executed or as the players left the game. At which point, I never managed to renew the membership with other such ambitious and active people. Indeed, I can't really seem to find any ambitious and active people anywhere anymore, for whatever purpose.
As for SA, I don't buy it. "Blanks for people to fill" are, in my eyes, pretty much "blanks forever so as to not ruffle any feathers". May as well praise Eretzism for "leaving blanks for people to fill". SA still doesn't have a vision on the afterlife, as far as I know, which would be the number one concern of any religious person. All it has is vague theology that doesn't really force anyone to do anything they wouldn't like to do. All can basically "worship" the stars in whatever way they wish. In my eyes, that's a hollow religion. Follows the same mold as all other "successful" national religions on other continents, except that it came first on the continent, and in a theocracy that would eventually colonize a lot, and at a time where the metagame was really pushing for religion to be taken seriously. That doesn't make it a good model, in my eyes.
As for fewer old religions... A lot of them died on BT. I don't see any improvement.
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Is the one based on MechWarrior still around? Probably not...
Yes, sadly.
Thank your neighbourhood Riombara for that.
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except that it came first on the continent, and in a theocracy that would eventually colonize a lot, and at a time where the metagame was really pushing for religion to be taken seriously
Yup, I have to agree on that. SA was just the "right time right location".
my two cents to the religion debate.
In my oppinion most players seek to "improve" their characters. A religion does not offer anything physical to use. It´s mostly RP and lets be honest, a lot of the players seek something to improve their char and a good RP is not part of that. Very bluntly said, a new noble seeks to become a region lord in the shortest way possible (or some other title/position). Religions mostly can't offer this. SA, due to it being large and state religion in many realms has the possibility to offer such physical improvemends.
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Yup, I have to agree on that. SA was just the "right time right location".
my two cents to the religion debate.
In my oppinion most players seek to "improve" their characters. A religion does not offer anything physical to use. It´s mostly RP and lets be honest, a lot of the players seek something to improve their char and a good RP is not part of that. Very bluntly said, a new noble seeks to become a region lord in the shortest way possible (or some other title/position). Religions mostly can't offer this. SA, due to it being large and state religion in many realms has the possibility to offer such physical improvemends.
Indeed, now SA has become large enough to have similar appeal to rulers in normal realms. In other words, people are willing to suck up to it in hopes of rewards or protection.
And agreed on your first point as well. Religions are drains in every sense. Lots of spending (especially now that they are taxed) with about no reward. As a result, hardly anyone involves himself in the religion game. It's easier not to, after all, and I could think of a thousand better ways to spend one's gold and time.
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Very bluntly said, a new noble seeks to become a region lord in the shortest way possible (or some other title/position).
If all you are after is min/maxing your character, then the religion aspect of the game is not for you. It's just that simple, and nothing can change that. Period.
If you are looking for more character development, as opposed to just stat development, then the religion aspect of the game can help. But you, the player, must bring something to the table for that to happen. More than likely that will require your character to do things that are non-optimal on the stat development side.
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SA still doesn't have a vision on the afterlife, as far as I know, which would be the number one concern of any religious person.
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Sanguis_Astroism/Writings#On_the_Afterlife
All it has is vague theology that doesn't really force anyone to do anything they wouldn't like to do.
Of all the religions I have ever been in, it's the only one which has a sense of "if x, you should do y". Granted, it's a little script with three stars that rotate, it's not much, but it's more than anything else.
All can basically "worship" the stars in whatever way they wish.
Good luck with that. You really have no idea what you are talking about.
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As for SA, I don't buy it. "Blanks for people to fill" are, in my eyes, pretty much "blanks forever so as to not ruffle any feathers". May as well praise Eretzism for "leaving blanks for people to fill". SA still doesn't have a vision on the afterlife, as far as I know, which would be the number one concern of any religious person.
The debates are still happening on this one. There are advocates of a couple different theories, and none of them have managed to take the lead and force their viewpoint on the religion as a whole. But that's a good thing, I think. If they ever manage to do that, then that will put an end to the debate.
As for Eretzism, I really don't know much of anything about it. But if you are going to compare the two, then I'd have to ask: Do the followers of Eretzism debate theology? Do they argue about the afterlife? Do they argue about the nature of the gods? Do they debate on how many gods there are, and whether or not any specific god exists? I would suspect that the answer to all those questions is "No", and that Eretzism simply doesn't talk much about anything at all, other than how they can help advance the nationalist agenda of Enweil. Yet these are all debates that have occurred within Sanguis Astroism within the past few months.
So in a way you are correct. The very fact that blanks exist does not guarantee that you will have a successful religion. They are an enabler. It's what the players do with them that counts. In Sanguis Astroism, the players often use these blanks as enablers around which to hold theological discussions.
All it has is vague theology that doesn't really force anyone to do anything they wouldn't like to do. All can basically "worship" the stars in whatever way they wish. In my eyes, that's a hollow religion. Follows the same mold as all other "successful" national religions on other continents, except that it came first on the continent, and in a theocracy that would eventually colonize a lot, and at a time where the metagame was really pushing for religion to be taken seriously. That doesn't make it a good model, in my eyes.
I won't deny that the "came first" part helped. But by itself that simply can't be the only factor, or even the main factor. Other religions were founded in the religious vacuums of the west, the south, the central islands, etc. These religions had a wide open space in which to expand. There were no competing religions to stop them. The peasantry were all pagans, with no competing priests to steal their followers, no other realm-based religions to fight against, the nobles of the realm did not already belong to other faiths, etc. They had the exact same opportunities to establish themselves and expand that SA had. Why did they fail? And I refuse to believe the answer is "SA was established first". That's a lazy answer, laced with sour grapes.
As for fewer old religions... A lot of them died on BT. I don't see any improvement.
And what have the remaining religions done to capitalize on this new power vacuum?
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If all you are after is min/maxing your character, then the religion aspect of the game is not for you. It's just that simple, and nothing can change that. Period.
If you are looking for more character development, as opposed to just stat development, then the religion aspect of the game can help. But you, the player, must bring something to the table for that to happen. More than likely that will require your character to do things that are non-optimal on the stat development side.
You speak as if it concerned only h/p hunters or fame mongers. It doesn't.
Seeking power in not (accurately) quantifiable. It isn't a stat that you develop. Doesn't mean one can't want to be optimal, as everyone has limited time and attention span he is willing to commit to a game. It's absolutely normal for people to prioritize and do some sacrifices.
For most people, achieving power so that they can achieve something or make a difference is an important objective, whether they want the spotlight or not. And it's quite normal. If all you want is to develop a character, than you may as well just go write a book or play in a free form RPG without limiting game mechanics like BM has. If you like the restrictions, it's probably because you like a challenge, and there isn't a lot from the game that challenges the creation of a personality for your character.
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http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Sanguis_Astroism/Writings#On_the_Afterlife
Of all the religions I have ever been in, it's the only one which has a sense of "if x, you should do y". Granted, it's a little script with three stars that rotate, it's not much, but it's more than anything else.
Good luck with that. You really have no idea what you are talking about.
Oh yea, "may", "mystery", "speculate", "likely", "believe", quite inspiring after years of having hundreds of followers.
The only ones who got in trouble were basically searching for it.
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The only ones who got in trouble were basically searching for it.
I don't find it surprising that religions that put in trouble people who weren't searching for it are not successful. Do you?
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Chenier, you do realize that not every successful religion has an afterlife. Many sects of Buddhism do not believe in an afterlife.
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So in a way you are correct. The very fact that blanks exist does not guarantee that you will have a successful religion. They are an enabler. It's what the players do with them that counts. In Sanguis Astroism, the players often use these blanks as enablers around which to hold theological discussions.
You speak of develooped lore as if it was a "disabler". Torenism had a lot of stuff in it, and they had a lot of people commited to the religion. The Blood Cult had a lot of stuff too, and florished. Did it become the number 1 religion in follower count? No, but if you are accusing it on "too much lore", then you truly were blind to the fact that it preached, you know, sacrificing living beings to please the gods and had questionnable ties to the daimons? The Blood Cult was never meant to be mainstream. Did we have a lot of established lore? Yes. Did that stop people from adding more? No. We have players write up lore for it regardless. Per capita, a LOT more than SA ever did. There are a billion things in life that can make religious people seek divine guidance. To not start up with a dozen answers is either sheer laziness or intentional vagueness to increase acceptability. Does SA debate these things more than Eretzism? Well, yes, but Eretzism has a fraction of the follower count, has a fraction of the activity rates from those present, isn't on a SMA continent, and is quite a bit older.
In the Blood Cult, we used *lore* as an enabler, instead of blanks. With so much random lore, it's much easier to try to extrapolate by making a bunch of wild links between random existing bits.
I won't deny that the "came first" part helped. But by itself that simply can't be the only factor, or even the main factor. Other religions were founded in the religious vacuums of the west, the south, the central islands, etc. These religions had a wide open space in which to expand. There were no competing religions to stop them. The peasantry were all pagans, with no competing priests to steal their followers, no other realm-based religions to fight against, the nobles of the realm did not already belong to other faiths, etc. They had the exact same opportunities to establish themselves and expand that SA had. Why did they fail? And I refuse to believe the answer is "SA was established first". That's a lazy answer, laced with sour grapes.
How many nobles went through Morek in their lifetime compared to Caerwyn? How many colonies did Caerwyn establish as opposed to Morek? How strong was Caerwyn to impose things on its colonies as opposed to Morek? How did the government system influence Caerwyn's stance on religion as opposed to Morek?
"Wide open spaces" are not very important. Who cares if you convert far-away rogue regions? Any priest can come and undo your job in a day or two. For one, don't forget that Morek was a theocracy, Caerwyn was a republic. Morek imposed SA on its colonies and on neighbours, Caerwyn did not. Why did the western religions fail? Well, for one, they *did* face more competition. The Seven were small, isolated, and died on their own. There were many realms in the North-East, but just one religion for almost all of its history. In contrast, there were few realms in the west, and they almost all had their own religion, if not two, plus the faith some of them imported from their original realms. Natural SA expansion competed with VE in Caerwyn. SA influence competes with Triunism in Terran. In D'Hara, SA, Dragon Worship, and Verdis Elementum were all present at the same time at one point, now it's just SA and VE. Etc, etc. SA has a ton of SA theocracies, and the only theocracies (in name or spirit) that existed to something else were destroyed by SA.
They did not have the "exact same opportunities", not by a longshot. SA was in one of the four founding realms. The western colonies came in way, way later. And no non-SA realm was a theocracy. In addition, all the enthusiasm for religion that was present when SA was founded was already pretty much gone by the time the other religions came up.
As for "if x, then do y", SA has the lamest one of them all. "If (time of year), then (have this mood more)". Great theology to be proud of, there...
Don't get me wrong, SA is a great model for a "successful" religion. I just don't consider it to be a "good" religion, because I don't believe any normal human could be even remotely spiritually satisfied by its teaching, or that such a religion could have the same scope of success had it happened in the real world in the middle ages.
And what have the remaining religions done to capitalize on this new power vacuum?
New religions sprung up, Eretzism re-emerged. The one that replaced the Old Gods tried to expand, but we'll see what that gives. Qyrvaggism and Alluran were preached in now-pagan Enweil lands to stir up trouble and help Rio in their war. Otherwise, not much as far as I know.
I don't find it surprising that religions that put in trouble people who weren't searching for it are not successful. Do you?
No kidding. That doesn't mean that a religion should not have any code of conduct or taboos that at least restrict characters a little in what they might normally want to do. Real world religions have tons of arbitrary rules.
Chenier, you do realize that not every successful religion has an afterlife. Many sects of Buddhism do not believe in an afterlife.
Eastern religions, as far as I know, tend to preach reincarnation and an ultimate nothingness. Not having an "afterlife" in the end of it isn't the same as lacking theology on the afterlife: the theology just clearly says "there is no afterlife". No human being would seriously devote his life to a religion that says "Well, you know, maybe this, or maybe that, but really, we don't know what happens after death", especially in those days.
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Do more research, then, Chenier.
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Do more research, then, Chenier.
Ignoring for a moment that SA is about the western world and not the eastern one, entertain us with examples will you?
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You speak of develooped lore as if it was a "disabler".
In some ways, it is. A highly developed lore can also be one in which the participants don't feel any particular need to make any contribution. It's all written already, so what reason do they have to try and contribute themselves? It's also extremely daunting to go to the wiki and see dozens of long, text-filled pages that are supposed to lay out what things your character believes, how your character should treat various situations, etc. And if you have characters in three or four realms/islands, belonging to three/four different religions, then you as a player will have to learn all of them in order to play your characters in that religion. Is it any wonder that they don't bother? Most of the probably "tl;dr" and ignore it all.
Torenism had a lot of stuff in it, and they had a lot of people commited to the religion.
Here's an interesting thing about Torenism, and it kind of illustrates my point rather well, I think. After Everguard fell I had the opportunity to talk with some former Everguardian players OOG about the events that lead to SA's crusades against them. The player claimed that most of the Torenist followers had absolutely no idea about the stuff that was on the wiki as relates to Torenism, or the manner in which Torenism was being portrayed there. So all that stuff that was written and posted, all that supposedly rich lore, was widely ignored and unused by the members of the religion. At least according the the player or two I talked with.
The Blood Cult had a lot of stuff too, and florished. Did it become the number 1 religion in follower count? No, but if you are accusing it on "too much lore", then you truly were blind to the fact that it preached, you know, sacrificing living beings to please the gods and had questionnable ties to the daimons? The Blood Cult was never meant to be mainstream. Did we have a lot of established lore? Yes. Did that stop people from adding more? No. We have players write up lore for it regardless. Per capita, a LOT more than SA ever did.
Yes, I know that the Blood Cult preached human sacrifice, and about their ties to the daimons, etc.
There are a billion things in life that can make religious people seek divine guidance. To not start up with a dozen answers is either sheer laziness or intentional vagueness to increase acceptability. Does SA debate these things more than Eretzism? Well, yes, but Eretzism has a fraction of the follower count, has a fraction of the activity rates from those present, isn't on a SMA continent, and is quite a bit older.
So, then equating Eretzism's blank spots to SA's blank spots is pretty pointless, if Eretzism doesn't actually use those blanks to good purpose.
In the Blood Cult, we used *lore* as an enabler, instead of blanks. With so much random lore, it's much easier to try to extrapolate by making a bunch of wild links between random existing bits.
For you, perhaps that's an easier way to go. But from what I have seen in the different religions I have had characters in, that's not the way it works for most people.
"Wide open spaces" are not very important. Who cares if you convert far-away rogue regions?
I'm not talking about far away regions. I'm talking about the regions right at home, within your own realm. When these other religions were formed, there was no real competition in the homelands from any other religion.
Morek imposed SA on its colonies and on neighbours
Incorrect on both accounts. SA was not imposed on Astrum. Astrum was formed by faithful followers of the Stars, who wanted to expand the influence of SA across the island. We didn't follow SA because it was the ticket to our own realm. We formed our own realm because we wanted to spread SA.
Also, Morek never imposed SA on any realm that did not first attack or otherwise antagonize Sanguis Astroism on purpose. In fact, it was quite a long time after SA's founding that any of that kind of thing happened at all.
Caerwyn did not.
That's Caerwyn's problem. Or, more probably, VE's problem. VE could have gotten together colony expeditions. Caerwyn had the nobility available to form Asylon. Why didn't the VE followers in Caerwyn get together and take Echiur for themselves? Or Itau? Or Via? These were great places for the VE followers to expand into, and set up shop for themselves. But they didn't. Why not? Didn't they care about expanding their faith? Maybe they just weren't invested in the faith enough to bother, or maybe the faith wasn't invested enough in expanding its power and influence to make the call to do this?
Why did the western religions fail? Well, for one, they *did* face more competition. The Seven were small, isolated, and died on their own.
The Seven was actually quite large in Springdale.
There were many realms in the North-East, but just one religion for almost all of its history. In contrast, there were few realms in the west, and they almost all had their own religion, if not two, plus the faith some of them imported from their original realms. Natural SA expansion competed with VE in Caerwyn.
Given that Caerwyn forbid preaching SA, and forbid all SA temples, even forcing one lord to tear down an SA temple, I find it hard to believe that there was ever much more than a token peasant following in any Caerwyn regions. There were almost always a majority of VE followers in all the northern regions of Caerwyn. At times Astrum's southern border regions had more VE followers than SA followers. After the war with Caerwyn started, in fact, several priests that came to Astrum to help in the war effort remarked on how many VE followers there were across Astrum's southern borders.
They did not have the "exact same opportunities", not by a longshot. SA was in one of the four founding realms.
So was the Seven, and the Order of St. Iestyn. And whatever that religion was in Madina, the one imported from Atamara. Estianism, maybe? I think it has since fallen apart on Dwilight, and I can't remember. So apparently being in a founding realm wasn't that much of a bonus.
The western colonies came in way, way later.
And when they were formed, SA really wasn't there in any strength at all. It still isn't in most of them.
As for "if x, then do y", SA has the lamest one of them all. "If (time of year), then (have this mood more)". Great theology to be proud of, there...
Makes for a great RP device. Need some inspiration on what your character could be doing right now? Pop open the phases of the Bloodstars, and see what they say. Is it a bit gimmicky? Sure. But it's also easy for players to grasp, and doesn't require a study of someone else's made-up theology to use.
Don't get me wrong, SA is a great model for a "successful" religion. I just don't consider it to be a "good" religion, because I don't believe any normal human could be even remotely spiritually satisfied by its teaching, or that such a religion could have the same scope of success had it happened in the real world in the middle ages.
Meh.... It would be absurd to think that any religion made up in BattleMaster could possibly be a real world religion. But that's not the key point. The key point is whether or not the religions are fun for the players that have characters in them. Most religions in the game aren't fun. They just exist. And "just existing" isn't fun.
New religions sprung up, Eretzism re-emerged. The one that replaced the Old Gods tried to expand, but we'll see what that gives. Qyrvaggism and Alluran were preached in now-pagan Enweil lands to stir up trouble and help Rio in their war. Otherwise, not much as far as I know.
Back when Alluran was founded for the first time, and then again for the second time, it was always a hollow shell. It never had anything in it worth a damn. Even the founder said "I'm leaving all this empty. It's up to the people in it to develop all the content." And without even the most basic framework to go from, it never went anywhere at all. It was a big flop from the start. I'd imagine this third incarnation is probably the same.
Not having an "afterlife" in the end of it isn't the same as lacking theology on the afterlife: the theology just clearly says "there is no afterlife". No human being would seriously devote his life to a religion that says "Well, you know, maybe this, or maybe that, but really, we don't know what happens after death", especially in those days.
What makes for a good RL religion isn't necessarily what makes a good in-game religion. The two fulfill completely different needs.
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Would any game religion pass IRL? No, of course no, no one has the time to develop a religion to that extent. However, with a bit of suspense of disbelief, and can imagine that if there is enough written on the key fundamental questions, then there are answers, "unwritten", on most of the rest.
If there's nothing to work on, however, I cannot suspend disbelief to tell myself that such a religion would give satisfying answers to the fundamental questions of life.
Fun doesn't make "good", in my book. You can have a bunch of nobles actively preaching about how squirrels will end us and about how we must worship the holy badger while wearing pink tutus, and RP a bunch around that and actively spread it. Could be fun. Would be stupid as hell, though, and wouldn't qualify as "good" in my book simply because it is fun.
Does a lot of theology text result in a lot of tl;dr? Yes, of course. But then again, I'd bet most SA players never really read the few SA texts there are either, and almost all of them never contributed to developping RP. So what's your point, if the end result is the same in both cases? At least when there is established theology, those who did bother can lecture others on the proper way of doing things. Hell, at least there is a determined proper way of doing things, for those who cared enough to look it up. When in the Cult, I had on many occasions people come ask questions to me about this or that, obviously not having read the wiki. It was a great opportunity to link various bits of lore with current events, and therefore publish new lore or documents. Indeed, a lot of texts you can see on the cult's wiki didn't just come out of my ass on day 1, it was the result of interaction with others.
I 100% disagree that intentionally leaving more blanks than text makes a religion better. It's certainly a key to success to not have any arbitrary rules as RL religions have as even the smallest rule will turn away some people, but that just makes for a !@#$ty (even if successful) religion. A good religion should feel like it could have been a real western religion in the days.
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The Seven was actually quite large in Springdale.
Don't make me laugh, unless something happend after my character (The founder) passed away. It had 5-7 nobles at it's peak days. Yes it had a big temple, but after the contributing (and paying) Duke disapeared it went downhill. To oppose SA it was a couple of months (maybe weeks) to late. Most likely it could have survived in a way.
If all you are after is min/maxing your character, then the religion aspect of the game is not for you. It's just that simple, and nothing can change that. Period.
And thats the reason most religions fail. Especially after the main driving force behind it (most of the time 1 player) abandons it. I would love to see a religion go from one to another and develop, change. Religions in the real world are not the work of one man, but the contributing parts of many stories, tales, visions.
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Not that it is exactly the most powerful of religions, but I believe Verdis Elementum on Dwilight has survived its founder's departure.
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Survival is not the point, change adaptation, new ideas. Most of the time the creativity dies.
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Fun doesn't make "good", in my book. You can have a bunch of nobles actively preaching about how squirrels will end us and about how we must worship the holy badger while wearing pink tutus, and RP a bunch around that and actively spread it. Could be fun. Would be stupid as hell, though, and wouldn't qualify as "good" in my book simply because it is fun.
I wouldn't call such a religion a good one either. And it definitely wouldn't be a fun religion for me. But there are people out there that like such things. Dunkontology, the donut religion on EC, developed a pretty large following. At one time, before religions were actual game mechanics, they had the second largest guild in the game, and were established on two or three islands. I personally think it was pretty ridiculous, but lots of people enjoyed it.
Does a lot of theology text result in a lot of tl;dr? Yes, of course. But then again, I'd bet most SA players never really read the few SA texts there are either, and almost all of them never contributed to developping RP. So what's your point, if the end result is the same in both cases?
The end result is most definitely not the same. If one person creates and delivers the entire theology, then one person has contributed to it, and only that one person is invested in it. When that person leaves, it will most likely fail. This is a pattern that we have seen over and over again. If ten people make major contributions to it, then ten people are invested in it. When he "founder" leaves, it will continue, carried on by the other people that are invested in it. That's what happened in SA when Mathurin left, and we didn't know if he would ever be back. Most of us thought he was gone for good. Other people that were invested in it took over, and kept things going, adding more to the theology.
You don't have to have 100% participation and activity to keep things alive. You just need a large enough core group of people that are actively invested in it, that it can survive the loss of a single key person. But as those key people leave, those that are left have to make an effort to get more people involved. That was the reason behind the large pool of elders we designed for SA, with regular elections for some of the elder positions. Keep interest going for a larger pool of noble, as well as leave the option open for almost anyone to actually become a guiding member of the faith.
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Actually, what am I saying, my character on Far East Island was an elder priest of MAE, and made fairly substantial additions and changes to the faith. New rituals and ceremonies, new religious iconography, new theological doctrines...
It is harder to work with existing material (while respecting others' previous work) than to create your own theology from scratch, I agree. On the other hand, there's much more motivation to engage with an existing body of theology and worshippers.
Edit: And this was all long after the founder, and subsequent dignitaries, had basically lost interest.
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One thing that ties into the one person vs lots of people developing theology debate...
"Long lost" religions that are "rediscovered" need to burn in eternal hellfire. It's possible, I'm sure, to have a great religion based around that. But it bugs me every time.
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One thing that ties into the one person vs lots of people developing theology debate...
"Long lost" religions that are "rediscovered" need to burn in eternal hellfire. It's possible, I'm sure, to have a great religion based around that. But it bugs me every time.
We need to have more religions based around characters. Some people need to proclaim themselves as gods!
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Survival is not the point, change adaptation, new ideas. Most of the time the creativity dies.
Survival is a challenge by itself. The game doesn't account for leadership change, and VE almost died due to game mechanics when the founder left. We are now locked with most elder positions forever locked out, too, highest occupied elder rank being the 7th right now I think.
If religions (and guilds) weren't so crippled when their founders left, then others would be more willing to contribute to such faiths that otherwise appear as at least partial dead ends.
The end result is most definitely not the same. If one person creates and delivers the entire theology, then one person has contributed to it, and only that one person is invested in it. When that person leaves, it will most likely fail. This is a pattern that we have seen over and over again. If ten people make major contributions to it, then ten people are invested in it. When he "founder" leaves, it will continue, carried on by the other people that are invested in it. That's what happened in SA when Mathurin left, and we didn't know if he would ever be back. Most of us thought he was gone for good. Other people that were invested in it took over, and kept things going, adding more to the theology.
You don't have to have 100% participation and activity to keep things alive. You just need a large enough core group of people that are actively invested in it, that it can survive the loss of a single key person. But as those key people leave, those that are left have to make an effort to get more people involved. That was the reason behind the large pool of elders we designed for SA, with regular elections for some of the elder positions. Keep interest going for a larger pool of noble, as well as leave the option open for almost anyone to actually become a guiding member of the faith.
It is the same, you just wrongly associated swiss cheese religions being determined only by the founder, while suggesting that those with more holes than content are the opposite. That is a bad logical fallacy. They are not tied to each other, as you can just as easily have faiths with a lot of predetermined lore that have faithful participate in order to add significant amounts of lore and theology as you can have faiths with more blanks than content never have the faithful have a say in anything. A leader guiding theology doesn't mean that he's doing it all himself and that subordinates cannot participate. A good chunk of mythology in the Blood Cult was written or inspired by the faithful, another good chunk was derived from other faiths. Every now and then, established faith with decent amounts of content will have people contribute to them (old religions with content get more of this than old religions without any, I would say).
To repeat myself: amount of content and amount of participation are not dependent on each other. Experience shows all combinations are possible, leadership style has more impact than amount of content on the short to long term, and lots of content can be beneficial on the very long term (why bother writing lore on a religion if no one cared to do so for many years prior?).
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Would any game religion pass IRL? No, of course no, no one has the time to develop a religion to that extent. However, with a bit of suspense of disbelief, and can imagine that if there is enough written on the key fundamental questions, then there are answers, "unwritten", on most of the rest.
If there's nothing to work on, however, I cannot suspend disbelief to tell myself that such a religion would give satisfying answers to the fundamental questions of life.
Fun doesn't make "good", in my book. You can have a bunch of nobles actively preaching about how squirrels will end us and about how we must worship the holy badger while wearing pink tutus, and RP a bunch around that and actively spread it. Could be fun. Would be stupid as hell, though, and wouldn't qualify as "good" in my book simply because it is fun.
Does a lot of theology text result in a lot of tl;dr? Yes, of course. But then again, I'd bet most SA players never really read the few SA texts there are either, and almost all of them never contributed to developping RP. So what's your point, if the end result is the same in both cases? At least when there is established theology, those who did bother can lecture others on the proper way of doing things. Hell, at least there is a determined proper way of doing things, for those who cared enough to look it up. When in the Cult, I had on many occasions people come ask questions to me about this or that, obviously not having read the wiki. It was a great opportunity to link various bits of lore with current events, and therefore publish new lore or documents. Indeed, a lot of texts you can see on the cult's wiki didn't just come out of my ass on day 1, it was the result of interaction with others.
I 100% disagree that intentionally leaving more blanks than text makes a religion better. It's certainly a key to success to not have any arbitrary rules as RL religions have as even the smallest rule will turn away some people, but that just makes for a !@#$ty (even if successful) religion. A good religion should feel like it could have been a real western religion in the days.
To me the issue isn't about blanks or reams of developed theology, its about a religion being fluid. Religious though changes, sometimes small changes sometimes big. Take Christian though on the after life, Hell was absent from early Christian churches, was pushed heavily in the middle ages when fear was such a large part of Church preaching, and currently is once again absent in some denominations.
SA succeeds in my opinion because regardless of how much stuff is actually written on the wiki (which lets face it is not some official place that EVERYTHING must be placed) theological discussion and development is an active part of that religion.
Besides which no religion STARTS we a massively developed Theology, this things do grow organically in some way. We often bypass that IG in many ways, rediscovering ancient faiths, visions from gods etc, but the fact remains that in far too many religions once they are set up that theological growth dies, and I believe that with it much of the potential vitality of the faith dies.
For instance Chénier how many of those original super active Blood Cultist were is some way involved in the forming of the theology? As yourself if perhaps part of the recruitment problem later was people felt like a square peg in a round hole that was created by other players for their own characters and reasons?
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We are now locked with most elder positions forever locked out, too, highest occupied elder rank being the 7th right now I think.
I definitely posted the announcement of the fix for that to the newsticker when it came out several months ago.
Any elder of the highest occupied rank can now reclaim the missing ranks, all but the Founder rank.
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For instance Chénier how many of those original super active Blood Cultist were is some way involved in the forming of the theology? As yourself if perhaps part of the recruitment problem later was people felt like a square peg in a round hole that was created by other players for their own characters and reasons?
The BC was a niche religion. I never found established theology to be the problem, I rather always felt it made us more authentic.
And the lore was established over time. Sure, I did most of it, but bits every here and there until the days it started declining, really. Others also contributed.
I definitely posted the announcement of the fix for that to the newsticker when it came out several months ago.
Any elder of the highest occupied rank can now reclaim the missing ranks, all but the Founder rank.
Seriously? I don't remember that.
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I definitely posted the announcement of the fix for that to the newsticker when it came out several months ago.
Any elder of the highest occupied rank can now reclaim the missing ranks, all but the Founder rank.
Out-of-Character from Sofia MacDuff (21 minutes ago)
I'm digging through the interface for managing ranks and people. Sadly, I don't see a means to promote myself higher.
I was under the impression that if the highest ranking member of a guild/religion left, the next highest could take (or would be automatically) control. I'm not seeing that kind of tool here.
I'll look a bit more and see what I can dig up.
Aaron Crandall
Where can this tool be found?
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Where can this tool be found?
In the Manage Guild Ranks page, down at the bottom, I believe.
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That's correct. I used it on EC with the Church of Humanity and Askarn used it on BT with the Golden Feather.
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Well, I believe religion is missing something more than a roleplay class.
Since the earlier hour of the civilizations, the religion were intrinsicly linked with medicine and healing people. But we don't have it on BM. I can quote this from the Egypts, Aesculapius for the romans, PAnacea for the greeks, Airmid for the celtians, and numerous more. Perharps, a subclass like "healer" could appear. What about giving the preachers the option to hire healers (the paraphernalia) and let them cure the people hurt by loot? This could give the preachers something to do with paraphernalia, and, more, something to spend the money. Preachers are a good class to gain money, as you spend with little. You can't hire soldiers, and have no use to paraphernalia.
Plus, with this, we can give the religion temples and etc the option to help the commoners, too, to be healed.
We can't forget that BM is a game based on something like the middle ages, and medicine, science chermistry, physics, are all moved by the religions.
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Over my dead body, and you can quote me on that.
This is, in fact, a frequently rejected wish. The problem here isn't history (we could go into that, it won't be pretty for religion), the problem is that way too many games have followed the "priest == healer" cliché. And I don't want to do that, in order to keep the distinction between BM and D&D.
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I must say, I did not think in D&d and other RPGs... I'm sorry, Tom. But I really did not think in a subclass wich would give to the priests a "power" to them. I thought them hiring some healers, and travel from here to there and send them to cure loot people (helping them going fast to the former levels) or wounded soldiers. They can help, but with common and ordinary things, like herbs. BM is not a game of high magic things =)
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I must say, I did not think in D&d and other RPGs... I'm sorry, Tom. But I really did not think in a subclass wich would give to the priests a "power" to them. I thought them hiring some healers, and travel from here to there and send them to cure loot people (helping them going fast to the former levels) or wounded soldiers. They can help, but with common and ordinary things, like herbs. BM is not a game of high magic things =)
Its not about HOW they heal, its about breaking away from the fact that most RPG's will pigeon whole priests into a healer role.
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Its not about HOW they heal, its about breaking away from the fact that most RPG's will pigeon whole priests into a healer role.
I must say, the preacher has not any link with any subclass. He can't fight to be a cavalier, a hero, can't stab to be an infiltrator, can't trade. Can only hope to appear some new players who really want to learn from a mentor, and pray to the treaties become really necessary in all continents.
So, what's your suggestion?
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Leave them as is. I've played several Priest and never found myself thinking I needed some subclass to flesh out the character.
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Besides H/P, I don't really think Priests are missing anything.
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I must say, the preacher has not any link with any subclass. He can't fight to be a cavalier, a hero, can't stab to be an infiltrator, can't trade. Can only hope to appear some new players who really want to learn from a mentor, and pray to the treaties become really necessary in all continents.
So, what's your suggestion?
I see Priest/Heroes all the time.
Though perhaps they take the Hero subclass before becoming a Priest.
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Yes, because you just can't leave hero as you do to every other class/sub. You can't pick volunteers, your family doesn't gold to let you change your mansion any time you want, and the "tell your tale" option never appears, at last, to me.
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Yes, because you just can't leave hero as you do to every other class/sub. You can't pick volunteers, your family doesn't gold to let you change your mansion any time you want, and the "tell your tale" option never appears, at last, to me.
I have a Priest/Hero and I changed my family home with him, and also "told my tale" several times. The volunteers-option is naturally unavailable.
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I have a Priest/Hero and I changed my family home with him, and also "told my tale" several times. The volunteers-option is naturally unavailable.
I've taken them, it's a pretty good combo actually: you get to move your home, tell you tales, and, most importantly, an option to try to escape the dungeons when captured.