Dear players,
I have been playing battlemaster since 2007, and something that always bugged me is the value and power of religion. I want to start a real discussion on how to improve it, make it more realistic and more fun, before I make an official feature request. I'll update this post regularly to keep up with the proposals for an improved religion.
You see that some players put much time and effort in religion, role-play wise in-game and on the wiki. Religion has the potential to be a very interesting part of the game, yet it most cases it is just a silent guild you are part of to appease your peasants, or you aren't part of an organised religion at all. What does it really matter what faith you follow? From a day to day basis it has little use for your character. You notice that in the message group of most religions. It is silent. No one cares. Of course this is not true for all religions, but most of them. We need to revive those religions.
What is the value of a man's faith? How do we value a religion? To answer that, I ask you to look at the Church of Ibladesh. For a very long time in the history of the East Continent, the CoI has been a very powerful church. Probably the most powerful of the continent. After Ibladesh's last war against Perdan, duchies succeeded and peace negotiations followed. Perdan demanded that the new realms closed down every temple of the CoI, the rulers complied knowing it would mean the end of the Church. They complied to give up their faith in order to stay in power. The zealous Ibladeshi just gave up their faith. Who can make sense of that? As priest of the CoI, I told people not to give up their faith, but to continue fighting for what they believe in. I stood alone in that thought. So how much does a religion really matter to a charterer? Too little.
Historically, the Church was a very important institution in medieval Europe. The Church was rich and powerful, and the pope's influence was greater than the influence of Kings. They were powerful and could command a whole continent to take up arms to 'defend' the faith in many holy crusades. There was much intrigue, because the stakes were usually very high. And for the common men, the church was there directive in moral and principle matters. That was also something that made the Church powerful, because they commanded the loyalty of the people.
I say, make the church more important. Give them more power. Give them the people! Make kings fear the power of the Church.
PROPOSALS:
- Taxes - Allow realms to choose wether or not to tax religions, or perhaps to tax only certain religions. More gold for religions with support of the realm which means more power. Also, it can create interesting intrigue between rulers and the Church's council.
- Excommunicate - make it an option to excommunicate someone besides kicking someone out. Excommunicated nobles cause civil unrest in religious regions. Depending on the % of followers in the region and the rank of the noble. A simple knight will cause some unrest in the region, a lord more, a duke will cause unrest in his duchy and a council member will cause unrest in the whole realm, and most strongly in the capital. Again, more intrigue.
- Influence followers - When a noble priest tells the peasant to jump, he jumps. When he tells you to hate realm X and love realm Y, he will hate and love accordingly. This is already a feature, but seldomly used because the penalties are too high. If it takes me more than 100 days to convert 40% of a population (about 2500 people) from an evil religion to my own, I'll not hamper that slow progress by trying to influence the people and lose 300 followers again. It isn't realistic to abandon your faith like that. The Church was the main tool to influence the people. This makes religions actually useful and makes them desirable or not (for different people), which is interesting for the game. The duke wants to keep a good bond with the Church to make sure his peasants act as he commands. Not just statistics and role-play. I propose to minimize the penalties on influencing followers.
- Evil ally? What!? - The peasants in a region should be influenced by a cross-reference of the dominant faith in the region, its views on other religions, the type of realm-based relations to other realms, and the dominant faith in that realm. (Indirik)
Please debate the above proposals and if you have proposals of your own to improve religions or the priest game, please share them.