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.
