Author Topic: What makes a good BM religion?  (Read 32298 times)

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #30: January 18, 2013, 01:07:38 AM »
The main issue as said is that you need some political power for a religion to do well. FEI for instance has a war between the Order of the Elders and the Church of Sartan, but very little actually happens in terms of crusades and burning temples or anything, why? Because the political powers (wisely perhaps in their situation) refuse to allow such religious war to be actually fought by members of their realm. Selene tried to do it aggressively and failed horribly in this case. We attempted to do the same in Ibladesh, again failed there unfortunately.

Although there are some positive points on religion. If you can get that power and tie important political figures to a church (and not just, hey I'm a member whoopwhoop, but actually tie them to you) then you can accomplish nice things with religion. As said, being part of a religion can get you that lordship etc.

I know for a fact it's used in more realms, although perhaps secretly.
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #31: January 18, 2013, 01:32:45 AM »
That's not a bad idea. How about something like this:

Let priests have significant influence over the peasants who believe in their faith? At low levels, they could nudge morale and loyalty up and down. At higher levels, it might be reasonable to give them the ability to raise up a peasant mob to kick Lords or knights out of their estates, or even (if the priest's skill is high enough, and there's not enough troops in the region to stop it) claim the region as a new outpost of the religion (naturally, giving the priest the lordship in the process!).

...Hey, wait a second....

Those types of priest powers are good for quelling internal threats. They can be used to destroy dissenters, such as a Duke who threatens secession, by instantly ousting him from power, so that a more conservative character can take his place.

But as for dealing with external threats, they are useless. Hostile realms can simply arrest you before you start preaching, denying your religious spread.

Thus those powers do little to encourage intrigue or warfare, as they actively work to harm those who might initiate such things, while being incapable of initiating those things itself. Religion is a tool for preserving status quo, nothing more.

Chenier

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #32: January 18, 2013, 01:51:39 AM »
Those types of priest powers are good for quelling internal threats. They can be used to destroy dissenters, such as a Duke who threatens secession, by instantly ousting him from power, so that a more conservative character can take his place.

But as for dealing with external threats, they are useless. Hostile realms can simply arrest you before you start preaching, denying your religious spread.

Thus those powers do little to encourage intrigue or warfare, as they actively work to harm those who might initiate such things, while being incapable of initiating those things itself. Religion is a tool for preserving status quo, nothing more.

100% agreed.
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #33: January 18, 2013, 02:18:43 AM »
I can do a HELL OF A LOT MORE damage or good as an ambassador, with far less gold and far less hours. When you want to deal damage, your priest/ambassador doesn't use his "influence followers" option, even if he has 60% following or more, he uses his ambassador badmouth realm option.
Ambassadors are overpowered. Especially since all their work is done in secret.
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #34: January 18, 2013, 02:22:56 AM »
So, what types of powers/features would you like religions to have? They should be *active* powers. i.e. something that a player has to initiate to make it happen.
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Dishman

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #35: January 18, 2013, 02:33:08 AM »
I'm liking the 'priests write scrolls' idea. If a cult or church could suddenly summon a horde of monsters on your doorstep for being an unbeliever, you'd get yo ass to church.

If you gave religions a weapon, they'd have much more reason to fight. It would take some balancing measures and some testing, but I can't think of anything better than using the clergy to manifest power through the written word.

EDIT: Someone more familiar with making feature requests want to post this (and other ideas) so we don't hijack the thread?
« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 02:37:15 AM by Dishman »
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #36: January 18, 2013, 02:35:04 AM »
So, what types of powers/features would you like religions to have? They should be *active* powers. i.e. something that a player has to initiate to make it happen.

I was thinking you could use faith points (which would be gained regularly through peasant worship) which you can use for upgrades or one-shots, like in civ. Or do you have another mechanism in mind?

Some upgrades I thought of; a crusade upgrade that grants faith for hated religions killed in combat, a morale upgrade for units led by members of the church, etc. I guess these upgrades could require a one-time cost as well as upkeep in faith.

Some one-shots would be like spawning a unit of militia, giving a one-day bonus to combat against hated religions, instantly creating a new temple, etc.
« Last Edit: January 18, 2013, 02:36:42 AM by Norrel »
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #37: January 18, 2013, 04:33:36 AM »
I'm liking the 'priests write scrolls' idea. If a cult or church could suddenly summon a horde of monsters on your doorstep for being an unbeliever, you'd get yo ass to church.

If you gave religions a weapon, they'd have much more reason to fight. It would take some balancing measures and some testing, but I can't think of anything better than using the clergy to manifest power through the written word.

EDIT: Someone more familiar with making feature requests want to post this (and other ideas) so we don't hijack the thread?

If you haven't noticed, priests have no actual in game effects. This would be rejected instantly.

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #38: January 18, 2013, 04:44:06 AM »
If you haven't noticed, priests have no actual in game effects. This would be rejected instantly.

Ah, the Apple version of 'lolno': That isn't a bug, it's a feature!

Well, if the intent of a good BM religion is purely for flavor..then I'd say http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Bloodspeakers did pretty good. An amorphous collection with enough doctrine leniency to allow anyone to jump in with their own style and enough structure to bond all of it together. At least from what I've gathered from the wiki.
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Chenier

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #39: January 18, 2013, 01:27:53 PM »
Ambassadors are overpowered. Especially since all their work is done in secret.

Even before ambassadors, priest options were ridiculously underpowered.

1) They rely on high follower counts, which can only really be achieved in your own realm where there are no competing religions and where you can get people to build temples
2) Maintaining temples of the right sizes, and shrines, costs thousands and thousands of gold.
3) Even with the massive infrastructure, getting decent follower rates takes forever in terms of time, and countless of the priest's hours in preaching. Many of these spent hours don't actually serve to gain new followers, but simply to replace the ones lost since the priest last came to the region.
4) Most of the actions cost so many followers, that no one in their right mind would sacrifice work which took so long to accomplish.
5) The "stronger" options are so "great" that they have almost no useful uses outside of civil wars. In offensive campaigns, they can only really work in isolated rural regions, because mobile troops, even your own, will stop you and throw you in the enemy dungeon. And almost nobody can use these "advanced" options. The oratory skill needs to be high. The priest needs to be an elder. Auto da fes require the region have a large enough temple (unlikely in hostile lands), and claiming the region requires that you don't already hold some kind of lordship.

Yea, Anaris. The priest options are so wonderful, I can't even begin to imagine why, even when all of my characters were priests, I never used them.

They are gimmicky at best. Religion needs more structural mechanics that mean it isn't just a glorified guild anymore. And these need to not be limited to priests.
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Anaris

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #40: January 18, 2013, 03:17:56 PM »
Ah, the Apple version of 'lolno': That isn't a bug, it's a feature!

Well, if the intent of a good BM religion is purely for flavor..then I'd say http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Bloodspeakers did pretty good. An amorphous collection with enough doctrine leniency to allow anyone to jump in with their own style and enough structure to bond all of it together. At least from what I've gathered from the wiki.

The game-mechanic powers of priests are exactly commensurate with those they might have been expected to have in the RL middle ages.

In other words, influence and power over people, not mystical magical powers.
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #41: January 18, 2013, 03:42:50 PM »
The game-mechanic powers of priests are exactly commensurate with those they might have been expected to have in the RL middle ages.

In other words, influence and power over people, not mystical magical powers.

But, on Beluaterra and Dwilight at least, there are mystical and magical powers, and they are not a vanishingly small part of gameplay.

Even aside from that– here's a half-dozen possible non-mystical changes that make sense and would help:

Make religion members able to give flag something as "heresy," like vulgarity, and it automatically goes to the religion's elders, who rule on it anonymously. i.e. "the lesser nobles are grumbling that you've started to stray from the One True Path"

Stop making your own realm's troops throw priests in enemy dungeons.

Create a mechanism for an RTO where a priest can make someone else the lord of the region, besides themselves.

Allow religions to declare realms "evil" or "misguided" or "faithful" or "ignore."

Allow religions to declare characters anathema, whereby they may have a random chance of being assaulted by peasants in areas where that realm is dominant, especially if they're a courtier or something. Obviously the number of anathema persons should be capped, probably as a ratio of the members or priests of a religion.

Boost the H/P available in the priest game.

----

These all seem feasible. These all are non-mystical. None of these have been previousy explicitly rejected. None of them give religions some kind of god-moding power. None of them could substantively replace RP and influencing by players. All of them could plausibly augment and encourage such– and even the most peaceful and get-along religions will eventually be tempted to declare someone anathema or proclaim a realm evil.
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Anaris

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #42: January 18, 2013, 04:03:29 PM »
But, on Beluaterra and Dwilight at least, there are mystical and magical powers, and they are not a vanishingly small part of gameplay.

You have missed the point.

First of all, no player characters have magic. Period. (Scrolls don't count; they're created by NPC magic, but don't require magic in the person casting them—that's their whole point.)

Second of all, to give such powers to religions would be to legitimize all their Gods. And giving it to the ones who don't even claim that there are Gods—or that the Gods don't interfere in mortal affairs—would just be bizarre.

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Even aside from that– here's a half-dozen possible non-mystical changes that make sense and would help:

Make religion members able to give flag something as "heresy," like vulgarity, and it automatically goes to the religion's elders, who rule on it anonymously. i.e. "the lesser nobles are grumbling that you've started to stray from the One True Path"

OK, that doesn't sound unreasonable. What sort of effect would you say this should have?

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Stop making your own realm's troops throw priests in enemy dungeons.

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean "change the code so that priests of your own realm cannot be arrested"?

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Create a mechanism for an RTO where a priest can make someone else the lord of the region, besides themselves.

Again, it's not an RTO. It's claiming the region for the religion. I could see a case for making someone else who's an elder the Lord, but that's pathetically easy to game.

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Allow religions to declare realms "evil" or "misguided" or "faithful" or "ignore."

That sounds reasonable to me, but I think Tom would dislike it, as it mixes the religious side and the political side too directly.

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Allow religions to declare characters anathema, whereby they may have a random chance of being assaulted by peasants in areas where that realm is dominant, especially if they're a courtier or something. Obviously the number of anathema persons should be capped, probably as a ratio of the members or priests of a religion.

That one sounds kind of cool. I wouldn't make the chance dependent on class, but rather on unit size, though.

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Boost the H/P available in the priest game.

Done. I have just tripled the amount of H/P available to priests ;D </snark>

...Yeah, there probably should be more H/P available to priests. Maybe for converting large numbers of peasants and the like.

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These all seem feasible. These all are non-mystical. None of these have been previousy explicitly rejected. None of them give religions some kind of god-moding power. None of them could substantively replace RP and influencing by players. All of them could plausibly augment and encourage such– and even the most peaceful and get-along religions will eventually be tempted to declare someone anathema or proclaim a realm evil.

The only point I'd make in response to this is that most of these can be done in RP. Obviously that can't apply game-mechanic effects, but it can definitely serve the purpose of, say, getting the characters in the religion to view realm X as evil, or Allison Kabrinski as a heretic.
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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #43: January 18, 2013, 04:16:00 PM »
Anaris, what would you think about a faith mechanic like Civ V's? Obviously it'd be a major overhaul and as such is too much work for now (or ever), but is it broken on the face of it?
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Anaris

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Re: What makes a good BM religion?
« Reply #44: January 18, 2013, 04:20:31 PM »
Anaris, what would you think about a faith mechanic like Civ V's? Obviously it'd be a major overhaul and as such is too much work for now (or ever), but is it broken on the face of it?

I don't know Civ V, but from your descriptions, I don't think it would be very appropriate. Things like "faith points" don't really mesh well with the general feel and mechanics of BM.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan