What is exact use of shrines?

[T0mislav]

It says: "Building a small shrine does not equate to a full temple, but it serves as a reminder to the local followers. Shrines strengthen the faith and will provide a gathering point for the believers.", but what does it mean?

When I enter the temple I get information: "This temple can provide for ca. 17500 followers." so it is exact information.
How many believers shrine can support (if any)?

Also there is temple treasury.
Temples are upkeeping from there.
There is no thing like shrine treasury so how to upkeep shrines in region without temple and when they draw from global treasury the region lose believers rapidly.

So generally, shrines can be payed only in regions with temples (where they are not needed) and in regions without temples they only cause rapid lose of believers.
So, again to return to my original question: what is exact use of shrines?

[Anaris]

Shrines, unintuitively enough, don't actually convert people in the region they're in. Rather, they help to energize them to go and convert people in neighbouring regions. So ideally, you want shrines in regions where you have temples, but can't easily preach farther yourself, so you use them to get the peasants to do it for you.

[Indirik]

Shrines don't have a Treasury, but they do collect donations. If there are enough followers in the regions, they will pay for themselves.

Shrines do not have a set number of followers like temples. They do help support followers, but not so strong as temples. The big thing people do wrong is walk in, preach, build shrines, and then leave. Then the followers drift away, and the shrines end up costing them lots of money forever.

Also, you don't need a temple to build shrines. You do need a certain amount of followers.

[T0mislav]

"The big thing people do wrong is walk in, preach, build shrines, and then leave. Then the followers drift away, and the shrines end up costing them lots of money forever."

So what are people supposed to do? Come to some region and stay in it forever?

[Indirik]

When a realm takes control of a region, do you expect to be able to take over, police until core, build your rcs, then walk away and never come back? Or do you expect to have to come back and do some courts and police every now and then to keep it in to condition?

For some reason, people have gotten the idea into their heads, despite all evidence to the contrary, that once a region is converted and shrines/temples built, that they should never, ever have to go back and touch that region again. So the behavior that we expect and account for with region control, is completely ignored when it comes to religion.

If you convert a region in the middle of nowhere, then walk away and never come back, how could you possibly expect to have it stay yours forever? Doubly true when other religions are strong in the area, and even preaching their own faith.

So, yeah, if you convert the region and build stuff, come back every now and then. Not only will you keep more followers, you'll make more gold in contributions for your temples.

[Vita`]

I have found my priests do quite little preaching, even being fully skilled and improving priest preaching. In my experience, its been much more effective to focus on infrastructure. Temples recruit locals by themselves so preaching seems redundant. Once the faith has grown enough, contributions either reduce or cover the costs of temple depending on if its a rural region or a city (or some other wealthy region like a mountain or townsland). I do find myself visiting the regions - to upgrade temples to convert more locals or drop more gold in them to subsidize maintenance costs. I very rarely preach when visiting the temples myself - 'oh, I'm not far away from being able to build a shrine, one preaching session should put me over the top'.

As Tim said, temples convert locals. Shrines convert neighbour regions.

As far as shrines being paid, it depends. They still accept local contributions. The local contributions just aren't saved in any treasury like with a temple. So if the local faithful contribute enough, it'll cover the shrine's cost locally. If not, your global treasury will cover it. I have some regions in my religion that have had 2 shrines and no temple for over an OOC year that *still* are paying their own contribution costs without me having visited recently. Then there are others that are a weekly drain on global treasury. Everything is different.

[Indirik]

My experience has been that regions that get more preaching have higher contributions, thus need less gold from there treasury, and regions that are left to themselves rarely manage to cover their own expenses. This was from a few years of experience with SA. I don't have any practical experience with any other religion.

[Vita`]

What I *do* know is that contributions are based on percentage of believers and wealth (regional gold stat and production %, I think, not sure) of a region. I don't know if preaching affects it more directly than having influenced believer percentage.

[T0mislav]

My experience is that my character priest (with high oratory skill) is lord of region that has 13300 peasants.
He build level 5 temple in the region that can provide for ca. 17500 followers.
He also build 5 shrines to the religion.
He managed to reach 11000 believers in 3-4 months preaching and after that he is daily preaching for last several months with no change - what he get by preaching he lose after the turn change.

Also, considering shrines - I have noticed that regions with shrines that are drawing gold from the global treasury are rapidly losing followers regardless of there is huge amount of gold in the global treasury.

Thank you for information that shrines are used for converting nearby regions.
From the description I was under impression that their main use is to replace temples in regions where temple can not be built.

Still, it would be nice to see upgrade to the game that will grant to local lord to build in his region temple to any existing religion instead to his religion only.

[Vita`]

Temples convert the region naturally and increase the local preaching like a priest does. The larger the temple, the more effect. If you're preaching as well, it won't be as effective because of that other preaching going on. I'd suggest focusing somewhere else and coming back. Also, converting neighbouring regions and building shrines there is of help.

As far as global treasury and follower loss, if a temple can't cover the maintenance cost with local treasuries and has to rely on global treasury, the region loses some followers. I don't think this applies to regions with just shrines, but the fact there are no temples in the region makes sense that followers would reduce. I think the only way for that to not happen is if it has bordering regions with shrines, but even then, it won't necessarily hold believers very high, especially if there's another religion's temple in the region.

BM isn't the modern world where everyone's just hunky dory with all other faiths and switching churches here and there. It's supposed to *mean* something, not be something you just collect a membership token from each church.

[Wimpie]

Wow this topic is very helpful if you did not fully grasp the essence of temples, shrines and followers and how it all interacts. So thanks to Tomislav for the question and thanks Vita and Indirik for the responses.

I do think the wording about what Shrines are, in game, could be updated to better explain what it actually does. I agree with Tomislav that it ain't clear, and that's maybe why (as Indirk pointed out) many have that 'I'll plant all this infrastructure here and never return'-attitude.

Also, I think this would be a great addition to some sort of FAQ around the Priest game on the Wiki. Maybe some day...

[Vita`]

Also, I think this would be a great addition to some sort of FAQ around the Priest game on the Wiki. Maybe some day...

Always glad to answer questions. Haven't been up for rewritting Manual in awhile. But if someone were, I would be glad to answer the questions and give them the necessary info.

[Medron Pryde]

Beluaterra, a few scattered temples around the continent, a few concentrations of them in the middle of the continent, and shrines all over whereever I can put them without getting run out of the area as the member of an enemy nation, have converted the continent to one religion.

It's rather amazing...

[Vita`]

In this case, your long-term competition has only been paganism, as Daishi has outlasted all other faiths. New religions have to start out from a very localized area and expand, which takes much time, lordships, and gold. Daishi is thus the rather default faith of BT. You just can't find a temple anywhere. -.-