CK2 Dev Diary #88 - A Faith In My Own Image

[TheDungen]

The reformer has sole choice.

That's a bit boring. Would be more interesting if it was sort of based on how you went about achieving the reformation. A more narrative approach. Because now it will very likely be that out of these 3000 options well see 2 or 3 that ever sees use. Just like ideagroups in eu4.

 

[Karlingid]

That's a bit boring. Would be more interesting if it was sort of based on how you went about achieving the reformation. A more narrative approach. Because now it will very likely be that out of these 3000 options well see 2 or 3 that ever sees use. Just like ideagroups in eu4.

Part of me thinks that the ruler, as the reformer, should be the one who gets to choose how it all goes down- but the other part looks at the event text and believes that there's got to be something going on there.

Maybe this helps explain why some remain in the "Old" variant, they're the priests and lords who reject your interpretation and stake out their own version until they can enforce theirs.

 

[TheDungen]

Part of me thinks that the ruler, as the reformer, should be the one who gets to choose how it all goes down- but the other part looks at the event text and believes that there's got to be something going on there.

Maybe this helps explain why some remain in the "Old" variant, they're the priests and lords who reject your interpretation and stake out their own version until they can enforce theirs.

I'd like it if each controller of a holy site (the three with the highest piety if more then three holy sites are controlled) got to pick one of the nature and doctrines and the last one was depending on how much of the nessecery component the character himself contributed. Say i control all three minimum nessecery holy sites myself then I become religious head but if all five are held but no one hold more than one then you end up with autocephalous.

 

[Prometheus_1]

651 is outside the game's timeframe.

Laconia has been discussed before, and is considered to be less than a barony in size. As such the representation is too small to be the dominant religion of a province, and since they're smaller than a barony, there's no representative character to carry the religion either.

If you can show them to be of significant size, or to have had a functional, relevant noble of their faith, then please provide the evidence for this, with an indication of their size compared to the relevant province or provinces.

The map in the wiki article shows them to have been a tiny, tiny region of Laconia, and even their area wasn't necessarily dominated by the Hellenic faith, since (as in the article you linked to) there are signs of 4th century onward Christianity in the area.

804 Its was not smaller than a Barony and also you just even need one group of courtiers to have that trait and it could be enough to be influenced and eventually even try to revive... it is historical and it adds gameplay.

 

[faiuwle]

Will reformed pagan religions that don't pick the polygamy doctrine still have access to concubines?

 

[Orphalesion]

Eh, I think making it situation based or giving you random aspects based on AI choices would kind of ruin the point and the reward of customizable reformation. But I'm sure it would make an interesting mod.

804 Its was not smaller than a Barony and also you just even need one group of courtiers to have that trait and it could be enough to be influenced and eventually even try to revive... it is historical and it adds gameplay.

Thing is...it would only amount to a handful courtiers at the most... and while all the Pagan reformations are, of course, fiction and fantasy, the Hellenic faith bouncing back from a handful of disenfranchised individuals, after all their holy sites have been closed or turned into Christian churches, after their priesthood and festivals have been abolished, is particularly far-fetched.
From a role-play perspective I just find it really hard to justify some count/duke/king or even emperor in the Byzantine Empire waking up one morning and deciding "Hmmmm I know my family has been Christian for centuries now, and my whole culture and it's leadership make a really big deal of that religion, to the point that it's basically impossible to wield power, or take part in society at all, if you don't follow that religion....but Imma just gon return to the gods of my great-great-great-grand father because potatoes."
The other pagan faiths at least still have a population and characters in the earlier start dates.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

804 Its was not smaller than a Barony and also you just even need one group of courtiers to have that trait and it could be enough to be influenced and eventually even try to revive... it is historical and it adds gameplay.

Rather than stating that, show us.

How many were there?
How much of the area did the Maniots control, and what proportion were Hellenic in faith?


It's been repeatedly brought up. So far nothing has shown there to be a statistically significant population of Hellenics there.


And as for being less than a barony, take a look at the 769 start.
Go to the theme of Achaia.
Go to the county of Monemvasia.
Compare that to the maps in your links. The county is roughly equivalent to Laconia.
The Mani peninsula is roughly a fifth of the county, if we're generous. There are four slots in the county at start, 3 of which are built.

Hence, the entire peninsula is less than one barony in size, *and* the peninsula shows signs of being partially Christian, thus meaning that in the less than one barony space, the population wasn't even fully Hellenic.
To make the area Hellenic would require making the whole of Monemvasia Hellenic at start.

Now, if you want to dispute the relative size, that's fine. Just bring some good maps, and preferably a source suggesting how many of the local nobles were Hellene, and what proportion of the goat herding, olive tending peasants of the time were Hellene.


We've got signs of elements of Druidic practices surviving in deep woods in England through the 12th century - not as anything organised, and probably half remembered tales of grandfather's grandfather's grandfather having been told a story once - but enough that priests were sent to stamp it out. That's not a reason to claim that Derby should be Druidic, or that there should be a Druidic noble there though.

 

[TheDungen]

Eh, I think making it situation based or giving you random aspects based on AI choices would kind of ruin the point and the reward of customizable reformation. But I'm sure it would make an interesting mod.
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You would get to pick one and as reformer you'd get first pick.bur you'd be forced to deal with the AI which would mean playing site diverse ones. Unlike the players who will pick the same 90% of all cases like they do with idea groups in eu4. A sandbox without boundary conditions is just Microsoft paint.

 

[Orphalesion]

You would get to pick one and as reformer you'd get first pick.bur you'd be forced to deal with the AI which would mean playing site diverse ones. Unlike the players who will pick the same 90% of all cases like they do with idea groups in eu4. A sandbox without boundary conditions is just Microsoft paint.

I get wanting to have some complications and unexpected things (that's for example why I'm playing Sims 2 rather than Sims 4) but in cases like this it's also the responsibility of the player to make it interesting for themselves. And well...if you know how, you can do some pretty amazing things in Microsoft Paint, just need to be creative, just like choosing your religious features.
Sure you can pick whatever gives you the best gameplay bonuses...or you can pick what you think makes sense for both the religion you are reforming and the character you are reforming the religion as.
And with the AI we can be sure that most of the time they'd throw in either something completely random, or, if the AI choice would be weighted by factors, they would choose the same doctrine 90% of the time.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

You would get to pick one and as reformer you'd get first pick.bur you'd be forced to deal with the AI which would mean playing site diverse ones. Unlike the players who will pick the same 90% of all cases like they do with idea groups in eu4. A sandbox without boundary conditions is just Microsoft paint.

How do you implement "picking first" with something like this?
Who gets second choice? How does that work?
Why exactly are we letting the controllers of the Holy Sites pick aspects? It's unlikely you'll ever actually be personally holding the sites in question. Either they'll be held by your (barony tier) priest vassals, or by vassals of your vassals.
Since no-one will (barring deliberate effort) control 2 sites directly, then your suggestion would always result in autocephaly.

And surely the AI is likely to "90%" pick the same thing every time for a given religion? It'll pick based on what's coded in, which will generally be in line with the baseline religion.

It'd also suck to have you reform the faith and get a reformation that screws you over because random picks gave you something you don't want to play with.

 

[Thure]

804 Its was not smaller than a Barony and also you just even need one group of courtiers to have that trait and it could be enough to be influenced and eventually even try to revive... it is historical and it adds gameplay.

Just google Mani paninsular. It's way smaller than a province.

 

[Orphalesion]

Also if you want Random aspects, assuming the game doesn't already have a random button, you can role a die for the natures/doctrines/leadership. Or you can choose those things according to restrictions you set yourself (like your idea for autocephaly)

 

[Greene]

Hierocracy means that there will be a theocratic ruler like the Pope as universal head of religion while Temporal is like a secular Caliph, no?

 

[Riftwalker]

That would fall under leadership. Most likely all the options that are availible for the already existing religions exists, so Pope-wannabe, Caliph-wannabe (like fylkir in TOG), patriarch wannabe and no leader like the indian religions.
Adding decadence to your religions would be interesting though, but they would have to re-do all the events around it since they are islam-specific. You decadent viking dynasty wouldn't have tribes from the desert kicking them out for example.

i don;t actually think caliphate-wanabe is the same ass secular rulers having temple holdings. basically getting rid of the 'wrong holding' problems from them owning a temple like Muslim rulers.

 

[PlotVitalNPC]

Frankly, while this system seems great, it feels like Paradox is completely wasting it by not allowing those who reject the reformation to create heretical branches and compete with the mainstream or anything like that.

Autocephalous norse pacifists who worship only the Vanir and commit lots of incest should not be incompatible with angry vikings with a temporal head of faith who praise THOR.

 

[Rags17]

How many were there?
How much of the area did the Maniots control, and what proportion were Hellenic in faith?

It's been repeatedly brought up. So far nothing has shown there to be a statistically significant population of Hellenics there.

And as for being less than a barony, take a look at the 769 start.
Go to the theme of Achaia.
Go to the county of Monemvasia.
Compare that to the maps in your links. The county is roughly equivalent to Laconia.
The Mani peninsula is roughly a fifth of the county, if we're generous. There are four slots in the county at start, 3 of which are built.

Hence, the entire peninsula is less than one barony in size, *and* the peninsula shows signs of being partially Christian, thus meaning that in the less than one barony space, the population wasn't even fully Hellenic.
To make the area Hellenic would require making the whole of Monemvasia Hellenic at start.

Now, if you want to dispute the relative size, that's fine. Just bring some good maps, and preferably a source suggesting how many of the local nobles were Hellene, and what proportion of the goat herding, olive tending peasants of the time were Hellene.
:

Just google Mani peninsula. It's way smaller than a province.

CK2 is a game that is all about "flavour" with a very strong emphasis on role playing. It is a game that pays careful attention to historical accuracy while also allowing for some extremely ahistorical results (eg Norse Caliphates, nomads conquering all of Europe) while also including some downright silly or fantasy elements (Immortality, satanic powers, handguns in the 8th century, AZTECS ffs !). Allowing a player the ability to turn a blue-label base level vanilla placeholder religion like Hellenic or generic Pagan into a fully fleshed out reformed religion does not to me seem like a big ask or even out of the ordinary in any way.

To the argument that there weren't enough adherents in one particular area misses the point entirely - we don't need to know exactly how many people in location "X" were of a certain religion at any given time, just what proportion of the total population was of that religion. Even if just 0.01% of the map's population was Hellenic this would entail that around 2-3 characters in the game should start as that religion, based on the fact that there are around 1400 provinces on the full map, each with a minimum of 3 holdings at start, each with a minimum of 6 characters in each court. I know - I'm ignoring tribal areas, empty nomadic provinces etc, but I am also ignoring the fully fleshed out courts of 30-40 characters for anything of Duchy sized or higher so a figure of 25-30,000 characters in game seems reasonable.

I am not arguing that any particular area should be Hellenic or Druidic (although in the interests of variety and considering how poorly the records are for the early starts this seems reasonable), all I am saying is that if I want to start in province "X", appoint that random resident Hellenic courtier as your Court Tutor and try for a Hellenic revival then why the hell shouldn't I ? I can accept Hindu gift eunuchs into my court and turn England dharmic, I can take Norse or Cuman women as concubines and turn France Germanic or Byzantium Tengri so why shouldn't I be able to revive a local religion of half baked and half remembered traditions and turn it into a religion that can stand alongside Zikri, Paulicianism or Zoroastrianism ?

Seriously people why do anyone else's enjoyment and goals have to make any difference to yours whatsoever ?

 

[Sanny]

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

CK2 is a game that is all about "flavour" with a very strong emphasis on role playing. It is a game that pays careful attention to historical accuracy while also allowing for some extremely ahistorical results (eg Norse Caliphates, nomads conquering all of Europe) while also including some downright silly or fantasy elements (Immortality, satanic powers, handguns in the 8th century, AZTECS ffs !). Allowing a player the ability to turn a blue-label base level vanilla placeholder religion like Hellenic or generic Pagan into a fully fleshed out reformed religion does not to me seem like a big ask or even out of the ordinary in any way.

To the argument that there weren't enough adherents in one particular area misses the point entirely - we don't need to know exactly how many people in location "X" were of a certain religion at any given time, just what proportion of the total population was of that religion. Even if just 0.01% of the map's population was Hellenic this would entail that around 2-3 characters in the game should start as that religion, based on the fact that there are around 1400 provinces on the full map, each with a minimum of 3 holdings at start, each with a minimum of 6 characters in each court. I know - I'm ignoring tribal areas, empty nomadic provinces etc, but I am also ignoring the fully fleshed out courts of 30-40 characters for anything of Duchy sized or higher so a figure of 25-30,000 characters in game seems reasonable.

Let's stop there.
You don't base it on the population of the whole map.
You base it on the population in a particular area.
You need to be able to show a community that is significant in a particular area to be able to place that community on the map.
If you can't, then you can't place them even remotely accurately.
Making the province the Maniots are in Hellenic would be to ignore the fact the rest of the area was dominantly Christian.

I'm doubtful that even 0.01% of the map population was Hellenic. The remnant, such as it was, was essentially isolated subsistence farmers in a difficult to access area... and there are signs that the area was partially christianised. The local nobles were Christian, and in a different part of the province, thus having little to no contact with the Hellenics.
Even taking 0.01% as accurate, you'd require that to be 0.01% *of the nobles*, or at best the court.
Can you find even one sourced Hellenic noble in the period? Or even a "lowborn" courtier at any of the courts?

I am not arguing that any particular area should be Hellenic or Druidic (although in the interests of variety and considering how poorly the records are for the early starts this seems reasonable), all I am saying is that if I want to start in province "X", appoint that random resident Hellenic courtier as your Court Tutor and try for a Hellenic revival then why the hell shouldn't I ? I can accept Hindu gift eunuchs into my court and turn England dharmic, I can take Norse or Cuman women as concubines and turn France Germanic or Byzantium Tengri so why shouldn't I be able to revive a local religion of half baked and half remembered traditions and turn it into a religion that can stand alongside Zikri, Paulicianism or Zoroastrianism ?

Seriously people why do anyone else's enjoyment and goals have to make any difference to yours whatsoever ?

So... My enjoyment of the game, and not randomly having Hellenism resurrect itself out of nowhere due to the AI shitting itself has to take a back seat to people dragging a broken, dead, corrupted, half functional religion out of its grave, resurrecting it from a number of adherents that is a statistical anomaly at best?

And remember (again) province religion is the dominant one for the area, so if you make an area Hellenic instead of (historical) Christian you're vastly misrepresenting the area.
For that matter, them being referred to as Hellene actually just means they were non-Christian (and presumably non-islamic, since that would have been recognisable). They could have been any sort of pagan, and the histories and terms of the time would term them Hellene, because that's what Greek used for all pagans at the time. The odds are it would have been *some* relation to Greek paganism, but there's no guarantee of what sort - whether it resembled "Roman" Hellenism, or one of the "mainstream" Greek variants isn't obvious. With the area the Maniots were in, and the general attitude of pre-christian religions in the area, it might not have been important enough to bring any of the mainstream versions to them.

 

[Rags17]

Let's stop there.
You don't base it on the population of the whole map.
You base it on the population in a particular area.
You need to be able to show a community that is significant in a particular area to be able to place that community on the map.
If you can't, then you can't place them even remotely accurately.
Making the province the Maniots are in Hellenic would be to ignore the fact the rest of the area was dominantly Christian.

I'm doubtful that even 0.01% of the map population was Hellenic. The remnant, such as it was, was essentially isolated subsistence farmers in a difficult to access area... and there are signs that the area was partially christianised. The local nobles were Christian, and in a different part of the province, thus having little to no contact with the Hellenics.
Even taking 0.01% as accurate, you'd require that to be 0.01% *of the nobles*, or at best the court.
Can you find even one sourced Hellenic noble in the period? Or even a "lowborn" courtier at any of the courts?
:

First off, I think that you are seriously overestimating what it means to be "Christian". I think that the versions of syncretic Christianity practice in some parts of Nigeria or Papua New Guinea today would make the Pope blush, and that is after over 500 years of Papal injunctions, preaching and missionary work, at least in the case of Nigeria. CK2 even makes a nod to this by allowing Tribal Christians the ability to take concubines, something that is a definite no-no in the classical Catholic formulation of marriage.

It is not really up to me to prove a claim that say Monemvasia had a predominance of Catholic practitioners, more appropriate would be for you to have to prove that the version of Christianity practiced in the hills of rural Greece complied 100% with the laws and teachings of the Catholic church. Hell, that's what made up about 90% of all of the heresies and apostasies of the Middle Ages - local variation from the Catholic defined "true" practice.

A side not here, but if you ever get the chance pick up a copy of an old card game called Credo. Each player plays as a faction with a random selection of Doctrines that make up their faith. There are around 12 in total IIRC, each of which gets voted on at the various Councils during the game. Every time your particular Article passes you get more flock, every time one loses you lose flock. Eventually the entire creed is finalized, the last step in the game is for all players to recite the "new" Catholic Creed.

The reason that I bring this up is that for me it showed how all of those "heresies" that we read about were actually just local practices writ large - most people did not care two bits about whether or not priests should be celibate or not (this wasn't determined for the Catholics until the later Middle Ages) but they all sure as hell REALLY cared with whether or not Jesus was the same substance, different substance or some other variation of substance with God.

The bottom line here is that I would lay dollars to donuts that if you could magically transport yourself to 8th century Greece or Spain or Tunisia or Ireland you would see such a massive discrepancy in local practices that you might not even recognize them as being the same "Catholic" religion as defined and practiced in Rome.

My second point her is much smaller, and that is that an overview analysis is the first step for working out where to place those provinces or courtiers. If we were to determine that say one province and four courtiers was justified based purely on numerical analysis then my argument is that in the absence of any other information to the contrary why not put them in southern Greece, if only because they we have information that there was SOME sort of community in that area. Even if we do not know how big it was or how far that local practice varied from the centrally defined version of the faith, this is still more info than we have about what passed for Christian practice in say western Anatolia or the northern Levant.

:
So... My enjoyment of the game, and not randomly having Hellenism resurrect itself out of nowhere due to the AI shitting itself has to take a back seat to people dragging a broken, dead, corrupted, half functional religion out of its grave, resurrecting it from a number of adherents that is a statistical anomaly at best?

And remember (again) province religion is the dominant one for the area, so if you make an area Hellenic instead of (historical) Christian you're vastly misrepresenting the area.
For that matter, them being referred to as Hellene actually just means they were non-Christian (and presumably non-islamic, since that would have been recognisable). They could have been any sort of pagan, and the histories and terms of the time would term them Hellene, because that's what Greek used for all pagans at the time. The odds are it would have been *some* relation to Greek paganism, but there's no guarantee of what sort - whether it resembled "Roman" Hellenism, or one of the "mainstream" Greek variants isn't obvious. With the area the Maniots were in, and the general attitude of pre-christian religions in the area, it might not have been important enough to bring any of the mainstream versions to them.

I don't know you but I am guessing that if you see, say, France going Jewish because the King's heir was converted by his Jewish tutor then you would have no big issue with that, even if IRL not one single independent realm on the map converted to Judaism in this way over the entire period of the game. You'd be okay with Germanic or Romuva or Slavic or whatever reforming itself even though none of them ever did or even got anywhere near close to doing so. You're okay with Druze and Zikri and Hurufism being in the game even though they are all formed outside the CK2 time period. Or Lollardy springing up in Spain in the 800s even though the intellectual underpinnings of this heresy arose only in England and only in the 1300's in reaction to Papal teachings of the 13th century. Or Bon coreligionists taking over Tibet even though it was already virtually gone as a distinct religionby the start of the CK2 period. Or a million other factual and contextual inaccuracies that exist in this game.

Again - the cost to implement this is near zero. In 99% of all cases any stray Hellenic courtiers and provinces will all die out within 20 yearsno matter what. By making them available though, players would have the option to take up the challenge of restoring the faith, just as player can now take a Germanic character in the 12th century or a Catholic Berber in the 8th century and try and restore them to their rightful place.

All I am saying is that the new mechanics of HF are ideally designed to allow players to reform ANY religion that they want, even ones with nil or close to nil existing unique mechanics, and turn them into interesting and unique religions in their own right. That to me seems to be what the whole idea of the DLC is all about, so why not allow this with existing religions that have no flavour, but could be made interesting using the mechanics of the new DLC ?

 

[Silversweeeper]

Again - the cost to implement this is near zero

Adding a couple of courtiers or flipping the religion of a province is of course trivial.

However, if you add a fairly straightforward way (and you'd get access to conversion through spouses or education with courtiers and converting to the local religion with counties (or triggering a revolt and then going down the courtier-based conversion route of your choice), which qualify as straighforward) to go Hellenic outside of horse-based exploits (that were unsupported even before we got a Hellenic horse), console usage (which never has been supported), mods (ditto), or save game editing (ditto), then you'd also have to ensure that they're bug-free with their current features (to say nothing of any new features you feel like adding), and requests for that were what made the devs remove the Hellenic faith (and the Roman culture and the generic Pagan faith) from the Ruler Designer since they weren't willing to spend time bugfixing the Hellenics.

You might want to argue that the bugfixing isn't necessary and that it is fair that you're on your own if you use any hypothetical non-Horse courtiers to go Hellenic, but there is a precedent for patching out non-Horse characters with unsupported religions (the Demon Spawn's witches used to be generic Pagan, in case you didn't know) because people used the existence of those characters as an argument for supporting an unsupported religion and the devs closed that particular loophole to (attempt to; given that we're having the Hellenic discussion again it obviously failed) put an end to such requests, so I rather doubt that they'd be willing to open up a similar loophole for Hellenics unless they suddenly decide to reverse their positions on supporting the Hellenics (which they haven't said anything about at this point).