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Dev Diary #20 - Religion and Faith

Come one, come all! Zealots and cynics, fundamentalists and heretics! It is time for us to finally talk about religion in Crusader Kings III, and all that it entails.

While parts of the religion system in CK3 may seem familiar to fans of the previous games, the system itself has been completely rebuilt from the ground up. As a result, there is little point in talking about changes from CK2; instead, I will start diving into how religion works in CK3 and what that means to you as a player.

The Religious Hierarchy
The most logical place to start talking about religion in CK3 is with… Religions! As a game concept, a Religion is defined by four main things:
  • What Traits are considered Sins and Virtues (3 each by default)
  • What Religion Family it belongs to (Abrahamic, Oriental, or Pagan)
  • What the standard religious Doctrines are for its Faiths
  • What Tenets are available to its Faiths
Individual characters and counties will never believe in a whole Religion — they believe in a Faith instead, with each Religion having several Faiths under it. For example, Catholicism and Orthodoxy are Faiths under Christianity, while Theravada and Mahayana are Faiths under Buddhism.

DD_WM_ChristianFaiths.png

[Screenshot showing a selection of either Christian Faiths, including distinct Coptic and Apostolic Faiths]

Similar to the way that Faiths belong to a Religion, Religions belong to a Religion Family. Religion Families are little more than groups of Religions, but this does serve an important purpose, as it plays a significant part in how Faith Hostility is calculated (more on that in a later Dev Diary).

Anatomy of a Faith
So if a character believes in a Faith, what does that mean for them? Well, each Faith is based on its parent Religion and inherits those attributes, but will be differentiated from other Faiths by its Tenets, Doctrines, and Holy Sites.

Tenets
Tenets are mechanical representations of the most important rites, rituals, and traditions of a Faith. Every Faith has exactly 3, picked from a total of around 50 different Tenets in the whole game. Tenets are the things which make a Faith special and unique, the things that set it apart from the other Faiths even within the same Religion (and especially outside of it).

DD_WM_Catholicism.png

[Screenshot of the Catholic Faith’s 3 Tenets - Armed Pilgrimages, Communion, and Monasticism]

Taking Catholicism as an example, we see one of their Tenets is that of Communion. This Tenet is what allows the Catholic Pope to excommunicate rulers, as well as allowing rulers to buy Indulgences from the Pope.

DD_WM_CommunionTenet.png

[Screenshot of the Communion Tenet, promoting values of honesty and community among adherents]

You may notice here that Communion also modifies what traits are considered Sins and Virtues by the Faith. While every Faith inherits 3 Sins and Virtues from its parent Religion, Tenets can add, modify, or remove these.

While some Tenets are unique to a single Faith, others are shared among multiple Faiths. For example, both Catholicism and Orthodoxy have the Communion Tenet. However, it is important to note that no two Faiths have the exact same combination of Tenets — as a result, every Faith will play at least a little differently, and some drastically so!

DD_WM_SacredLies.png

[Screenshot of the Sacred Lies Tenet, promoting scheming and treachery among adherents]

Doctrines
While less impactful than Tenets, Doctrines are still a crucial part of each Faith. A Faith’s Doctrines determine both its clerical structure as well as what its adherents can and cannot legally do.

DD_WM_Doctrines.png

[Screenshot of the Catholic Doctrines]

Every Faith has at least 18 Doctrines, with a few extras depending on the circumstances. While every Religion has a default stance for each Doctrine, these should be considered guidelines more than actual rules; individual Faiths can and do break away from standard dogma when appropriate. The different Doctrines are broken up into 4 categories:

  • Main Doctrines
  • Marriage Doctrines
  • Crime Doctrines
  • Clergy Doctrines

Main Doctrines cover how a Faith is organized on a fundamental level. These include things such as the traditional gender roles of a Faith, if the Faith has a Religious Head or not, how accepting (or unaccepting!) the Faith is of other Faiths and Religions, and if its priests must be part of a dedicated theocracy or if lay clergy are permitted.

Marriage Doctrines cover who is allowed to get married and how: if rulers can have multiple spouses, if concubines are permitted, if and when divorce is permitted, if extramarital relations can result in legitimate heirs, and who can even get married in the first place.

The Crime Doctrines cover what acts, if any, are considered immoral or even outright criminal. Characters who are publicly known to have violated these principles are Shunned, suffering an opinion penalty with all characters of that Faith, and may even be considered an outright Criminal who can be lawfully imprisoned and punished for their violations against divine law.

Finally the Clergy Doctrines determine how priests must behave and what their primary role in society is. The Clergy Doctrines also determine what power, if any, secular rulers have over the clergy within their realm.

Holy Sites
Finally, every Faith has some number of Holy Sites that this Faith considers to be more sacred than the rest. Controlling these Holy Sites will give a bonus to all characters of that Faith; this can create a significant source of conflict in the game, as many different Faiths can share specific Holy Sites, and every one of them wants to be the one in control!

DD_WM_HolySites.png

[Screenshot showing the five Orthodox Holy Sites and their corresponding bonuses]

Moddability
I’m going to go on a quick tangent here and talk about modding Faiths and Religions in Crusader Kings III. Primarily, I want to mention that everything I have talked about so far is completely modular! This means Religion Groups, Religions, Faiths, Doctrines, Tenets, and Holy Sites can all be swapped in and out, modified, changed, or new ones added with even just a basic knowledge of scripting.

DD_WM_Script.png

[Screenshot of a script snippet showcasing the Coptic Faith’s parameters]

This is one of the primary reasons we settled on the Faith, Tenet, and Doctrine system for CK3. Even though religion has a massive impact and touches dozens of game systems, it is easy for even new modders to dip their toes into the pool and start adding or changing things as they see fit. For experienced modders, this setup improves productivity and reduces the risk of introducing bugs. This has also had the side-effect of improving our productivity here at the office, which brings me to...

This is my Faith. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
At current count, we have 99 different Faiths in Crusader Kings III, all of which are fully playable. That more than doubles the number of playable religions we had in CK2 after Jade Dragon released.

DD_WM_EgyptNubia.png

[Screenshot of Egypt and Nubia, showing the diverse number of Faiths in the region]

Remember what I said earlier about how no two Faiths have the same combination of Tenets, and how every Faith would play at least slightly differently?

Yeah.

Your options are quite extensive:
  • You can play as the good ol’ Catholics, or one of their heresies like the Cathars.
  • You can play a different branch of Christianity, such as the Coptic Church or the Armenian Apostolic Church.
  • You can play as a more unusual branch of Christianity like the Adamites.
  • You can play not just as Sunni or Shia, but as individual religious movements or schools within them such as the Ash’ari or Maturidi, and the Isma’ili or Qarmatian.
  • You can play as various Jewish movements, such as the Karaites or Rabbanists.
  • You can play as a Dualist sect, such as Sabianism or Manicheanism.
  • You can play as individual branches of Hinduism, such as Vaishnavism and Shaktism, or make the choice between Therevada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana Buddhism.
  • You can play as one of three different schools of Confucianism, shaped by differing philosophies and focuses.
  • You can play as a distinct African pagan Faith such as Bori Animism or the Senegambian Roog Sene.
  • You can play as either Tengri or Magyar steppe pagans each with their own special traditions.
  • You can play as one of the Indian or Tibetan pagans as well, extending beyond Bon and into other regional and cultural Faiths.
  • Finally, don't forget the old favorite pagan Faiths like Norse (now called Asatru)!
While many of these faiths will have some similarities and common elements (especially within the same Religion), none of them are identical to each other. They all differentiate themselves mechanically in at least one way, and often in many ways. But… let’s say you’ve looked at every single one of these Faiths, and none of them are quite right. What, then, is a soul-searching medieval ruler to do?

Well, join us next week for the Dev Diary on Custom Faith Creation and Pagan Reformation!
 
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What Religion Family it belongs to (Abrahamic, Oriental, or Pagan)
Individual characters and counties will never believe in a whole Religion — they believe in a Faith instead, with each Religion having several Faiths under it.
At current count, we have 99 different Faiths in Crusader Kings III, all of which are fully playable.
So basically, you've said that there are 3 religion families, with ??? religions, consisting of 99 Faiths in total.
How many religions are there? How many of those Religions have only one Faith?
 
This looks astounding and excellent! Only one small question: is it too late to rename "Oriental" to "Eastern"? It means exactly the same, bu the former term has some unfortunate historical baggage which could detract from the wonderful job you're doing trying to represent faiths past the Indus. And I say this as an (almost) alumnus of an Oriental Studies Faculty ;)

Rolling my eyes so hard right now.
 
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Sounds fun. It would be nice to get a list of all 99 religions and their tennents.
So question. If I somehow become religious head, could I change the Doctrines to how I want? For example, wanting to turn witchcraft into a totally legal thing, or encourage same sex relationships instead of shun them?
 
Counties? Why? Shouldn't that be Baronies? Can this be modded to make faiths barony-based?
Catholicism should have 7 virtues and 7 sins (the ones in CK2). I counted 5 each, unless there were more scrolling down the screen and were trimmed from the picture.
"Avunculate Marriage" Does it mean that uncle-niece marriages are allowed?
 
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Counties? Why? Shouldn't that be Baronies? Can this be modded to make faiths barony-based?
Catholicism should have 7 virtues and 7 sins (the ones in CK2). I counted 5 each, unless there were more scrolling down the screen and were trimmed from the picture.
"Avunculate Marriage" Does it mean that uncle-niece marriages are allowed?
Imagining having to convert every single barony, one at a time, makes me absolutely nauseous.
 
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Also, sounds like the next DD will be more about the pagans, but can we get a confirm/deny on the two major ARR pagan religions, celtic and egyptian? If you've got 99, surely there's been space for the pre-abrahamic religions of the entire map to be represented, even if christianization has all but completely displaced them by gametime.

Couple other ideas related to this NOT from ARR:
- Pre-abrahamic semitic/arabic/middle eastern paganism, which is known to have been fairly widespread at least until the rashidun caliphate
- gnostic christianity (maybe with a special relationship with the eastern gnostic religions like manicheanism?)
- In polytheistic religions, a representation of how different areas could have different patron gods or even completely different minor pantheons; this could be simplified with multiple faiths (and arguably would also have some utility in christianity for things like marianism).

Celtic paganism is not in. Egyptian paganism is... kind of in? Kushitism (shown in the DD's screenshot) draws many elements and influences from it, including the inclusion of various Egyptian gods as part of its pantheon. However, it is not immediately recognizable as the Egyptian paganism that was popularized after Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, since it focuses more on Upper Egypt/Nubia than Lower Egypt.

Gnostic Christianity is in. Several varieties, in fact. They all have special relationships with each other (and manicheanism).

Pantheons are also represented for all polytheistic Faiths, as well. Not all of them have the 'pick a god' mechanics that existed in CK2, but when a character goes to war they'll pray to their Faith's war deity, when they pray for a bountiful harvest they'll pray to their harvest/wealth deity, when lamenting a misfortune your character might curse their Faith's fate deity, etc.
 
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@Baron von Shoes A question. why doesn't Zorastrianism and the various faiths there have its own family? I don't see it being part of Oriental or Pagan or Abrhameric.
In game terms, Zoroastrianism is part of the Oriental family. It's quite different from the other Oriental religions though, so we gave it some unique mechanics to separate it from them.
 
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What does the Ecumenism tab in that one screenshot refer to? Religions so far has to be my favorite DD however I’m still a bit worried about Coptic and Apostolic Christians. In Ck2 they copy pasted Coptic from Orthodoxy, however this resulted in the Coptic pope gaining authority over Armenia like how the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople gained authority over the rest of the Orthodox world, which is totally wrong since they all Oriental Patriarchs, Coptic, Armenian, Syrian etc all have their own authority.

although that seems to be fixed my new worry is that now that both are completely separate they can change tenants without the other, or will have opinion bonuses against each other, which is totally wrong. So is their a method for two faiths to share the same tenants and not have any negative opinion bonuses with each other like the actual Coptic and Apostolic churches since they’re the same religion at the end of the day?

Edit: I see a doctrine called ‘ecumenical patriarchs’ under the church, but I don’t think that will work for the churches, you’ve already split the two main Patriarchates of Oriental Orthodoxy Coptic and Armenian, Coptic Pope gets a claim on all Africa and the Syrian basically the Entire Middle East, and Armenian the general area of the Caucus Mountains and Asia Minor. Up until a few centuries or two ago those and Syrian Orthodoxy were the only Patriarchates, so I’d think that it doesn’t make very much historical sense to allow the player to make more Patriarchates, plus judging by the way things seem to be heading toward the Patriarchs would be subordinate to each Religous leader of each separate ‘religion’ when in reality they would be equal in authority to both the Armenian and Coptic Patriarchs. So unless there’s a special mechanic that would effectively create a new ‘faith’ for every Patriarchate things wouldn’t make very much sense with a Patriarch based setup for the faith.
 
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I have a few questions:
1. Is it possible for non-Catholic Christians to participate in crusades? Historically many Orthodox and Armenian Apostalic Christians fought alongside the Catholic Crusaders so it would be cool if even if you weren't obligated to like the Catholics you could optionally join in to help them.

2. Is the Crusade system from Holy Fury returning in CK3? What I mean is the whole system of choosing a beneficiary, your beneficiary gets a piece of the land based on participation, you get a certain amount of gold, etc and if the Crusade equivalents for other faiths/religions have that or a similar system now instead of just the guy who participates the most getting everything directly. It always annoyed me that you couldn't have the beneficiary system for Great Holy Wars as a pagan reform option.

3. Do custom faiths have to be within a specific religion or can we make separate religions entirely?And even further, can we make a new family. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say being able to do that is a stretch but I can dream!
 
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@Baron von Shoes A question. why doesn't Zorastrianism and the various faiths there have its own family? I don't see it being part of Oriental or Pagan or Abrhameric.

Will be probably be in the pagan group. Remember that Zoroastrian faith appeared in CK2 with the Old Gods for example.
It will probably look like this :
Pagan > Mazdean > Zoroastrian and other mazdean faiths

Speaking of pagans I hope that each unreformed pagan religions will not fall in the same religion. Meaning for example that several Tengri faiths could appear once it is reformed, while these are not so related to slavic paganism for instance (Pagan > Tengri > Tengri Faiths and not Pagan > Polytheist > Tengri/Slavic). Or maybe magyar and tengri paganism will be faiths of the same pagan religion (Pagan > Steppe paganism > Tengri/magyar faiths) ? I don't know, maybe these questions will be answered next week.
 
it would be really, really good if religions could change over time as they did historically. so if the mechanics allowed Catholic priests to marry and then have it taken away from them; or if the Great Schism was addressed.

still, good work!
 
Will be probably be in the pagan group. Remember that Zoroastrian faith appeared in CK2 with the Old Gods for example.
It will probably look like this :
Pagan > Mazdean > Zoroastrian and other mazdean faiths
You probably skipped this while writing your post:
In game terms, Zoroastrianism is part of the Oriental family. It's quite different from the other Oriental religions though, so we gave it some unique mechanics to separate it from them.
 
Good to see Gnostics and Waaq represented in game. (y)
;):)
As for Zoroastrianism, I ve read somewhere that there was tension between Zurvanism which taught about predestination and was fatalistic in comparison to Mazdayasna or original Zoro.

As for Yazidis, are they a religion in Abrahamic or a faith in Islam?

Also, I saw Ecumenical being one of the doctrines ...are the other ones Gnostic, and Ancestral?
 
Celtic paganism is not in. Egyptian paganism is... kind of in?
I'd really like to see at least a token celtic pagan religion; surely it'd be useful for dead british characters? It doesn't have to be fleshed out, much like hellenism isn't, modders can do that, but it would be so so nice to just have it baked in officially rather than having to be added. Awesome to see all the rest of this, though, I'm really happy that the main change to religion from CK2 is "let's have more of them".
 
The splitting up of many of the CK2 religions worries me tbh. Having a huge Catholic blob and the rest of the world super fragmented religion-wise doesn't sound super balanced. It's difficult enough to repel crusades and holy wars in CK2 even as Sunni, the second-largest religion. If it gets divided into its varies schools and sub denominations I feel like the issue of a Catholic north Africa 100 years into every game will only be exacerbated.

Well, Catholicism is by its nature very centralized and homogenic. It was historically both its strong and weak point.
Realistically, this shouldn't be solved by blob removal/creation but by simulating the very reasons why Catholicism didn't paint the Muslim world in its colors.
 
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I'd really like to see at least a token celtic pagan religion; surely it'd be useful for dead british characters? It doesn't have to be fleshed out, much like hellenism isn't, modders can do that, but it would be so so nice to just have it baked in officially rather than having to be added. Awesome to see all the rest of this, though, I'm really happy that the main change to religion from CK2 is "let's have more of them".
I'd rather see Insular Christianity
 
Please, for the love of the gods, do NOT call Norse "Asatru". That term completely ignores the Vanir and is not really representative of what the people of the time believed (among a few other issues including the literal translation of the term). Might I suggest "Forn Siðr" (Forn Sidr or Forn Sithr if you must anglicize it) or The Troth if you want to call it something other than Nordic or Germanic Paganism? Those two terms are far more universal.
I agree, but I believe "Asatru" has become the common denomination for many people, so it may be more recognizable. I'm not saying that it's a better choice, but it's probably the reason behind it. It's also possible that calling this set of beliefs "the old faith" didn't seem very appealing.

I've got 99 religions, but Hellenism ain't one...
... which is a good thing, because it probably means that we're going to have 99 historical religions, and not a mix of historical ones, weird reinterpretations (like yezidi as a heresy of Islam), semi-ahistorical ones (like Zunism) or completely ahistorical ones (like the thing hellenism was - which is by no means what the religion of the Greeks was, but rather the result of mad scholars thinking it would be best to ressurrect some old gods. In many ways CK2's hellenism is more similar to Cthulhu worshipping than actual greco-roman old religions).

I'd much rather have an actual pagan religion that was around at the time like Basque Paganism
I doubt Basque Paganism was still a thing.
First because Basques were already christianized during CK's timeline, and second because the archaeological evidence shows that religion among the Basques didn't follow a different track than religion in the Gauls or Iberia. It became part of the Roman religious structure, then it shifted to christianity as the entire empire converted to it.

There are obviously still traces of older beliefs and traditions in 11th century Basque cultural area, but that's true for literally all parts of the world converted to christianity no matter when, because that's how christianity spreads. It still doesn't mean that Basque paganism was still alive during CK's timeline, and if it was alive in some remote areas, then it was a heavily roman-influenced version of it (maybe keeping old god names, but still following roman structure). Anyway, we aren't treating spring worship or giant burning as separate pagan religions, so there's no reason to give a special treatment to poorly attested Basque pagan remnants...
 
This looks quite good! A great base to build on in the future as well, even if things like Catholic doctrines changing over time and antipapacies are not in the game at launch.