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Dev Diary #24 - Fervor, Religious Hostility, and Doctrine Showcase

Hello everyone, and welcome back to our final Dev Diary on Religion in Crusader Kings 3! Today I will be talking about what the mysterious Fervor is, how that ties into Heresies and Heresy Outbreaks, as well as how Religious Hostility works and some of the ways that Doctrines can impact it. To wrap things up, I will show off some additional never-before seen Tenets and Doctrines!

Fervor
Every Faith has a Fervor score, which is a representation of how strongly adherents of that Faith believe in the righteousness of their religious and secular leaders. While Fervor has a slow ticking increase over time, it is primarily influenced by the virtuousness or sinfulness of that Faith’s leaders. Virtuous priests can inspire a populace and rally the people behind themselves, while sinful ones (especially religious heads) can cause massive scandals that damage the faithful’s trust in their religious institutions.

DD_WM_Scandal.png

[A screenshot of the Pope looking very guilty after being caught in flagrante]

Adherents of a Faith with high Fervor are willing to fight and die for their beliefs. They gain bonus resistance to attempts to convert them to another faith, and both secular and religious leaders can declare Holy Wars to spread their Faith across the world. However, while these Holy Wars are ostensibly waged in the name of the divine, in practice they often tend to be little more than opportunistic land-grabs — as a result, every Holy War declared will slightly damage a Faiths’ Fervor, while losing land to hostile Holy Wars will actually increase your Faith’s Fervor as the embattled faithful dig in and fight for their way of life!

When a Faith’s Fervor drops, adherents of that Faith become vulnerable to conversion. Characters are more willing to accept a Demand Conversion when their Faith’s Fervor is low, and the Court Chaplain’s ‘Convert County’ task gains a scaling bonus against Faiths whose Fervor is lower than their own. In addition, if Fervor drops low enough, a Faith becomes vulnerable to heresy outbreaks!

Heresy Outbreaks
A heresy outbreak is what happens when a ruler becomes disillusioned with their current Faith and is swayed to join a different one. If there is already a heretical Faith present nearby, they will convert to that one automatically. If no suitable heresies are around, they will become a heresiarch and start espousing the doctrines of a brand new Faith, which is typically (but not always), one from their Religion.

A ruler who converts to or founds a new heretical Faith will then attempt to convince nearby rulers of their old Faith to join them, with the success rate of this being dependent on how low their old Faith’s fervor has fallen. This means that while heresy outbreaks can vary wildly in size, converts to the new heresy will tend to remain clustered together in a specific region — this both protects the burgeoning Faith while simultaneously limiting its influence in distant lands.

DD_WM_Heresy.png

[A screenshot showing an outbreak of Lollardy, originating in southern England]

As you can imagine, heresy outbreaks are incredibly divisive events; nobody wants to sit on the fence when your immortal soul is on the line! As a result, after a heresy outbreak occurs both the old Faith and the new heretical Faith will gain a substantial increase to their Fervor score. As this is likely to encourage Holy Wars for both sides, it is not uncommon for a new period of religious violence to follow as the two Faiths fight for supremacy!

Ultimately, the flow from scandal to heresy to zealousness and back will cause Fervor to vary wildly over the course of a game of CK3. Unlike the relatively static Mortal Authority in CK2, this means that even the big dominant religions will have periods of weakness, making them vulnerable to fractures and religious violence.

Religious Hostility
Speaking of religious violence, how does that work? With so many different Faiths and Religions in Crusader Kings III, how do they view each other? What is the difference between how an Orthodox ruler views a Catholic, a Bogomil, and an Ash’ari?

In Crusader Kings III this is all handled by the Religious Hostility system. For characters of a given Faith, every other Faith in the game will receive one of the following rankings:
  1. Righteous
  2. Astray
  3. Hostile
  4. Evil
Righteous is how a Faith views itself and, in a few rare circumstances, other Faiths that have certain things in common with it. Righteous Faiths have no penalties at all with each other.

Astray is how a Faith views other Faiths that have similar goals and ideals but are just a little… wrong. For example, Orthodoxy and Catholicism consider each other to be Astray. Astray Faiths have only a minor opinion penalty with each other.

Hostile is how most Faiths view their heresies and other significantly divergent Faiths. Opinion penalties are more substantial at this level, and rulers gain the ability to declare Holy Wars against rulers of Hostile Faiths. However, intermarriage is still common when it is politically convenient, and alliances can still be forged between rulers of Hostile Faiths.

Evil Faiths are considered to be an anathema, and cannot be tolerated. Evil Faiths suffer the most severe opinion penalty possible, and Holy Wars against each other become commonplace. Rulers will almost never accept marriages with characters of an Evil Faith, making alliances all-but-impossible.

So how is Religious Hostility determined? The primary factor is what Religion Family both Faiths belong to:

DD_Hostility.png

[A screenshot of a spreadsheet showing how base Religious Hostility is calculated, with Abrahamic Faiths being the least tolerant and Eastern Faiths being the most tolerant]

But wait, if Abrahamic Faiths view other Faiths within the same Religion has Hostile, why do Catholicism and Orthodoxy only see each other as Astray? The answer to that, my friend, is Doctrines!

Doctrine & Tenet Showcase
Now we’re going to take some time to reveal a bunch of the various Doctrines and Tenets available for Faiths in Crusader Kings 3. For starters, the Catholic, Orthodox, Apostolic, and Coptic Faiths all have the ‘Ecumenism’ Doctrine, which changes the Hostility of any other Faith with the same Doctrine to just ‘Astray’, thus allowing these Faiths to have cordial relations with each other.

DD_WM_Doctrine_Ecumenism.png

[A screenshot showing the Ecumenism doctrine, which reduces Hostility between certain Christian Faiths]

In a similar vein, the various Muslim Faiths all have a doctrine representing their belief in the true succession for Muhammad. The various Sunni Faiths all see each other as Astray, with the same being true for the collective Shia Faiths and the collective Muhakkima Faiths.

The embattled minority of Gnostic Faiths have an ever stronger version of this; having always struggled to have their beliefs accepted, they see all other Gnostic Faiths as being fully ‘Righteous’. This allows us to have coalitions of Faiths within or even outside of a Religion that see some Faiths as allies and others as enemies, completely changing the dynamic of how religious relations play out in Crusader Kings III.

DD_WM_Doctrine_Gnositism.png

[A screenshot showing the Gnosticism Tenet, which among other things eliminates Religious Hostility between Gnostic Faiths]

Finally there are other Tenets which can modify how your Faith sees, and is seen by, Faiths in other Religions.

DD_WM_Doctrine_Syncretism.png

[A screenshot showing various Syncretism Tenets, which reduce Religious Hostility across entire Religions]

Diplomacy not your thing? Try some warfare!

DD_WM_Tenets_Warfare.png

[A screenshot showing various warfare-focuses Doctrines and Tenets, including Armed Pilgrimages which enables Crusades]

Or is all of this just too secular for you? After all, isn’t religion supposed to be about spiritualism, a belief in otherworldly entities beyond our understanding? Well then maybe one of these tenets would suit you...

DD_WM_Tenets_Mysticism.png

[A screenshot showing various Tenets of a more spiritual nature: Astrology, Auspicious Birthright, Reincarnation, Sun Worship, Sky Burials, and Esotericism]

Of course, this is just a sample of the Tenets and Doctrines that we have in Crusader Kings 3. It would take too long to go into this level of detail for all of them, but here is a teaser of some available Tenets on the Faith Creation screen, showing both some previously revealed and unrevealed Tenets.

DD_WM_Tenets_List.png

[A snippet of a handful of available Tenets from the Faith Creation screen]

That’s all for now — hopefully this post has given you something to think about as you plan your first campaign of Crusader Kings III, and every one after that!
 
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Just two things. 1 you should gain ferver for being attacked, not losing. assuming it is meant to represent actual ferver and zeal more so than religious unity, which are related but different. and 2. will there be a skepticism doctrine? id quite like to remake a certain obscure Hindu offshoot.
 
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The religious hostility system could be improved too honestly.
The way it was worded in previous dev diaries made me think that it could have been able to represent stuff like occasional intermarrying between Christians and Muslims, or how Muslims themselves tended to be more tolerant toward Christians and Jews compared to pagans (you'd think that Christians and Muslims would view each others as "Hostile" instead of full on "Evil", especially when it comes to the Muslim view on Christianity. They'd still holy war each others to death, but the shared Abrahamic roots should matter somewhat like they mattered in real life).

It's especially odd seeing as the interfaith hostility rules get overridden so often. Muslims ignore the default altogether and use caliphal succession doctrines as their guide instead. Most major Christian denominations consider each other Astray, instead of Hostile. It seems like that rule really only means that Christians and Jews both hate heretics (which, fair enough for the Christians, but was there really that much internecine Jewish violence in the Middle Ages?).
 
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It's especially odd seeing as the interfaith hostility rules get overridden so often. Muslims ignore the default altogether and use caliphal succession doctrines as their guide instead. Most major Christian denominations consider each other Astray, instead of Hostile. It seems like that rule really only means that Christians and Jews both hate heretics (which, fair enough for the Christians, but was there really that much internecine Jewish violence in the Middle Ages?).

There problem is that there weren't (m)any Jewish rulers at the time. However, it is true that by the era of the game, the Jewish - Samaritan divide had been officially quieted down with the simple idea of "treat them like Jews insofar as they are like Jews".
 
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This is the Dev Diary I have been waiting for and it did not disappoint!

While Fervor has a slow ticking increase over time, it is primarily influenced by the virtuousness or sinfulness of that Faith’s leaders.

Right off the bat, 100% better than Moral Authority. Leaning into the roleplay, and opening up opportunities like sending your spymaster to look for dirt on the Pope in order to lower Fervor right before initiating a schism. Or maybe the opportunity will just fall into your lap.

They gain bonus resistance to attempts to convert them to another faith, and both secular and religious leaders can declare Holy Wars to spread their Faith across the world.

Does this mean that Holy Wars can't be declared with low Fervor? Or is it just that the AI will usually choose not to in order to avoid decreasing it further?

every Holy War declared will slightly damage a Faiths’ Fervor, while losing land to hostile Holy Wars will actually increase your Faith’s Fervor

This seems like it's fairly controversial on here, but I think it's both historically accurate and good for gameplay. Think about it: when a Holy War/Crusade is declared, the people who are signing up are the most fervent ones. Once they're gone, those left are less fervent overall. Those who leave will either die or mostly feel like they have put in their time and are too old/injured/busy to go to war again. Fervor ticks up constantly, so the next generation will be back to fully ready to wage war, likely primed by their parent's stories. And while it is true that it's a little unrealistic that a Holy War in Africa hurts Fervor in Ireland, for pretty much every Faith other than Catholic it makes complete sense to have one unified score, so I get it. Also, I imagine if you win a Crusade you still gain a ton of piety, prestige, and gold in addition to more land, so it's not like it's not worth it. You just can't spam them because you'll be literally depleting your populace's percentage of people willing to go to war for your Faith.

This means that while heresy outbreaks can vary wildly in size, converts to the new heresy will tend to remain clustered together in a specific region — this both protects the burgeoning Faith while simultaneously limiting its influence in distant lands.

Very nice, much better than random sprouting of heresies all over.

after a heresy outbreak occurs both the old Faith and the new heretical Faith will gain a substantial increase to their Fervor score.

This is a great mechanic. I would imagine an area with two Faiths at high fervor is basically polarized, either you're one thing or you're the other, and everyone's willing to kill to decide who comes out on top for control of the region.

Now we’re going to take some time to reveal a bunch of the various Doctrines and Tenets available for Faiths in Crusader Kings 3. For starters, the Catholic, Orthodox, Apostolic, and Coptic Faiths all have the ‘Ecumenism’ Doctrine, which changes the Hostility of any other Faith with the same Doctrine to just ‘Astray’, thus allowing these Faiths to have cordial relations with each other.

Now this is fascinating. The fact that ecumenism is a main doctrine implies that any Christian Faith can take it without sacrificing a Tenet slot, although I imagine if you want both that and a gay witch sex cult Faith it is going to cost an absolute metric ton of Piety, with I think is a good mechanical way to prevent such things from being relatively trivial to accomplish. That would probably be something to dedicate a run to, rather than a fun side project. It would feel very unrealistic to be able to implement a super out-there Faith while remaining ecumenical unless everyone in Europe pretty much agreed you were the most pious person since Saul.

The various Sunni Faiths all see each other as Astray, with the same being true for the collective Shia Faiths and the collective Muhakkima Faiths.

Ok, I will take this, although I still think various Sunni/Shia faiths should share Holy Site bonuses.

The embattled minority of Gnostic Faiths have an ever stronger version of this; having always struggled to have their beliefs accepted, they see all other Gnostic Faiths as being fully ‘Righteous’. This allows us to have coalitions of Faiths within or even outside of a Religion that see some Faiths as allies and others as enemies, completely changing the dynamic of how religious relations play out in Crusader Kings III.

This is super cool. I'm imagining a multiplayer mod where each player starts with a Faith that has a modified Tenet that makes them consider all the other player Faiths Righteous. Then everyone takes over the world, leading to religious harmony.

Some of these seem super cool, and some seem nearly useless. Unless Divining the Stars and the benefits of a Sky Burial are super powerful, that is.
 
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what I will still say is the implementation if "Insular Christianity" is a mess - they were loyal to the Pope in Rome, yet you've implemented them to be like a third branch of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, where they will have the same attitude that they have to each other, as well as being wholly independent. This is going to make the Isles a mess religiously and politically and will make any sort of situation where the Irish fall back under Catholicism peacefully basically impossible. The best implementation would've been to at least make them a heresy of Catholicism but have some mechanic where they aren't being holy warred constantly, since apparently it's impossible to make them have the Pope as an authority while being "different". You should have just not put them in the game until a later patch/DLC allows for shared religious heads, to be honest.
 
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A triumphant faith losing fervor makes no sense in an era where success in war showed God’s favor and loss showed the opposite. This is a change that I really don’t like
So I see both your point and the devs' about this. I'd like to suggest a way that's both balanced and realistic: declaring a holy war, and losing a holy war (on offense or defense), both reduce fervor; having a holy war declared on you, and winning a holy war (ditto), both increase fervor by the same (or a similar) amount. This squares realistically with how people thought about each scenario AND is balanced, in that winning an offensive holy war, and losing a defensive one, would give little or no net Fervor change. Losing an offensive one would result in a big hit that could set back a religion that's blobbing, for realistic reasons, and winning a defensive one would strengthen a small faith.
 
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With Zoroastrianism it's tough, and doesn't track through their whole history. On the surface, Iranian and Indian religions consider each other to be, basically, demon worshippers, with Ahura / Asura and Daeva / Deva basically flipping side from one religious group to the other in terms of good and bad. Proto-Mazdan tribes were likely engaged in horrible religious warfare that drove Deva worshipers to India and the near east. Mazdans had prayers like the Frawardin Yasht section twelve, which talks about killing deva-worshippers by the hundreds of thousands of hundreds of thousands (AKA ten billion). But practically, they had much more antagonistic opportunities against non-deva worshippers, especially Christians and Muslims (just before the time of the game) and made only relatively minor, non-genocidal incursions into India.

Then they lost all their lands, were welcomed into Gujarat, and have been fine neighbors to their Deva-worshipping co-nationalists with occasional intermarriage (far beyond the game scope, but Indira Ghandi's husband was a Parsi).

I suspect that this can all be modeled by tenets and doctrines that modify hostility and intermarriage, but it's also another example of why dynamic hostility would be great. If they stay a minority, Zoroastrians should grow more and more accepting with time, but in an Alt-History where they restore the persian empire, they should gradually get more hostile.

Also, I really think the Abrahamic settings really only make sense for Christianity. Even a hypothetical restore-the-temple, reinstate animal sacrifice, resume religious execution, "We've got a Kohen Gadol Yo" version of Judaism would, absent unknowable political pressure, see Christians and Muslims as compliant with the seven Noahide laws and thus merely "astray".

I kinda wonder if the best way to view the hostility settings is as a representation of how the faith acts to other faith when it has power. As a faith without the ability to act on its view of other faiths will essentially act more peacefully.

That said I believe the form of Zoroastrianism in Iran (Zurvinite and Mazdan) and the one in India (Parsi) should each be a different faith. This would allow the Parsi to have changes to their tenets and doctrines to show the integration with the local Indian culture.


I wonder if a system that allows religions to go up or down one step in hostility would both preserve the feeling of different religions being more or less accepting of different faiths bu also allow for some dynamic change over time.
 
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It seems a really off to have astrology give naval speed implying a link to celestial navigation. Astronomy is a science and completely distinct from astrology. Sure many astronomers during the time period were also astrologers, but many other medieval astronomers thought such practices were heretical.
I think the point is that if people believe the sky determines your fate, they'll spend more time watching it and learning about what happens in it.
Also, if there's going to be a celestial navigation boost, it should also increase income from trade (maybe represented as more revenue from coastal cities), since your ships are better at reaching their intended destinations.
 
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I like the concept of fervor and I absolutely see the reasoning behind the holy wars change, however, does fervor lost this way have a cap of sorts ?
In case of the absence of one I could imagine a situation where the Catholics reconquering the Mediterranean from the Muslims creates a great turmoil inside the Catholic world, leading people to doubt the church to be right and just, although the Christian God supposedly has just helped them in recovering long lost territories from their arguably biggest rivals. Which frankly doesn't make much sense in my opinion.
Love the Dev Diary though.

EDIT: And the faster the conquests the greater the turmoil which would be a bit counter-intuitive. People getting tired from constant "crusading" makes sense, but not people abandoning their religion for being too succesful.
I think a better way would be to have *declaring* a holy war reduce Fervor, and *winning* the holy war increase it (by the same amount, or slightly more). The reverse would also be true. This is realistic for the reasons you describe, while still balanced.
 
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I think a better way would be to have *declaring* a holy war reduce Fervor, and *winning* the holy war increase it (by the same amount, or slightly more). The reverse would also be true. This is realistic for the reasons you describe, while still balanced.
That would just defeat the point of stopping blobbing religions.
Winning religions don't need a mechanic that helps them win harder.
 
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That would just defeat the point of stopping blobbing religions.
Winning religions don't need a mechanic that helps them win harder.
If it's the same on both sides, then there's no net change in fervor, so it doesn't help them win. Maybe have the gain from winning be slightly less, like 75%? That would simulate the effects on popular opinion well, while still preventing religious blobbing and death spirals.
 
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Extremely minor but I'm not a fan of the Proud trait seemingly being renamed Arrogant.

(might have been mentioned but the new forum layout is a pain)
 
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Technically speaking, Zunism isn't simply a localized variant of Hinduism. The worship of Zun has its roots in Hepthalite paganism, but Zunism was heavily influenced by Shaivist and Suryanite Hinduism, and to a lesser extent by other surrounding religions like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and local Indo-Iranian polytheistic traditions.
Technically speaking, we just don't have enough information to back that claim.
Given the archaeological evidence, we can say that it was very close to religious practices found in India, with emphasis on sun worship. The rest is speculation. It could feature the remnant of a Greek Apollo cult influence, it could even predate that, it could be Hephthalite influence (though it seems very unlikely)... we don't know.
This forum is the only place where you'll find people with such confidence about the "zunist" religion. All scholars are aware of the lack of evidence.
 
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Good point, but these sorts of interfaith marriages should still be fairly rare. Maybe add an attribute to certain cultures (Byzantine, Spanish, Crusader, etc.) that makes them more likely to accept interfaith marriage proposals?
I'd suggest making these interfaith marriages acceptable for neighboring realms only. So, as a matter of principle the parties will refuse, but they'll make exceptions for rulers who are right at their borders who they interact with more closely.
 
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I think your understanding of the gameplay is mislead by the fact that the good Baron seems to have misread his own table: it says nothing about the relations between different Faiths of the same Religion. Insular and Catholicism will both be Faiths within the Christian Religion. So they're not in the table: I guess that means the default relationship between them is Astray?

Someone has probably already said this to you, but the table absolutely says something about different faiths of the same religion; For Abrahamic religions, faiths in the same religion (and redundantly the same family) are hostile, with exception to the ecumenism doctrine.
 
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Some of these seem super cool, and some seem nearly useless. Unless Divining the Stars and the benefits of a Sky Burial are super powerful, that is.

I doubt Tenets are supposed to be of equal importance. Faiths will probably have one or two really defining Tenets and one that's less important. Even for Catholicism, Armed Pilgrimages seems to be bit of a showstopper, Communion pretty important, and Monasticism more of a neat thing.
 
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I doubt Tenets are supposed to be of equal importance. Faiths will probably have one or two really defining Tenets and one that's less important. Even for Catholicism, Armed Pilgrimages seems to be bit of a showstopper, Communion pretty important, and Monasticism more of a neat thing.
Also hinted at by their different piety costs.

If you want to found "The Church of Minmax World Domination" it will be more expensive than "Catholicism, but slightly different".

Also, CKII Religions weren't "balanced" so this isn't a change.
 
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