Yesterday should have been a dev diary day, but I forgot that May 1 is actually some sort of Red holiday, and turning up to work gets you lined up against a wall and shot. However, this is not the time to discuss the mysterious idols, totems and faiths of the previous century. Let us instead think back much further, to simpler - if no less bloody - times, before Socialist May Day, before Christian Walpurgis Night, when the bonfires blazed for the Old Gods...

To begin with, religious Moral Authority has been revamped. The base value is now determined by the number of Holy Sites under the control of the religion. On top of this, there are various timed modifiers (think character opinions) for things like winning or losing holy wars, or building temples. This new system applies to all religions, not just the pagans. The pagan religions do tend to start with fewer Holy Sites under their control, but on the other hand there are no pagan heresies to worry about.



Now, as mentioned in previous dev diaries, pagans enjoy a number of advantages, but they also suffer from some frustrating limitations. Foremost, perhaps, is that they are stuck with Gavelkind. Pagan vassals are also a lot more suspicious of new rulers on succession (harsher "short reign" opinions), they cannot demand conversion of vassals, and they are easily impressed by the cunning missionaries of the Abrahamic religions. To avoid these problems, pagans can of course simply give up the old ways and convert, but there is another option; pagan religions can be reformed in imitation of those clever monotheists. With a proper church hierarchy, a holy book, and standardized rituals, the pagan religions can become more competitive.



Reforming the faith is not easy; you need to control three of the holy sites and have a lot of Piety to boot. After reforming, your faith will be given a religious head. In the case of Norse Pagans, the character who conducted the reformation will become the Fylkir, serving as both secular ruler and religious leader in much the same way as an Islamic Caliph. You may now declare holy wars, both great pagan Crusades and regular religious wars against infidels. Other pagan religions get a vassal religious head, like the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.



There are tradeoffs to reforming the faith, however. You will lose the Subjugation casus belli and the defensive home attrition, and the unreformed version of your religion will become a heresy (which can cause problems for you.) As a pagan, you will normally want to grow quickly using your invasion and subjugation CBs, and then try to either reform your religion or convert in order to consolidate and stabilize your realm...

That's all for now. Next week's topic is special pagan events and decisions!

[video=youtube;yoF84KVR9F8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoF84KVR9F8[/video]
[video=youtube_share;vYxB1O-XGk0]http://youtu.be/vYxB1O-XGk0[/video]

Bonus! Crusader Kings II: The Old Gods expansion in-depth Q&A at PC Gamer
Everything you want to know, but haven´t dared to ask?
“It’s less than a month until the longships land to bring us The Old Gods, the pagan-focused expansion for Crusader Kings II. We’ve been keeping close tabs on new details at our Viking Analysis Desk, and today, we’ve got some extra meaty details for you. Below you’ll find our massive Q&A with project lead Henrik Fåhraeus, covering everything from concubines to pagan sacred kings.”
Read the full Q&A here: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/05/01/crusader-kings-2-the-old-gods-in-depth-qa/


Web page: http://www.crusaderkings.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Crusaderkings
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Crusaderkings

 

[The Kingmaker]

Perhaps Persepolis or Pasargadae for Zoroastrian holy places?

I might recommend the Fire Temple Complex atop Mt. Khajeh, though the Muslims may have destroyed it by then. The Zoroastrian renovation of the world is supposed to begin there.

The tombs of the old Achaemenid kings at Naqsh-e Rustam could be another option.

 

[User29]

Will the pagans be able to have agnatic cognatic inheritance?

they will be able to after they reform the religion He says it somewhere in one of the streams

 

[Randarkmaan]

Obvious Zoroastrian holy sites are the three great sacred fires, the Fire of the Stallion in Media (roughly the modern region of Kurdistan and Iranian Azerbaijan IIRC), the Fire of the Farr in Persia (Fars region, "farr" is an important Zoroastrian concept, and can be somehow explained as the divine favor bestowed upon the champion of the Truth, the Great King of Persia, but it's a bit more than that as well) and the Fire of Mihr is Great in Parthia (North-eastern Iran and central asian republics). Though all of these had been destroyed by 867 (the fire of the Stallion by the Romans in the great Roman-Persian war, the rest during the Muslim invasions it seems), putting holy sites in these locations would make great sense for Zorastrians. They should also control very few or none of these holy sites at game start, the collapse of the Sassanid empire pretty much killed Zoroastrianism as an organized hierarchical religion (though a great many people remained Zoroastrians and influences on Iranian culture survived)

 

[S. Bailly Smith]

Of course, now that the game starts in 867... there won't be any Shi'a.

Uh, what? The Sunni/Shia split happened right after the founding of Islam over who would be caliph. Shiites will be in the game.

 

[balmung60]

Could we get the Pagans to take on a different name after reforming (either by default or by modding)?

For example, if I want Norse to become Asatru upon reformation, could I make that happen?

Also, will we be getting more varied symbols for the various Pagans?

 

[Wise Strategist]

So in order to reform a religion you to first control at least three holy sites for your particular, are just three holy sites general. Meaning, If I were to create a Zoroastrian ruler in say the British Isles, and take three of Britannia's holy sites, would I still be able to reform the Zoroastrian religion or would those sites be completely useless to me, because they are specifically Zoroastrian?

 

[TheDarkMaster]

So in order to reform a religion you to first control at least three holy sites for your particular, are just three holy sites general. Meaning, If I were to create a Zoroastrian ruler in say the British Isles, and take three of Britannia's holy sites, would I still be able to reform the Zoroastrian religion or would those sites be completely useless to me, because they are specifically Zoroastrian?

They'd be useless to you. However, I don't know if there'd actually be any holy sites in Britain at all...

 

[Comradebot]

Uh, what? The Sunni/Shia split happened right after the founding of Islam over who would be caliph. Shiites will be in the game.

But there won't be any Shi'a rulers, as none of note existed at the time. They showed in a video that there will be a "Rise of the Shi'a" event that pops a few years in, where a Shi'a Sayyid shows up and invades one of the Sunni states (think they said it's a bit random which gets chosen) to establish the first Shiite sultanate.

Knowing my luck, the first time I decide to play Muslim in 867 it'll be me that gets smacked with the doomstacks.

 

[Comradebot]

They'd be useless to you. However, I don't know if there'd actually be any holy sites in Britain at all...

95% sure you gotta control your holy sites. Looking at the screenshot, all you can see marked are the Norse ones, even though one would assume at least one of the Romuvan (if not all of them) should be somewhere in that shot of the map.

And for the record, they already confirmed there's a Catholic holy site in England, at Canterbury.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

But there won't be any Shi'a rulers, as none of note existed at the time. They showed in a video that there will be a "Rise of the Shi'a" event that pops a few years in, where a Shi'a Sayyid shows up and invades one of the Sunni states (think they said it's a bit random which gets chosen) to establish the first Shiite sultanate.

Knowing my luck, the first time I decide to play Muslim in 867 it'll be me that gets smacked with the doomstacks.

You could probably agree to convert and avoid total annihilation.

 

[Talq]

So in order to reform a religion you to first control at least three holy sites for your particular, are just three holy sites general. Meaning, If I were to create a Zoroastrian ruler in say the British Isles, and take three of Britannia's holy sites, would I still be able to reform the Zoroastrian religion or would those sites be completely useless to me, because they are specifically Zoroastrian?

They would be useless (except for decreasing other religion's moral authority). Look at the last screenshot, which shows the holy sites for the Norse religion.

Besides, just because a particular place is significant to some religion doesn't mean its significant to yours - various pagan holy sites (& cult centres) didn't become significant to Christianity just because population around them converted - instead they were frequently destroyed or abandoned. Jerusalem is probably the only major site that became significant to a religion by virtue of being significant to others.

 

[iniudan]

Catholic: Santiago, Jerusalem, Rome, Canterbury and Cologne

Would suggest replacing Canterbury by Reims, mostly because that put a holy site a bit away from the Norse, who already have Cologne close by to conquer, while also giving you a nice location for Christianity to hold position if Iberian peninsula come to fall to Islam.

 

[The Kingmaker]

Would suggest replacing Canterbury by Reims, mostly because that put a holy site a bit away from the Norse, who already have Cologne close by to conquer, while also giving you a nice location for Christianity to hold position if Iberian peninsula come to fall to Islam.

I think they're in perilous occasions on purpose. Two of the Norse sites are outside their natural sphere, meaning they'll have to fight the Catholics for them. In the same way, the Catholics will have to fight the Norse in order to hang on to their holy sites.

 

[Goosecreature]

Could we get the Pagans to take on a different name after reforming (either by default or by modding)?

For example, if I want Norse to become Asatru upon reformation, could I make that happen?

Also, will we be getting more varied symbols for the various Pagans?

Yes, modding this would be very easy and the pagan religions have been given unique symbols.

 

[Goosecreature]

What's the deal with african pagans, will they be able to reform and do they have holy sites?

Yes.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Can you usurp the Norse religious leader title if you have three of the Norse holy sites?

 

[Orinsul]

Yes, modding this would be very easy and the pagan religions have been given unique symbols.

How modible will the pagan mechanics be?
will each feature be its own feature=yes value? As with the Catholic and Orthodox religious options, or grouped together hardcodingly like SoI's Moslems.

 

[gorillacakes]

Worshipers of Ahriman make for a good video game badguys, but is there any real historic evidence of these existing?

Yes there were indeed followers of Ahriman. He was given sacrifices of wolf(?) blood collected into a bowl and thrown into a shadow as far as I recall. I will look up sources in Theological library here and get back to you once I find it again.

As someone else said, there was a later movement where Zurvan was elevated to a coequal footing within the Godhead, the religion becoming truly dualist. Prior to that it's debatable whether Zoroastrianism could be classified as dualist but extensive contact at the height of Zurvanism caused figures in the west to view Zoroastrianism as dualist. The truth is theologians and historians don't know if Zurvanism was a faction within the official hierarchy or an actual full on challenge to the faith like a heresy. It is far more fatalistic as far as I can recall.

Hoping to mod in the good old Manichaeans myself, they were still knocking around in the 800's with a new Yamag situated in far in the east.

Back on topic: Excellent stuff Doomdark! I am so looking forward to this!

 

[Steely Dwarf]

Yes.

Thanks for the info, definitely going to give them another pass now that they have an empire to form and a path to reform.

 

[smeggy]

I am no uber Muslim by any extent, but there isn't any "holy value" to Cordoba from theological perspective.

Maybe instead of Cordoba or Baghdad we could throw in that Al Zahar place.

Think you're wrong here. Around the year 1000 it was the biggest city on the CK2 map, it had the biggest books collection, huge economic power, and the only remaining Umayyad (2nd caliphate) dynasty in power. It might not be a Mecca or Medina, but at the time it was one of the mayor Islamic cities.

It dont think PI defines these holy sites as pelgrimage sites, but as holy seats of power.