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Holy Fury Reformations?

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Maybe Reclamations, as a by event only reformation if thats possible? if tribunal are gone (which currently isnt possible or I think even planned but future talk)
with special feature and etc choices like, continue venerating the tribunal, or accept or denounce the good/evil daedra divide, ALMSIVI or dissident version of velothi teachings or etc? rather than the vanilla options.
 
Baldamundo said:
This is purely the fault of lazy gamedevs for Skyrim and Oblivion. Religion was extremely rich and interesting and varied in Morrowind, and in the wider lore. Just they never bothered showing any of it in the sequels.
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Truewhit said:
What do they say about religion in the lore books?
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I mean, I'm not sure this is actually true? I agree that the religion's are presented in a more interesting way in MW, but I'm not sure how well that could translate to CK. The religious beliefs may be interesting to read about, but wouldn't really translate into interesting mechanics in-game.

Take mantling for example-would be very difficult to implement, but also unclear what you could do in-game with it. Similarly, having different cultures and religions having different stances on the same deities (i.e. worshipping/ignoring/persecuting and vilifying various daedric princes) is extremely interesting in-game, as is having different names/aspects for the same/different gods (is Alduin AKA and is AKA Akatosh and/or Auri-El? etc), but both likely wouldn't have much actual impact on gameplay.
 
It would, at least, have been useful to have had more detail on modern legal Marukhatism, which Oblivion so thoroughly squandered with the Temple of the One. But then, it did the same for the Elder Council, so it is hardly only religion they did that with.
 
The way I always envisioned reformation for the Deadric Cults is essentially turning them into proper religions. By default, they are just what their name implies, cults. They are disorganized groups that essentially just exist to cause trouble for rulers. One that adopts the religion has very little going for them, aside from the marginal benefits of the Prince interactions. If you had a way to reform the religion, you could establish a proper hierarchy and belief system that give mechanics to fit with the religion.

Your choices are of course shaped by the prince you worship, and I'd go so far as to use the nature slot for prince specific features. You worship Sheogorath? Then his Shivering Isles nature gives opinion and piety bonuses to lunatics, makes the lunatic trait more likely, causes rulers to be less predictable, but might not have too much effect on your provinces. While Hermaeus Mora gives tech spread boosts, Hiercine boosts levy size. Mephala gives +2 intrigue and makes rulers far more prone to plots. It's up to you then what form of religious rule you have and what ways your people worship them, assuming those options make sense for the prince.

The cult religions remain in their role as troublemaking religions, intended to replace the vanilla heresies even for Deadra worshipers.
 
Some random Deadric religion doctrine ideas:

Order of Warlocks
  • Grants access to a piety retinue of lesser Deadra
  • May recruit special Warlock characters (similar to vanilla Gurus), mages with high martial that get a special command skill bonus to commanding lesser Deadra. This skill may be passed on to wards.
Divine Companions
  • Rulers and mages of the religion can employ Deadric familiars or bodyguards, depending on their prince (Sheogorath gives Golden Saints, Azura gives Winged Twilights).
  • Army levies are slightly larger and battlemages get increased morale damage.
Planar Pilgrims
  • Members of the religion can establish portals to their prince's plane of Oblivion, these provide province modifiers and increase morale authority. Other religions can destroy the portal if they occupy the province and get special CBs to try and close them.
  • Skilled mage followers anywhere and followers who live in realms with open portals can make pilgrimages to the plane of Oblivion.
  • Once per lifetime while their prince is powerful enough, pious rulers in a realm with an open portal may prepare an invasion and get deadra event troops to support them.
 
Expanding on the idea of 'Organizing a Religion', here's a systems proposal.

A ruler following any disorganized faith who is not tribal, is at least kingdom tier, is independent, has a temple in their capital who's holder matches their religion, and has a realm size of at least ~40-50 can spend a bunch of piety and gold to organize their religion. This brings up the new reformation screen, which is used to choose: their religious pantheon/god (replacing nature), religious doctrines based on that pantheon choice, and religious leadership. Afterwards, them, their courtiers, capital province and any demesne provinces that shared their old religion convert to a new religion that is given the mechanics and flags for their religious choices. New holy sites are chosen for the religion, starting with the capital province of the organizer and a random selection of nearby important locations on a preset list (since we can now add and remove religious sites in game). Any loyal vassals who shared their liege's old religion will also convert themselves, their court, and their provinces which shared the old religion to the new religion. Finally, the new religion is marked as a heresy of the old, allowing it to later supplant the disorganized faith.

Since the religions and gods of the Elder Scrolls are somewhat different from their real world equivalents, I think there's a few universal rules we can apply to them that the nature usually dictates. For example, rulers cannot send their religious adviser to proselytise to disorganized faiths unless that faith is a disorganized heresy or their disorganized parent faith. Rulers are also generally inclined to proselytise to their provinces if they do not share their faith, similar to the proselytising nature, though some pantheons are somewhat less inclined to this and the AI might only convert provinces if they're zealous. Aggressiveness and marriage willingness directly depends on what pantheon is chosen. Those who worship warlike deadra will be more aggressive and have levies and CBs that reflect that. Characters who share the same or similar pantheons will be able to marry one another. For example, Aedra worshipers can marry one another, two faiths that share at least one deadra can marry one another, two different animist faiths can marry one another.

Which pantheon you can pick to worship depends on the disorganized faith you're organizing. If it's a deadric cult, you must choose to worship either that one deadra exclusively or a set of similar deadra which includes the one you were originally worshiping. For example, a cult to Azure could choose to worship either Azura exclusively or the three deadra of light and darkness (Meridia, Azura, and Nocturnal). Organizing out of the Reachmen Old Faith would allow them to worship one of their deadra, their specific deadric pantheon, the hagravens, or more benign Aedra like the Eight Divines. A pantheon of several deadra allows its followers to select any of those deadra as their patron to determine which they gain arnor with and be more flexible in their benefits, however they will generally be somewhat weaker and some of the more extreme doctrine choices will be restricted.

Your doctrine options will be heavily influenced by which pantheon you pick, on top of each Pantheon giving special effects to your followers. The leadership choices should include at least some version of Temporal, Hierocratic, and Autonomous, but I think that at the very least Temporal should be significantly weaker than it is in the base game (no crown, no bonus prestige and piety to landed characters for their dynasty controlling the religion) and potentially only be available for certain pantheons. There should also be at least one new leadership option in Avatar, which is having either the subject of your faith or a representative from them serving as religious head. For example, the hagravens would have their Crone as religious head, deadric cults who worship one specific deadra could have an appropriate lesser deadra serve as religious head.
 
This is a repost from the suggestion thread. I have a few ideas about what use could be made of the new Reformation mechanics.

Some of the ingame religions would be fitting to be reformable in a standard way; I'm mainly thinking about the Old Gods, Animist, All-Maker and Dragon Cult faiths, maybe even the Islander, Green Pact and Hist faiths. The mechanic could also be applied to the Pyandoneaic faith once Orgnum is dead, making it reformable if ever a new powerful Maormer King arises. Maybe it could also be worked into the Emperor Ascendant and Death of the Tribunal event chains. If it's feasable, it would be cool if the mechanic were used to allow the creation of more established Daedric Cults, as in creating a priestly leadership if you're a Cultist whom happens to have a large Kingdom or Empire.


Another idea would be that, if that's even possible, when reforming certain faiths, you'd have doctrines allowing you to add or remove Daedra, Aedra or other Et'Ada and Divine entities from its pantheon, as in of which ones you may be the follower of. For example, after the Fall of the Tribunal, the Almsivi faith could be made reformable, then, once a ruler is powerful enough to do so, he could reform it into the Reclamations faith and, for the doctrines specifically available to that faith, in addition to the standard ones, he would have doctrine options of different groups of divines that could go along those lines: House of Troubles (would add the worship of Mehrunes Dagon, Sheogorath, Molag Bal and Malacath) and House of Reclamations (would add the worship of Azura, Mephala and Boethiah), or only Dunmer Houses (which would include both).


For the generic pantheon doctrines, they could group their gods by theme, so something along the lines of: Human Heroes, Elven Heroes, Beastfolk Heroes, Destructive Gods (Molag Bal and Merhunes Dagon), Dark Gods (Mephala, Malacath and Nocturnal), Gods of Light (Azura and Meridia), Gods of the Mind (Hermaeus Mora, Vaermina and Sheogorath/Jyggalag), Gods of Decay (Namira and Peryite), Fickle Gods (Clavicus Vile and Sanguine), War-Like Gods (Hircine and Boethiah), Wise Gods (Julianos, Dibella and Zenithar), Steadfast Gods (Akatosh, Mara and Stendarr), Nature Gods (Kynareth and Arkay), Chaos Gods (Sithis and Padomay), Ordered Gods (Anu and Auriel), Primordial Spirits (Magnus and Lorkhan) and Animistic Spirits.


For the other faith-specific doctrines, they could be like that to allow for unique divine combos:
  • Old Gods: Old Daedra (worship of the Daedra from the original Old Gods faith) and Old Aedra (Worship of the Aedra from the original Old Gods faith)
  • Animist: Spirits of Old (Animistic spirits + some unique for them)
  • All-Maker: All-Maker (as that God is unique to them, though similar to Anu)
  • Dragon Cult: Forces of Nature ( Animistic spirits + Dragon, Alduin and Akatosh)
  • Islander: Deep Gods (Their unique gods which I forget the names of)
  • Pyandoneaic: Orgnum's Descendants (Saint Orgnum)
It would also be nice if we could have three doctrine slots instead of two in the mod, to allow for more variety, since it has a lot of religions. If it's worrisome that there might be too many doctrines, some of the vanilla doctrines could be subsumed in the pantheon ones. For example the Animistic doctrine could be integrated in the Animistic Spirits doctrine along with the worship of those spirits, the Daring doctrine could go with War-like Gods (Hircine and Boethiah), Bloodthirsty Gods could be included in Destructive Gods (Molag Bal and Merhunes Dagon) and Ancestor Worship could be subsumed by Elven Heroes, Beastfolk Heroes and Human Heroes.


I didn't expect I'd have that long of a suggestion but I just wrote and it kept on spilling out. Apologies if I wasted your time with that diatribe. Thank you for reading and keep on the good work, I love it!
 
One thing that's going to be important for these reformations/organizations is some reason to actually want to worship things other than Deadra. What differentiates worshiping something that can outright give you benefits and boons vs one that can't do much of anything to directly affect the world? Well, one option is for the Deadra to give direct active abilities and bonuses, while the Aedra give passive ones that fit more in the background. This would fit well with the way they behave in the lore anyway.

Which brings me to what will almost certainly be my most controversial suggestion: choosing an Aedra or similar pantheon gives you access to primogeniture and ultimogeniture succession. You cannot get those any other way, allowing Aedra worshipers to have the most stable realms after succession flat out. This doesn't mean that they should always use primo or they're completely safe from factions trying to force x succession law, but that following those religions gives primo as the base benefit for doing so and it will be their default succession law. Followers of other pantheons can unlock other succession laws by doctrine choice, like the Code of Malacath's Rule by Might, now that they're more moddable we can do a lot with those successions to offer unique or flavoraful experiences. However, they should all have some inherint element of instability to go along with the theme of Deadra giving big immediate power spikes but being less stable in the long term.
 
i really like that suggestion. More variation between religions is always good and itll break some of the monotony of so many realms having similar succession
 
TheDarkMaster said:
One thing that's going to be important for these reformations/organizations is some reason to actually want to worship things other than Deadra. What differentiates worshiping something that can outright give you benefits and boons vs one that can't do much of anything to directly affect the world? Well, one option is for the Deadra to give direct active abilities and bonuses, while the Aedra give passive ones that fit more in the background. This would fit well with the way they behave in the lore anyway.

Which brings me to what will almost certainly be my most controversial suggestion: choosing an Aedra or similar pantheon gives you access to primogeniture and ultimogeniture succession. You cannot get those any other way, allowing Aedra worshipers to have the most stable realms after succession flat out. This doesn't mean that they should always use primo or they're completely safe from factions trying to force x succession law, but that following those religions gives primo as the base benefit for doing so and it will be their default succession law. Followers of other pantheons can unlock other succession laws by doctrine choice, like the Code of Malacath's Rule by Might, now that they're more moddable we can do a lot with those successions to offer unique or flavoraful experiences. However, they should all have some inherint element of instability to go along with the theme of Deadra giving big immediate power spikes but being less stable in the long term.
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I don't know about the succession thing... I still want the mod to give the player freedom to build their own Kingdom however they want, without restriction; and that also fits with the lore, as, on Nirn, culture and religion seem to be a bit more flexible than on Earth, while people (or characters, as it's fictional) seem to have more importance.
 
Empoleon Blownaparte said:
Hey, this has been brought up at least twice now, to my knowledge, and I just wanted to have a more permanent place for discussing it, since it usually passes in conversation to another topic.

I'm probably not one to talk about it, since i know little of Elder Scrolls lore, but at the same time I'd love to see Daedric Cults be reformable with these new mechanics, as I have been lead to believe by those more knowledgable than I that the Daedric Princes are Emovoric in nature. I'd honestly love to see a Cult of Sheogorath, Sanguine, or even the sadistic Vaermina go benevolent (It's not that hard to say to your crazy followers that the God of Insanity, Pleasure, or Dreams preaches benevolence, even if beforehand they're a lot less friendly, especially Vaermina, but of course that would be limited and the nicer doctrines probably wouldn't be available for some of them)

Perhaps in order to reform a Daedric Cult, you must either be the chosen of that Daedra (Either through causing an Invasion in their name, or maybe a new event chain to give you a trait similar to the Patron traits) or they must be waning in power to the point they can't really stop you from changing their image.

Maybe some Doctrines change what traits the Prince likes, and maybe some new "Generic" doctrines could be added, like, an "Aesthetic" Doctrine that opens an event chain for creating works of art in their name, and makes them like Attractive and Poet characters (Obviously not available for Namira, and probably default for Sanguine, Vaermina and maybe Sheogorath)

Anyone want to weigh in? Perhaps even one of the devs?
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I'd personally like to see the new reformation system used in the mantling of princedom like the hero of kvatch did with sheogorath.


Yuiiut said:
I mean, I'm not sure this is actually true? I agree that the religion's are presented in a more interesting way in MW, but I'm not sure how well that could translate to CK. The religious beliefs may be interesting to read about, but wouldn't really translate into interesting mechanics in-game.

Take mantling for example-would be very difficult to implement, but also unclear what you could do in-game with it. Similarly, having different cultures and religions having different stances on the same deities (i.e. worshipping/ignoring/persecuting and vilifying various daedric princes) is extremely interesting in-game, as is having different names/aspects for the same/different gods (is Alduin AKA and is AKA Akatosh and/or Auri-El? etc), but both likely wouldn't have much actual impact on gameplay.
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After reading this thread implementing reformations should be done differently based on religions clearly. With Daedric cults it's far less complicated than you imagine. The process of mantling would be the complicated part and different between cults while successful mantling will result in immediately changing portrait and name and being set as the head of that title. The various powers available would be functionally the same across the cults. Some kind of interactions with the followers, ability to give special artifact for added opinion or interactions with a character, force an invasion as its head etc. Again, the time intensive part would be programming the unique challenge after initiating "reformation". Aside from that I don't think you should be able to change names or even characteristics of the cult. I always imagine the process of mantling fully transforming you into that prince's personality anyway.

However reforming into something like the nine divines would offer the more traditional reformation options of setting religion characteristics.

EDIT: Additional powers of a mantled daedra prince could also be the ability to approach rulers from anywhere to join the cult with a chance ranging from never (if the character is of certain religions that hate daedra and has opposing traits, the latter weighing more heavily) to 100% certainty (if the character is a perfect candidate and of a religion that is more open minded about daedra). Another separate power could be to force a cultist to go public and with support of other cultists in the realm lead the overthrow of the primary title and vassals. All this gradually making Tamriel a softer target for when you finally decide to invade. Or perhaps the invasion would have to start immediately after successful mantling because you'd already be holding territory on tamriel. Unless you forfeit your other titles the moment you mantle and solely exist off map until you decide to invade. Or perhaps those are two different decisions you'd be able to make.

I'm hyped for the potential of Elder Kings Reformations.

Could I finally play as a Sload Molag Bal?
 
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Xoatl said:
I'd personally like to see the new reformation system used in the mantling of princedom like the hero of kvatch did with sheogorath.
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As you have pointed out, mantling would be hard to implement, and I'm not sure how appropriate it would be, considering how rare it is in the lore. I think it'd be better if reformations were used to the Daedra Cults as they are for the vanilla pagans; that is, creating a formal church hierarchy and canon scriptures. The rationalisation would be that if you are a powerful emperor or king following a Daedroth, you might find it would be easier to administer the realm with that.

It would also be nice if you had some doctrines to add secondary deities to your pantheon. For instance, upon reforming the Cult of Molag Bal, you could have a doctrine allowing you to add his ally - as per the lore - as secondary deity, namely Azura. The other ones could go like this:
  • Cult of Hermaeus Mora: Mephala
  • Cult of Clavicus Vile: None
  • Cult of Mehrunes Dagon: None
  • Cult of Azura: Molag Bal
  • Cult of Boethia: Stendarr
  • Cult of Hircine: None
  • Cult of Jyggalag: None
  • Cult of Malacath: Mephala
  • Cult of Mephala: Malacath and Hermaeus Mora
  • Cult of Meridia: Arkay (?)
  • Cult of Namira: None
  • Cult of Nocturnal: None
  • Cult of Peryite: None
  • Cult of Sanguine: Vaermina
  • Cult of Sheogorath: None (isn't he enough)
  • Cult of Vaermina: Sanguine
Alternatively, another approach could be to let one add whatever god that is not in direct opposition, so, with the Cult of Molag Bal example from earlier, you could add Sanguine, Hircine or Hermaeus Mora, but not Arkay or Boethia.
 
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