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Religion: what each in-game religion means and what bonuses they give.

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Imrryran said:
I think there is another mean to "create" a new religion without using the old ones (which could be used elsewhere).

You can write events which prevent the nation from moving the DP sliders beyond some limits. For example, there could be a cordobian event which fire when innovation is below 5 and offer the choice to get (A)+2inno or (B)-3stab. You could even have only one choice to maintain the sliders between the limits.
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This is true, but it doesn't create a new religion, just a limited heretical movement that goes no further than disrupting the host country.

There is no chance for it to blossom, to be taken on as a state religion, become the province religion for colonies etc. But of course creating more limited-sphere heresies within the existing non-Christian faiths is still something we need to see more of. They have great flavour!
 
Removing shi'te for an reformed for of islam is fine by me, still renaming confucianism to polytheism is maybe not that good, i mean I wouldn't want to call zoroastrianism polytheism, even though the persians believed in many gods (but most gods had a subordinate meaning like christian saints and angels).
 
Every religion is different. All of the pagans' are different from one another, and Confucianism is also pagan, in that it isn't Judaism, Christianity or Islamic. There are lots of other polytheistic religions that deserve their own naming and definition, just as confucianism does. The only reason the game currently sorts Confucian from the rest is that in the vanilla game its spread and political significance was enourmous. Otherwise it would be a non-starter.

If we don't have China then we can conpletely ignore Confucianism and use for some other purpose. Or keep it and change the characteristics, or whatever. There is nothing precious about the confucian faith and ideology, any more than Zoroastrianism, Bhddhism, Shiite or Orthodox.

Basically, folks, we have 11 religions to use in this game. If we want to do it properly, we should start by saying that only five of these are untouchable and that everything else is up for grabs.

Catholic, Sunni, Hindu, Pagan, Orthodox and Bhuddist are the religious building blocks of the game. They are established majpr faith groups which, while there are many iterations, for the religious context of the politically dominant cultures. To deviate from at least these goes well beyond the purpose of our mod. (Note that I do not include Confucian here, as there will be no major-state China.)

I would argue that both Catholic and Sunni require one major heresy each. Let's call them Protestant and Shiite, just to keep things simple for the moment.

That leaves us with three religions that could be realistically reassigned, although the ramifications for each would still be far reaching.

Reformed
Counter-reformed Catholic
Confucian

One of these would need to be devoted to the east, maybe event two.

Of these, the least purposeful is CRC, and if we really wanted to shift a religion around, we could get rid of the CRC to provde room for either an additional Islamic heresy, or to give the east more room for religious dispute.

Some of the effects of the CRC can be done via events, wherein it brings Stab Hits, changes to relations, revoltrisk increases and reductions, bonuses to this and that etc etc

Matty
 
MattyG said:
Of these, the least purposeful is CRC, and if we really wanted to shift a religion around, we could get rid of the CRC to provde room for either an additional Islamic heresy, or to give the east more room for religious dispute.
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Unfortunately, I don't see how we can reassign CRC unless we're prepared to turn all the Christian religions around (and that would mess up things like the HRE and the ability to convert during the Reformation, so IMO it's not a good idea). It has too many hard-coded effects tying it to the other Christian religions. Specifically:
- marriage rules are the same as Catholic
- CBs on all Protestant and Reformed countries
- the ability to convert freely and without stabhit between Catholic and CRC
- no penalties for Catholic provinces - in fact you can't create 'counter-reformed' provinces as a CRC country, only Catholic ones.

Similarly Reformed is tied to Christianity. So I'd say outside Christendom, we only have 2 religions to play with:
Confucian
Pagan

These have to account for far more than 2 sets of religious beliefs. So in practical terms we have to divide the religions which aren't Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist into 2 categories, based on how we want them to work in game. The key question is the following: how 'developed' is the religion, in the sense of amount of dogma, existence of sacred texts, priesthood, uniformity across provinces, level of recognition by other countries etc? If the answer is 'very', we make it Confucian. If the answer is 'not at all', we make it Pagan.

So on this basis, Benin has 'Pagan' religion, because the local religious beliefs were quite a mixture, there wasn't much dogma, and the priests were seen more as magicians than moral leaders. Zoroastrianism is 'Confucian' on all counts. But some others are more difficult to decide. For example, if Shinto is considered a developed religion, why isn't the Maya religion?
 
Also, pagan countries are more annexable and bring lesser bad boy in war for christians than confucian, which we can use for our advantage. Basically, if it is a country that is likely to fall under European hands fairly easy, then make it pagan. If it is bound to put up a lot of resistence against christianity, make it confucian.
 
Making the mesoamerican empires confucian might then be a good idea if we want the conquest of America harder for the europeans.

Too bad we can't add new religons, a mahayana/ theravada split for the buddhists could have been fun. Anyway, is there a better name for the new confucian religon than just polytheism??
 
yourworstnightm said:
Making the mesoamerican empires confucian might then be a good idea if we want the conquest of America harder for the europeans.

Too bad we can't add new religons, a mahayana/ theravada split for the buddhists could have been fun. Anyway, is there a better name for the new confucian religon than just polytheism??
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That was never suggested as the name. It was the generic I labelled it and commented that it would need something better sounding than that. I think it would depend on what religion it was. Any ideas?

Most of the pagans in the americas have the chance to go non-pagan near the time their would be destroyed, so that will make a different in MP. I don't think they should get something other than pagan to start with, not with only 11 religions available to us.
 
I would think we can call one Pagan and the other something generic-sounding as well, like Animist or something... maybe rename both and make the hardened, "confucian" types "Pagan" and the natives in America and subsaharan Africa "Animist"?
 
What if CRC, Reformed, and Confucian were eliminated totally? Protestant can take over Reformed. China becomes Buddhist, and likely Korea too.

Then we can have fun! Invent Shinto for Japan only, Zoroastrianism for some Persian provinces, and maybe Judaism for the Khazars? A surviving Jewish Khazar realm would be loads of fun; perhaps they'd have options to recapture Jerusalem and restore Israel; or take over Persia and convert to Zoroastrianism.
 
I agree that CRC is less necessary in Aberration. Reformed has to stay, if only because it is already so deeply imbedded in the events. But there's more too it than giving it a new name. There are hard-coded features of each religion, especially the CRC. It MIGHT work waaay over in Asia where it's antagonism with protestant faiths will have less impact until late in the game. Incompoetant will be better able to comment on this.

As for Confucianism, there are already ideas for this. We don't want to see one religion (like Buddhism) occupy too broad an area (like part of India, and all China and SE Asia) as this makes it too easy for everyone there. So, we need to have that mix of Animist (Confucian) Bhuddist and Hindu for it to have some richness and diversity.

But let's keep thinking about the CRC thing ...
 
I have trouble with the re-introduction of Zorastrian back into the game.It had been deeply unpopular at the time of the Muslim expansions, and many of the Persians converted to Islam at once since the clergy and priests were in support of the Persian Crown.Even if we consider the mongol occupation of Persia (which lasted for a while) I doubt the Persians would "suddenly" relapse from their current religion which is greatly established to Zorastrian.Thats my take of it, too hard to digest.
 
The idea is that the moslem invasion of Persia never was completed, the arabs conquered Iraq, but was halted. Later the turkish invasion did happen, and some persians converted to islam, while some turks assimilated in to the persian nobility and became zoroastrian. When the no moslem mongols invaded whole Central Asia and Persia became a toal mish mash of religions, with zoroastrians, moslems, buddhists and nestorians.
 
Ahhh ok, makes sense.Then perhaps the cultural lines of Persia should be expanded to Baluchi and inner Asia?
 
What could be done, is to switch the religions around totally.
The catholic tag doesn't need to represent catholicism, but a new religion somewhere, where it could make sense to convert to another religion (counter-reformed tag) without any penalties...
Then eg. confucianism could represent catholicism.

Just a thought. :)
 
Calipah said:
Ahhh ok, makes sense.Then perhaps the cultural lines of Persia should be expanded to Baluchi and inner Asia?
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Nah baluchis, should be baluchis, turcomans should be turcomans, and afghan culture scrapped divided between pashto and turcomans. Since the turkic invasion did happen there should be turks in central asia, later conquered by mongols. The baluchis are a part of the ilkhanate, and they have lived there already during sassanid times. If Persia is ressurected they could get cores on Baluchistan and the pashto areas in Afghanistan.
 
Thinking about it, are the generic religon tag really that usefull, I do not mean to reintroduce confucianism, but the theravada/ mahayana buddhistic split would be great if included.
 
A solid idea, and these kinds of variations are very much a part of Interregnum.

But we are a long way from working on that part of the world.

Unless you are offering to help ... ? :D
 
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