This might sound crazy, but... please make Miaphysite unorganized

[shigad]

So basically, I think for role playing purposes, the game would greatly benefit from the Miaphsites being considered an unorganized religion. Yes, it's true, they have a religious leader, the Miaphysite Pope, but he has authority over virtually nothing. The Egyptian rulers are Arabs, and the only powerful Miaphysitic rulers of Armenia and de-jure Abyssinia bow down to their respective autocephalous heads, and frankly, I don't think there's any communication between them - They are seperated by a sea of Arabs.
If the Miaphysite faith was considered unorganized, it would let a powerful ruler, say a king of Abyssinia who had just reclaimed Egypt for his faith, to declare himself the protector of the Miaphysite faith or something similar - basically exactly what religious reformation is all about (roleplay wise).
You could even decide to convert to Catholicism, and request a mass conversion, just like other unorginized faiths. This is even quite fitting, as the Miaphysites of Africa are often tribal, and just like the pagans in the north, converting to a stronger religion will give you more authority, and more importantly an alliance with a Catholic realm - hopefully helping you to crush them infidels!

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Ethiopian Christians didn't get autocephaly until 1959. They were directly subject to the Coptic Pope in Alexandria before then.

 

[kviiri]

No objection in principle, but we don't really know what the organized/unorganized distinction is in this game.

I would like to see Coptic and Armenian churches being separate, though.

 

[IlikeTrains]

Miaphysite should have a Petrine Sees equivalent of Pentarchy (basically Pentarchy without Constantinople and Jerusalem) and autocephaly.

 

[viola]

Miaphysites acting like pagans would be stupid and out of place, so no.

 

[DPS]

If the Miaphysite faith was considered unorganized, it would let a powerful ruler, say a king of Abyssinia who had just reclaimed Egypt for his faith, to declare himself the protector of the Miaphysite faith or something similar - basically exactly what religious reformation is all about (roleplay wise).

I don't really agree with that. Rather, I'd say that mechanically, the way reformation works in CKII does amount to that. But even given that, we don't really know yet exactly how reformation will work in CKIII.

 

[Pointyearedgit]

Ethiopian Christians didn't get autocephaly until 1959. They were directly subject to the Coptic Pope in Alexandria before then.

I mean yeah, but (at least partially) by choice. Players should have options to toy around with this, especially if Ethiopia is playing serious political games.

 

[WatershockPlayz]

This is the exact opposite of reality in every possible way. The Miaphysites aren’t just reformed, they were probably more reformed than literally any other Christian religion. By the first start date Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy both have a lot of changes in coming years, namely the Great Schism, Meanwhile the Miaphysites, since their split in 451 from the main churches, has been stable in every doctrine. As a Coptic Christian I can say that we still read the Nicene Creed... from the first council in 325, to this day, some of the oldest bible manuscripts are written in Sahidic Coptic. The first monk and monastic tradition originated in Egypt with St.Anthony. In Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy even after the split they still revered St.Athanasius and St.Cyril as fathers of the religion.

To say they were unreformed, or as you put it ‘unorganized’ (I assume you mean no real leader), is the same as saying that a religion that gave ALL of Christianity some of its most recognized features, like monks and doctrines from the 1st and 3rd Councils before their split, and SURVIVED 1400 years under Islamic Rule without being wiped out or changing Doctrine.

To handle the meat of your statement, no the Coptic Pope (It’s more accurate to say Patriarch of Alexandria, he is a bishop with equal power to any other except for the fact that Alexandria is revered as a holy city) definitely without a doubt had power. I have an entire thread I dedicated to Miaphysites below, and their you’ll find some examples of how relevant the Coptic Pope Was.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...es-egypt-and-revolts-recommendations.1272183/

And now to more relevant arguments, Miaphysites have a very stable and very very clear leadership. They’re lead by 4 Autocephalous churches in this time period (Coptic, Armenian, Malankara(India), and Syria) who all have EQUAL power, and since their respective Patriarchs have only a Bishop position, all bishops are equal. However far from their being no clear leader, a Patriarch had extra powers than a normal Bishop, the very term ‘Patriarch’ means ‘Patri’ Greek:Father ‘arch’ like an arch bishop, he is the father of the Bishops, the highest rank of Bishop and has powers granted to him by the Holy Synod.
Here’s a link on the Coptic Pope:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_of_the_Coptic_Orthodox_Church_of_Alexandria

Among duties important to the game the Coptic Pope can Consecrate Bishops, Consecrate Churches (My own church had to wait 4 years until his H.H. Tawadros II could come) , and Canonizing Saints. The other Ecumenical Patriarchs I would assume have similar abilities.


Finally, where the hell did you hear Miaphysites in Africa were Tribal? The two centers for Christianity in Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia, both Coptic, were centered around the massive cities of Alexandria and Aksum, neither of which were tribal. Tribalism in Africa is mainly in West and Sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan had a few tribes, buy even then Ethiopia and Egypt were light years from being Tribal. Also what do you mean ‘mass conversion’ is ‘fitting’, not sure if you’re aware but after splitting from the other churches the Byzantine Empire DID try mass-conversion of the ‘heretics’ (They realized that not only we aren’t heretics, but have literally near identical doctrines 1400 later when our Patriarchs professed one faith and began the path to ending the schism in 2001) and failed miserable despite hundreds of thousands dying in mass persecution. By the time Islam conquered Egypt in 642 the 200 years of persecution failed and Egypt was still more or less 100% Miaphysite despite the genocides. Also not sure if you’re Eurocentric or just wording it wrong but what the hell is a ‘stronger religion’ supposed to mean? With Ethiopia being included in the map update supposedly Miaphysites will be WAAAAY more relevant, why convert to Catholicism when you have so many other Coptic Countries to interact with, plus assuming the feature is implemented realistically mass conversion wouldn’t convert your provinces automatically and all you would get is a bunch of revolt risk for being of a different religion.

Anyway in summary the Miaphysites do have leaders (I agree that CkIII should distinguish between Armenian and Coptic Autocephalous branches since each had their own power, however they were still one religion and be displayed as such) who do have mechanics that Ck3 should (at least Ck2 did) represent. And in any case were very organized and reformed, with little to no change in doctrine in 1600 years and the very least more religiously stable than the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches dealing with the Great Schism.

 

[Patriarch of Bub]

I'd like if Miaphysite would get "resistant to conversion" and a bonus in fighting on home territory.

In game Egypt turns muslim very quickly due to how moral authority is calculated, and Ethiopia and Nubia get overrun as soon as a there's a tiny breach in the tributaries buffer states.

 

[DPS]

I'd like if Miaphysite would get "resistant to conversion" and a bonus in fighting on home territory.

In game Egypt turns muslim very quickly due to how moral authority is calculated, and Ethiopia and Nubia get overrun as soon as a there's a tiny breach in the tributaries buffer states.

The issue of how quickly Egypt was largely converted to Islam is a controversial one, and one on which I'm not sure we have any hard data, so I'm not sure I agree with the resistance to conversion idea, but the Muslims never conquered Ethiopia, so clearly there's some factor that CKII doesn't adequately address there--I have never played a game in which Ethiopia wasn't conquered by Muslims (except a few where I go a "Game Over" early on).

 

[WatershockPlayz]

The issue of how quickly Egypt was largely converted to Islam is a controversial one, and one on which I'm not sure we have any hard data, so I'm not sure I agree with the resistance to conversion idea, but the Muslims never conquered Ethiopia, so clearly there's some factor that CKII doesn't adequately address there--I have never played a game in which Ethiopia wasn't conquered by Muslims (except a few where I go a "Game Over" early on).

The resistance to conversion has a lot of modern day data, namely that in 1400 years Egypt still has yet to convert all of Egypt to Islam, 10-15% (12% seems to be the most reliable figure) is still Coptic, not only that but at least one governate (province) is still Coptic (At the very least the figures are so close the government can’t decide which one has the majority), Minya. Another governate with an insane Coptic population is Asyut... who is about 48.5% Coptic to this day...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asyut_Governorate

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any more demographics on any other governate so I can’t speak to the rest, however the above numbers only add up to about 5% of Egypt’s population, or around 5,000,000, another 5-7 million Coptics are spread out across every governate.

Looking at statistics if in 2019 two provinces at least are still either Coptic majority, or very recently Coptic Majority it stands to reason that EVERY single province should not be Muslim by the year 1000, that’s well ... a thousand years off. Anyway the Abbasids and Fatimids who controlled Egypt from 750-1250 (500 years) during the time period weren’t interested in proselytizing the Egyptian population, Abbasids because a majority of their food supply came from Egypt and large scale rebellions like the Bashmuric Revolt in 832 disrupted it, plus Mohammed had married a Coptic Women and declared Copts were their brothers and for the Arab Empire to be kind to the Egyptians when they conquered it. Which they stringently followed... sort of. Fatimids relied on Armenian mercenaries, who were also Miaphysites so they needed to be more tolerant than one would normally expect to Miaphysites in order to avoid their mercenaries turning on them. Real Persecution didn’t begin under the Mamluks, and even then Egypt wouldn’t be converted to majority Islam until the Ottoman Conquest... well past the games Time frame. And it seems that no matter how hard the Ottoman Court Chaplain tried he just couldn’t get those two provinces to convert to this day.

I think the historical evidence above is pretty clear as evidence for a Miaphysite resistance to conversion boost. It’s not controversial at all, the only controversy their is really comes from a Frenchman estimate of the Coptic population in the 1700’s during the Napoleonic wars. He basically assumed that the Coptic Population took its biggest hit in the first 200 years of Abbasid/Umayyad rule and gradually decreased since. Theirs no real evidence of that, plus since Coptic the language remained as the common language well into the 12 and 13th centuries (14th would be a stretch) until Arabic took over the majority under Mamluks, and in the 1600’s Ottomans banned it, it’s safe to assume a language associated with Christianity wouldn’t be spoken by the masses of a Muslim Majority nation who already have to learn Arabic to read the Quran. Thus the major Of poeple speaking Coptic were probably well... Coptic Orthodox.

As for the Ethiopia one it’s probably because the entire country wasn’t represented on the map, part of what made Miaphysites so weak was that a lot of Coptic lands weren’t included in the game and African countries are needlessly made weak, even in situations like Ethiopia that lasted into the 1930’s without being conquered by Europeans, the very last African country to do so, I’d imagine a large population and advanced technology compared to the rest of Africa helped with that, North and East Africa are both incredibly advanced compared to the rest of Africa, both being non-tribal entities (Berbers excluded) and having large populations and access to important trade routes that passed on valuable ideas and technology. However with Ck2 North Africa is made fairly strong as historically shown, but East Africa is a mess and despite the fact that Arabs really had to need for Ethiopia since it couldn’t provide as much food compared to fertile Egypt on top, plus with a large army it wouldn’t be easy. Except that it is with how weak they are in Ck2 so they always get conquered. In Ck3 Ethiopia will hopefully be stronger by virtue of having more land... but only time will tell on that point.

 

[Pyoro]

Frankly the "Organized/Unorganized" "bias" the game has sounds a bit like historic determinism anyway. It's like an easy way of saying "this is better than that", but although it did work out that way in our timeline and for Europe, can we really say that was a forge conclusion? (random example; is Shinto really "organized", and if it isn't, isn't that exactly how it managed to survive?)

Either way, with I'll assume what will be a more fluid system that'll allow more nuanced different religions I wouldn't be surprised if such a broad split in religious types will be gone anyway.
On the other hand I also wouldn't be surprised if they kept it nonetheless (but a bit disappointed, probably ^^; ).

 

[viola]

Frankly the "Organized/Unorganized" "bias" the game has sounds a bit like historic determinism anyway. It's like an easy way of saying "this is better than that", but although it did work out that way in our timeline and for Europe, can we really say that was a forge conclusion? (random example; is Shinto really "organized", and if it isn't, isn't that exactly how it managed to survive?)

Either way, with I'll assume what will be a more fluid system that'll allow more nuanced different religions I wouldn't be surprised if such a broad split in religious types will be gone anyway.
On the other hand I also wouldn't be surprised if they kept it nonetheless (but a bit disappointed, probably ^^; ).

"Unorganized" in Crusader Kings is a way to say that a religion lacks an established theological thought of any kind and it's basically a bunch of decentralized folklore traditions with shared myths rather than the things Christianity, Islam or even the way less centralized Indian faiths are (which describes Norse, Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and the diverse Western African faiths relatively well). It's a decent way to represent how European pagans in the Middle Ages were driven into accepting Christian missionaries in their lands because they offered them a kind of political legitimacy that the Old Gods weren't able to give, and why the Christian missionaries were seemingly so successful at preaching in pagan lands while the pagan followers struggled to oppose the ideas of the foreign preachers.

Shinto would be a little hard to define because it definitely has elements of what makes a "unorganized religion" (more emphasis on folklore and traditional rites rather than theology), but at the same time the level of sophistication in Japanese culture was way superior to that of Northern European pagans. Historically Shinto traditions survived because the foreign faith that spread into Japan (Buddhism) isn't an exclusive religion like Abrahamic ones and Buddhist missionaries felt no reason to try to root out the native faith at all: in Japan to this day people follow both Shinto and Buddhist rites with the two religions co-existing next to each others (or even fusing into new sects like Shugendo, which is mountain mystics practicing a mix of Shinto nature beliefs with Buddhist concepts).

Crusader Kings' logic is mostly built with the idea of exclusive religions in mind though, since it wasn't originally supposed to expand the map any further than Persia. In the West if you're a Christian or a Muslim you're expect to be only a Christian or Muslim and nothing else, but religiosity in the East has been way more open, and it got more and more open the furthest East you go. In China you have Confucianism establishing a series of moral rules that greatly conditioned the Chinese culture and government co-existing with traditional Chinese polytheism, co-existing with Buddhist temples that came from India to spread their religion, co-existing with other native Chinese religious thoughts, and it's normal for most people and administrators to respect and recognize each of these belief systems without it being too much of a problem.

The way religion has worked in Crusader Kings so far is kinda unprepared to represent the East's religiosity (even EU4 has issues).

 

[kviiri]

"Unorganized" in Crusader Kings is a way to say that a religion lacks an established theological thought of any kind and it's basically a bunch of decentralized folklore traditions with shared myths rather than the things Christianity, Islam or even the way less centralized Indian faiths are (which describes Norse, Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and the diverse Western African faiths relatively well). It's a decent way to represent how European pagans in the Middle Ages were driven into accepting Christian missionaries in their lands because they offered them a kind of political legitimacy that the Old Gods weren't able to give, and why the Christian missionaries were seemingly so successful at preaching in pagan lands while the pagan followers struggled to oppose the ideas of the foreign preachers.

Well, we don't really know that. I mean, CK3 will be reworking the religious system so we don't really even know what the distinction means here.