Religions

[Space Voyager]

Makes me so happy I have never bought Empires... This whole mod, that is, not religions.

[jackwang838]

Mongols believed in Shamanism, from the book "secret history of mongols" throughout Genghis's life, he was often believed what the Shaman was saying. Actually, Genghis' best childhood friend became the Shaman.

[James the Red]

I looked up Nestorian Christianity, it is very interesting, I had no idea that there was christian missionary work in china during the European dark ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism_in_China

I find it fascinating, how would it be represented? As a small minority religion in a few provinces with a few priests on the map?

[Augustus Lucifer]

Nestorian would have a reasonably small following and require state sponsorship to really prosper. I don't know enough about the various religions to approximate all the possible scenarios. Our religion system will hopefully allow for interesting possibilities though, there's a lot of outside the box thinking going into representation of the religious 'buildings'.

[Marcion]

Another shadow religion in Chinese history is Manichaeism. Hundreds of texts written in old Turkic/Uighur were found in Xinjiang in the early 20th century. I guess it and Buddhism must have been co-existant there in the years before the rise of Genghis, since the grottoes seem to have been co-habited by both "sanghas", though it probably wasn't endorsed as a state religion at that point.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Shadowcry]

Manichaeism was mostly gone from thsi period as a distinct religion. Much of its beliefs had already been absorbed into Daoism while the last remaining Uighur Khanate had mostly absorbed parts of Manicheaism into Buddhism, Christianity or Islam by this period. While an important religion, it was mostly submerged by this time.

[Nakandakari Lobato]

Just a short idea about the effect of religions. When I have played Kingdoms, I've noted the real lack of priests that can be recruited in the vanilla game. Think about the significance of religion, once buildings begin to be constructed and improved upon. I usually double the number in the export text file for buildings for all religious building to make the number more realistic. This also makes huge disorder issues with taking over enemy lands if they have been actively recruiting priests(imams). If you use the vanilla stats, and a priest dies, it may be a LONG time before you can recruit another. That's just not realistic, especially if you have an abbey or larger facility.

I hope that you consider doing this in AUH too.

Now in respect to Japanese religions, from what I have read, Buddhist monks could be both extremely helpful and extremely annoying and extremely problematic for the Japanese. You might make it a double edged sword. They could foment real disorder in cities where generals/governors have heretical or non-religious beliefs. Many times in literature (whether historically accurate or not) the monk acts as a mentor and civilizing force both for the leader as well as the community. Having more to recruit means sending pesky missionaries in to enemy lands to stir the kettle! That's a great way to probe the enemy lands.

NL

[James the Red]

Will there also be temples to Deities depending on the Culture? Like temples to Chinese deities when playing as the Song?

[pericles_plato]

So some of china would be christian in the early part of game? Since the missionaries were there.

[Yelü Dashi]

Eh ?

The mod is set in the 12th century.

A Nestorian (i.e Syrian in origin) form of Chrisitianity had penerated the steppe somewhat, but certainly not through proselytising. Christianity came much later to China proper.

[RollingWave]

Nestorian christianity arrived in China through the Silk road , either during the Tang dynasty or slightly earlier. the Tang court had sponsored it more or less. and there was a small following in some of the major cities (particularly those along the silk road) but after the Tang's influence waned and the Silk road's function decreased, so did this particular religion.

[pericles_plato]

Oh, cool. Looking forward to see what religions you put in here.

[James the Red]

Will there also be temples to Deities depending on the Culture? Like temples to Chinese deities when playing as the Song?

Come to think of it, I dont know anything about far eastern mythologies, besides that the Japanese have a Goddess named Amaterasu.

[virusscan123]

How about using it as culture/naturalisation rather than religion??

Religion never had as big an impact on Asian geopolitics as in Europe or Mid-east. Few rebelled for religious reasons, and even fewer war erupted between countries of different religions. There was no Pope, no Caliph, and I am pretty sure (but not absolutely sure) there was no concept of Holy War such as Jihad or Crusade.

No there is not any concept of "holy war" in the major east asian religions (referring to Buddhism, Daoism, Confucius-ism & probably shinto as well - not too sure about the rest); the prosecution of Buddhism during the Tong dynasty in China was mainly due to social reasons (many became monks just to not participate in social services, plus they get free offering of food as well). The evidence of that is out of all the Buddhist schools at that time in China, only Zen was left alone due to the fact that they do not believe in begging of food and had to farm for themselves.

If my memory serves me correctly there was never any conflict between any of the religions that turned into a full scale war between nations. The exception might be the persecution of Buddhism in Tibet around 800BC because the Emperor that time believed in Bon (the native religion of Tibet before Buddhism was introduced). An interesting note is that despite Tibetan Buddhism being fully Varjayana at that time, after the persecution a Mahayana monk helped its rebuild and hence accounts for the importance of both Mahayana & Varjayana practises in modern Tibetan Buddhism.

Anyways just want to say Hi to the forum, this is my first post (had been a lurker for some time now)
I must say this mod looks very promising! Good job!

I am Chinese and practise abit of both of Tibetan Buddhism & "Chinese" Buddhism, if the team needs any help with whatever I am more than happy to contribute!

[James the Red]

Is there a limit to how many different 'temples' (mutually exclusive building options") a faction can have?

[Augustus Lucifer]

Is there a limit to how many different 'temples' (mutually exclusive building options") a faction can have?

Not that I'm aware of. You could probably have hundreds, if that was your thing. There's limits on how many buildings you can have in the EDB though, and religion is only a small part of what buildings are used for, so that's kept in mind when allocating building tree slots.

Temples aren't tied to religious usages though. A building is made a temple by giving it the 'temple_' prefix(IIRC), but I haven't observed any religious effects from a building with no capabilities that has the prefix. The religious conversion is tied to a 'religion' line, which marks what religion it can convert to, and then a further capability -- religion_level -- is used to effect the % of per turn conversion in (I believe) 0.5% increments.

We aren't using the temple_ prefix for our religious buildings. We've crafted a self-imposed way of restricting religious building options that has more variation than simply preventing any religious building aside from one be built in any one area. We'll have a preview in the future which explains that system, once I get around to completing it, so I won't go into specifics just yet.

[James the Red]

What about that Tibetan religion, Bon? Is that being considered for a religion spot or being apart of Tibets Buddhism or something?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n

[Charging_Knight]

Will Hinduism be in, considering the Champa and Angkor kingdoms were Hindu...

[Augustus Lucifer]

What about that Tibetan religion, Bon? Is that being considered for a religion spot or being apart of Tibets Buddhism or something?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6n

Tibet will be Vajrayana Buddhist in the mod, which incorporates Bön in the Tibetan tradition. There was historically some notable conflict between the traditional Bön religion and the introduction of Buddhism, but this would have subsided some by our period since Buddhism will have been half a century old in Tibet and taking hold.

Will Hinduism be in, considering the Champa and Angkor kingdoms were Hindu...

Hinduism is currently planned for inclusion. The current religions are:

Mahayana Buddhism
Theravada Buddhism
Vajrayana Buddhism
Daoxue (Neo-Confucianism)
Tengriism
Islam
Hinduism
Nestorian Christianity
(+ Default/Heretic)

[James the Red]

so, I was thinking about how religion could be implemented. And I was wondering. What if there were different levels of religions? A 'factional religion' and the various agents would have 'personal religion'. The factional religion being the religion of his faction, which would have religious agents and such. But personal religions wouldn't have that, its just a trait characters can have and not something that is in the religious percentages or anything like that.

If this were to happen, then I guess the religions that have agents and stuff would be...

Mahayana Buddhism
Theravada Buddhism
Vajrayana Buddhism
Daoxue (Neo-Confucianism)
Tengriism
Hinduism
(+ Default/Heretic)

But characters in those factions might have 'personal religions' that differ from the factions, So a Song general would have Daoxue as his factions religion, but could have Islam as his 'personal religion'. A Mongolian general would have Tengriism as his factions religion, but could possibly have 'Nestorian Christianity' as his personal religion.

Having religion be like this would also allow Shintoism into the game, just not as something you convert the map too. Is that a good idea?