[Preview] Religion Overhaul - What we are working on...

[m_1512]

Greetings all, I thought to make a small preview of what we are currently working on, so you have an idea of what is to come in the next release. The main spotlight, as you would have guessed is an overhaul for religions in the game. Fun fact is that this very idea is what created the vision for this mod. Let us start.

Currently, the religions in vanilla come with a single effect each. We felt that this was not at all sufficient as it put the significance and importance of religions to the back seat. To continue, the effects too were a mixed bunch, some would seem logical, and some not so much. For example, Roman Paganism gave a sanitation bonus while Christianity simply spread itself at a huge cost to money. This was something that we could not really come to grips as Roman Paganism would have been costly with its grand temples, and lavish rituals and orgies. And churches then would have been simple and not of the grand scale of the medieval era. Plus, the Latin and Greek schism is anachronistic as both empires at this time had the same religion and were very much Roman. And now to the changes.

Religions instead of having one defining effect, would have not two, not two, and not even three, but 6 effects based on a combination of traits. Traits such as did the religion then preach an offensive approach to war or a defensive one? Or did the religion allow amassing of wealth or did it encourage frugality? This would make you consider religions as a vital aspect of your game and make you plan on what you do with them. Plans also include making conversion involve proper effort so you have to actually consolidate new regions.

Here's an image of the 'Roman Melting Pot' I made while we planned for the overhaul:

Legend
Tyrian Purple - Nicene Christian
Purple - Antiochene Christia
Orange - Arian Christian
Red - Roman Paganism
Green -Celtic Paganism
Teal - Judiasm

I'd bet the picture should have intrigued you. But yes, our current plans include changes to religion effects, restructuring religions, and even exploring the possibility of adding new ones, and other gameplay changes. And the example of restructuring is shown above, replacing Latin with Nicene, and Greek with Antiochene. And if we find a way to add a new religion to the campaign, Judaism would be one obvious choice.

And that's all for this preview. Hope you enjoyed it. We appreciate your feedback and support.

[Smiling Hetairoi]

Picture doesn't work sadly.

[Augustusng]

Picture works fine for me.

By the way, you might be wondering about the addition of "Antiochene Christianity" to replace the "Greek" vanilla one. We felt 395 was a bit too early to call it "Nestorian," but if we do end up adding new religions, we'll also include "Alexandrine Christianity." Now... the problem is that neither of these were officially distinct from the main branch of Christianity just yet, but we thought it better to include them to show that even though the Church was officially united, regional differences were starting to show under the influence of the bishops of Antioch and Alexandria, and the use of Syriac/Coptic language for Church services and translations of the Bible in those regions. Maybe it might make more sense for this sort of thing in Justinian's era, but the game doesn't really allow for "emergent" religions, as far as I know anyway...

[m_1512]

Theoretically, it might just be possible as we'll need to include the religion as a hidden one in startpos, and then maybe write half a dozen scripts to make it emerge in-game. Not to mention what huge effort it should be in testing.

[Augustusng]

Well, I notice the original preview picture here is missing. Here are two new ones to make up for it.

Well okay, the first one maybe isn't that interesting. You may have seen a similar one before in my building mod.

Fertility Map

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Religion Map

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[zombieflanders]

I used the FOW removal submod from the BACAI project to create versions of the map showing everything. I had to paste the bottom of a second image for both, so they're slightly bigger than 1920x1080, but the spoiler tags should automatically resize them.

Fertility:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Religion:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Augustusng]

Cool! Nice to see the rest of the map too.

EDIT: On a side note, some provinces display higher than their base fertility on that map - Sahara because of the Garamantian faction trait, Arabia Felix because of the Ma'rib Dam, and some Sassanid territories because I gave them the Garamantian faction trait too...