Religions and Temples

[Alavaria]

(clicky - you mean you need to click too much or what? I've even checked dictionaries to understand, but they don't have much of this word)

Micromanagement. Also potentially having many priest agents filling up the menu (sometimes I fear for the game's stability with a massive roster of merchants, priests, spies and assassins when you scroll down the list)

[achilles-91]

Please consider removing (or at least reworking) priests, like you did with merchants. Those spam stacks of priests by AI are absolutly unfun and unrealistick. And if you want to have so much priests, you have to do to tons of unfun micromanagment. EB2 completly removed priests, and I have to say, religion works perfect. Although, conversion rate is way too slower, way slower.. In SSHIP i would vote for slower religion conversion, but not that much.

[Lifthrasir]

Yes, I've also noticed that weird AI behaviour consisting in stack of 8-12 priests on a single area. Though, I have no idea what causes this

[Alavaria]

Less priests would indeed change the calculus of conversion, being able to slide in 4->6->10+ priests into a settlement makes conversion very fast, and you don't need to worry about building the churches.

Also, if you're advancing, you can just convert as you go, any regions behind the frontline will fill up due to the "neighboring regions" all being of thesame religion. I think you can swiftly go from 0% to 50% and it will deal with the "worst" of the public order drawback.


Alternatively mass conquer people of the same religion as you... which is historical too I guess.

[Kilo11]

One thing I think would be interesting to try to add in some of the dynamics of religious conversion. Like, it is almost impossible to ever completely stamp out another religion in a province, but in the game this becomes inevitable at some point. By the same token, it is often the case that a new religion entering the scene will quickly gain a small cohort of hard believers (something like 10% or so) who convert over quickly. Usually it will be the bottom of society, who is fed up with the status quo (including the often traditionalist religious institutions) and hoping for any kind of change that might improve their lot.

The general thought I have in mind is to make the conversion rates for churches very high when the region religion includes almost no members of that churche's faith (0-15%), have it steady out for the in-between area (16-75%), and then drop to almost nothing for that last bit (76-100%). This would reflect the dynamics of conversion better, and also make it hard to completely eliminate other religions, as well as making it easier to get that first bit of believers on your side, both of which are more historical than this flat conversion rate we see in the game now. This would also be a fairly straightforward and simple thing to implement, requiring only three extra lines per church building in the EDB. Something like the following should do it:

;; If we are implementing this for Catholic factions, then
religion_level bonus 5 requires not region_religion catholic 15
religion_level bonus 2 requires not region_religion catholic 75
religion_level bonus 1 requires not region_religion catholic 100

Obviously, this would need to be adjusted depending on the level of church, but you get the main idea.

[Alavaria]

The standard way religion works is something like that, it works by converting fractions of people of "other religions" and thus slows down as your religion becomes more dominant.

This allows you to quickly "jump past" the zone of high religious unrest (0% to 50% of your own religon). By the time your stack of priests has spent a couple of turns, a 0% might be a 60% region, resulting in very little public order penalty (like 20%, instead of 80% or so at nearly 0 converted)

[Kilo11]

Hmm, thanks for info Alavaria. I did not know the exact mechanics of the conversion process, but now that you say it, I do seem to recall that first bump happening pretty quickly (as it should). I don't know about the slowing down, as I never really pay much attention once it's past around 50-60% my religion and unrest is no longer an issue, but the mechanic would seem to take care of that on its own. I still think it would be worth making some of the bonuses contingent on percentage of people already in your religion though, and have them shift as the percentages shift. It makes for a more dynamic experience, and models the real-life situation more cleanly. Something for the devs to discuss though, as the ultimate decision rests with them.