Religion: How will it work?

With the previous Total War titles that have included religion it has been pretty straight forward, send a priest in or build a church and wait years and years for the region to convert.

But with Napoleon covering such a small time period, how will religion be dealt with? Certainly it did still have a major impact during this time period, for example when Napoleon was in Egypt religion was a huge factor and almost led to revolts when the French flag was to be flown above every mosque. Examples in Europe can even be found where religion played a major part.
But at the same time, it is not reasonable or realistic to have the old system of churches (and it is already known priests are not in the game) that convert x% of people, since the game covers such a small period of time.

How do you think this issue will be dealt with in Napoleon?

Personally I would kind of like it to be neglected and left out of the game. But that would be pretty unrealistic because there would be no settlement disorder for it.

It should matter more in the Muslim world. Europe had been through the Enlightenment in the 18th century which had secularised many Europeans - though not always their governments.

Originally Posted by Geronimo2006

It should matter more in the Muslim world. Europe had been through the Enlightenment in the 18th century which had secularised many Europeans - though not always their governments.

Agreed

I don't remember reading about major religious issues in during the Napoleonic Wars, I think most were more nationalistic

Isn't CA taking out religous agents?

I was under the impression that religion would not play a role at all in NTW; the only agents we have are the Spy and the Gentleman or something like that.

Originally Posted by hitokiri2486

Isn't CA taking out religous agents?

I was under the impression that religion would not play a role at all in NTW; the only agents we have are the Spy and the Gentleman or something like that.

Yes they did say religious agents were to be taken out, so that led me to wonder if they would take out religion altogether in the game (hopefully). Perhaps in the Egypt campaign it can play a role, but in other parts of Europe it was never major enough to cause any major fighting (except France turning on the Papal States and Napoleon attacking the Papacy, but that was more financial).

I would like to see it taken out of the game mostly, as the conversion of a settlement within the timeframe of Napoleon is not plausible.

Perhaps religion will be replaced with some sort of nationalism that can be reduced by using spies or by buildings of some sort?

Wasn't Napoleon an atheist?

Originally Posted by Nizam89

Wasn't Napoleon an atheist?

Probably, but as Head of State of a Catholic nation he at least paid lip service to being a good Catholic; such as getting married by the Pope. Everything he did was for political effect and to maintain control. He only worshipped his own destiny.

Actually, Napy tried to get back into the graces of the church, contrary to the republicans before him that where not afraid to behead a cleric once in a while
At the same time, he made the "Concordat", that was in a lot of ways what the brits did when they founded the anglican state : the catholic church of france was under the control of the government, and the Vatican had to renounce to any attempt in meddling in the government affairs. (The secularism we know now in France was the result of a law in 1905.)

Anyway, France was an exception regarding religion (as it is still now) but saying religion wasnt an issue isnt true. While it's outside of the timeline, the creation of Belgium, while political, was under the cover of religion.

Sure religion was an issue, of course it was, as it is now. However, we have to take into account that it wasn't an overiding issue (at least in Europe). Spain and Portugal, both fiercly catholic nations, were allied to the protestant British. France, a (mostly) catholic nation, storming over Christendom. Alliances and rifts were much more because of politics in this new age of "enlightenment". As such religion shouldn't really be a part of the politics of the game. The little people still cared about it though.

To be honest, the balance CA had with religion in Europe was just about right in ETW. Max -2 for religious problems. But since it's not really an issue, why code it?

maybe instead of religion you could switch it to general political opinion, replacing churches with forums and stuff, and instead of priests you'd have political instigators, or something, to change people's political opinion, in order to accept your regime

just a thought

As in you'd have people like Thomas Paine sending out his pamphlets preaching equality and republicanism and the like?

i remember reading of Napoleon introducing himself as either a Muslim or a huge fan of Islam(someone confirm this), in his first speech to the Egyptians. he obviously knew that religion was a very important aspect for the middle easteners daily life.

may be just make the midd leasteners a bit hostile against the French.

Originally Posted by MehemtAli_Pasha

i remember reading of Napoleon introducing himself as either a Muslim or a huge fan of Islam(someone confirm this), in his first speech to the Egyptians. he obviously knew that religion was a very important aspect for the middle easteners daily life.

may be just make the midd leasteners a bit hostile against the French.

He hinted at the possibility of he and his army converting to Islam, but even the Clerics in Egypt knew it was just him blowing hot air out of his mouth, there was little chance of him converting and almost no chance of his army converting.

Originally Posted by burden010

As in you'd have people like Thomas Paine sending out his pamphlets preaching equality and republicanism and the like?

Yeah.

Depending on your faction's ideology, you would have a propaganda agent "converting" the territories to your ideology.
Countries with monarchies would have a Royalist ideology, whereas France would have Liberal ideology.

I think having nationalism would be more suited to the period

I think CA said that it removed the priests, religious buildings and so the religion, "because it doesn't fit the era". And that's a good thing, I think.

Well a more convinient thing would be to hust make region that have different culture,beliefs e.t.c. , more difficult to maintain order. I am pretty certain even Napoleon must have taken that into consideration. Now I can only quess that's why he did a single campaign at a time, since he couldn't maintain order on too many regions at once. Perhaps something along the lines of both Nationalism/Loyalty the people had for thier Country/Royalty. They could also add a new statistic called Cultural Differentiation. The more different for example further away both in geographical distance from your capital and in religion group, the more difficult to maintain public order. So Orthodox regions are closer to Catholic but further away to Muslim ones. In terms of code even RTW had a similar system with the player's distance from capital playing important role to his empire's Management. They could also make it that the closer that region is to your opponent's capital, the more difficult it will be to maintain public order, as long as that country's ruling regime remain intact.

hopefully they wil remove religion, it's just annoying waiting 30 turns for the churches to convert the religion then having to destroy them and then build something on it, it already takes long enough to settle down a settlement without religious unrest like distance to capital unhappiness completely unneccesary and annoying

Well maybe then they can make religious unrest checks only once every 4 turn (per month), since turns represent only a week. What I want to say is that they can "scale" it appropiately.

I'm sceptical as to if it will even work, let alone how it will function.