Religions and Temples

[Kilo11]

Hey guys,

I have been considering whether it is sensible to have the temples in SSHIP be set in such a way that they are auto-destroyed upon a faction of another religion taking that settlement. I mean, though there wasn't a great deal of religious diversity in many areas during this period, there were notable exceptions to this, like the Holy Lands where many faiths coexisted with their own temples (even if they did so with a bit of tension) or even the somewhat mythicized but nonetheless supported "Convivencia" era in southern Spain under the Moors. I also think it would add an interesting twist to the gameplay if the player can decide him- or herself whether to destroy the existing temples and convert the whole population or to attempt to create a state that welcomes multiple faiths. It would certainly add a challenge, what with the added religious unrest, but the church buildings also have public order bonuses as well that would partly balance that out. This would also make everything more coherent, because as it is, if I as the Fatimids conquer Jerusalem, the church there is destroyed, but not the Holy Sepulchre! Same for all other wonder churches; they belong to a specific religion, but stay even when the basic temple is destroyed. The only thing I am not sure of is whether this might play some hell with the AI factions, if they are unable to cope with the other religion buildings, destroying them when necessary, leading to increased unrest and potential revolt among their settlements.

I know that it is a simple task to make all the temples not be automatically destroyed when the settlement is taken by someone else, so that's not an issue. I think that limiting construction to only those temples of your faith is also sensible, so not much needs to be changed in the EDB for that. Though it is beyond the scope of this proposal, I could also see this being extended in the future via some cool and clever scripts for adding bonuses or penalties for either being too inclusive or proselytistic. Another little bonus of this proposal is that it would necessarily involve compressing the city/castle temple lines into a single one, saving a bunch of building trees that could be used elsewhere. Finally, if they are handled in this way, all of the wonder churches could be pushed into the end of their respective temple lines, saving all those building trees as well.

Any thoughts are more than welcome, especially from the modding team.

[Lifthrasir]

Not sure to get your point. Wonders were not always destroyed. Most of the time they were "converted". The best example is Hagia Sophia which became a great mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. Another example is Saladin who kept all religious buildings after conquering Jerusalem. In some other areas, rulers were more tolerant regarding other religions such as Spain or Sicily for instance.
However, I don't think it is possible to change the bonus of such building depending on the religion of the settlement owner

[Ngugi]

You can give the same building different effects depending on what faction who owns it; and in case you have religion switching ingame you can either to a script about it, or easier even if less direct make a certain % of a relgion required for an effect to apply for a faction who owns the building (like with unit recruitment).

[Kilo11]

Hey Lifth,

That is actually my point, that wonders, which are also churches, stay (as one would expect) but that "normal" churches are destroyed. I mean, if the Holy Sepulchre can stick around under Muslim rule, why not a Catholic church or cathedral as well? My point is that the presence or absence of churches from another faith should be in the player's hands, especially as it would present an interesting and tough choice in many scenarios (having a mosque in my catholic settlement will slow conversion down, making things initially more difficult, but later on those public order benefits might be really useful). Not to mention, I think many players would simply find the idea cool, to be able to allow the conquered people to keep their own faith, and then if they do convert, have it be from natural forces (bigger church, bigger conversion), rather than a forced proselytization where the local religious buildings are torn down and replaced.

Regarding the religion bonuses, they definitely can be switched on and off for different settlement owners, and I know how to do it! They can also be set to different things for the different factions, or be conditional on other buildings being present, or certain religion levels in the region. Seriously, I have been figuring out how everything works. I am starting to feel moderately competent

[Lifthrasir]

@ Kilo11, I see your point. We quickly talked about something similar a few months ago with JoC. We're both interested by this BC submod. I really like what WeekendGeneral has done with the religions.

@ Ngugi, thanks for your input

[Jurand of Cracow]

My views on the religions:
- I don't have much against the traditional way of spreading a religion: religious buildings and the priests,
- to my mind, the conversion process is too fast if we compare it to the history. The Muslims lingered on Sicily for another 150 years, the pagans in Poland for 200 years, the Greeks in Southern Italy for 300 or more. Even if we consider just getting to be a dominant religion, it usually took 2+ generations. All in all, I think the conversion process should be much slower and the option in the SS6.4 "Slower assimilation" went in the very good direction.
- to this end, I thought about two things: lowering the religious benefits from the buildings and lowering the number of priests available. However, it seems that Lifth and MWY didn't enjoy these ideas, so I dropped them. I'm not bringing them up now, but I just want to voice my preferences: slower assimilation.
- I don't have any opinion (yet) on keeping the buildings of the other religions.
JoC

As always, I think the principles of any change would be:
- it's better to be roughly right than perfectly wrong;
- the SSHIP is balanced: think about keeping that balance;
- the major advantage of the SSHIP is that's stable: it's paramount not to break it;
- think about AI: if he would handle it;
- keep the SS logic: changes should be intuitively grasped by the players;
- minimality: change the least is needed so that the SS-core stays and the players feel familiar;
- efficiency: try shooting two birds with one stone, the fewer code-lines the better.

[Kilo11]

With regards to the "principles of change" JoC brings up, I think the idea I have in mind is actually bang on, aside perhaps from the AI aspect, as I have no idea how that would pan out and requires some playtesting first.
-It's definitely more "right" to have the temples stay put and be optionally destructible, rather than having it be a fixed effect of conquest that all foreign religious buildings are destroyed
-Having temples of different religions is self-balancing, in that it pushes religious unrest up but also gives a public order bonus --> also provides an interesting choice for the player, weighing short term harms against longer-term stability
-I have tested this a bit, and it seems to be fully stable. Moreover, there is nothing in the EDB or other files that would seem to provide any element of instability
-Not sure about AI --> needs some testing
-The logic of the game seems to me to be mainly aimed at better gameplay and more historicity; this would get both in one shot
-It's a pretty small change (took me about 10 minutes to get it all working for temple_catholic, and playable without crashing)
-It cuts the number of religious building trees in half, meeting JoC's idea of efficiency, and this also gives some wiggle room for future development of the mod, by making space for some new maybe faction-specific buildings.

[Lifthrasir]

Just to clarify JoC post: I'm not against lowering the religion conversion

I'm also taking this opportunity to ask people here if anyone has input about the religions rates for the areas covered by SSHIP and for the 12th century. For instance, what was the rate of Jews in Western Europe? What was the rate of Christians and Pagans in Eastern Europe? What was the proportion between Sunni and Shia for the Muslim countries? etc...
Thanks in advance.

[Kilo11]

I also think that lowering the conversion would be interesting. It would also make it more important to actually move priests around to get that scripture out I remember in vanilla I would always just recruit one priest per settlement (maybe two if the place was 100% not my religion) and then let the conversion happen, without giving a second thought. Lower conversion rates is more historical and makes gameplay more challenging interesting.

Regarding history and dispersion rates, I don't know about much of the different groups, but I am sure that most Shia Muslims at that time would have been concentrated in the Levant, Mesopotamia (lower, I think), and near Persia. As far as I can recall, the Fatimids were also Shia, which helped push that sect further west and south. However, I don't know what percentage of the population would have been Shia or Sunni, just that Shia was "dominant" in those places, whatever that might mean.

[Lifthrasir]

Shia was dominant in Egypt during the Fatimids but Sunni took over when Saladin took the power and let the last Caliph died without any replacement (on the Shia side) and for the period convered by SSHIP.
Mesopotamia was definitively Sunni. Persia also. It was Shia earlier and then later again. But still for that period of SSHIP, I think that Sunni was dominant. I'm not sure for Almoravids and Almohads in Morocco and for Seljuks of Rum but think that they (Rum) should have been Sunni as well.
But what I'm also looking for is the percentage of all religions for all areas. For instance, Persia was mostly Sunni. But I'm sure that there was still a weak percentage of Shia, Jews, etc... Same about the Levant where I think almost all religions should be represented. I'd really like to have such figures to see how to implement a better representation of the different religions in game (meaning also a possible creation of new one).

[j.a.luna]

Mmm Lifth this would be interesant election of make new religion, for example jews and separated muslim religion in sunni and shia( same case with catholic and orthodox)
This would do more inmersion for the game and more difficult control the settlements due to variety of religions( real and logic case)
I am in favour of low the rate of religion conversion, in Spain for example in many south settlements( Andalucia) muslims were great part of population and in a few turns in the game should not be conversed to christianism all population, should be in many years...and due to this you should have strong garrison for control settlements with a lot of people of different religion(public order) also in some regions included Spain and Jerusalem if you want maintain your religion you must pay an extra income... maybe you could make some script,building or something for the player can choose if keep different religions but with extra income or go out( religion conversion faster) the infidels and less income...

[Lifthrasir]

You should check the BC submod I've linked in post #5. His work about how to consider religions is really welldone.

[j.a.luna]

You should check the BC submod I've linked in post #5. His work about how to consider religions is really welldone.

You could include it in the next version, it is really well done

[Lifthrasir]

It doesn't work that way. First, we need to decide to use it. Then get the permission from the creator and finally adapt it to SSHIP. And that might be some work

[Kilo11]

I'm not familiar with the submod, and too engrossed in the latest version of SSHIP to give something new a try, but does it involve any way to reduce/offset religious unrest by some process of assimilation or tolerance? I know that there were few instances of richly mixed poopulations which were sustainably stable, without unrest or insurrection, but there were still some cases, and it would be cool if the player had the option to have a multi-ethnic multi-religious kingdom that does not attempt to force conversion of everyone to one faith. It can still be difficult and fragile to accomplish such a thing, but it would be cool if that were a possibility, which right now is not really the case. That's one of the reasons I advocated above scrapping the auto-destroy aspect of religious buildings, so the player could try to build such a kingdom.

[Lifthrasir]

That's my understanding of that submod.

[MWY]

Hey Lifth,

That is actually my point, that wonders, which are also churches, stay (as one would expect) but that "normal" churches are destroyed. I mean, if the Holy Sepulchre can stick around under Muslim rule, why not a Catholic church or cathedral as well? My point is that the presence or absence of churches from another faith should be in the player's hands, especially as it would present an interesting and tough choice in many scenarios (having a mosque in my catholic settlement will slow conversion down, making things initially more difficult, but later on those public order benefits might be really useful). Not to mention, I think many players would simply find the idea cool, to be able to allow the conquered people to keep their own faith, and then if they do convert, have it be from natural forces (bigger church, bigger conversion), rather than a forced proselytization where the local religious buildings are torn down and replaced.

Because realistically, those buildings would convert people to catholics. Which is not in the engines power to represent. You can only slow the conversion down which is way less impactful. So you would also need to tone down the boni. And the player could still abuse this by getting money for erasing the religious buildings (which are quite expensive). Having said that, I'm open to a change like that.

[Alavaria]

Because realistically, those buildings would convert people to catholics. Which is not in the engines power to represent.

Yeah, it isn't like the RTW engine where you have specific Religion AB conversion and Religion XY conversion. It's only "convert to owning faction's religion" so it's pretty much always a question only of how much it costs to convert faster.

Priest squads are quite effective, if somewhat very clicky (you can put them in your army stack though, which is one way to deal with it)

[Jurand of Cracow]

Yeah, it isn't like the RTW engine where you have specific Religion AB conversion and Religion XY conversion. It's only "convert to owning faction's religion" so it's pretty much always a question only of how much it costs to convert faster.
Priest squads are quite effective, if somewhat very clicky (you can put them in your army stack though, which is one way to deal with it)

I think from the historical perspective it was not only the question "how much it costs to convert faster" as it was also "how much faster it's possible". Many (most) of the rulers wanted to convert populations and would even pay for it - the problem is the people faith was to be bought but change over the decades or centuries. And for some even some thousands years were not enough (Jewish exist until today without having rulers for most of the period, or Zoroastrians still living in relatively small numbers in the world). And to my mind the proper reflection of the slow pace of religious change should be reflected in the SSHIP - it's too fast here.

(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)

I'm not familiar with the submod, and too engrossed in the latest version of SSHIP to give something new a try, but does it involve any way to reduce/offset religious unrest by some process of assimilation or tolerance? I know that there were few instances of richly mixed poopulations which were sustainably stable, without unrest or insurrection, but there were still some cases, and it would be cool if the player had the option to have a multi-ethnic multi-religious kingdom that does not attempt to force conversion of everyone to one faith. It can still be difficult and fragile to accomplish such a thing, but it would be cool if that were a possibility, which right now is not really the case. That's one of the reasons I advocated above scrapping the auto-destroy aspect of religious buildings, so the player could try to build such a kingdom.

Obviously, a good material of a submod to check how does it play in the game.

But what I'm also looking for is the percentage of all religions for all areas. For instance, Persia was mostly Sunni. But I'm sure that there was still a weak percentage of Shia, Jews, etc... Same about the Levant where I think almost all religions should be represented. I'd really like to have such figures to see how to implement a better representation of the different religions in game (meaning also a possible creation of new one).

Exactly this. I trust the creators of the SSHIP to have made some research (and good guess) but if there're people reading the books on some regions then they may find critical studies on these numbers (but please don't quote numbers from medieval chronicles written by monks who didn't know anything about the reality).

I gather information on the provices in this thread, so I may also include the religions' percentages.

[Lifthrasir]

I'd prefer to keep info about religions here as that's basically a dedicated thread for that topic