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Greetings!

Today I want to bring up some minor, but still very flavorful, changes and fixes we’ve done to a few religions. Most of what I’m about to present is the courtesy of our talented and passionate betas, who suggest a lot of good improvements!

Manichean
The Manichean religion, which in-game is part of the Zoroastrian Group and mainly present on the Steppes, has been changed to be more historical and just generally more fleshed-out. For example, rulers of the Manichean faith can no longer take concubines, can now have female temple holders and get access to Reincarnation events. The religion also receives a bunch of new goodies:
  • A ‘Bema’ religious festival decision
  • A formable Holy Order (The Army of Light)
  • A religious head with an accompanying title (The Manichean Church)
manichean goodies.png


Khurmazta
The Khurmazta religion is a new heresy in the Zoroastrian group, and is mainly present in Khiva and the new Pamir areas among the Sogdian people who live there. Rulers that adhere to the Khurmazta faith can choose to embrace a Patron Deity, who all give various bonuses much like the Hindu patron deities do.
khurmazta.png


Nestorian
The Nestorian religion, which is present in parts of Arabia, India and Africa, has also been fleshed out with new details. There is now a decision to form their Holy Order (The Order of Saint Addai) and, while not strictly relating to Nestorianism, we’ve added a new culture that is primarily Nestorian - the Assyrian culture. The Assyrian culture is present in the area around Baghdad/Syria.
assyrian.png


General
One of the main things that caused India to be very stagnant and overly resistant to invasions was the fact that they started out with very powerful Holy Orders right out the gate. We’ve reconstructed these so that you can form them under certain circumstances, and they will automatically form when India is under threat, i.e. by letting some of the major cities fall to invaders.
updated_ashoka_text.jpg


Also, a lot of religions have had their Holy Sites moved around. The Indian religions, Nestorianism and Manichean in particular. They’ve primarily moved into the Purang county in Tibet, to the holy mount Kailash.
khailash.png
 
Yey! Finally we have a dev diary :D
 
Just like Zunism I've never heard about Khurmazta before. Paradox games making me learn, woo!
 
Will Assyrian be in the Arabic culture group?

This is probably a very small thing but having violet Assyrian culture reminds me of the fact that East African cultures like Nubian have really similar colors to Arabic, you'd think they were part of it
 
Are Manicheans now a separate religion within the Mazdan group or are they still a Zoroastrian heresy?
 
Very nice that manicheanism gets some attention. It is interesting faith that has had influence beyond it's adherents.
 
Manichean
The Manichean religion, which in-game is part of the Zoroastrian Group and mainly present on the Steppes, has been changed to be more historical and just generally more fleshed-out. For example, rulers of the Manichean faith can no longer take concubines, can now have female temple holders and get access to Reincarnation events. The religion also receives a bunch of new goodies:
  • A ‘Bema’ religious festival decision
  • A formable Holy Order (The Army of Light)
  • A religious head with an accompanying title (The Manichean Church)
This right here has made the next patch already the best patch yet. :D
Also will the Religious Head of Manichean be able to declare a Great holy war?
 
Are there any religious changes planned to the Druze and Si'a in general?
Maybe! We haven't done anything yet, but seeing as we've tweaked a lot of religions already it's not outside of our scope :)

Will Assyrian be in the Arabic culture group?
Assyrians are in the Byzantine culture group and use Andalusian portraits to show the cultural mixing that occurred after Muslims conquered Mesopotamia. A few playable Assyrians appear in later start dates, where historical governors under Mongols have been given counties to run :)

Are Manicheans now a separate religion within the Mazdan group or are they still a Zoroastrian heresy?
They are still a heresy
 
Maybe! We haven't done anything yet, but seeing as we've tweaked a lot of religions already it's not outside of our scope :)
Fantastic! Going along with the spirit of these changes, I think Druze drop Polygamy, gain Reincarnation, and should also lose the Decadence mechanics. They make little sense for some Muslims, not to mention the non-Muslim Druze!

Other than that, Druze is not a missionary religion as it is. It's difficult to become Druze if you are not born Druze. This is why the religion never had a chance to spread, but also why it survived so long! Which is why in my opinion there should be a different mechanic for them - perhaps using Societies - not to "secretly convert" but to give other characters a "Friend of the Druze" trait and have them be able to marry Druze and have the child be born into the religion. Don't know how hard it would be to implement.

Alternatively there could be an option to "reform" the religion to make it a more missionary religion, but that should be hard to accomplish.

By the way, having such a society would work for the Fatimids too, but more like a secret society, since they overtly pretended to be regular Shi'a but had esoteric practices and beliefs only for the inner circle.
 
That is all very nice but when you do the religious tweaks, could you please add more crusade targets weight? I know you have already made some (around Reaper?) but crusades for Indian kingdoms happen all the time. There is this thread "Great holy wars" made recently in which the guy complains about a Jewish GHW for Andhra. I do not have any save myself but are saves really needed if that happens that often?
 
Great, but what about Suomenusko, which badly needs flavour, and can reformed pagans be allowed to proselytize in other countries, given that they're remodeling their faith to be more like the Christian church?
 
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Maybe it is right time to ask for change Egyptian culture info two separte ones:Misr/Masr in Arabian/Levantine Group and Coptic in Byznatine/West African group. Both cultures are really different. By culture I mean traditions, religion, music, writing, identity, roots (arabian vs old egyptian+hellenic mix)

Edit: I meant East African of course
 
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