Imperator Dev Diary, 10th of February 2020

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Showing developer posts only. Show all posts in this thread.

Arheo

Game Director - Hearts of Iron
Paradox Staff
Feb 13, 2018
1.175
22.005
Hi all,

As the eagle-eyed amongst you noticed last week, I included a subtle hint upon the subject of today’s DD.

Accompanying the Deity rework that you have already been introduced to, we’re working on a dynamic Holy Sites feature. In keeping with the organic way that Pantheons and deities work, we wanted holy sites to be entirely within player control - something you could dedicate, destroy, and utilise, without having a strict, pre-existing list of sites from day 1.


How will they work?

Any territory can be designated a Holy Site to a Deity which exists as part of your pantheon, and which does not currently have a designated Holy Site. The territory needs to be of the same dominant parent religion as the deity, and there will be a substantial cost for doing so. There can only be one holy site for a deity in the world (consider them a parent temple): if you want to acquire the site for a deity in your pantheon yet it is owned by someone else, you’ll need to resort to more violent means.

If you own and control the holy site dedicated to a deity, the passive and active effects of that deity will be increased. They will have a ‘level’ which is tied directly to the city status of the territory in which they are placed. This ties into some further goodies which I’ll explain more about in a future diary.

You can, of course own holy sites dedicated to Deities that are not part of your pantheon, though you will receive no additional bonuses for doing so.


What about historical sites?

There will be a bunch of pre-scripted holy sites such as the temple of Apollo at Delphi, or the Asclepeion at Epidaurus. Many deities will not have pre-scripted sites.


Can we destroy holy sites, once they’re created?

You will be able to desecrate holy sites, effectively removing the dedication for ephemeral bonuses, and allowing the site to be rededicated elsewhere. This will harm your relations with countries who worship this deity as part of their pantheon.


As a bonus, here’s a WIP wireframe of how your new Religion View might look, after the 1.4 update:


Zkmi1-DVwaAj9tPHK9vWJh0tx1VuHwy8dAaoESiBl7EtkkQwe1IuflG6a4EkSrl7QX1q6hyq2YCkAq_pnql0_MbCyOzvgbIjU4WaHDVTPyedMrgZ267BVlbOxMdcUT4vVCxijq6e



Next week, we’ll be back to have a look at some of the Missions that will be coming as part of the paid Content Pack: Magna Graecia, that will accompany the 1.4 release, as well as a look at the revised holdings mechanic, which contains a new take on character land ownership.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I hate to be that person but... is there any historical precedent in history for this? This is making religion way more important than it actually was during the period.

Yes. Patronizing specific gods and building up costly cult centers for them is very much in line with the political role that religion played in the era :)
See Pyrrhus renovations at Dodona, The Ptolemaic shrines to Alexander, etc
 
What does this mean for the current embellish the temple to Optimus Maximus decision that Rome has?

This is actually a good question. We had not planned a special deity for it or anything, but this might be a cool opportunity to do something. I will see if I have time to change it into something new and fitting the system :)
 
oh sweet, I like this, looking forward to going full Ashoka and spending all my time and money building new holy sites to the Buddha

Question about the screenshot, assuming its correct, it looks like 3 of your patron dieties all share the same holy site, which makes sense historically, many of the largest riches temple complexes had temples to multiple gods, but how does this work mechanically? Can you just stack all your gods in one city, say Rome, with all its wealth and spender and the imports of my vast empire, or will I need to spread all my gods out into different temples instead of building just one really sick temple, or is it like a religious restrictions? So you can stack Hellenistic gods together but not cross religions, or can you, like Ptomlemy would.

Since that's a UI mock up, I'd be very wary of reading anything about how mechanics work from it. I wouldn't expect we could stack holy sites in the same city, but it'd be nice if we could.
 
Problem with that is then you just make it a fancy temple. Pretty sure this is supposed to be "the" holy site. And frankly I think this mechanic is more interesting when it's more limited.

Yes this is not to be read as the only place where the god is worshipped (also why you can have a god in your pantheon without owning its holy site) but the main center of worship in the entire world :)
 
Thanks for the reply.

It was more the desecrating of holy sites and the opinion impact of that. I don't recall any incident of that in ancient history - the desecration and the collective outrage from that via other nations.

In anything Rome was an interesting example of it being multi-faith, how it incorporated various different religions from different parts of Europe and the Med into its pantheon.

Mind that this is not a huge opinion modifier, but it does exist (and international outrage within a religious community is not unheard of in the era, we are not talking crusades here).
If anything this update makes it easier to play a multi-faith country, as there is nothing stopping you from worshipping gods from multiple religions in your pantheon and patronizing their respective holy sites :)
 
Question about the screenshot, assuming its correct, it looks like 3 of your patron dieties all share the same holy site.

The way the mechanic works you cannot have more than one Holy Site in the same spot. :)
Multiple gods in the same territory could be interesting but would present some challenges as well. If you want to have a cluster of Holy Sites for your Pantheon there is nothing stopping you from setting up these sites close to eachother (as long as there aren't any present for your gods already).
 
Im sry to ask again but im not sure if my comment got lost in the number of comment but, one thing I didnt fully understand yet was the thing with the seasons and so on. So 1.4 will come with the religions changes or will it also include the culture changes or is this for 1.5? Kinda lost the track on this season thing. One season one update? Or more updates? Also will each season or update contain a dlc?
Still looking forward to the update and I hope the Magna Graecia Dlc comes with like tarentum, syracus missions :)

Answer would be rly appreciated, I promise I will buy next dlc :D

The focus for 1.4 is Religion. Culture is not the focus of this update.
 
Also hoping we can have different holy sites for Greek, Roman and Etruscan gods. Especially when the game starts, they were very different, and given that they have different names, it should be possible (for instance, Mars should absolutely have Rome as a holy site, but that seems less appropriate for Ares).

They are different deities in the game, so they will be able to have different holy sites.
 
So some questions:

1: Will each of the deities get unique icon/images in the update?

2: Will Zeus' holy site be the Temple of Zeus in Olympia and Athena's the Pantheon in Athens?

3: This is half a suggestion, half a question, but with Holy Sites now being a thing, can it also be possible that whenever we build a regular temple in a city, it might be possible to dedicate the temple (or at least the first one we build in a province) to a specific god for a additional cost and possible small bonus?

1. No, with the amount of deities in the game, this is not even remotely feasible.
2. Probably.
3. No.
 
In response to the first answer:

1) can we throw money at you for flavour DLC to include things like more unique deity graphics (or selected digital distributors, I don't think I can throw that far)
2) can it be opened up for diversification through mods?

Holy sites look cool. 10/10 would desecrate again.

1. Maybe?
2. The system supports individual icons per deity if you feel like modding it that way, and have several thousand spare hours of painting time.
 
That is actually not the case presently. Just as with all current Paradox Games, the DLCs in use for any multiplayer is dictated by the DLCs that the host owns. Punic Wars included (have tested this personally already)
And if this would happen please make sure to post about it on the bug forums because it should never be the case.
 
The new mechanic for religions will need some thinking to work well with more innovative religions lile judaism, zoroastrianism and buddhism

To do some of the mentioned religions justice, we'd need a new system. That's not going to be part of this update, but something I'm considering for the future. There's only so many hours in the day :(
 
I would swear @Trin Tragula mentioned a few weeks back that judaism would get special treatment...

What I said was that Judaism is not a focus at this point but it will have some rules that separates it a bit from the rest.
As Arheo says we would need a whole update to do Monotheistic religions justice most likely :)
 
I believe that when they focus on monotheistic religions they will take the opportunity to introduce Christianity, it is understood that they do not do so in this patch.

Anyway I hope that monotheistic religions have something unique in patch 1.4.

By the way I take the opportunity to comment on a minor detail about religions. At this time not all religions made sacrifices, would it be very complicated to change the icon and the description of stability? I give an example. If there is a religion that did not make sacrifices but adored nature then change the icon of the pig for a tree and instead of saying sacrifice call it honor nature. Something like that is just an idea.

Given IR ends in 27 BC, if they include Christianity they'd have move the end date.
 
By the way I take the opportunity to comment on a minor detail about religions. At this time not all religions made sacrifices, would it be very complicated to change the icon and the description of stability? I give an example. If there is a religion that did not make sacrifices but adored nature then change the icon of the pig for a tree and instead of saying sacrifice call it honor nature. Something like that is just an idea.

We're going to be doing something very much along these lines, yes.