5 religious tenets instead of 3 would be much better

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I'd rather have better tenets and keep the limit at 3.
I guess it would be cool if there was a game rule about this limit. Three is default, but you can also choose 5, which disables achievements.

EDIT: What Ezumiyr said a moment before me. :D
 
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Forcing players to make hard choices is generally a good thing. Additionally fewer tenets makes them more meaningful instead of being one of 5+.
 
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That's Tenets vs Doctrines, in a sense.
(Although Doctrines can impact gameplay in a major way, but they do seem of less importance than tenets)
While the UI emphasizes them a lot less, I'd argue that doctrines tend to have more gameplay effect than most tenets, currently. For instance, monogamy/polygamy/concubinage and gender-dominance both probably have more consistent effects than any tenet* in the game, at the moment. Even Communion only becomes especially significant when combined with the Head of Faith doctrine.

Most of the tenets are largely flavor-focused with small mechanical effects. For instance, Esotericism (one of my favorites, and one of the better ones of the "minor" category). It adds a virtue (wiseman) and a way to get it fairly consistently. That's a nice, consistent bonus (gaining a virtue gives you +10 opinion and +1 piety/month, which is quite useful), but it's hardly something that makes the game feel different. And a lot of the doctrines are significantly worse in that respect. By comparison, "I can only land men, and default to male preference inheritance" vs. "Both sexes are treated equally for those purposes" is a tangible effect that makes gameplay significantly different in several, obvious ways.

Even the Asatru, with their new, unique "Great Blot" tent, are basically just "Human Sacrifice with the ability to throw an extra special feast every once and a while (that is currently bugged, but that's a side issue)."

I believe that the idea was that the doctrines would define most things, and that the Tenets would make the religions feel more unique and flavorful. Which is why it's a problem that most tenets don't really feel unique and flavorful (although the lack of flavor/uniqueness is a complaint about many aspects of the game), but I suspect adding more tenets per religion would make that problem even worse.


*The only possible exceptions would be the Warmonger and Pursuit of Power tenets, which unlock the ludicrously cheap and overpowered Conquest CB, but that's an issue for a different thread. It's no coincidence that Pursuit of Power in particular tends to be the min-maxers bread and butter.
 
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While I'm not opposed to increasing the number of tenets, one should be aware that having more tenets per religion is not like a magic wand you can wave at the current religious system and instantly make it better. Having more tenets will drive tenets from being these purportedly big driving issues towards more like extra spice or nuance. More flexibility and nuance often results in less definition, as we've seen in CK3's system overall compared to CK2: while there are vastly more religions with their own unique combination of mechanics, the small differences between them make them seem more like pre-defined points on a continuum than actually interesting entities in their own right.

My suggestion would be that instead or in addition to adding tenet slots, many tenets should be moved to religion-specific or universal doctrines (as appropriate). Tenet slots should be reserved for things that unlock "big mechanics" for religions in my opinion.
 
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I'd prefer that Paradox overhaul the tenet mechanic altogether. Communion, a tenet that forms a fundamental part of the church at this time should not be lumped together with Taqiya for Shi'ites. One of them is simply less significant and should be treated as perhaps a minor tenet. Maybe 2 major tenets, and 3 minor ones for things like Jizyah, Taqiya, etc. In turn, they should balance the larger tenets.
 
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That's open to debate.

Let's say there are 20 tenets to chose from (not the exact number, but since there are some restricted ones, and some mutually-exclusive ones, let's simplify).
With 3 tenets, you can make 1140 different combinations. With 5 tenets, you can make 15504 combinations. 15k is more than 1k, so it's better, and make religions vary more... but does it really ?

Let's say that out of the 20 tenets, 1 gives the ability to launch Holy Wars.
With 3 tenets, you can make 190 different combinations that include Holy Wars. That's 17% of all possible combinations.
With 5 tenets, you can make 4845 different combinations that include Holy Wars. That's 31% of all possible combinations.

So you suddenly go from about than 1 in 5 religions in the game waging Holy Wars, to aoubt 1 in 3.
Does this really make for more variety ?


I think there are so many options to chose from that the point of restricting a faith to 3 tenets is to force to make a choice - and in some cases such as this one, that makes for more variety in playstyles, and more replayability.

Let’s say there are 53 tenets (the actual number). So with 3 tenets you have about 140.5K possible unique faiths. With 5 tenets you have about 344.5M. So what’s bigger 100 thousand or 300 million?

Moving on, most faiths are not unique. It’s a misleading argument. Because different faiths of the same religion typically share more than they disagree on and because certain aspects of the religion are far too important to not include, in reality only one tenet varies between faiths. That’s not variety, that’s not interesting. If you increased the number to 5, those 2 or 3 tenets all the Buddhists share can be contrasted with the 2 or 3 they do not. As opposed to the present game where each Buddhist faith feels like an arbitrary subset of the same thing. Sorry you cannot have monasteries because well I already gave them to that group and you both already have dharma so gotta be different somehow.

Instead of making religions feel and play differently the current game makes them all play and feel the same. The religions are not fully fleshed entities but arbitrary collections of a few bonuses and drawbacks; all so limited in scope that it’s immaterial anyway. This is great if you’re trying to make a statement on humanism and how all religions have more in common than they don’t, it’s not great if you’re trying to portray a medieval strategy rpg.

Instead of assembling different ingredients to make a unique dish the game feels like taking an animal and arbitrarily cutting off 3 body parts. No you don’t keep the sheep, you keep that ear, leg, and liver. Isn’t that so different from the guy with the leg, nose, and spleen of a deer!
 
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eh, not all. Most should stay with 3. But I 100% think that the major religions (eg. Catholicism) should get an extra one to actually make them unique, ideally something that's only available to them too so can't be copied in a created/reformed religion.
 
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Let’s say there are 53 tenets (the actual number). So with 3 tenets you have about 140.5K possible unique faiths. With 5 tenets you have about 344.5M. So what’s bigger 100 thousand or 300 million?

Moving on, most faiths are not unique. It’s a misleading argument. Because different faiths of the same religion typically share more than they disagree on and because certain aspects of the religion are far too important to not include, in reality only one tenet varies between faiths. That’s not variety, that’s not interesting. Instead of making religions feel and play differently the current game makes them all play and feel the same. The religions are not fully fleshed entities but arbitrary collections of a few bonuses and drawbacks; all so limited in scope that it’s immaterial anyway. This is great if you’re trying to make a statement on humanism and how all religions have more in common than they don’t, it’s not great if you’re trying to portray a medieval strategy rpg.
There may be a larger number of fully unique combinations, but there would also be a lot more overlap between combinations meaning they're less unique.

Religion A being able to do something that religion B can't isn't unique when religions C through P can do it as well.
 
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adding a few more tenets that are only present in certain religious groups

We basically have that now.

Only certain Christian faiths get the Ecumenism trait. Only Islamic faiths get access to Mohammad's succession.

I suppose it could be expanded to other religions as well to flesh out eastern faiths.
 
I agree with the major and minor tenets thing. Choosing between Pursuit of Power and Polyamory is no choice at all. With only three tenets and no separation of major and minor tenets, small flavor tenets like Sky Burials, Reincarnation, or Aniconism will be crowded out by powerhouse tenets like Warmonger, Bhakti/Patron Gods, or Ecclesiarchy/Pentarchy. By separating them, there's at least room for both.
 
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Three tenets could stay BUT each tenet should be stronger (merge those sacrificial and add some fancy decisions to them <like Bloodthirsty Gods from HF>; make some tenets unit buffers <defensive, offensive etc.>; copy Stability stuff; invent some synergies and so on). It wouldn't be on par with HF doctrines, but still be better thant what we have now.
Furthermore, make religions and/or faith unique and distinct WITHOUT relying entirely on tenets (so Asartru would keep blot even without said tenet).
 
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I'd prefer that Paradox overhaul the tenet mechanic altogether. Communion, a tenet that forms a fundamental part of the church at this time should not be lumped together with Taqiya for Shi'ites. One of them is simply less significant and should be treated as perhaps a minor tenet. Maybe 2 major tenets, and 3 minor ones for things like Jizyah, Taqiya, etc. In turn, they should balance the larger tenets.
Having minor and major tenets would help I agree
 
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We basically have that now.

Only certain Christian faiths get the Ecumenism trait. Only Islamic faiths get access to Mohammad's succession.

I suppose it could be expanded to other religions as well to flesh out eastern faiths.
Yes, I agree that it should be expanded plus these unique traits should be more significant than simply a modifier buff, which is the case for both currently. There is a significant lack of unique mechanics and flavor to differentiate religions. I know some of CK3 devs are former HIP developers and I think the different feels and gameplay each religion has on HIP should be what is aimed at.
 
The actual problem is the modularity. While nice for the niche modded community, it means that Catholicism isn’t Catholicism but a generic religion with 3 tenets tacked on, same with Orthodoxy, or the various branches of Islam.

If Catholicism is "a generic religion with 3 tenets tacked on" the 5-tenet Catholicism is "a generic religion with 5 tenets tacked on." At no time does more tenets improve things. You can do a whole bunch by just changing the doctrines, already. Ever try a Christian faith with Temporal head of faith?

Yeah so many of the tenets are so boring and useless that I will never pick them for a custom religion if I only have three choices.

Are you sure? Won't it just turn into "I only have five choices, so I need to choose these tenets for my playstyle. Boring!"

Forcing players to make hard choices is generally a good thing.

Absolutely. Add tenets, you'll just have people choosing more of the powerhouses and complain that they aren't making different choices each game. That's the fault of the player, not the game.

What if, instead of choosing three tenets, you choose two tenets, and one more from a restricted list of "boring" tenets? That will get you the variation you're looking for.

But maybe I'm missing something. If you did make a five-tenet Catholicism, what would it look like? What would make it more alive? What would you want to change religion to?
 
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Don't suppose you've experienced the base version of CK2, back before any of the DLC or content patches, have you? Yeah, in CK3 the world outside Europe is pretty bare-bones, but so the world inside Europe, once you get past the surface. CK2 was even worse since most of it wasn't even playable, or literally didn't exist until later. Did better with time, just hopefully Paradox gets to that point quicker and more thoroughly this time around.
I started playing way back with CK1 my man. First, the fact that CK2 had the same problems CK3 has at launch does not justify it at all, CK1 had hardly being a smash hit and Paradox was way smaller back them, today not only CK2 is their best selling game but Paradox is far bigger and has more resources than in 2011 so one would expect a sequel that was better than CK2+DLCs if not from all that at least for good consumer practices. Second CK2 even at start didn't have fictitious religions like Ikhtilafism or out of place modern religions like the Quaranists plus religions felt like religions due to specific heresies being tied to them rather than being their own religion
 
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If Catholicism is "a generic religion with 3 tenets tacked on" the 5-tenet Catholicism is "a generic religion with 5 tenets tacked on." At no time does more tenets improve things. You can do a whole bunch by just changing the doctrines, already. Ever try a Christian faith with Temporal head of faith?



Are you sure? Won't it just turn into "I only have five choices, so I need to choose these tenets for my playstyle. Boring!"



Absolutely. Add tenets, you'll just have people choosing more of the powerhouses and complain that they aren't making different choices each game. That's the fault of the player, not the game.

What if, instead of choosing three tenets, you choose two tenets, and one more from a restricted list of "boring" tenets? That will get you the variation you're looking for.

But maybe I'm missing something. If you did make a five-tenet Catholicism, what would it look like? What would make it more alive? What would you want to change religion to?
It is not about difficulty at all, it is about making religions unique, distinct and interesting. It is to add flavor which they lack and fix massive historical inaccuracies like some Buddhist religions lacking the monasticism tenet
 
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It is not about difficulty at all, it is about making religions unique, distinct and interesting. It is to add flavor which they lack and fix massive historical inaccuracies like some Buddhist religions lacking the monasticism tenet
And I'm arguing that adding tenets will not add flavor.

No, "making sure the Buddhists all have Monasticism" is not adding flavor. If it's something all faiths in a religion are supposed to have, then it's not flavor. Do you have examples of the sort of flavor you would add that five tenets will give you but three will not?
 
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There may be a larger number of fully unique combinations, but there would also be a lot more overlap between combinations meaning they're less unique.

Religion A being able to do something that religion B can't isn't unique when religions C through P can do it as well.
This was literally the exact point I was arguing against. You are countering my point by repeating the thing I was countering...?

To use my exact example. What's a more interesting difference a deer vs. a sheep or leg+ear+liver vs. leg+nose+spleen? But the deer and sheep have so much more in common than the assemblages of body parts :eek:

The mixture, the sum of the parts, is what makes things unique; not the parts themselves.

I used this one before in a different thread. Let's say faiths are meals and tenets are ingredients. If you can use three ingredients, you cannot make interesting differences. Would you rather have salt+garlic+chicken or garlic+pepper+steak? You don't look at this and think "so many differences," instead you think "these meals both suck, why isn't there any salt on the steak, why is the chicken so bland? Why not instead compare salt+pepper+cumin+garlic+chicken to salt+pepper+coriander+garlic+steak. Now both have the essential ingredients (salt+pepper+garlic or say monasteries+communion) and room for variety. If it were up to me, there would be no arbitrary limit period - you can have as many or as few tenets as makes sense for the faith. This whole system is just there so people can customize religions and they need a limit on customization, well fine; but that's like limiting the amount of traits a person can have because the character designer cannot be unlimited for balance reasons. You don't design a concept around the exceptions, design it around the norm and make special rules for the exceptions.

Put another way, take 2 Jain faiths, both need pacifism and asceticism because those are core to Jainism, now your differences are actually only down to 1 tenet; and one sect needs nudity so no room for anything else. The only way to make 3 tenets work is to make tenets much more complex, so complex that they are effectively multiple tenets in one (e.g., the argument for Buddhist not having reincarnation is typically that dharma includes reincarnation). Wouldn't it just be easier to relax the arbitrary rule of 3 tenets. I mean why 3 anyway, what's so special about that number? Things like this just feel gamey. It's like religions in Civ games, they aren't actually different just the same thing with slightly different bonuses.
 
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I used this one before in a different thread. Let's say faiths are meals and tenets are ingredients. If you can use three ingredients, you cannot make interesting differences. Would you rather have salt+garlic+chicken or garlic+pepper+steak?
Tenets are meal components, doctrines are spices. Any meal with salt, garlic, pepper, cumin, sage, or coriander as a major component is a bad meal.

Compare rice+chicken+nopales and steak+potatoes+carrots. Spice as you want via doctrines.
 
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Three tenets could stay BUT each tenet should be stronger (merge those sacrificial and add some fancy decisions to them <like Bloodthirsty Gods from HF>; make some tenets unit buffers <defensive, offensive etc.>; copy Stability stuff; invent some synergies and so on). It wouldn't be on par with HF doctrines, but still be better thant what we have now.
Furthermore, make religions and/or faith unique and distinct WITHOUT relying entirely on tenets (so Asartru would keep blot even without said tenet).
This would exacerbate the problem, not help it. It would highlight the missing, less powerful, aspects of each faith even more! With this faiths would feel even more like hollow collections of gamey features and less like actualized religions.

It is not about difficulty at all, it is about making religions unique, distinct and interesting. It is to add flavor which they lack and fix massive historical inaccuracies like some Buddhist religions lacking the monasticism tenet
EXACTLY. Or Buddhists and Jains both lacking reincarnation

And I'm arguing that adding tenets will not add flavor.

No, "making sure the Buddhists all have Monasticism" is not adding flavor. If it's something all faiths in a religion are supposed to have, then it's not flavor. Do you have examples of the sort of flavor you would add that five tenets will give you but three will not?
Dude what is your definition of flavor? Having things in common does not mean it's not flavor, where did you get this bizarre idea that sharing something makes it lose value.

Here's a laptop, a car, and a set of clothes; now go have a life. What, you think people need houses too? But wouldn't that reduce the quality of your life, you see that guy has a house, a tv, and a set of clothes; if I gave you both a house you would have more in common, reducing overall quality of life. That's your argument right? You should arbitrarily strip away aspects of something to come up with a barely justified set of differences; doesn't matter if the parts don't make an interesting whole. All that matters is that you share as few parts as possible in your worldview.
 
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