Hi everyone! It's Singe again, and this time for another look at religions and faiths in Elder Kings II. The first time we talked about this was about six months ago, so if you need a refresher go read it here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wip-elder-kings.1415723/page-4#post-27064953
A lot has changed in these six months, and I feel like it is time to show what has changed, and what has stayed the same. Let's dive into it!
Monotheist Pantheons
Very early in the design work for the religions & faiths, we established that we wanted to represent pantheons with a lot more precision than vanilla. We quickly arrived at the conclusion that a new doctrine group would be needed. After that, the question of what to do with faiths that wouldn't be able to take patrons had to be solved, as they didn't worship several deities, or even a single one for some.
As was explained in the first religion dev diary, polytheist faiths would be able to take a patron deity among a few predetermined ones, so a follower of the Divine pantheon could dedicate themselves to Akatosh or Mara, while someone who was part of a monotheist religion, like the Herd-Mother faith, would receive a permanent dedicated bonus.
We expanded on that idea, and now the monotheist faiths receive a bonus scaling with Devotion. The cavalry bonus for the Herd-Mother pantheon, the Popular Opinion bonus for the All-Maker pantheon, or the Lifestyle Experience bonus for the Ancestor Moths pantheon now scale with Devotion, with even a penality should you be declared Sinful.
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Patron Deities Interface
At first we had the passive patron and the active patrons (like the Daedra) in the same interface. However it became apparent that since they didn't do the same thing and didn't answer to the same rules, it would be better to put the Patron deities among the faith window - that and it would allow you to see the Patron deities associated with another pantheon!
Below is the new Cyrodiilic Heroes pantheon, composed of various revered heroes in the vast region of Cyrodiil, led by Saint Alessia, Pelinal Whitestrake, Morihaus 'Breath-of-Kyne', Reman 'Light-of-Man', and Bendu Olo. You can even see the new art associated with them, which is also shown when you get the trait associated with the patron.
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Cultural Identity Doctrine
Most faiths in the Elder Scrolls universe are also tied to a culture, or a people. Just like the Patron Gods mechanic, which is restricted to a tenet in vanilla but much more important in TES, the old Communal Identity tenet was not enough, and had to be made a full scale doctrine.
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The Cultural Identity doctrine comes in five levels, with each one tying the faith closer to the culture, making it easier to spread in provinces sharing your culture group or culture, but more difficult otherwise.
With the Cultures being tied to specific parts of the world, see:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wip-elder-kings.1415723/page-9#post-27296283, this should make the map less prone to strange religious blobs, and should hopefully help keep some regional identity as time passes.
To help understand how the decision to tie a culture to a faith is made, let's give an example for each level:
- No Cultural Identity: Most Daedric cults are open to anyone no matter the culture
- Cultural Identity: The splinter Eight Divines faiths are loosely tied to a Culture Group, such as the Nord Cult being tied to the Nordic Culture Group, or the Breton Rites being tied to the Breton Culture Group
- Strong Cultural Identity: The Brutal Breed are an Orcish faith that emerged after the fall of Orsinium, and which is much more fundamentalist and agressive than your usual Orcish faith - with the goal to make every Breton and Redguard pay for the crimes commited against the Orc-folk, real or imagined
- Communal Identity: The All-Maker faith is tied to the Skaal people, and even other Nords might not necesseraly understand it and be ready to follow it
- Strong Communal Identity: The Nerevarine Prophecies are almost exclusive to the Ashlander tribes of Vvardenfell, and they tend to be rather exclusive of other people - even going as far as not considering that the Nerevarine might be a non-Ashlander, which is rather ironic given the events of TES III
Special Doctrines
So with these two new general doctrines - the Main Pantheon and the Cultural Identity - the main doctrine interface was already full, and it became much harder to find space to add new and more special doctrines.
To this end we added a new doctrine group, the Special Doctrines. If you remember the doctrines such as the Ecumenical doctrine, or the branches of Islam, that's where they would be put in Elder Kings.
For now we use two special doctrines, the Cyrodiilic Cult, and the Council of the Eight.
The Cyrodiilic Cult is used to represent how religiously diverse Cyrodiil is, with strange hero cults, veneration of previous Emperors, and bizarre faiths such as the Ancestor Moths living in relative peaceful coexistence. This doctrine allows them to view one another as Astray, even if they do not share the same Pantheon - as it would otherwise make them see each other as Hostile.
While the Imperial Cult is part of the Cyrodiilic Cults, other splinter faiths of the old Eight Divines religion aren't, so if a Breton Rite ruler was to hold a part of Cyrodiil they would see these strange hero cults and other bizarre faiths as Hostile.
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The Council of the Eight is used to represent how close the old Eight Divines faiths are, even if they do not share the same beliefs. Each Chapel handles its own affairs, but they all answer to the Council of the Eight, led by the faith with the highest number of county followers (which will almost always be the Imperial Cult, but you never know what could happen...).
To represent this, the leader of the Council of the Eight receives a special doctrine, Council of the Eight - Leader, which gives them a slight fervor bonus for each faith that is part of the Council of the Eight except them (so at game start, the Nord Pantheon, the Breton Rites, and the Redguard Creed).
The other members of the Council of the Eight receive another special doctrine, Council of the Eight - Member.
Both of these doctrines also reduce the conversion speed against other faiths which are part of the Council of the Eight - so the Imperial Cult will have trouble getting a foothold in Skyrim if it tries to erase the Nord Pantheon, and should try to find other areas to expand into.
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Daedric Doctrines
When we first showed the faiths and religions of EK2, we talked about how you would be able to add the various Daedric Princes to your pantheon, with daedra-aligned doctrines and tenets. While the idea was, and without any bias, very good, in execution it felt a bit awkward. So we tweaked it a bit, keeping the idea but giving more control over who worships what.
To this effect, each faith has now a view on each and every of the 16 Daedric Princes. While most faiths have a general view of the Princes, with the Imperial Cult considering the worship of any of the 16 Princes criminal, some other faiths handle them differently - the Velothi faiths being the most obvious example with the Good Daedra (Azura, Boethiah, Mephala) who can be accepted or part of the Pantheon, the Bad Daedra (Malacath, Mehrunes Dagon, Molag Bal and Sheogorath) who are always criminal, and the ones in between that are considered shunned.
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When designing a faith, you have four possibilities when dealing with Daedric integration.
If your faith is monotheist (Herd-Mother doctrine), you can't add a Daedra to your pantheon.
If your faith is monotheist but worships a Daedra (Malacath doctrine), you can't add other Daedra to your pantheon, but the specific Daedra you worship is considered Focused and will allow you to request better and stronger boons, even allowing you to start a full scale invasion of Nirn...
If your faith is polytheist (Divines doctrine) then you can only include Daedra that you are aligned with. This works exactly like before, so if your faith allows Vampires you have the ability to include Molag Bal, but you do not have to - and that's the main difference.
If your faith uses the 'Daedric Princes' main pantheon doctrine, then you can freely choose which Princes you worship, and which ones you disallow - but you can only worship the Daedric Princes and not an external pantheon.
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However, not everyone worships the Daedric Princes in secret... And while we are not yet ready to show everything about it, I can give you a small teaser of what's to come!
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New Pantheons
Below can be found some of the current pantheons, and some of their patron deities.
Keep in mind that art and effects are WIP and subject to change!
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New Tenets
Of course it's not only new doctrines that have been added, but new tenets as well!
Most of these are used in some of our custom faiths, so you will find them as you explore Tamriel in CK3.
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Faith Creation Window
The new doctrines, either main, criminal, or Daedric, take up some valuable space, and the faith window was not made with all of that in mind.
Our very talented GUI artist allowed us to hide some specific doctrinal categories, so that it's easier to navigate the window when you create a new faith!
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And that's all for today!
We hope that this dev diary answered some of your questions, and as always feel free to join our communities following these links:
Discord:
https://discord.gg/zarB4GZ
Subreddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ElderKings/
Our Paradoxplaza thread:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/wip-elder-kings.1415723
As a bonus, the new Bosmeri faiths that you will find all over Valenwood!
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