Bishops: a proposal for re-implementation

[kviiri]

Preface: this post is largely written with the Christian world, particularly the Catholic church in mind. This is because they were well-supplied with mechanics in CK2 (when religions were much less modular and more "hand-crafted") and therefore seem a bit shallow, short-changed even, when it comes to CK3. My intent is to evaluate the pros and cons of the CK2 system for bishoprics, the positives of the CK3 system in comparison, and mechanically simple ways to bring back some of the bishopric joys from CK2 while preserving the strengths of the CK3 system.

As most of these features concern mainly Catholics in CK2, I will implicitly mean only Catholic bishops when referring to "bishops", unless I specify otherwise, but try to be mindful of ways to port these suggestions into the modular religion system of CK3 and possibly non-Catholic and non-Christian faiths.

CK2 bishops have the following features:

• each temple holding is (normally) controlled by a separate bishop
• taxes and levies are provided from a temple holding to the liege or the religious head – whichever the bishop likes more
• bishops generally do not expand, but can be granted counties or duchies (to create prince-bishoprics or prince-archbishoprics) who function the same way, just occupying a slot higher in the feudal food chain
• bishops are replaced automatically by default, but the player can petition the Pope to appoint a particular successor, or if they have the Free Investiture realm law, appoint the successors themselves
• Court Chaplain is not appointed automatically, and has no special relation to the religious vassals of a country

It goes without saying that the CK2 system has more granularity than the CK3 system, but the CK3 system does have certain advantages. CK2 bishops tend to stay small unless the player manually inflates their power, and keeping them happy is usually just a matter of having as many virtue traits as possible – or micromanaging bishop inheritances constantly with Free Investiture. Their power is so distributed that keeping them all happy via bribes or similar is not a feasible option, but on the other hand they lack the individual power to be highly problematic Turbulent Priests that your CK3 Archbishop can be, should he really hate your guts.

I want to preserve the feeling of a very powerful Archbishop in CK3, but supplement him with lesser bishops that are stronger, but fewer in number, than CK2 bishops. They would exist in a power structure distinct but parallel to the Feudal one, to highlight the role of the church as a secondary source of state-like power in the age of CK3. I want to also keep the CK2 features of appointing one's relatives and friends as Bishops, as well as the possibility to engage in Investiture controversies because everyone loves that.


Onward to the proposal.

Currently, CK3 realms pay their temple dues to a single Realm priest (or Archbishop) who pays their liege only if he likes the liege (Opinion > 0), and scaling up to 50 opinion (the opinion check can be disregarded by holding a Strong hook on the priest). My proposal is that for Independent realms for Ducal tier and above, these dues (including dues from temples in vassals' realms, weighed by the vassal's tax and levy rate) are collected in a single pool as now, but the Archbishop controls only a portion of this pool (say, 50%). The rest of the pool is distributed equally between Powerful Bishops; some number of Realm priests of the player's strongest vassals. The total number of these lesser bishops, in my imagination, would be something like three to seven, varying by realm size, but I'd opt for a smaller number most of the time. This serves the immediate effect of making the church money less binary and less gameable by Swaying your Archbishop: you will need to also have a fair degree of overall Clergy approval to maintain good income from your churchgoers.

With more Bishop slots, the idea is that the player can influence who gets to wear the funny hat at each time. The "good guy" tools for doing this are:

• Suggest a Bishop: Nominate a character of your choosing to receive a Bishopric in the event of a vacancy. Must be approved by the Pope, with a bonus modifier to acceptance if he likes you. He might agree, ask for gold, piety or similar in exchange, or flat-out refuse should you nominate someone totally unsuitable or if the Holy Father just hates your guts.
• Suggest an Archbishop: Nominate one of your Bishops to become the next Archbishop in the event of the old one's dismissal or untimely demise. Same conditions as above.
• Petition for dismissal: Kindly ask the Holy Father to dismiss one of your Bishops or your Archbishop. Requires the Pope to either like you a lot, or dislike the target. Again, gold, piety, hooks or similar might lubricate the process.

This makes good relations with the Pope very profitable: you can control which of your idiot sons are going to not only be knocked out of temporal inheritance but also be *pleased* about it and pay you good money during their hopefully-long tenure as the Lord's servants. However, the Pope wasn't the only person who had a say in these matters: certain rulers in the Holy Roman Empire took the investiture of Bishops in their own capable hands and hilarity ensued. So I think these interactions should also be present:

• Dismiss [Arch]bishop: Get rid of the current Archbishop or any of your Bishops, damn what the Pope thinks. Will result in the fired Bishop and the Pope taking certain offense: unless you have a particular faith in the Pope's clemency you should wear your Excommunication-proof pants to work today.
• Appoint [Arch]bishop: Fill an empty bishop slot with a character of your choosing, regardless of what the Pope thinks. This is basically "Free Investiture", and is also likely to incur the Pope's ire; as well as that of your other Bishops. Bishops appointed this way receive an opinion bonus towards their appointer, naturally, and a trait, Temporal Investiture, which makes other clergy lacking the trait dislike them.

Note that investiture is not, and should not be a Doctrine: mechanically restricting one to "good guy conduct" unless one reforms their religion should not be necessary. Instead, the investiture controversies are handled via Papal dislike towards rulers who frequently bypass their judgment: it is the player's choice whether they try to cozy up with the Pope to get the clergy they want, or take the risk of practicing Free Investiture.


Finally, some dirty details.

• If a Bishop dies and has no appointed (by the liege or the Pope) successor, there should be about 1 month of grace period before one is appointed so the player doesn't have to constantly babysit their Bishops. It would be really cool if the Sede Vacante was implemented as having a temporary administrator for the time, but might not be worth the effort.
• The Temporal Investiture trait makes clergy pariahs in face of other clergy, and petitions to dismissal such clerics should be easily approved by the Pope. Losing an excommunication war should automatically dismiss all clergy appointed via temporal investiture.
• The options to suggest/appoint an Archbishop/Realm priest could also apply to vassals. This could create a potentially unsavory situation where more than one person can influence the same slot: eg. if I'm a powerful vassal, my "suggest Realm priest" would potentially conflict with the Liege's "suggest Bishop". Some logic needs to be had to handle overrides, haven't thought of anything fancy yet but a simple default would be just that the Liege's wishes override the vassal's.
• To add an additional incentive to get bishoprics in your Dynasty, Bishops earn renown for the Dynasty. Perhaps Count-tier for normal, Duke-tier for Archbishops.