Concerning Pagan Reformation

[Bartgeier]

I find, and I think many do so too, that the current system of pagan reformation is rather bland, tedious und simply not very realistic. So I thought about, how to make it more apealing.
That said, I don't think the old system with the three sites needs to be removed, I think it should be complemented with a qualitativ approach. This qualitative approach centers around the building of monuments. You basicly build a new site, with heavy costs in money, piety and time. It could also take some time until it is an accepted site, so that you need to upgrade it several times over several generations.
With this you would have two ways to reformation, the quantitative one, and the qualitative one. Also a mixing could be possible. So you hold one traditional site und build and upgrade another, but with only two upgrades instead of three. This way even a disconnected people could reform a faith, and at the same time it would take a lot dedication. Additonally it would be easy to controll the AI in this, so that they don't reform wildly.

Unrelated to this I really find it annoying that when a faith is reformed in the current game, that the tenets or organisation do not change. I mean whats the point of a reform if nothing changes?

 

[Opanashc]

Unrelated to this I really find it annoying that when a faith is reformed in the current game, that the tenets or organisation do not change. I mean whats the point of a reform if nothing changes?

List of changes of reformed vs unreformed can be found on Wiki.

 

[Bartgeier]

Yeah, but that stuff does not really change much about the faith, does it? The Tenets and doctrines stay completely the same. And that is rather boring in my opinion. They could predefine, how a religion changes, or a least add a game rule so that you as a player could tell the game that rulers where more free in changing them. My favourite option would be to make it dependent on die sins and virtues of the ruler, how many tenets they change or how much doctrine they reorganize.

 

[Unknown Sage]

So I see another post about this and thus I must too again comment because the reformation mechanics have been a thorn in my side for a while.

I do like your idea of replacing the holy site requirements with this monument system. And that could very well be a good replacement for the hard geographical lock on reformation.
But where you keep the vanilla effects of said reformation I would change some stuff there as well. My main problem with it personally is that if your faith is unreformed you cannot ever make a new branch of it unless you first do the whole reformation process. That in itself is problematic when you consider that the pagan religions aren't organized and thus should easily be able to split into several branches. Compare it to the strict rules and hierarchy in christianity, and then wonder why they can freely make new versions of it while pagans cannot.

So my take is reformation as a way to change your faith should go. And instead it should only be a way to organize the religion so you can go feudal (and lose the anti feudal penalties) As such I would therefore also change the phrase 'reforming the faith' to 'organize the faith' to better fit what it actually does now.

 

[Bartgeier]

@Unknown Sage
I generally agree, that an unorganized Faith should be more prone to branch out than a already organized one, because they have far less mechanisms in place to hinder such an incident. On the other side one could argue, that it is exactly the restrictions of a codified religions, that drive people to become heretic. If the belief is pretty vague and local already, the meaning of splintering is much deminished. That said though, if one considers the unorganized faiths as vague approximation of unrefined but simular popular beliefs of certain groups, then it still would be much more sensical if the reformed faith splinters away from the unorganized root as something new; maybe akin to Judaism an Christianity. It also would open the possibility of several reformed faiths in competition with each other.

Though I don't really think that paradox will do away with the old system any time soon. Because of that I tought a small addition to the existing system is much more likely to be adopted (Even if the chances of this even been read and well recieved are pretty low be themself).

 

[Unknown Sage]

Of course if you do look at it from a non game mechanic perspective then indeed you are correct in that given their inherent unorganized nature of vaguely similar popular beliefs it makes sense for it to not be seen as a different branch. Whereas the christians would see a slight deviation as such. However the game mechanics currently make it absolutely impossible to have a slightly different set of doctrines than the main faith unless you reform first, (which then requires the three holy sites).

While I agree that paradox will unfortunately most likely not change the system anytime soon. I do think that having the ability to branch out from the main faith without reforming (read conquering entire regions to get the holy sites locked in a specific geographical region) should be extremely high on the potential religion rework list.
While your system of monuments is definitely much better. I don't think simply changing some doctrines and/or tenets should require that much work when all non pagans can just do it whenever they want (provided enough piety). Sadly I think they just went copy paste from ck2 without properly integrating it into the new religious system of ck3.

 

[Opanashc]

Yeah, but that stuff does not really change much about the faith, does it?

AI will never change anything when reforming a faith. But the player can change it all, given enough piety. So I don't see, what your argument is all about.

 

[Bartgeier]

AI will never change anything when reforming a faith.

That is the problem.