Crusades, Catholic heterodoxy faiths with the Rite tenet, and some weird, weird interactions

[Garnrag]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or just a quirk of dynamic faiths, but I'm seeing some very odd behaviour with crusades in 1.12.4.

I started as a Catholic ruler in the 9th century start date, and created a custom religion that included the Rite and Armed Pilgrimage tenets (Esotericism for the third, if that might matter) prior to the Crusades beginning. I've participated in about a half dozen crusades since they were unlocked, and am usually one of the sole contributors to the war (either at, or extremely close to 100% of the war score contribution).

At the end of the great holy war, I get notified that I didn't contribute enough to count for a reward. Land grants are always given to Catholic beneficiaries, and I don't think I even get a cash or prestige prize for my efforts beyond what I won from battles or sieges.

To a large extent this feels like it makes sense; my dynamic faith changed everything I could to be overtly heretical while still keeping the Papacy as my head of faith and while we could argue about investiture, concubinage, divorce rights, gender equality, and the other doctrinal items and how far you could stretch things before it's clearly schismatic / heretical, I think making witchcraft an accepted part of the church's liturgy would have been more than sufficient to trigger an equivalent to the Albigensian crusade.

Still, the game's not only inviting me to take part in the Crusades, I'll get a telling off if I don't at least throw some florins the Pope's way, so it seems odd that I get a glitch instead of recognition at the end of the war.

The Pope just called the first crusade in several decades, targeting Poland which now follows my dynamic faith, the one that keeps the Pope as its head, so bug seems increasingly likely, but I haven't tried this out with Insular or Mozarabic characters yet and I'm hopeful the hivemind can help shed some light if these quirks happen with those faiths as well, or if I need to verify my installation for some corrupted event files?

 

[William the Merry]

Crusades not landing you if wrong faith is intended, as otherwise Catholicism would be spread a little less. Is any of de jure poland under pagan rule?

 

[Garnrag]

Crusades not landing you if wrong faith is intended, as otherwise Catholicism would be spread a little less. Is any of de jure poland under pagan rule?

I think the relevant event text and the GHW mechanics are out of harmony, then. As a heterodox participant, you're absolutely treated as if you're wholly Catholic including negative events for non-participation and prompts to nominate a beneficiary. Some of this makes fair sense - if you're claiming to be part of the eccumenical Latin rite church, you should be joining in, but I think it's a disservice to the players to not make it clear that they won't get the same outcomes.

Maybe a simple NOT operation to exclude dynamic faiths or the historical heterodox traditions from certain events or the 'nominate a beneficiary' notification would be sufficient, but as it is I feel the devs are putting a huge amount of work into easing the learning curve with CK3 lately, only to then see the wheels come off a bit for these bizarre edge cases.

Also, please excuse me if I'm misreading you, but I don't think that explains why the crusade for Polaba awarded the de jure land of k_jerusalem with the k_sorbia title to the Catholic beneficiary?

As for the current crusade for k_poland, yes you're absolutely right there's a Slavonic realm that has about 50% of d_mazovia and d_lesser_poland. Anyone want to place some bets on what will happen to the existing k_poland title that already belongs to a ruler following my dynamic faith? Because from what I've seen so far, I could well believe the game's going to inadvertently do to a bit of a Baldwin of Flanders job on Poland without intending to.

 

[Silens]

Crusades not landing you if wrong faith is intended, as otherwise Catholicism would be spread a little less.

Catholic isn't just one single faith, and a different rite is a different faith. That's how the game treats it, I get that, but it's not how it is, nor how it should be.

The Catholic Church is a collective term for all rites sharing the same understanding of sacraments and accepting the spiritual leadership of whoever they elect as the Pope. That's the unifying element, Catholic literally translated means world-spanning, coming from the Greek word "καθολικός" (katholikos) - universal. It's literally the universal term for all rites gathered under the umbrella called "Catholic".

Each rite is a church of its own, and has a patriarch at its top. The patriarch of the Roman Catholics is the archbishop of Rome. The technical term is "autonomous particular church sui iuris". It just so happens that the biggest church within the Catholic Church is the Roman Catholic denomination, also called the Latin Church. That 95% majority (give or take) usually leads to a lopsided election power during conclave, and the elected Pope is exclusively Roman Catholic. By tradition he then appoints himself to the vacant seat of archbishop of Rome and the vacant seat of Patriarch of the Latin Church.

But every other Catholic church, like the Armenian Catholic Church, Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church, or the Coptic Catholic Church, is also a full and unconditional, and in no means inferior part of the same Catholic Church. Their cardinals also get to be in the conclave, and could in theory also be elected Pope. Then the Roman Catholic church would've to find someone else for the seat of Patriarch of the Latin Church and the seat of archbishop of Rome.

Those particular churches get their own liturgical and canonical traditions, but they are as Catholic as the Roman Catholic Pope sitting in Rome.

In case of Mozarabic rites is gets even better. Mozarabs aren't an autonomous particular church sui iuris, they are Roman Catholic. Period. They merely have a different liturgical practice (also called rite), just like Milan as a city gets its own rite: the Ambrosian Rite. Yet they are as Roman/Latin Catholic as they come.

It's therefore unacceptable that crusades discriminate against Catholics of different rites, as they are not a different faith, often not even a different Catholic denomination. They are Catholics, and should fully benefit from being Catholic and contributing to the Catholic crusade.

If OP founds a new rite, the Pope should get a say in it, either approve it or call a schism. But if he approves, which he does in CK3 for a lack of a mechanic that presents him with a choice, a different rite still means it is part of the Catholic Church. With all benefits and obligations. That also means no discrimination within the Catholic church.

/end of ecclesiology lesson.

 

[Rubidium]

Eh, realistically the whole representation of Crusade beneficiaries in-game is already an ahistoric approach. It's not like the First Crusade had a huge contribution from Bouillon to justify Godfrey becoming de facto ruler of Jerusalem. It was more that he was a sufficiently respected leader and had sufficient support.

We see this even more explicitly with the Fourth Crusade, where Emperor Baldwin was elected by 12 electors (6 Venetians and 6 French clergy); he was certainly one of the prominent leaders of the crusade, but his choice probably had more to do with the rival candidate Boniface of Montferrat's close ties to the Hohenstaufens (something neither Venice nor many of the French clergy were thrilled by).

So it's a gameplay mechanic, and it's reasonable for a gameplay mechanic to favor more "orthodox" folks than somewhat schismatic folks, even if they are all obviously Catholic, especially given that part of the "point" of the mechanic is to support Catholicism as a force. You already get tons of benefits from creating a custom religion (OP gets legalized witchcraft and probably other helpful stuff); no need to add "spread your faith with the help of Catholic crusaders" to the list.

As to why the OP is called on to participate in crusades, that's because they chose "Armed Pilgrimages" as one of their tenets.

 

[Garnrag]

To Silens, yes that's all true but for the game purposes, "Catholic" is a specific abstraction of the Roman Catholic congregation as the pop-history monolithic "Church" of the time period.

Separate to the Crusades the game is named after, Paradox want to give us tools to do our own silly stuff with. So I have my Catholic offshot that's pro-gay, pro-witch craft, pro-secular investiture, and so long as I take the Rite tenet and keep a spiritual head of faith, I can stay catholic in that I'm part of the western Christian collective. It's a nonsense, but it's just a bit of screwing around in the game. I'm fine with that.

To Ribidium, I've actually been doing some tests. I get called to the Crusades without Armed Pilgrimage, too. Tenets of Rite, Esotericism, and Gnosticism. I used the console to flip a northern Italian hegemon to Catharism, which is treated as righteous by my Rosicrucian-esque hodgepodge.

Pope calls a quick Holy War for k_italy, and I'm on his naughty list if I don't at least cough up some coin, and if I do join in I still get told I can designate a beneficiary. The war ends the same way as discussed above.

I'm not saying it's the biggest area for attention in the game, but I feel it robbed me of the titular experience without clarity. Next time I try to build an orgiastic witch cult, I'll go secular head of faith and just do a full on Henry VIII, dying fat and syphilitic.

Anyway, thanks for helping me get my head around what's happening. It's not a bug as such, just a couple of conflicting features grinding gears against each other that only really manifests if you're deliberately trying to break the core concept.

 

[Garbageolopogos]

If OP founds a new rite, the Pope should get a say in it, either approve it or call a schism.

Here's a really great example of a meaningful interaction players could be having with the pope. But instead in CK3 the pope is absolutely meaningless. He's a randomly generated character whose primary function is to give the player free money and claims. There is almost no other benefit to being buddies with him aside from a couple unique decisions.

We need a religion DLC.

 

[Garnrag]

Here's a really great example of a meaningful interaction players could be having with the pope. But instead in CK3 the pope is absolutely meaningless. He's a randomly generated character whose primary function is to give the player free money and claims. There is almost no other benefit to being buddies with him aside from a couple unique decisions.

We need a religion DLC.

Oh sweet merciful cash-grab, yes! I tried a mod that aimed to add a college of cardinals, but chose to stick with the limp situation in vanilla for now.

I loved seeing my dynasty dominate the Papacy in CK2 once they added that feature. Still waiting on this and republics for CK3.

 

[Garnrag]

For anyone who was curious, the crusade for Poland ended, according to the Pope's memories in a victory for Christendom, but I can't see that the Slavonic realms have changed hands. If anything, it looks like the Christian king of Poland lost a few counties to his pagan neighbours during the crusade!

Four months later, the Pope's called another crusade for Poland. Those who don't learn from history, et cet.

 

[HenszVance]

I'm genuinely not sure why you'd choose Rite AND Armed Pilgrimages when the Catholic faith already has Armed Pilgrimages.

Since the Pope is your Head of Faith, having two Armed Pilgrimages is completely redundant. This is likely the root of the issue: the game is probably bugging, as it's expecting you to respond twice to the same call to war, or something along those lines.

 

[Pendables]

Shared heads of faith is one of the things that Paradox sort of promised would come after release. I guess they didn't have time to actually implement it so they just hacked together the Rite tenet and didn't worry about how it barely worked.

 

[Garnrag]

I'm genuinely not sure why you'd choose Rite AND Armed Pilgrimages when the Catholic faith already has Armed Pilgrimages.

Since the Pope is your Head of Faith, having two Armed Pilgrimages is completely redundant. This is likely the root of the issue: the game is probably bugging, as it's expecting you to respond twice to the same call to war, or something along those lines.

I never get why folks on here feel obliged to question or critique other people's play styles or choices. It's only ever a small minority, but it's like going to the dentist only to have them ask me why I'm wearing my glasses upside down...

Sure, they'd stay on better if I wore 'em the other way, and sure maybe it's weird enough to be noteworthy, but maybe I want to role play or retain the minuscule bonus for pilgrimages that comes with the Armed Pilgrimage tenet.

Plus, as I said in a later post, the game's behavior is identical regardless of whether I've got Armed Pilgrimages or not. The Catholic Great Holy Wars, called by the Pope as Head of Faith, simply do not integrate heterodox faiths into the outcomes of Crusades.