Has the Piety/Prestige system outlived its usefulness?

[Arcvalons]

Someone mentioned elsewhere that it's quite boring how piety and prestige are just numbers that you always want to go up, big number good and small number bad, which makes a lot of events and decisions have an objectively "correct" and an objectively "wrong" choice. It makes CK3 less deep strategically. In another thread one of the devs also complained (ironically) about people just automatically skipping event text and going to the tooltips to immediately click the choice that gives you prestige/piety. So has the piety/prestige system outlived its usefulness?

I can imagine a system in which prestige and piety are not just numeric values that should always trend upwards, but perhaps values on a scale. So for example there's a Piety scale, one end of the scale is orthodox, and the other is reformist — you would actually have to take decisions and events that push the scale towards reformist before you'd be able to make a new faith, for example. Ditto for prestige, it could be a scale between legitimacy and populism, where the scale moves towards legitimacy by doing stuff favoring the high nobles of the realm and following tradition, while straying out of that could push it towards populism (as in, favoring the burghers and peasants).

 

[johnty5]

In another thread one of the devs also complained about people just automatically skipping event text and going to the tooltips to immediately click the choice that gives you prestige/piety.

I know it's not really the point of the thread. And I know I'm probably going to regret it. But I feel like people are going to read this, not actually go and read what the dev said and then it'll become "forum truth" that "devs complain about people not reading events" and inevitably lead to people snarkily posting "well, if the devs wrote better events...", "well, if the events didn't repeat so much..." etc.

So - the dev was clearly being sarcastic.

"If you don't want to read my painstakingly-made, lovingly-crafted event text that I infuse with love and passion and send off to the player with a neat little bow and then stay up at night thinking about how it'll be received... and instead skip right to the options to just click one randomly, then that's absolutely your prerogative and I promise you I won't be bitter about it at all, as you can clearly see."

Anyone who's reading that as a serious "complaint" need to seriously work on their abilty to recognise social cues.

I can imagine a system in which prestige and piety are not just numeric values that should always trend upwards, but perhaps values on a scale. So for example there's a Piety scale, one end of the scale is orthodox, and the other is reformist — you would actually have to take decisions and events that push the scale towards reformist before you'd be able to make a new faith, for example. Ditto for prestige, it could be a scale between legitimacy and populism, where the scale moves towards legitimacy by doing stuff favoring the high nobles of the realm and following tradition, while straying out of that could push it towards populism (as in, favoring the burghers and peasants).

Onto the main point. I think this is an interesting idea.

I'm not sure I agree withe the specific ends of each scale. The Orthodox vs Reformist dichotomy doesn't allow for an Impious/evil character and the Legitimacy vs Populism one doesn't allow for a low-prestige character who everyone thinks is a dick.

But I quite like the idea of piety and prestige exisiting on a -100 to +100 scale. I think it might make it easier to conceptualise what each end of the spectrum represents that the current "big number" system.

 

[Kimlin1004]

But I quite like the idea of piety and prestige exisiting on a -100 to +100 scale. I think it might make it easier to conceptualise what each end of the spectrum represents that the current "big number" system.

But that system already exists with fame and devotion, it just isn’t displayed as -100 to +100. It is the same thing.

 

[BloodyPuma]

I actually miss the old "highscore" system and ther ledger. Small things, but made you to pump piety/prestige more.

 

[FishieFan]

Was thinking about this earlier, should faiths innately be righteous, pluralist, and the other or should it be sliding scale, as we've seen devs implement with cultural acceptance and the various iberian struggle phases

 

[JesterInYellow]

This sounds like a good suggestion and I'd support it over our current system for a number of reasons. But the biggest problem I have with piety/prestige isn't just that it's an ever-upwards scale with no real differentiation between "types" of piety/prestige. More, it's that it is a system that genericizes mechanics before they can interact with each other. It's a crutch the devs use to prevent the possibility of having any interesting gameplay.

For instance. You want to create a heretical faith. What do you do? Pump piety. It does not matter how you pump this piety. But pumping piety usually means being orthodox. So what you do is consecrate your artifacts in the name of Catholicism, follow all the Pope's teachings, go on pilgrimages to holy sites, build Catholic churches, execute heathens, refuse any chance to trod off the beaten path, and abstain from any form of non-catholic thought. This gives you enough Funny Religion Points to create a Funny Religion out of nowhere.

Instead of doing things to slowly build up a schism in the faith in your court and counties, you just do whatever gives you Funny Religion Points--most of which are options that would be doing the opposite of your final goal. Instead of any of these mechanics intertwining and building on top of each other, they get genericized into abstract points, and then these points interact with the mechanics, in such a way to keep them very strictly segregated from one another.

Instead of building churches that are under your control, slowly ousting the clergy, spreading heretical thought among your friends and family, riling up the peasants, revoking privileges and stealing artifacts from the Catholic Church, until you develop enough support to create a heresy--all of which would interact with the other mechanics of this game--you just rush for Funny Points.

Of course, doing any of this would mean the devs have to focus on something other than Funny Events.

Edit: Oh yeah, also I momentarily forgot; this would do about nothing to solve the immense problem with how this game portrays non-abrahamic faiths, which I don't think can be solved.

 

[fodazd]

My personal opinion:
-> On the one hand, I think it is important for a game about the middle ages to portray the necessity to act religiously appropriate in order to maintain your legitimacy. A scale between "orthodox" and "reformist", where both sides of the scale have their usefulness, would simply not do that. In this sense, the current system is better.
-> ...However: I agree that it does not make much sense that you currently have to act extremely pious according to your old faith in order to convert or make a new one. In this sense, the proposed system would be better.

 

[klopkr]

I've been thinking this a while. I think there should still be a total go up number but I wish there was a sliding scale from unpious to pious that had different outcomes and abilities. Being 100 pious or prestigious would be a lot of work to maintain and allow things like holy wars for kingdoms and asking for gold and claims. Having -100 piety would allow for special kinds of unholy acts but cause a LOT of problems and definitly leads to excommunications. But still a valid gameplay style that doesn't prevent you from doing a ton of actions.

On the other hand I think prestige should have two undless go up numbers, Fame and infamy which you would spend to do actions. But instead of just being prestigious you can also become infamous to your enemies and get special conquests and tyrannical acts.

Either way it's NO FUN to be locked out of a bunch of game options because you have negative prestige or piety. Plus it's weird that my witch murderer excommunicated incest fornicator who murdered his own pope is still gaining piety.

 

[Darumaka]

I've been thinking this a while. I think there should still be a total go up number but I wish there was a sliding scale from unpious to pious that had different outcomes and abilities. Being 100 pious or prestigious would be a lot of work to maintain and allow things like holy wars for kingdoms and asking for gold and claims. Having -100 piety would allow for special kinds of unholy acts but cause a LOT of problems and definitly leads to excommunications. But still a valid gameplay style that doesn't prevent you from doing a ton of actions.

On the other hand I think prestige should have two undless go up numbers, Fame and infamy which you would spend to do actions. But instead of just being prestigious you can also become infamous to your enemies and get special conquests and tyrannical acts.

Either way it's NO FUN to be locked out of a bunch of game options because you have negative prestige or piety. Plus it's weird that my witch murderer excommunicated incest fornicator who murdered his own pope is still gaining piety.

Yeah pretty much how Tyranny and Dread work for opinions. Sure you can be all lovey-dovey with your vassals and have them like you profusely, or you can become a rotten tyrant and have them be so afraid of you they won't ever revolt despite hating your guts. Something like this should be implemented across the entire game, allowing unpious or infamous playthroughs to be more fun and viable.

Of course before something like this would require an overhaul of the entire game so I doubt it would ever be implemented.

 

[EricMN93]

Maybe something realistic that would help with the piety system is that it could unlock certain laws. For example, if you have little piety, you can apply the law of appointing bishops, with the repercussions that this would have (I'm thinking of empire-papacy conflicts).


I think it would be realistic to be able to change certain laws of your religion without having to create a new one.

 

[Darumaka]

Maybe something realistic that would help with the piety system is that it could unlock certain laws. For example, if you have little piety, you can apply the law of appointing bishops, with the repercussions that this would have (I'm thinking of empire-papacy conflicts).


I think it would be realistic to be able to change certain laws of your religion without having to create a new one.

That would require a full-on religion rework to be honest, because as it stands things like the papacy and clergy are basically non-existant with how little impact they have on the game and how few mechanics tied to them there are.

Bringing back autocephaly might be a start, allowing your realm's church to be virtually independent from its head but still remaining part of that religion, thus allowing you to change its rules. Of course that would mean not making it exclusive to Orthodox Christianity, and it would imply reworking Insular Christianity into simply an autocephalous version of Catholicism native to the Ireland and nearby areas.

Autocephaly alone could bring about tons of interesting events and what not as your dynasty struggles with the clergy in their attempts to wrest control away from them. It could even work as a sort of mini-struggle one could trigger in which you could reach a compromise (autocephaly), you bow down to the head (toe the line and keep the faith as is), or break away and start a new faith. Maybe limit such a mechanic only to Kingdoms and Empires, as a Duchy alone would realistically find it hard to even challenge the church in such a manner.

 

[snakeboyoyo]

I would like an option where tooltips can be hidden and you simply roleplay your decisions. Could be interesting, athough the events would have to be less repetitive and probably procedurally generated for that to work as well.

As for the simplistic "numbers go up = good", prestige and piety is the least of my gripes. The development number and the incremental building upgrades are the most unimmersive imo.

 

[Darumaka]

I would like an option where tooltips can be hidden and you simply roleplay your decisions. Could be interesting, athough the events would have to be less repetitive and probably procedurally generated for that to work as well.

As for the simplistic "numbers go up = good", prestige and piety is the least of my gripes. The development number and the incremental building upgrades are the most unimmersive imo.

At least with buildings you have to actively click something, with development you can just click the steward button on your capital and forget about it for the rest of the game .

 

[Niall9]

In another thread one of the devs also complained (ironically) about people just automatically skipping event text and going to the tooltips to immediately click the choice that gives you prestige/piety.

I feel part of this is the event UI. It is so dark that the text and characters don't stand out. Also so many of the backgrounds are the same.

 

[Niall9]

I would like an option where tooltips can be hidden and you simply roleplay your decisions. Could be interesting, athough the events would have to be less repetitive and probably procedurally generated for that to work as well.

As for the simplistic "numbers go up = good", prestige and piety is the least of my gripes. The development number and the incremental building upgrades are the most unimmersive imo.

Yeah I think this as a game settings option would be good. Know some will hate this while others would love it

 

[Riaman98]

Even faiths which allow clerical appointment are not so free of RNG of random appointments on theocratic holdings, if one dies another one gets appointed without permission, and inherits all that gold. I wanted to roleplay as making that place hereditary or allowing to make it appointed by my wish.

 

[Flockingbird]

I would like an option where tooltips can be hidden and you simply roleplay your decisions.

You might like the ObfusCKate mod!

Edit: Here’s the Steam link.

 

[greywulfos]

Someone mentioned elsewhere that it's quite boring how piety and prestige are just numbers that you always want to go up, big number good and small number bad, which makes a lot of events and decisions have an objectively "correct" and an objectively "wrong" choice. It makes CK3 less deep strategically. In another thread one of the devs also complained (ironically) about people just automatically skipping event text and going to the tooltips to immediately click the choice that gives you prestige/piety. So has the piety/prestige system outlived its usefulness?

I can imagine a system in which prestige and piety are not just numeric values that should always trend upwards, but perhaps values on a scale. So for example there's a Piety scale, one end of the scale is orthodox, and the other is reformist — you would actually have to take decisions and events that push the scale towards reformist before you'd be able to make a new faith, for example. Ditto for prestige, it could be a scale between legitimacy and populism, where the scale moves towards legitimacy by doing stuff favoring the high nobles of the realm and following tradition, while straying out of that could push it towards populism (as in, favoring the burghers and peasants).

I kind of think that the idea of piety and prestige being two spheres of clout that you can spend is kind of fine, my problem is that they're more broadly something you acquire just by existing rather than something you have to actually invest in.

You're telling me that I'm considered a religious icon just for... Sitting on the right province and doing a pilgrimage once? I become exalted among men just because of the amount of modifiers I've stacked on my dynasty? That doesn't feel right.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

I kind of think that the idea of piety and prestige being two spheres of clout that you can spend is kind of fine, my problem is that they're more broadly something you acquire just by existing rather than something you have to actually invest in.

You're telling me that I'm considered a religious icon just for... Sitting on the right province and doing a pilgrimage once? I become exalted among men just because of the amount of modifiers I've stacked on my dynasty? That doesn't feel right.

Piety should be gained by pious acts. Battling heathens and performing pious acts should matter more than sitting around and doing a pilgrimage every 15 years or so. The religious relation task and learning should probably be nerfed for the amount of piety they generate. The model for medieval piety would probably be Saint Louis IX of France.

Prestige might also need to be rebalanced. Dynastic bonuses should probably be just a flat amount rather than a percentage. There is only so much prestige one can gain from being the house and dynasty head of a famous dynasty. That fame should get you started, but you should have to do more in order to prove that you are worthy of the family name.

 

[PDS_Noodle]

I know it's not really the point of the thread. And I know I'm probably going to regret it. But I feel like people are going to read this, not actually go and read what the dev said and then it'll become "forum truth" that "devs complain about people not reading events" and inevitably lead to people snarkily posting "well, if the devs wrote better events...", "well, if the events didn't repeat so much..." etc.

So - the dev was clearly being sarcastic.

"If you don't want to read my painstakingly-made, lovingly-crafted event text that I infuse with love and passion and send off to the player with a neat little bow and then stay up at night thinking about how it'll be received... and instead skip right to the options to just click one randomly, then that's absolutely your prerogative and I promise you I won't be bitter about it at all, as you can clearly see."

Anyone who's reading that as a serious "complaint" need to seriously work on their abilty to recognise social cues.

You are completely right, as ever!

I really don't care if people read the event text or not. If you want to, great, if that's not how you find fun the game, also great. So long as you're playing the game that's all I care about!

---

As for the main thrust of the post, I like the idea in a vacuum but obviously it's not something that's going to happen with CK3. It's simply too big a rework to happen in the middle of a game's life. It's theoretically something I could potentially see for years down the line when a sequel rolls around, though, the concept is solid.