Has the Piety/Prestige system outlived its usefulness?

[Torredebelem]

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).

While your suggested system might be interesting, the present system has nothing wrong associated with it. The problem you are reporting that I highlighted in bold and underlined above pertains to poorly designed events, where options are not situational in nature and worse, where one option is always the best to take. Instead of meaningful dilemmas, we are faced with fluff that is interrupting the gameflow.

 

[FishieFan]

While your suggested system might be interesting, the present system has nothing wrong associated with it. The problem you are reporting that I highlighted in bold and underlined above pertains to poorly designed events, where options are not situational in nature and worse, where one option is always the best to take. Instead of meaningful dilemmas, we are faced with fluff that is interrupting the gameflow.

We don't need to rework the system we just need to rework all events to work in the current system, got it

 

[Torredebelem]

We don't need to rework the system we just need to rework all events to work in the current system, got it

Much easier than reworking such big gameplay cornerstones like Prestige or Piety, as the Dev answering this thread explained.
This being said, many events would need a rework with the present or the suggested system in order to make them interesting. Their quality or lack thereof is not dependent on which system is implemented but on absolute terms.

 

[apollo1989vieten]

Piety from learning is op. If you get bonuses like earthly focus, spiritual, and zealous and a good high almoner if you are king, even a bad learning character will generate much piety. My current Matilda play has Matilda at 7 learning yet is gaining 1.7 piety a month.

 

[Kainser]

I feel like the OP doesn't understand the concept of Piety in the setting of the game. Piety was a core part of living during this period and being seen as pious or impious was a huge deal for many rulers. The opposite of Pious should absolutely not be "reformer".

The general concept is fine though but I personally don't really have a problem with prestige and piety as they are in the game.

I actually miss the old "highscore" system and ther ledger

God I miss the ledger. Never forget that CK2 had a leaderboard for which character had murdered the most people in the ledger, A+ feature.

 

[klopkr]

I feel like the OP doesn't understand the concept of Piety in the setting of the game. Piety was a core part of living during this period and being seen as pious or impious was a huge deal for many rulers. The opposite of Pious should absolutely not be "reformer".

The general concept is fine though but I personally don't really have a problem with prestige and piety as they are in the game.

I think the weirdest part is that you're kinda just constantly collecting goodboy points basically no matter what you do.

Kill your pope? Don't worry you still make like 10 piety from all your temples.

There is a concept around the time of having your clergy pray for your necessary sins. And inherently a king may want to be doing what they can to make it seem like they're working towards true piety. But when there's straight up, undeniably sinful actions you can regularly do in game, it's a bit weird that everyone is always gaining piety and that you want to gain it as a currency to do more actions later.

Executing your own pope shouldn't just keep you from declaring holy wars for a bit as you lack piety. It should probably shake the very foundation of your capability to ever be a holy warrior.

Im open to instead of replacing the point gains completely to having yet another different metric like scale from unholy to holy as part of your piety mechanic, being the real gatekeeper of your ability to use actions that need strong religious justifications like a holy war or buying claims.

God I miss the ledger. Never forget that CK2 had a leaderboard for which character had murdered the most people in the ledger, A+ feature.

I think everyone agrees with this. I checked the ledger all the time in games to learn more about what's going on.

 

[Bisonmask]

They haven't outlived their usefulness, Prestige and Piety just suffer from the same problems as Opinion: too many ways to increase them, too few ways to decrease them, and too much of the process passively rewards you for existing

 

[grommile]

The opposite of Pious should absolutely not be "reformer".

Agreed.

Many people who wanted the Roman Catholic Church reformed were exceptionally pious people, disgusted at perceived impiety by the existing hierarchy.

 

[Bisonmask]

Agreed.

Many people who wanted the Roman Catholic Church reformed were exceptionally pious people, disgusted at perceived impiety by the existing hierarchy.

It comes from conflating pious with zealous I think

 

[grommile]

It comes from conflating pious with zealous I think

I wouldn't describe Fra Girolamo Savonarola as lacking in zeal

 

[apollo1989vieten]

I wouldn't describe Fra Girolamo Savonarola as lacking in zeal

John Wycliffe I also believe was a really pious man who saw the wealth and almost exclusive control over Bible knowledge (medieval Catholic used the Vulgate, a 4th century translation into Latin) as extremely corrupting. He and his followers worked to translate the Bible from Latin into Middle English.

 

[Bisonmask]

I wouldn't describe Fra Girolamo Savonarola as lacking in zeal

I don't mean to say there were no people who could be described as both pious and zealous but that these are different things

 

[vandevere]

I think we need to look more deeply at the Zealous Trait and apply it less narrowly. Zeal not only works for martially inclined characters. It can work for any type of character. Pious and Zealous characters follow their religion's rules...religiously. Martial and Zealous characters make great Holy Warriors. Zealous Diplomats will go that extra mile to promote peace, and Zealous Stewards will work over time to make their coffers full.

 

[Flockingbird]

Zealous Diplomats will go that extra mile to promote peace, and Zealous Stewards will work over time to make their coffers full.

Sounds more like Diligent to me.

 

[fodazd]

My personal opinion: I agree that it's a bit weird for zealous followers of pacifist religions to get +2 martial and stress loss for executing infidels.