How exactly does religious prestige work?

[unmerged(25273)]

I know that it helps to increase your omen chance and that you can increase it by building temples and by having spice in provinces with your state religion. But I would like to know more in detail. For example in my game the only Jewish province has turned to Carthaginian faith and there is no Jewish nation. Still Jewish has about the same as my Carthaginian state religion (between 11 and 12) which now encompasses over 50 provinces almost all of them with temples. Grateful for info on the subject.

 

[unmerged(60148)]

No response
I guess this pretty much sums it up, nobody knows. Religious prestige never made any sense since the original release. Back then the greek religion was shooting through the roof for no apparent reason, temples were useless. Then there were some changes made and the greeks are fine now, but temples are still useless. Overall broken feature.

 

[Azkor]

I always thought temples should raise civ by like 0.1 per month. Actually I think several of the buildings should increase civ values on a sustained basis.

 

[unmerged(60148)]

I always thought temples should raise civ by like 0.1 per month. Actually I think several of the buildings should increase civ values on a sustained basis.

There are no buildings that do that, civ either spreads or increases from events - tribal events , event related to the wealth of your ruler and another event called impeccable administration that relates to traits of the governor and his popularity.

 

[Azkor]

There are no buildings that do that, civ either spreads or increases from events - tribal events , event related to the wealth of your ruler and another event called impeccable administration that relates to traits of the governor and his popularity.

Why yes thats correct thats why I said I THOUGHT some buildings should increase civ rating.

 

[unmerged(60148)]

Why yes thats correct thats why I said I THOUGHT some buildings should increase civ rating.

My bad, I was reading it wrong.

 

[kristoff]

I too wonder what's it all about religious prestige. The whole concept seems cartoonish. And a diplomatic option to desacrate holy place? Totally useless thing, which I never used in any game. Why should I hit someone else's religious prestige if it doesn't mean anything in reality? It's an absurdally detailed thing put among other far more important diplomatic actions. As well we could have there an option to spit on somebody's shoes.

Given timeframe, religion should only work in EUR as a factor that influences provincial tax income, manpower ect. and possibly relations between characters (more chance to become friends or more loyal to the people of the same faith ect.). And that's all. Nobody cared back then of expanding his own faith all over the world or waged religious wars. Contrary, tribes and nations were often borrowing foreign gods, including them in their own beliefs.

 

[Wessel]

My best guess is that it would have an influence on your chances when you take an omen.

 

[Grubnessul]

I think that's what it is supposed to do at least...

 

[unmerged(119342)]

VV 22 and religion score still makes no sense in the game.

Why do religions without provinces show up at 10+? I took out Egypt and converted the whole country to Greek religion, yet there is the Egyptian Pantheon listed at ~10....thirty years after the fact! Does character religion count more than provinces in the religion score, and as long as they live on shore up the religion?

Currently in my game, my beloved Pontus and Seleucus sidekick possess a total of 150 thoroughly GREEK provinces which all have high civilization and temples. I also have complete control over whom gets spices and whom doesn't. We should get more than our variable religion score of 10.3-10.8!!!!:wacko:

A feeble Rome of less than 20 provinces (whose few conquests somehow magically became completely Roman in every way in fewer than 5 years) passes us by in certain months.

I sound like Andy Rooney...but say did you ever notice how the computer converts cultures and religions so quickly while it takes you forever?

 

[Cheexsta]

Experiment time! This is done in 474 as Rome with no mods (other than modding the savegame for controlled tests).

Roman Religion - Control Test
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 3
"Roman" religion population: 279
"Roman" culture and religion population: 117
"Roman" religion average civ value: 66.7
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 1
Religious Power: 5.4

Test 1: Change population numbers
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 3
"Roman" religion population: 250
"Roman" culture and religion population: 117
"Roman" religion average civ value: 66.7
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 1
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: population numbers have no effect.

Test 2: Change number of provinces
"Roman" religion provinces: 0
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 3
"Roman" religion average civ value: 66.3 (minor change here, will test it separately anyway)
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 1
Since the population test showed no change, the rest of the numbers have been ignored.
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: very unexpected result, I thought it would change at least a bit...

Test 3: Change number of culture provinces
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 2
"Roman" religion average civ value: 66.7
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 1
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: kind of expected this one. No change, again.

Test 4: Change highest civ value
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 2
"Roman" religion average civ value: 64.45 (again, minor change; will test separately)
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 70
Temples: 1
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: damn, another unexpected result!

Test 5: Change average civ value
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 2
"Roman" religion average civ value: 10
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 1
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: this is getting old.

Test 6: Change number of temples
"Roman" religion provinces: 9
"Roman" culture and religion provinces: 2
"Roman" religion average civ value: 10
"Roman" relgion highest civ value: 90
Temples: 9
Religious Power: 5.4
Conclusion: I give up.

Overall impression: religious power is borked.

So, out of curiosity I decided to compare the religious data from 474 to that from 722.

474 (1 Roman temple):

722 (4 Roman temples):

I'm so lost. Hello, broken feature!

Edit: Ahh, I did another quick test, this time actually continuing the game from the moment the changes were made. It looks like religious power grows steadily after you make changes; so rather than it being a hard number derived from provinces, it actually just grows over time. It would be fascinating to take a closer look at this over the course of a long-term game.

 

[Sute]{h]

Interesting... I hope Paradox will enlighten us one way or the other on this issue.

 

[Descartes]

Haha good work on your experiment, Cheexsta! You have proven what we all suspected

 

[unmerged(60148)]

Great job Cheexsta. If the religious prestige grows and accumulates in time, then the game needs to preserve the value in the save file. Many months back I recall spending some time trying to identify those values in the file, but failed. Hopefully someone else can do a better job. Another more heretic idea is for Paradox to just tell us how does it work

 

[Ipsissimus]

I think the world is not yet ready to learn the arcane knowledge of how religious prestige works.

 

[GLENN]

You may have changed the temples but Power is based upon provinces and population that are your religion.

You can build temples in newly conqoured provinces but they still remain a different religion for a long time.

I build temples and get my provinces to turn into Roman.

I get my Omen power up to over 65%

This means I can have an Omen every year. (Almost)

In vanilla Rome it did crap, In VV it seems to work properly.

 

[Cheexsta]

Glenn: read the rest of my post. I changed more than just the temples: I changed population, civ value and culture, all in separate tests. You cannot possibly say that I "just changed temples".

As I also said, the effects of religious prestige evidently aren't instant. You have to let the game run for a bit before the changes become apparent, but I failed to do that in my tests. That'll be an experiment for another day.

 

[TheLoneGunman]

So it seems Paradox treats Religious Prestige/Power like a character stat.

I guess they add up the sum total of things you've changed and translate that into a "Monthly Religious Prestige = +0.05" or similar stat.

 

[GLENN]

Sorry Cheexsta. I was going off what I remembered from a few days ago when I read it.

I did remember that I was confident you didn't test the game by running it (my impression), but I decided not to comment because at that time I did not have VV and possibly Rome.

I have read all the posts from the beginning of time up to 26 pages, then I think I got up to page 35 and started to skip all the other pages until Rome 1.3 was released. I have read selected posts since that date.

Of course, I have read from today and a few pages back.

You only changed one parameter, which is correct for a lot of tests.
However, if the change is not great enough it won’t effect the formula.

In this case I think you need to change multiple parameters, even then I’m not sure you will see a change, because the PC has not updated the information.

TRY:

1) number of temples to 2
2) culture and religion population: to 130
3) religion population: to 350

Then check the statistics after running the game for one day.
Other games have to run one day before it updates.
Maybe this test will have to run for a month.
It all depends upon how they set it up in the background for calculations.

I read that pop gets updated yearly, up to province 10, then after that a decade. If thats true, then test parameters are one year minium?

Why is population listed twice? I have not examined the text files thoroughly.
Standing on the outside it doesn't make sense between 2 and 3. The relationship looks backward.

Culture and Religion population is < Religion Population?
Typo error?

Then culture population is a negative. What effects that?
Let’s take Rome.
So if your (Greek, Celts) foreign culture population is > your (Roman) religion population you will not gain in religious power as a % of the total population of your empire.
That means when you colonize or conquer a province too fast it reduces your religious power. Hence your ability to call an Omen.

Just thinking out loud.

I just see a lot of feedback that says don’t build temples, don’t build temples, don’t build temples.

I believe they work for me.

New related subject:
I am not too sure on the affects of building a temple in a newly acquired province. Will it promote the foreign religion or the Roman religion in the above example?
I read some question on this, but don't remember the feedback.

Anyone have the real answer to this?

 

[unmerged(92421)]

Did you go forward a month in time? maybe its calculated each month.