I always wondered this too. I put up lots of temples usually once i have a decent income. Giving priority to defences, fora and tax raising buildings first.
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@Glenn: As I'm sure I've mentioned at least twice now, I did not continue the game past the starting point in my tests, and I acknowledged that I should have. However, having spent an hour or whatever of my life on the tests that I did do, at the time I had no desire to repeat the absolutely thrilling experience.
Also, if you look at the screenshots I posted, those were taken using the bookmarks in-game. You'll notice a few oddities: Animism power decreases, even though the number of provinces increases (and therefore the population should have increased, and I doubt they would have lost temples in the meantime); Carthaginian and Shamanism power increases even though the number of provinces decreases, possibly through the addition of temples or population. The rest of them increase and decrease in a plausible way, except maybe Judaism which decreases even though nothing in the history file for Judaea indicates any changes that should affect it.
Yeah, it still baffles me, either way. It'd be nice if one of the devs could clarify how exactly religious prestige works, since nothing in any of the manuals says anything about it. I'd have to check the EU3 manual, though, see if it can yield any clues (even though the religious system is completely different, it may have some similar factors).
Also, if you look at the screenshots I posted, those were taken using the bookmarks in-game. You'll notice a few oddities: Animism power decreases, even though the number of provinces increases (and therefore the population should have increased, and I doubt they would have lost temples in the meantime); Carthaginian and Shamanism power increases even though the number of provinces decreases, possibly through the addition of temples or population. The rest of them increase and decrease in a plausible way, except maybe Judaism which decreases even though nothing in the history file for Judaea indicates any changes that should affect it.
Yeah, it still baffles me, either way. It'd be nice if one of the devs could clarify how exactly religious prestige works, since nothing in any of the manuals says anything about it. I'd have to check the EU3 manual, though, see if it can yield any clues (even though the religious system is completely different, it may have some similar factors).
I've not done any analysis myself. My experience may shed some light to this.
I've played two 300 year campaigns. Once as (a homemade) Judea, Judaism of course, and once as Arabia with a homemade religion. Since these were long campaigns, there are of course many, many variables. But my strategy was always more or less the same: I always conquer Egypt first, then the Seleucids, and then gradually Greece and Africa and so on; I always and only build temples where they share my faith. On the whole my progress in the two games were similar. I generally have conquered the whole map after about 200 years, and here are my observations:
-In both games, Greek pantheon always have relatively high prestige, even when they're completely wiped off the map.
-My custom religion gain prestige at a much faster rate than Judaism.
-Animism always seem to decrease even when they are gaining ground, or at least gaining population.
This leads me to think that:
-The prestige could be a zero-sum game, with any gain in one religion compensated by another's loss. However, the total sum seems to increase over time, either automatically according to the game year or as a function to some other combination of factors.
-Any change in religious prestige is very gradual... it gives the impression that there is some kind of inertia to the shifts. But I was under the impression that religious prestige aren't saved in the savegames, in which case this isn't logical. Can anyone confirm this?
-Considering Greek pantheon's tenacity and Judaism's difficulty in gaining prestige, some of this may be hardcoded. So to test the mechanics properly, one may want to set up a control group with custom religions. In fact, you may want to go as far as using all blank history files to eliminate any differences between religions/provinces.
I've played two 300 year campaigns. Once as (a homemade) Judea, Judaism of course, and once as Arabia with a homemade religion. Since these were long campaigns, there are of course many, many variables. But my strategy was always more or less the same: I always conquer Egypt first, then the Seleucids, and then gradually Greece and Africa and so on; I always and only build temples where they share my faith. On the whole my progress in the two games were similar. I generally have conquered the whole map after about 200 years, and here are my observations:
-In both games, Greek pantheon always have relatively high prestige, even when they're completely wiped off the map.
-My custom religion gain prestige at a much faster rate than Judaism.
-Animism always seem to decrease even when they are gaining ground, or at least gaining population.
This leads me to think that:
-The prestige could be a zero-sum game, with any gain in one religion compensated by another's loss. However, the total sum seems to increase over time, either automatically according to the game year or as a function to some other combination of factors.
-Any change in religious prestige is very gradual... it gives the impression that there is some kind of inertia to the shifts. But I was under the impression that religious prestige aren't saved in the savegames, in which case this isn't logical. Can anyone confirm this?
-Considering Greek pantheon's tenacity and Judaism's difficulty in gaining prestige, some of this may be hardcoded. So to test the mechanics properly, one may want to set up a control group with custom religions. In fact, you may want to go as far as using all blank history files to eliminate any differences between religions/provinces.
Perhaps not in the manuals, but the original strategy guide linked in the FAQ forum since EU3:Rome came out gives, on page 11, the fundamentals (my highlighting):
Since province change of religion is timestamped not only the country setup files (and thus used for initial values when starting a new scenario at any time) but also in the save files (used to recreate the setup when loading a game), we cannot deduce that the religious power of a religion is something as simple as the accumulated sum of religious prestige from every province with that religion over time subjected to some conveniently chosen squashing function (but it might be); as an example, it could be something more complicated with a decay function built in applied at end-of-month updates of current religious power rather than just summing it all and squashing the end result: if so, it should be fairly easy to test for if anybody cares.
In either case, or in case the clever buggers who designed it were even more inventive, no huge changes in religious ownership, province buildings, or province contents will result in anything but fairly minor local religious power changes over a short period of time.
Note that your save files will also display the following information (different numbers, though
).
Code:
enable=noreligion
noreligion=0.157
enable=roman_pantheon
roman_pantheon=0.091
enable=greek_pantheon
greek_pantheon=0.088
enable=egyptian_pantheon
egyptian_pantheon=0.149
enable=carthaginian_pantheon
carthaginian_pantheon=0.038
enable=phoenician_pantheon
phoenician_pantheon=0.110
enable=shamanism
shamanism=0.029
enable=druidism
druidism=0.034
enable=animism
animism=0.068
enable=judaism
judaism=0.157
enable=zoroaster
zoroaster=0.059I have not bothered analysing a heap of savegames and setups to find out whether this is directly related to religious power, religious prestige, or just strict percentage of populations, but if any of you clever beavers really want to know the details of how things work over and above "religious power extresses the accumulated religious prestige over time", I am pretty sure that the only thing you need is patience and savefiles, since all the details are there for the looking.
EDIT: Sorry for not answering earlier but I don't read this subforum much.
EDIT2: Blah, rereading the strategy guide comments, I realize that one could understand the definition to be an accumulation process without the "over time" component. That does not match my general experience, but, realistically, it is possible that I have just been seeing what I have been expecting, since I have most definitely not been playing Rome enough to be an expert. Should that prove to be the case, my apologies.
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Religion is effected by culture:
your culture and sub culture
foriegn culture
I believe there is a formulas we can use. I will double check and post later.
your culture and sub culture
foriegn culture
I believe there is a formulas we can use. I will double check and post later.
GLENN, I was just reading your Rome Guide (B) version due to your comments on religious power here, and I'm afraid I really do not understand how you have reached your conclusion with regards to religious power.
You seem to draw a direct line between culture and religion as it they have anything directly to do with each other because there's a Roman name in each group, when in fact they are two distinct systems. Not every nation has a culture that is eponymous with its religion and, in the data files, the two lists of tags for cultures and religions are clearly distinct. You could rename religions "religion1, religion2, ... , religionN" and cultures "culture1, culture2, .... , cultureM" and the game would not work one whit differently.
The idea of counting provinces of a specific culture and thinking of that as equal to the religious power (your 13 roman subculture provinces ~ 13.3 roman religious power example) fails completely for any number of other comparisons than the one example you list.
As an example, starting a new 474 scenario will reveal a starting religious power for the roman religion of 5.4 with a total of 9 roman religion provinces in the world. A quick count shows that there are 3 roman culture provinces and 6 roman subculture provinces.
The same start will have Judaism (the religion) at a startling 35.3 religious power with 1 province in the world having Judaism as religion. (The culture of that province, incidentally, being Jewish not Judaism for, as noted earlier, they are two different tag lists: one for religions and one for culture; There is one province with Jewish culture and another three from the Nabatean subculture in total, if you still want to try to figure some way for culture to have meaning).
Our friend Zoroaster has 30 provinces to his name and a power of 3.3 (the poor guy). He doesn't have any specific cultures to his name no matter how long a stretch one would want to make, but he does have a total of 6 Zoroastrian religion provinces controlled by countries with Zoroastrianism as their state religion if one want to use another approach but that doesn't really help either.
But we don't need to go to other examples than the one you show in the guide. The same screenshot you show as an example of how 13 culture provinces ~ 13.3 power has Judaism with 19.4 power. While it is not impossible for some culture you have chosen to associate with Judaism (the Jewish group would seem obvious) to have grown to cover around 19 provinces, it seems highly unlike.
Back to Roman again, the 536 start has Roman religion with 4.8 power, roman religion provinces a total of 10, and roman culture provinces 4 with another 6 subculture. Yes, that's an increase in total number of provinces with roman religion by one and an increase of the roman culture provinces by 1 over a 474 start, yet the power is lowered by 0.6.
Finally, the religious power of a religion is independent of the choice of viewer. As an example, Numidia and Carthage have the same religion and that religion's power has a fixed value at any given time, no matter which nation you are viewing with, but they do not even belong to the same culture group (Numidian culture is part of the Egyptian culture group).
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As stated, I don't know how it works either, but I'd be really surprised if culture played any role in it at all.
You seem to draw a direct line between culture and religion as it they have anything directly to do with each other because there's a Roman name in each group, when in fact they are two distinct systems. Not every nation has a culture that is eponymous with its religion and, in the data files, the two lists of tags for cultures and religions are clearly distinct. You could rename religions "religion1, religion2, ... , religionN" and cultures "culture1, culture2, .... , cultureM" and the game would not work one whit differently.
The idea of counting provinces of a specific culture and thinking of that as equal to the religious power (your 13 roman subculture provinces ~ 13.3 roman religious power example) fails completely for any number of other comparisons than the one example you list.
As an example, starting a new 474 scenario will reveal a starting religious power for the roman religion of 5.4 with a total of 9 roman religion provinces in the world. A quick count shows that there are 3 roman culture provinces and 6 roman subculture provinces.
The same start will have Judaism (the religion) at a startling 35.3 religious power with 1 province in the world having Judaism as religion. (The culture of that province, incidentally, being Jewish not Judaism for, as noted earlier, they are two different tag lists: one for religions and one for culture; There is one province with Jewish culture and another three from the Nabatean subculture in total, if you still want to try to figure some way for culture to have meaning).
Our friend Zoroaster has 30 provinces to his name and a power of 3.3 (the poor guy). He doesn't have any specific cultures to his name no matter how long a stretch one would want to make, but he does have a total of 6 Zoroastrian religion provinces controlled by countries with Zoroastrianism as their state religion if one want to use another approach but that doesn't really help either.
But we don't need to go to other examples than the one you show in the guide. The same screenshot you show as an example of how 13 culture provinces ~ 13.3 power has Judaism with 19.4 power. While it is not impossible for some culture you have chosen to associate with Judaism (the Jewish group would seem obvious) to have grown to cover around 19 provinces, it seems highly unlike.
Back to Roman again, the 536 start has Roman religion with 4.8 power, roman religion provinces a total of 10, and roman culture provinces 4 with another 6 subculture. Yes, that's an increase in total number of provinces with roman religion by one and an increase of the roman culture provinces by 1 over a 474 start, yet the power is lowered by 0.6.
Finally, the religious power of a religion is independent of the choice of viewer. As an example, Numidia and Carthage have the same religion and that religion's power has a fixed value at any given time, no matter which nation you are viewing with, but they do not even belong to the same culture group (Numidian culture is part of the Egyptian culture group).
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As stated, I don't know how it works either, but I'd be really surprised if culture played any role in it at all.
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You are correct. I have a new update but am trying to find out the formula.
I believe there is a relationship between culture and religion. I'm not too worried about the AI now. The AI is programmed to have a certain base power, perhaps with a minimum. One thing that makes me believe this is a temple.
Temples are suppose to add +1 to power if they are in a province with your religion. However, when you have 16 provinces with temples and your power is near half that, something is a negative in the formula.
All I know is if Rome remains relatively static and the culture of the provinces change to Roman your power goes up.
So far my calculations have shown:
Owning a province with a temple in and different religion = -.1 power minimum.
Building a temple in a province that is not your religion increases that religion, not your own, in fact it reduces your power by .1 minimum
Add temple increase prestige minimum .2
Add temple power +1 or more
Converting province to your religion -0.4 power
All of this testing was done at year one before any time passed. Then I ran it for a few years.
I believe there is a relationship between culture and religion. I'm not too worried about the AI now. The AI is programmed to have a certain base power, perhaps with a minimum. One thing that makes me believe this is a temple.
Temples are suppose to add +1 to power if they are in a province with your religion. However, when you have 16 provinces with temples and your power is near half that, something is a negative in the formula.
All I know is if Rome remains relatively static and the culture of the provinces change to Roman your power goes up.
So far my calculations have shown:
Owning a province with a temple in and different religion = -.1 power minimum.
Building a temple in a province that is not your religion increases that religion, not your own, in fact it reduces your power by .1 minimum
Add temple increase prestige minimum .2
Add temple power +1 or more
Converting province to your religion -0.4 power
All of this testing was done at year one before any time passed. Then I ran it for a few years.
Why do you think that?
The effect of a temple on a province is a value of +1 to local_religious_prestige. This is a +100% modifier to whatever base value of religious prestige (not religious power) that that province contributes [buildings.txt], just like desecrating a temple in a province is a -50% modifier [static_modifiers.txt].
If a province would normally provide exactly one religious prestige per month and if there was a direct linear correlation between religious prestige and religious power your assumption would be right, but both are very dubious assumptions (for instance, they don't fit the totality of any observations at all).
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Moreover, distinguishing between players and AI with respect to the calculation of religious power for religions is an idea you can shelve on the spot for two reasons: a) In singleplayer, the religious power of a religion is independent of which country you are playing, as can be trivially verified, and b) In multiplayer it is observed that everybody has the same religious power overviews no matter their country, no matter their religion, no matter which mix of AI/human players are used at any given time.
In other words, if the AI got any bonus to religious power (which it does not, but that is another matter), it would be one that was applied as a bonus on the calculated religious power, not one that affected the calculations of the global religious power overview.
The global religious power overview values are independent of who is playing what.
Right, I had time for yet another small test.
Take a normal 474 start. Roman-religion starts out with 5.4 religious power and generally declines to 5.2-5.3 religious power over the next 2-3 years if you do not do anything special.
Save the game immediately after start. Make a copy of it, let's say we call it test1.rome ; Change in the save-file the culture of every single roman-cultured province in the world (roman, etruscan, osco_umbrian, messapic, and venetic) i.e. including the barbarian ones just for fun without changing Rome's primary-culture. You now have a situation where there is exactly one roman-religion country in the world and the culture it has as primary (Roman-culture) no longer exists, nor do any of its secondary-cultures. Load up the same savegame and run a few years.
You will observe exactly the same decline from 5.4 to 5.2-5.3 with the Rome-without-any-roman-culture in the world as with the Rome-with-roman-culture-in-all-your-provinces.
Make another copy of the 474 save, let's call it test2.rome ; Change in the save-file the line roman_pantheon=0.054 to, say, roman_pantheon=0.001, load it up and start the time running. Over the next 3-4 years the religious power of the roman religion will converge on around 5.2-5.3.
Do the same for the test1.rome example (in, say, a new test3.rome) - same pattern again. The value that the roman pantheon religious power converges on is unaffected by the number of roman culture provinces in the world and it is unaffected by the starting religious power.
Can we please drop the idea that the religious prestige or power depends on culture? Pretty please?
Yes, but what if they go down? Or what if they are wiped out? Here's an example that does not at all match what one would expect if culture was in any way important.
Take a normal 474 start. Roman-religion starts out with 5.4 religious power and generally declines to 5.2-5.3 religious power over the next 2-3 years if you do not do anything special.
Save the game immediately after start. Make a copy of it, let's say we call it test1.rome ; Change in the save-file the culture of every single roman-cultured province in the world (roman, etruscan, osco_umbrian, messapic, and venetic) i.e. including the barbarian ones just for fun without changing Rome's primary-culture. You now have a situation where there is exactly one roman-religion country in the world and the culture it has as primary (Roman-culture) no longer exists, nor do any of its secondary-cultures. Load up the same savegame and run a few years.
You will observe exactly the same decline from 5.4 to 5.2-5.3 with the Rome-without-any-roman-culture in the world as with the Rome-with-roman-culture-in-all-your-provinces.
Make another copy of the 474 save, let's call it test2.rome ; Change in the save-file the line roman_pantheon=0.054 to, say, roman_pantheon=0.001, load it up and start the time running. Over the next 3-4 years the religious power of the roman religion will converge on around 5.2-5.3.
Do the same for the test1.rome example (in, say, a new test3.rome) - same pattern again. The value that the roman pantheon religious power converges on is unaffected by the number of roman culture provinces in the world and it is unaffected by the starting religious power.
Can we please drop the idea that the religious prestige or power depends on culture? Pretty please?
Should one build temples in wrong-religion provinces? I haven't been - is that a mistake?
Susanna
Susanna
Why do you think that?
The effect of a temple on a province is a value of +1 to local_religious_prestige. This is a +100% modifier to whatever base value of religious prestige (not religious power) that that province contributes [buildings.txt], just like desecrating a temple in a province is a -50% modifier [static_modifiers.txt].
Its in the Rome book! page 59.
"Each temple built by a country which follows a religion will add +1 to the Relgious Power of that religion"
When I look at the files temples effects prestige, so we agree.
Temples built = +1 to prestige
Its a misprint in the book.
However, check out this test as Rome;
add a temple to Picenum before the game starts.
474.1.1 = { roads = yes temple = yes } # Via Salaria
boot up game to recognize new files.
click on Picenum, you will see temple.
Rome power has gone from 5.4 to 7.1!
Rome prestige has gone from 44.4 to 44.6
So if the text files only increase prestige, why did the power go up?
Over the next two years power slowly decreased to 6.8
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Because religious power is based on religious prestige. I have never argued against that. In the above, I just noted that there was no evidence to support the notion that there was a linear relationship between the two and none to suggest that a temple added +1 power.So if the text files only increase prestige, why did the power go up?
Yes, that is a mistake. My tests show;
build a temple with your religion you get a plus.
build one in a province with different religion, its a plus for that religion.
Yes (to it being a mistake). A temple in a province supports the religion of the province, not the state religion of the owner (or controller) of the province.
That is to say - I only build temples in provinces that have my state religion - is that the correct policy?
Susanna
Susanna
It struck me that all these sums up to one (well, 0.98) and I checked two of my savegames, and they also have their power sum up to one (or slightly above).Note that your save files will also display the following information (different numbers, though
Code:enable=noreligion noreligion=0.157 enable=roman_pantheon roman_pantheon=0.091 enable=greek_pantheon greek_pantheon=0.088 enable=egyptian_pantheon egyptian_pantheon=0.149 enable=carthaginian_pantheon carthaginian_pantheon=0.038 enable=phoenician_pantheon phoenician_pantheon=0.110 enable=shamanism shamanism=0.029 enable=druidism druidism=0.034 enable=animism animism=0.068 enable=judaism judaism=0.157 enable=zoroaster zoroaster=0.059
This leads me to believe that religious power is relative, thus there will exist no correlation between a temple and a fixed power value. (but it would relate to a relative value.)
It's simply redistributed like:
Code:
[relative power of MY religion] = [absolute power of MY religion] / [absolute power of ALL religions]I have not tried this, but it could work like this:
My absolute power is 200, all other religions have absolute power of 800.
The relative power will simply be 20 and 80, respectively.
If I build temples and such and my absolute power eventually becomes 300, the power sum would now be 1100 and not 1000, which would give me the relative power of 27.3 (300/1100*100) and all other religious would have 72.7 (800/1100).
Incidently, Kaigon is right.
Religious power only goes up, it doesn't decrease. So if all of Rome is destroyed, and no Roman religion doesn't appear anymore, they still have the accumulated religious power. Say the Roman religion had gathered 100 power before it was wiped away as main religion in any province. Thus it will have a relative power to the very end of the game, it just decreases over the years. Religions do not just disappear, and strong religions will have secret followers even after they are made illegal.
To make an example (it doesn't go exactly like this, but it is easier to understand, at least for me it is):
Roman religion has gathered in total 100 "absolute" power when Roman religion is wiped away. All the religions in the game have in total 800 power, thus Roman religion shows (100/800)x100=12.5 Thus you see in the religion charts Rome with 12.5, and in the save game file you will find Rome religion with 0.125
Fifty years later there is of course still no provinces with Roman religion anywhere, but the total sum of religions is now 1500. Thus you find Roman religion in the charts with (100/1500)x100=6.7 power, and in the save game file roman religion has an entry of 0.067
Another fifty years later still no provinces with Roman religion, but the total sum of religions is now 2500. Thus you find Roman religion in the charts with (100/2500)x100=4 and in the save file as 0.04.
Notice that there will be rounding errors as only three decimals will be recorded (it is, AFAIK, recorded monthly), so it is not quite like this, but quite close to this model
Religious power only goes up, it doesn't decrease. So if all of Rome is destroyed, and no Roman religion doesn't appear anymore, they still have the accumulated religious power. Say the Roman religion had gathered 100 power before it was wiped away as main religion in any province. Thus it will have a relative power to the very end of the game, it just decreases over the years. Religions do not just disappear, and strong religions will have secret followers even after they are made illegal.
To make an example (it doesn't go exactly like this, but it is easier to understand, at least for me it is):
Roman religion has gathered in total 100 "absolute" power when Roman religion is wiped away. All the religions in the game have in total 800 power, thus Roman religion shows (100/800)x100=12.5 Thus you see in the religion charts Rome with 12.5, and in the save game file you will find Rome religion with 0.125
Fifty years later there is of course still no provinces with Roman religion anywhere, but the total sum of religions is now 1500. Thus you find Roman religion in the charts with (100/1500)x100=6.7 power, and in the save game file roman religion has an entry of 0.067
Another fifty years later still no provinces with Roman religion, but the total sum of religions is now 2500. Thus you find Roman religion in the charts with (100/2500)x100=4 and in the save file as 0.04.
Notice that there will be rounding errors as only three decimals will be recorded (it is, AFAIK, recorded monthly), so it is not quite like this, but quite close to this model
So by damaging religious prestige you don't actually diminish their religious power, you just delay it's accumulation? Interesting, so it's more of a religious arms race. Does the AI carry out this mission that anyones seen?
Erm, I should have been more precise. The "absolute" religion power can not go down by *itself*, so after you "wipe out" a religion, it does not lose the absolute power anymore. Which is why you see religions on the charts even after they have no provinces.
Also, the prestige as such does not accumulate (except it does, sort of). The absulute power is not so interesting, but the relative number is what is the interesting thing.
Anyway, as far as I can see there is only one good reason for Desecrating Holy sites. It is to send in your most moronic diplomat and hope he gets captured (if he gets decapitated too, you can consider it as a bonus) and thus give the target a casus belli on you, in the hopes that will goad them to DOW you
Also, I don't recall seeing the AI using this option that often, so it seems to be aware of this