Promoting religions

[Martin_Mortyry]

I know it's already been suggested a million times at least, including one of my own threads, but I decided to create a new one for a few reasons: 1. that topic is pretty old; 2. I didn't flesh the idea out well enough nor was it really thought out; 3. I wanted to bring more attention.


What's there to say, except for AI seemingly ignoring the mechanic, the culture promotion is great - at last, I have control over which cultures I like and which I want to eradicate! The religious acceptance looks really bland in comparison - you can only control the acceptance via decisions, ideas and policies(i.e. you can't actually control it at all), and all the religions are being segregated to either heretic or heathen where every single belief is being treated equally: the heathen acceptance at least makes some sort of sense in most cases but putting every fellow believer into the same basket is not only dumb but also ahistorical.

I don't need to dwell too deep for some good historical example, I just need to take a look at two of my all time favourites:

• Poland - as we all know, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a cradle of religious love and acceptance in Europe... well at least it might've been as long as you weren't an orthodox. Protestants from all over Europe would come to PLC to seek religious freedom, some of our nobles even converted to reformation(Radziwiłłs becoming calvinists is the most notable example). Orthodox on the other hand were in a really bizarre legal situation - it seems that the Commonwealth's policy on the schismatics was to integrate them to the Polish catholic church - hence the Union of Brest. The Unity Church is a topic for another thread(), in the current version of EU4 it can be only represented by conversion, unfortunately.
• the Netherlands - this one's simple: "you can live and prosper on premises of the Seven Provinces, as long as you're not a darn papist!" The Dutch really hated catholics, probably because of the Spanish. They were very ok with other branches of protestantism/reformation though!

Now that we have the introduction and justification done, let's talk about my proposed changes to the religious acceptance.

1. Everyone's on their own: every religion would have a separate acceptance meter so that promoting protestants wouldn't necessarily mean tolerating catholics. This would work similarly to the culture promotion - for a notable sum of monarch points(I don't know whether DIP or ADM) a country could increase its tolerance of a chosen group by 1, on a scale from -3(without additional maluses) to 3.
   That, of course would mess with things such as national ideas. To avoid any herculean tasks of coding the current Tolerance of Heretics/Heathens could be transformed into...
2. Overall Tolerance: As I've already mentioned, the current scale would stay, so would all the modifiers to tolerance of heretics and heathens scattered all over ideas, decisions, events and policies. The point of keeping remnants of the old system is the overall tolerance modifiers which would affect all the religions among either heretics or heathens.
3. 4-step tolerance: Similarly to the current version, the tolerance would be divided to persecuted religions(<0 tolerance), tolerated religions(tolerance at 0) and accepted religions(>0). Besides that, there would be a 4th level of tolerance, it is...
   
4. The Promoted Religion: Once a religion is at 3 tolerance points, the country can decide to make it the Promoted Religion(PR): this belief would be treated just like the True Faith regarding the bonuses. Conversion of land to that religion would be allowed. Changing the state religion to PR would cost much less prestige and would be possible no matter if the religion is heretic or heathen(although converting to a heathen one could probably cost a stability hit additionally). Only one religion can be fully promoted!

Some takeaways:

1. The Overall Tolerance modifiers would become very powerful so it would make sense to nerf them in some national ideas, e.g. Ottomans could get +3 acceptance of orthodoxy only. It could, of course, stay as it is in other cases like buddhists tolerating one another.
   
2. The change will probably influence the conversion as well. Perhaps a reverse tolerance could be introduced, in which the lower the tolerance of a religion the easier it is to convert them(~0,5% of conversion per point?). I'm not sure if it wouldn't harm the balance though.
3. I was thinking about giving bonuses of the PR to the promotor but looking at some of them(shia, nahuatl, buddhism in a way) I am unsure if it wouldn't be a bit too OP. Also, there wouldn't be a reason for changing religion!

I think(I hope) that's all I wanted to write! If you have any questions or want to show support/opposition to this suggestion, please write it below. Thanks for your attention.

 

[cub298]

I know it's already been suggested a million times at least, including one of my own threads, but I decided to create a new one for a few reasons: 1. that topic is pretty old; 2. I didn't flesh the idea out well enough nor was it really thought out; 3. I wanted to bring more attention.


What's there to say, except for AI seemingly ignoring the mechanic, the culture promotion is great - at last, I have control over which cultures I like and which I want to eradicate! The religious acceptance looks really bland in comparison - you can only control the acceptance via decisions, ideas and policies(i.e. you can't actually control it at all), and all the religions are being segregated to either heretic or heathen where every single belief is being treated equally: the heathen acceptance at least makes some sort of sense in most cases but putting every fellow believer into the same basket is not only dumb but also ahistorical.

I don't need to dwell too deep for some good historical example, I just need to take a look at two of my all time favourites:

• Poland - as we all know, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a cradle of religious love and acceptance in Europe... well at least it might've been as long as you weren't an orthodox. Protestants from all over Europe would come to PLC to seek religious freedom, some of our nobles even converted to reformation(Radziwiłłs becoming calvinists is the most notable example). Orthodox on the other hand were in a really bizarre legal situation - it seems that the Commonwealth's policy on the schismatics was to integrate them to the Polish catholic church - hence the Union of Brest. The Unity Church is a topic for another thread(), in the current version of EU4 it can be only represented by conversion, unfortunately.
• the Netherlands - this one's simple: "you can live and prosper on premises of the Seven Provinces, as long as you're not a darn papist!" The Dutch really hated catholics, probably because of the Spanish. They were very ok with other branches of protestantism/reformation though!

Now that we have the introduction and justification done, let's talk about my proposed changes to the religious acceptance.

1. Everyone's on their own: every religion would have a separate acceptance meter so that promoting protestants wouldn't necessarily mean tolerating catholics. This would work similarly to the culture promotion - for a notable sum of monarch points(I don't know whether DIP or ADM) a country could increase its tolerance of a chosen group by 1, on a scale from -3(without additional maluses) to 3.
   That, of course would mess with things such as national ideas. To avoid any herculean tasks of coding the current Tolerance of Heretics/Heathens could be transformed into...
2. Overall Tolerance: As I've already mentioned, the current scale would stay, so would all the modifiers to tolerance of heretics and heathens scattered all over ideas, decisions, events and policies. The point of keeping remnants of the old system is the overall tolerance modifiers which would affect all the religions among either heretics or heathens.
3. 4-step tolerance: Similarly to the current version, the tolerance would be divided to persecuted religions(<0 tolerance), tolerated religions(tolerance at 0) and accepted religions(>0). Besides that, there would be a 4th level of tolerance, it is...
   
4. The Promoted Religion: Once a religion is at 3 tolerance points, the country can decide to make it the Promoted Religion(PR): this belief would be treated just like the True Faith regarding the bonuses. Conversion of land to that religion would be allowed. Changing the state religion to PR would cost much less prestige and would be possible no matter if the religion is heretic or heathen(although converting to a heathen one could probably cost a stability hit additionally). Only one religion can be fully promoted!

Some takeaways:

1. The Overall Tolerance modifiers would become very powerful so it would make sense to nerf them in some national ideas, e.g. Ottomans could get +3 acceptance of orthodoxy only. It could, of course, stay as it is in other cases like buddhists tolerating one another.
   
2. The change will probably influence the conversion as well. Perhaps a reverse tolerance could be introduced, in which the lower the tolerance of a religion the easier it is to convert them(~0,5% of conversion per point?). I'm not sure if it wouldn't harm the balance though.
3. I was thinking about giving bonuses of the PR to the promotor but looking at some of them(shia, nahuatl, buddhism in a way) I am unsure if it wouldn't be a bit too OP. Also, there wouldn't be a reason for changing religion!

I think(I hope) that's all I wanted to write! If you have any questions or want to show support/opposition to this suggestion, please write it below. Thanks for your attention.

I really do like this. It is a similar idea to the culture idea I just saw in another post, but the two should be tied together and have very similar to how they work.



Also, if you are going to promote all those different forums and post you created, just put it in a link like this:
Link by "Content by Martin_Mortyry", or
Link by "Threads by Martin_Mortyry".
You can find at the bottom of your Profile page, in the posting section, with these two options.

Then you could maybe mention 4-6 of the more important ones you want implemented.

 

[AndrejK]

Basically you're saying that the system would allow me to choose which religion I convert it to?

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

Basically you're saying that the system would allow me to choose which religion I convert it to?

Yes, at least if we talk about yours and the favoured religions. Expanding other religions... wouldn't make sense, really.

 

[The dragon of bhutan]

Yes, at least if we talk about yours and the favoured religions. Expanding other religions... wouldn't make sense, really.

Would this mean you can finally become pagan without going bankrupt or that weird animist exploit-ish thing?

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

Would this mean you can finally become pagan without going bankrupt or that weird animist exploit-ish thing?

I think so, yes. Just like you can change your country's main culture in the current version.

 

[The dragon of bhutan]

I think so, yes. Just like you can change your country's main culture in the current version.

In that case, I'm all for it.

 

[FleetingRain]

Ressing this because this is too good.

I'd only like to add that I don't think we need an Overall Tolerance modifier; it even sounds counter-intuitive to your suggestion. I'd instead just keep both modifiers and add the ones for specific religions.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

Ressing this because this is too good.

Glad to hear that!

I'd only like to add that I don't think we need an Overall Tolerance modifier; it even sounds counter-intuitive to your suggestion. I'd instead just keep both modifiers and add the ones for specific religions.

Well, the "overall tolerance" is essentially what we have in the game at the moment - tolerance increases to every heresy or heathenry in the world. I'd keep such modifiers because of instances like buddhists, who tolerate every other denomination of their religon, or Indian states that require tolerance of heathen beliefs just to stay afloat. Needless to say, if players had more influence on their tolerance of particular religions, these modifiers would be extremely powerful, but I'm afraid they'd be required in some cases.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

I'd keep such modifiers because of instances like buddhists, who tolerate every other denomination of their religon, or Indian states that require tolerance of heathen beliefs just to stay afloat.

Oh, and also religious and humanist ideas. It's easy to find some substitute for tolerance in humanist set(cheaper promotion), but not so much in case of the tolerance of the Ture Faith in religious ideas.

 

[FleetingRain]

Glad to hear that!


Well, the "overall tolerance" is essentially what we have in the game at the moment - tolerance increases to every heresy or heathenry in the world. I'd keep such modifiers because of instances like buddhists, who tolerate every other denomination of their religon, or Indian states that require tolerance of heathen beliefs just to stay afloat. Needless to say, if players had more influence on their tolerance of particular religions, these modifiers would be extremely powerful, but I'm afraid they'd be required in some cases.

Oh, I think you meant you wanted one modifier for both Heathens and Heretics. Guess we agree then.

 

[PurpulaPhoenixum53]

I would love to see this implemented. It would add immersion as different regions could have different flavor (i.e In my Greece game Egypt could be Coptic , Portions of Italy could be Catholic while my main region Greece and Anatolia would be Orthodox)

 

[withche.07]

Actually tolerated religions make sense for Ottomans as well.
They generally didn't touch other heavenly (according to Islam) religions (Judaism and Christianity basically) as long as their followers paid Jizya.
So these 2 could be called tolerated religions.