Should Slavic be split in two?

[Zsrai]

I don't think it's a huge problem that Slavic is spread out while others aren't. Slavic, and to a lesser extent Suomenusko and Tengri, can be the "hard" reformations while Germanic, African, and (especially) Romuva can be the "easy" ones. Slavic isn't even all that bad unless you're in the Balkans; you can grab Pommerania, Poland, Kiev and/or Novgorod and not be utterly enormous at any rate. It seems more set up for the Wendish or Russian Empire to also be the reformer, not the "mere" Serbian or Croatian kingdoms.

 

[jonjowett]

As of HF, I have now reformed all of the pagan faiths (apart from Hellenism and Aztec) in one patch or another. The hardest was definitely Zunism - dealing with the Abbasids in 769 is no joke. Germanic and Romuva are super-easy - but Germanic at least was probably designed that way, as it was the main focus of TOG. Slavic wasn't too bad, but I've only done it with centrally-located states like Poland (Piast!) and Novgorod (Rurik!)... I am now a little bit curious about what it would be like if I started in the Balkans...

But, on writing this post, I realised that reforming Aztec was a far more interesting challenge. Ah well.

 

[Dragatus]

Start in southeastern poland, Galicia-Volhynia, or Kiev, and you could very easily be able to reform Slavic within your lifetime since it has a fairly high moral authority to begin with and you're centrally located between 3 holy sites.

Fair enough, but I was writing from the perspective of the south Slavs (Carantanians, Croatians, and Serbs in particular). My bad for not making that clear.

 

[Arch-Heretek]

Devs during TOG: "Pagan Reformarion is supposed to be a very high difficulty challenge!"
People here: "It's not too hard, but about making it even easier, eh?"

Sure I could play easy mode as the Germanic, Romuvan, or African Pagans, who seem to be the ones with the most flavor and intent of Holy Fury and TOG, but at least three others in Slavic, Zunist, and Suomensoko just don't stack up in terms of ability to reform or flavor in general. I'm not saying make reformation easier for all people across the board, I brought attention specifically to the Slavs. It's already incredibly easy for the 3 focus religions and even Suomensoko because of the Estonian cluster and how most players will be expanding anyways (though Suomensoko has a lot less flavor compared to the other three, basically just localization changes).

Why not spread the Germanic sites out of Scandinavia into places like Germany and Francia? Or Romuvan ones into Crimea? Make it "Harder." Historically these people *existed* in these areas, but the point of these two religions is supposed to be A) The Viking Religion for Vikings and B) The Lithuanian Religion for Lithuanians. Meanwhile Slavic is supposed to be *all* of the Slavic peoples, from Poland to Russia to Kiev to Serbia and Croatia. Suomensoko suffers from this to a lesser degree, being the religion of all the Finno-Ugric people, but they generally don't have half of Europe between them and their holy sites as well as being a much sparser populace historically.

 

[IndigoRage]

Sure I could play easy mode as the Germanic, Romuvan, or African Pagans, who seem to be the ones with the most flavor and intent of Holy Fury and TOG, but at least three others in Slavic, Zunist, and Suomensoko just don't stack up in terms of ability to reform or flavor in general. I'm not saying make reformation easier for all people across the board, I brought attention specifically to the Slavs. It's already incredibly easy for the 3 focus religions and even Suomensoko because of the Estonian cluster and how most players will be expanding anyways (though Suomensoko has a lot less flavor compared to the other three, basically just localization changes).

Why not spread the Germanic sites out of Scandinavia into places like Germany and Francia? Or Romuvan ones into Crimea? Make it "Harder." Historically these people *existed* in these areas, but the point of these two religions is supposed to be A) The Viking Religion for Vikings and B) The Lithuanian Religion for Lithuanians. Meanwhile Slavic is supposed to be *all* of the Slavic peoples, from Poland to Russia to Kiev to Serbia and Croatia. Suomensoko suffers from this to a lesser degree, being the religion of all the Finno-Ugric people, but they generally don't have half of Europe between them and their holy sites as well as being a much sparser populace historically.

I believe a solution for Balkan Slavs is listed above. Just fabricate on the holy sites, take them, and just let them go when you're done with them since Slavic usually has pretty high moral authority anyway.

 

[Zsrai]

The solution to Slavic, besides what IndigoRage said, is to just blob it up. Either strategically pick off counties or just gobble up a bunch of land. It's no different from Germanic or Suomenusko in that way, just with the scale upped. If you want an "easy" reformation, then don't do Slavic.

 

[Arch-Heretek]

The solution to Slavic, besides what IndigoRage said, is to just blob it up. Either strategically pick off counties or just gobble up a bunch of land. It's no different from Germanic or Suomenusko in that way, just with the scale upped. If you want an "easy" reformation, then don't do Slavic.

I did not say "easy," in fact I denigrated it in the very first sentence of my last post. I'm looking for consistency or logical progression. I do not consider abusing game mechanics to snake into the northern corners of Europe to be particularly fun, nor do I want to form a doom blob that reforms the religion not as a matter of objective, but as a consequence to rampaging across the map.

 

[Zsrai]

I did not say "easy," in fact I denigrated it in the very first sentence of my last post. I'm looking for consistency or logical progression. I do not consider abusing game mechanics to snake into the northern corners of Europe to be particularly fun, nor do I want to form a doom blob that reforms the religion not as a matter of objective, but as a consequence to rampaging across the map.

It is consistent and a logical progression. Slavic is the "hard mode" reformation. If you don't want to snake around or blob, then don't reform Slavic. Just because you want to do it another way than is presented doesn't mean that the current way is wrong or that the devs must change it, especially not in an easily modded game like CK2. If you're not a fan of how it's presented, then edit the files or make a mod for it.

 

[jonjowett]

It is consistent and a logical progression. Slavic is the "hard mode" reformation. If you don't want to snake around or blob, then don't reform Slavic. Just because you want to do it another way than is presented doesn't mean that the current way is wrong or that the devs must change it, especially not in an easily modded game like CK2. If you're not a fan of how it's presented, then edit the files or make a mod for it.

I semi-agree. I don't think Slavic is too hard as it stands - it's just not designed with balkan slavics in mind.

However, I think it would be nice if there were more than two possible prerequisites for reformation in general. For example, if you could reform by controlling two holy sites with 75% MA. Or 4 holy sites with 40% MA.

 

[Zsrai]

I semi-agree. I don't think Slavic is too hard as it stands - it's just not designed with balkan slavics in mind.

However, I think it would be nice if there were more than two possible prerequisites for reformation in general. For example, if you could reform by controlling two holy sites with 75% MA. Or 4 holy sites with 40% MA.

It should probably only require a scaling MA based on your held Holy Sites, with the current 30% at 5 and 90-100% at 0.

 

[jonjowett]

It should probably only require a scaling MA based on your held Holy Sites, with the current 30% at 5 and 90-100% at 0.

I think 0 or 1 holy site is problematic in gameplay terms - it means that there could be several different characters who could reform the religion, all at the same time. Since reformation can only be done once, this could be quite frustrating for the player. If you require at least 2 holy sites, the chance of having 2 simultaneous potential reformers is practically zero.

Equally, I included the 4 + 40% option because I often find myself in that exact situation...

 

[Streletz]

i was writing about this since Old Gods expansion - slavic religion is by far the worse and the most boring in the game (with possibly the Zunists that I've never played)

Romuva, African and Suomnsko are brainlessly easy to reform, and two of them now have the Eldreship succession, helping you to keep you Empire united.

Germanic have a ton of flavor, events, stupid bonuses (how is to navigate rivers more complicated to navigate seas???)

And as Slavic, you have your vanilla pagan religion without any interesting things, you have to conquer an anhistorical and gigantic empire to reform (or making sneaky conquest making your map bleed your eyes). Your neighbourgs are overpowered Tengri hordes, that are immune to which is supposed to be your biggest strengths (defensive attrition) And you're locked in Gavelkind. Have fun.

I've never played any slavic character except to convert asap, which makes like 30% of the map implayable for me in earlier starts.

Reformation as it is have absolutely no sens, and is boring to play. It should be character related - be independant, have <20 learning, have a temple vassal with 15>Learning, have 500 piety. It should not be instant, instead it should trigger a period of instability (malus to relationship with your vassals and give a special CB on you to your same religion neighbourg for 5-10 years). Or perhaps even several wave of negative events, a bit like westernization in EU3.

And if you manage to survive your reformation period, nobody outside your realm should convert to the reformed religion. That mechanic would make far more sense to me.

 

[Arch-Heretek]

It is consistent and a logical progression. Slavic is the "hard mode" reformation. If you don't want to snake around or blob, then don't reform Slavic. Just because you want to do it another way than is presented doesn't mean that the current way is wrong or that the devs must change it, especially not in an easily modded game like CK2. If you're not a fan of how it's presented, then edit the files or make a mod for it.

Did you bother to look at the title of this thread? Or the first post? It's a discussion whether this should be changed or not to better accomadate the far flung reaches of Slavism. It's not even "make reformation easier," it could just be shuffling the holy sites around to not hug the Polish-Moscow corridor, or further fleshing out the religion to make the fringes actually affected by it. Reforming Slavic paganism requires, at minimum, an empire and a half worth of size. If you don't start directly on a holy site or next to one, it will be significantly bigger. Even Zunism only requires one empire in an area that makes sense to the religion.

You're being utterly reductive by boiling it down to "you want it easy, games cannot change despite the dlc that just changed a bunch of things, do it yourself" and it's utterly worthless. You seem to think I think this is too hard, despite me saying otherwise. No, I don't, I've reformed it several times. I can do the illogical seize random provinces in Russia and Poland while half a map away thing.
In what world is conquering the entire Intermarium plus large chunks of Russia consistent with all the others that have only a single empire, at most, to reform, consistent? In what world is some tribal in the Balkans marching across the Carpathians to sit on a couple of temples, with nothing between them and hundreds of kilometers apart, logical? Yours, apparently.

 

[Zsrai]

Did you bother to look at the title of this thread? Or the first post? It's a discussion whether this should be changed or not to better accomadate the far flung reaches of Slavism. It's not even "make reformation easier," it could just be shuffling the holy sites around to not hug the Polish-Moscow corridor, or further fleshing out the religion to make the fringes actually affected by it. Reforming Slavic paganism requires, at minimum, an empire and a half worth of size. If you don't start directly on a holy site or next to one, it will be significantly bigger. Even Zunism only requires one empire in an area that makes sense to the religion.

Yeah, I did. I don't think it needs to be changed, but if you do you can always find a mod, make one, or just edit the files yourself. Zunist has a worse shot at reformation than Slavic does actually, since you have to push into the Abbasids.

You're being utterly reductive by boiling it down to "you want it easy, games cannot change despite the dlc that just changed a bunch of things, do it yourself" and it's utterly worthless. You seem to think I think this is too hard, despite me saying otherwise. No, I don't, I've reformed it several times. I can do the illogical seize random provinces in Russia and Poland while half a map away thing.
In what world is conquering the entire Intermarium plus large chunks of Russia consistent with all the others that have only a single empire, at most, to reform, consistent? In what world is some tribal in the Balkans marching across the Carpathians to sit on a couple of temples, with nothing between them and hundreds of kilometers apart, logical? Yours, apparently.

Ok, so I reduced the problem down for you, which isn't utterly worthless. You don't how spread out the Slavic holy sites are. That's fine. That doesn't mean they have to change. If you want a more simple reformation then choose a different religion. If you want to blob and reform, pick up Slavic. Seems like a simple thing to figure out to me.

P.S. - I never said that "games cannot change despite the DLC", stop building false arguments.

 

[balmung60]

Not saying that it's good that Slavic is by far the hardest to reform, but I'm pretty sure that's by design. More than the other Pagan faiths, it's "meant" to get wiped out and have mass conversion as a more preferred outcome, so as to try to push the game in a more historical direction. If anything, looking at the intent this way and sorting Pagan faiths by when they are considered wiped out when you go through the date selection menu, the bigger outlier is Germanic and how incredibly easy it is to reform, even though it's the second Pagan faith gone (third if you count Zunist). If there's a goal of producing a 1066-ish result by 1066 from the 867 start, Germanic should be much harder to reform, instead of being the most likely religion to see the AI pull off a reformation with.

On the other hand, from a purely gameplay perspective, yes, it is kind of bad that Slavic is both so hard to reform and doesn't even have a particularly great reformation perk to make up for that difficulty (at best, it can be said that at least it's not Suomenusko's perk). At least make it fully equal to Sea-Bound + Stability.

 

[Orphalesion]

Well in some ways Germanic Paganism suffers the same issue as the Slavic one; the belief system of the Saxons, the vast majority of which is lost to us, while similar, wasn't the same as what the various Norse peoples believed in. And even the Norse one is based on the writings of a guy who lived in a world where Christianity had already replaced the old gods.
A lot of things remain obscure and are guess-work or scholarly theories. We don't know the identities of Njord's or Tyr's wives for example and have little/no information about the religious roles of several of the gods.

And...isn't that also the problem with Slavic Paganism? All we know about what was once a vast expansion of different cults and myths are a few bits and pieces either written down by explorers who neither could nor cared to truly understand what's going on, or things that were written down post-Christianization.
Would we even have enough information on the beliefs of the Southern Slavs and the ways they might have differed from those of the northern ones for the Devs to create a separate religion out of that?

 

[Eldath]

slavic religion is by far the worse and the most boring in the game (with possibly the Zunists that I've never played)

Talking crap about the two best religions in the game, smh...

Also, no Slavic doesn't need a split. You can easily mod holy sites to be close together if that is your preference.
I personally modded all reformation natures to always convert all provinces and it was easy to learn. I also modded the Cathar heresy to have it's own crusades. It took about 10 minutes to learn. You can do this if you want to.

 

[jonjowett]

I also modded the Cathar heresy to have it's own crusades.

I guess you also had to add a religious head to call the crusades? Or did it work without that?

 

[IndigoRage]

The solution to Slavic, besides what IndigoRage said, is to just blob it up. Either strategically pick off counties or just gobble up a bunch of land. It's no different from Germanic or Suomenusko in that way, just with the scale upped. If you want an "easy" reformation, then don't do Slavic.

imo the most reasonable thing the devs can do regarding OP's problem is change the requirements for the bloodline, rather than making any changes to reformation itself.

 

[Eldath]

I guess you also had to add a religious head to call the crusades? Or did it work without that?

Yes I did. I could also name him as "Gnostic Pope".