I like the EU4 icon a lot, tbh. It would make the most sense, and I think they did a similar thing when Ibadi graduated from Sunni heresy to unique Muslim branch.
The (un)Official Justice for Manichaeism Petition Thread
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If we're inventing a hole new religious group it might be better to make a Gnostic religious group instead of a Manichean one. But let's start with baby steps and make Manichean a non-heresy within the Mazdan group first. For heresies I think initially Manichean could just not have any heresies. It offers a good mix of historical accuracy and low workload for PDX.
Because the thing we all need to consider is that ideas are good, but someone will have to do work to actually turn them into reality. And the less work that is, the better the chance that it will be done.
Making Manichean a non-heresy by itself is very little work. All that's really needed is a new icon. Once you have the icon you can literally make Manichean into a stand-alone religion in less than 1 minute. So far so good. Adding a Learning bonus and heir designation is also very simple and will add no more than another minute or two. Throwing in the Buddhist ambitions is still under 10 minutes of work. But for artifacts and a unique great work it already begins to depend.
If you have all the numbers decided upon you should be done in an hour, maybe less. But if you don't have all the numbers decided on already, then the workload will no longer be trivial. And then with unique interactions with China, a new monastic order, and special heresy mechanics the workload becomes significant, so I'd say we drop those for now. Ideally they would be added too, but they're not essential and we should focus on the main goal.
So our request at this point should be limited to making Manichean a stand-alone religion in the Mazdan group (probably using a variant of the EU4 icon) and giving it some easily added extra features. We can still discuss the validity of each of the three (ambitions, Learning bonus, heir designation) in the thread.
If we want artifacts and great works to be added too, we need to first discuss them in detail and come up with specific numbers for everything. PDX can then choose to use our numbers or not, but the numbers we provide them with lower the workload even in the latter case because it provides them with a framework to build on.
Indeed it does seem like the more logical and pragmatic way to go.
Imho it would also take very little effort to make the nature of Manichaism Cosmopolitan.
Since the religion had elements from Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastranism and Buddism and was not that much openly hostile to other religions it could make sence from a historical - religious point of view (although it was only the dominant - state religion for the Uyghurs one can argue).
From a gameplay point of view we will have finaly one religion that has this particular Nature from the get go. It could provide a different gameplay expirience than most other religions. You would need to rely more on balancing a multi religious realm than having a one-religion one-culture empire. Even playing a Taoist ruler for a change can be great fun (at least for me
, i undestand it is not everyones cup of tea).
I get the more feasible solutions, though we are working on 2 assumptions here.
First that the proposal will be heard and implemented.
Second that it will be a minor addition to some future patch.
What if the next major expansion will focus on religions, the eastern side of the map, or whatever other topic where Manicheism could be reworked as a proper standalone religion...with unique features. Part of a big update, not a small one.
There have been some good and a few great suggestions on the thread. I'm not defending my own, far from it, but i think we should try to project a fully unique Manicheism, with the pragmatic solution as plan B, not A. I wouldn't be excited if Manicheism was reworked by borrowing existing mechanics a bit from left and right, because quite frankly if i wanted to play with those mechanics i could simply play with the already existing religions.
Furthermore i feel it would go against the "spirit" of this desired rework of Manicheism. Manicheism wouldn't be very unique from simply borrowing existing stuff. It would not be the "See of Babylon" but the "Whore of Babylon", if you catch my drift.
It's so late here and I'm so tired i can't tell whether what i wrote makes full sense in English or whether it sounds complainy or inspirational. It was meant to be inspirational. Hat off to all, I'm falling in the arms of Morpheus.
First that the proposal will be heard and implemented.
Second that it will be a minor addition to some future patch.
What if the next major expansion will focus on religions, the eastern side of the map, or whatever other topic where Manicheism could be reworked as a proper standalone religion...with unique features. Part of a big update, not a small one.
There have been some good and a few great suggestions on the thread. I'm not defending my own, far from it, but i think we should try to project a fully unique Manicheism, with the pragmatic solution as plan B, not A. I wouldn't be excited if Manicheism was reworked by borrowing existing mechanics a bit from left and right, because quite frankly if i wanted to play with those mechanics i could simply play with the already existing religions.
Furthermore i feel it would go against the "spirit" of this desired rework of Manicheism. Manicheism wouldn't be very unique from simply borrowing existing stuff. It would not be the "See of Babylon" but the "Whore of Babylon", if you catch my drift.
It's so late here and I'm so tired i can't tell whether what i wrote makes full sense in English or whether it sounds complainy or inspirational. It was meant to be inspirational. Hat off to all, I'm falling in the arms of Morpheus.
Hopefully, we'll get some news in the near future about whether to expect a proper expansion or another Great Works/Iron century-style patch. Either way, it'd be easy to implement this sooner rather than later.
PDX could also make it a stand-alone religion in a patch and then elaborate on the features in an expansion.
Why not create many mini patches gradually fleshing out all the more barebone religions and heresies? Could go one at a time.
It seems that the majority would welcome more flavor for the obscure religions - heresies.
They could go about it by selecting one religion heresy at a time. Create a thread about the current state of the religion, some basic history and the approach they are thinking of taking. Maybe the community could chip in as well with some ideas. Of course what they would eventualy implement is as allways in their hand.
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As much as I'd like to see this, I'm not expecting a great deal more out of CKII in the way of new content. My hope is that Manichean changes are slipped into the next bug-fixing patch as a small treat for the players.
I really hope you are wrong. I know you do too
.It seems to me that even all those years later the game still has so much potencial. More religious and cultural flavor. A revamped economy and technology system. Natural dissasters etc... One can dream...
I feel that this is too grand for CK2... Maybe in CK3 they'll consider it.
Manichaeism is listed as a Zoroastrian heresy because it competed with Zoroastrianism (it's effectively a heresy of every other non-Pagan religion in the game, in fact, by claiming that it had the "right" way of interpreting the other religions) in its earliest eras, and while its portrayal as just a detached and Nestorian-esque heresy that can function without replacing Zoroastrianism with SoA might be a bit shallow, we don't really need to change too much for it. Its scope as a serious majority religion was very limited, and not within the actual timespan of CK2.
Manichaeism is listed as a Zoroastrian heresy because it competed with Zoroastrianism (it's effectively a heresy of every other non-Pagan religion in the game, in fact, by claiming that it had the "right" way of interpreting the other religions) in its earliest eras, and while its portrayal as just a detached and Nestorian-esque heresy that can function without replacing Zoroastrianism with SoA might be a bit shallow, we don't really need to change too much for it. Its scope as a serious majority religion was very limited, and not within the actual timespan of CK2.
What are the meanings behind the symbols? The first it's kind of easy to make out. What is number 2, and what does it represent?Updating this with a few more possible symbols I located:
Number 3 above has been pointed out as the symbol of an Egyptian divinity, unless otherwise, it really seems that to me as well.
The second one is an ouroboros and it isn't particularly Manichean. There is somewhat of a link to gnosticism, but iI don't think it's significant enough to make it a symbol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros
I am under the impression that Mancheaism adapted to local beliefs, so it would be nice if you could chose a patron saint among, say, Jesus, Buddha, or Zoroaster.
That third one is indeed an Egyptian symbol. Not sure why it popped up in my search.
The second is indeed an ouroboros, which has associations with gnosticism/reincarnation: both concepts that Manichaeism is associated with. I think it'd be a solid choice, especially considering that several of the pagan symbols are just generic images of concepts associated with their respective faiths.
Hmm. I hope those "helpful" in the OP are the devs finding the info helpful for their future implementation.
Honestly, even if they just changed the status of Manichaeism as it already exists from heresy to religion, I'd be content. Not overjoyed, but...
It does have more features than any other heresy and isn't far from Miaphysite or Nestorian in terms of features, so yeah, even making it a separate religion without any additional stuff would be fine.Honestly, even if they just changed the status of Manichaeism as it already exists from heresy to religion, I'd be content. Not overjoyed, but...
Yeah just sticking it in its own religious group would be enough for me but more features are always welcome.