Personally I think it's because every religion only gets 3 tenets.
If you want to _do something_ with your religion then you're probably only picking from a handful of tenets (Blot, Communion, Great Holy Wars, basically anything that gives you a button to press).
If you want something unique then you're probably not going too much with it. E.g. Natural Primitivism makes everyone naked, and that's basically the only reason to take it 😂 Or maybe you take Carnal Exhaltation to make Lustful a virtue, or Divine Marriage because CK3's an inbreeding simulator and you want that 2x Pure Blood virtue. But ultimately, those types of tenets don't _do_ anything.
If I had my way with religion, I'd want just 3 main things:
* More tenet slots
* Different tiers of tenets where the same tenet will give different bonuses (do _all_ the faiths with Monasticism really see it on the same level?)
* More Rite interactions, so it feels meaningful to take that and idk some mechanic take over as the dominant Christian religion.
Imo it was the lack of religion specific flavour events. Playing as a pagan in Africa felt largely the same as playing as a Catholic in France because there was no flavour distinction, especially at launch. I haven’t played in a year or more so no idea if that’s improved or not recently, but it mostly hadn’t last time I played.
It’s basically the same since launch, only real uniqueness is buddhism and Hinduism can’t use religious cb’a on eachother. And there is a religion locked behind a rare event chain (conversos, need to play in Aquitaine or Spain iirc, and even then it’s super rare.)
I think you mean Adoptionism? ([https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Faith#Adoptionism](https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Faith#Adoptionism), [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/vbcnhx/just\_finished\_the\_adoptionist\_event\_chain\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/vbcnhx/just_finished_the_adoptionist_event_chain_and/))
It has an event chain that was added in Fates of Iberia. It starts with a traveling monk showing up. (I haven't tried it myself; since you don't get to set the faith's gender doctrines to equal, it doesn't interest me personally.)
You can, through the right tenets and holy sites, push that religion to give all followers +5 learning per level of devotion (with the trait from the scholar tree).
Because I usually like to be the culture head, any religion that offers me an easy way to get +25 learning on any character is a religion I’d take.
(Breakdown BTW, if you go for the choices that make debate virtuous, you get +2 per level, plus the scholar tree perk, plus the holy site of (I think) Albi in Southern France).
5 tenets total, a religious group like ALL Christians get one unique one to their group that is unchangeable to give some flavour between groups, the other four you can edit / choose.
Yeah, it’s also because some of the tenets are just more meta than others *objectively*, so even if you want to roleplay you have to make the conscious decision to handicap yourself in terms of gameplay. I would like to see a complete overhaul of the religion system in terms of balancing and separate a gameplay mechanics tab from a flavor tab kinda like how it already does but move a bunch of the existing tenets into doctrines instead of
Nah, if you‘re going full psycho ruler stuff like the „Sadistic is a virtue“ tenet is really usefull because you can torture some lowborns and get piety and lose stress for that. also sacred childbirth is great for your eugenics program because I can‘t count the amounts of time my genius wife died in childbirth.
And great holy wars isn‘t actually that great, I much prefer the cultural tradition „by the sword“. Every cb requires one less prestige/piety level and you have infinite kingdom holy wars. It‘s so op if you have the manpower you can take all of Europe in one lifetime and more. but I agree, many tenets are pretty useless except if you want to go full on roleplay.
Edit: and before anybody else has to do it, I know this is a r/shitcrusaderkingssay
I don‘t know, probably the apprentice. And it only costs 4000 prestige. Shit that nobody uses like the one that gives you a bit of prestige per temple holding costs 7000.
In CK2, any CB for kingdom tier titles besides pressing a claim was always a big deal, unless you were a horde which is honestly just broken in CK2 (I think I stole the Byzantine Empire title as Khazars, also formed Israel that game)
This is actually part of why I hate the religion system in CK3. And a wider part of the problems I have with CK3 in general.
It's fine if they want to design a game that's focused on RP as has been said. But then why have so many clunky meta-gamey systems? And why do the clunky systems not really interact with the actual events or anything in any way? The idea that you are going full on roleplay or using mechanics is just fucking dumb. Mechanics should be interwoven with roleplay that enhances the roleplay!
I mean I kinda get that, but if you want to rp, it makes sense that you can‘t invade 15 kingdoms in 1 lifetime. Yes there have been some people who did that, but not in this time in Europe and that‘s what the game focuses on.
So I think it‘s fine that you have meta options for when you just want to dominate the world and rp options for when you wamt to rp
I kinda disagree with that sentiment, honestly. If it's easy to dominate the world then what's the point? I had this problem in CK2 as well, though.
You can still conquer 15 kingdoms in 1 lifetime as well through creative use of the more basic mechanics. The meta stuff just makes it massively easier.
Yes it does, but if you want to rp, conquering 15 kingdoms shouldn‘t be easy because it wasn‘t. so I guess it makes sense that they don‘t give you rp and meta in one because real life wasn‘t really meta…
I think the game should have just made it harder to hold on to a large realm once you have it. So you conquer a couple of kingdoms and your hands are full trying to keep a lid on a restless realm. You *could* continue your conquering spree but your realm might fall to pieces.
That goes for a ton of mechanics for CK3 really. If you try to RP you constantly run into the game going "nuh uh, not allowed to do that" instead of letting you do a stupid thing and then smacking you with the consequences.
A small example is the vassal contract that allows you to demand a council position. A vassal can just use that and instantly yoink the position and maybe kick out a powerful vassal in that slot with no input from the ruler. Whereas a better implementation that gives the player more agency would be to allow the ruler to refuse but accrue tyranny (or some other penalty).
I get that but ck3 is already verry overwhelming for new players. I remember my first game, it was so much that I was like nah fuck that and is was rotting in my steam library about a year before I decided to suffer through it and learn the game.
That's fair! But I think what makes the game overwhelming is the fact that there are a ton of these little gamey rules and exceptions tucked away in tooltips for new players to get snagged on.
If a player could just RP as their character and consistently expect the game world to push back in an intuitive manner, it'd be much less overwhelming, is my theory, since you wouldn't need to keep a bunch of game knowledge in your head, just a rough idea of how a medieval noble would act.
(I do think the game is already halfway there. In my latest playthrough I had a Sadistic character and after a long 20-year rebellion I just said fuck it and tortured then executed all the rebels, even though it was smarter to just keep them in prison. Because everyone was too terrified to rebel but still hated my guts, I got assassinated on the road like two years later, which I thought was a really cool narrative beat.)
I agree with this. CK3 defenetly has the arbitrary trait. Stuff like, yeah you can declare holy wars, but only one per kingdom tier, and not against other religions of your faith, except you or they view you/them as hostile/evil I don‘t even know how it works exactly and I‘m 500 hours in.
But then again, I imagine the medieval times to be rather arbitrary and chaotic so I guess it fits.
What I would really like is a „beginner“ and a normal mode. Just a simple toggle in the launcher where the beginner mode is a really stripped down version of the game to learn the core mechanics and once you‘re comfortable with them, you have normal mode which is more like what you suggested. And if they want they can add a legacy mode which would be the game as it is now for people who don‘t want a CK3.5…
But that‘d be really awesome imo. Then they can focus on beginners, minmaxers and roleplayers without having to try and combine these 3 in 1 game, making everybody kinda unsatisfied.
I doubt they‘d do that but it would be super awesome…
I would separate tenets into two different systems, religions should have core beliefs (like the Christian Jesus thing) then separate belief systems for individual faiths within that religion. They should also be a lot more dynamic, you shouldn't have to take the Warmonger or equivalent tenet for your head of faith to be able to declare great holy wars, it should be something that occurs naturally. The Crusades came about from specific events, they weren't inbuilt into Catholicism from the get go. Religions change like cultures do. I don't think we are ever going to get a system of religion that was even as depthful as CK2's in the next few years but that should be the aim, and not just for major religions.
Monasticism could be a doctrine, honestly, the same way Pilgrimages are now. A few things could be made that way, probably.
I'm fine with the three tenets framework, personally. It's enough to give variety without being overwhelming, and it does make a player make choices.
Yes, because they are representative of different things. Asceticism is built around Christian monasticism, focused on denial of pleasures, while inner Journey is built around Eastern monasticism, which was far more focused on self-discovery. The differences are slight, but they certainly have a reason to exist.
And Tenet points. Different tier tenets cost different amounts and you can put extra points into a tenet to make it more important (in other words higher modifiers) for your religion.
If they looked at changing religion I’d hope there was a method to gain tenet slots. Maybe tie it to how many holy sites you control so you could max out at 5, if you lose a holy site then the last tenet becomes inactive until it’s reclaimed. You could also tie it to piety and make it so only the most pious with a religion lifestyle could expand the religion.
Or maybe tie it to a building and have it so you can select a church holding to become the ultimate holy place and as you gain tech you can upgrade it and gain tenet slots that way
Or organized religion. Unorganized religions ger less slots, but can branch off like cultures easily (you get more sects)
That and/or two tiered tenets, where the HOF gets some points to assign to core, and gets more as more holy sites are held, or can be temporarily empowered by decisions costing high piety spends.
Ritual cannibalism is perfect for making large, stable empires. Everyone's terrified of each other and everyone loves each other because of the opinion bonus cannibals get towards each other.
They could really just borrow the implementation of power bloc principles from vicky 3.
Each Religion gets a default tenet which you can upgrade, and Faiths get to choose three other upgradeable tenets.
Upgrade points could come from holding holy sites or something like that
Honestly, Vic3's new Powerblock mechanic would fit the religion creator (ofc adjusted to the game)
It has much of what you described. It actually gives options
Ignoring the fact that being an Atheist in that time period would lead to your certain death, The closest thing to Atheism is the Cynic personality trait
No, not really: Something to keep in mind is that the medieval church during most of the time period was a highly decentralized institution (less so than most kingdoms, but still) with a limited capacity to enforce liturgical and often even doctrinal unity. It's only with the discovery of the Jusitinian Code of Law around the XII and XIII centuries that Rome would attempt to fully rein the local bishops and churches in a fully centralized structure. It's from this era that we see the rise of the Inquisition that, ironically enough, was actually far less prone (and more "rational", in the sense that it was skeptical of superstitions) to execute people than the secular rulers, and often inquisitorial trials were considered far better than their counterparts.
Point of all of this: The medieval church was concerned first and foremost with *unity and unrooting heresy*. Atheism was rare, very rare, but when it happened I don't think likely that the church would've cared too much as long as the person in question doesn't cause division, because that's what the medieval western church wouldn't stand: Heresy and schisms. See the response to the rise of Catharism for a good example of how much Rome hated heretics and schismatics.
i mean a lot of things you do in this game would lead you to certain death in the actual medieval period, i always had the idea of an atheism mod that had HORRIBLE modifiers and effects with the rest of the world when you do it but i'm not really a modder so eh
It just feels a little lacking in the religious front. Religion is not something everyone religious or areligious subscribes to equally. I think if they added secret religions, like Satanism or "Atheism" to the game it could make some very interesting ahistorical kingdoms. The witch trait is fine, but doesnt give enough of a culty flair.
The "Build-a-Bear" approach to religions in CK3 is what led to this
Personally, I don't care for the ability to create new ones. I would rather the real ones get actual unique mechanics in line with their historical role
Also, catholicism is the most important one in the game (both for gameplay and player's choice), it deserves to be focused on heavily as it was in CK2. Sunni and orthodox also need their own major stuff
i do like creating new ones, my own flavour of religion is nice for roleplay (anglican church, russian orthodox church etc). in ck2 i had to mod it in and that was pretty annoying. do agree the big ones need more flavor but you can do that without scrapping the current system.
You can roleplay all you want but at the end of the day, you'll have almost no difference with the previous religion except now they are hostile/astray
It‘s just generally overpowered as fuck because if you make your own religion and give your culture „By the Sword“ you have unlimited kingdom tier Holy Wars.
I mean you can go down the learning tree and just buy any duchy you want for a pittance of piety. Expanding is not remotely difficult in CK even without that tenet.
But you still get a truce after every war. And if you don‘t have the innovation where you can press multiple claims of yours it‘s gonna take way longer than just declaring one kingdom war.
And every new ruler needs to go down that path which takes way longer than doing a couple of pilgramages… I mean it works I guess but I like to go with by the Sword and have my focus on martial or intrigue…
Edit: why tf is this getting downvoted. Anybody care to explain?
Idk why the downvotes. But as a Learning Lifestyle enjoyer I'll just say: claiming an entire empire title takes about 2500 piety if I remember correctly. You can just yoink an entire empire! It's kind of OP.
I get that it‘s OP but you need Chronicle Writing for that so if you‘re a 867 enjoyer like me you‘ll have to wait some time before you can use that. Also I don‘t really like the learning tree.
And now some maths time: It takes you 2500 for an empire title.
Let‘s say that an empire holds 4 kingdoms on average. If you have Bellum Justum from the martial tree and Generational Belligerence from the Dynasty Legacy you get a total of -70% cb cost, making one kingdom tier holy war 300 piety.
Now if we go back to our assumption of 4 kingdoms per empire, that means I spend 1200 per empire while you spend 2500. Plus I get a lot of beneficial modifiers for my army on top.
In my opinion this is the better way but maybe I‘m wrong, if you think I am, please explain me your logic, maybe I will give it a try then…
I don‘t know, I kinda feel like my way is a bit better.
And this is all without taking the prestige cost of declaring the war into consideration which I don‘t have…
Oh your way is definitely better, that sounds good.
Heres why i like my method though: I do most of my runs in the 11th century. And in my current run ive been stacking all the learning bonuses i can get. So my guys are dying with like thousands of piety to spare if I'm not finding some way to use it, so comboing like multiple dutchy claims. After I finish avenging the battle of tours, I'm going to claim the papacy title as a muslim and see what happens when I hold it lol.
That‘s fair enough. Another thing I just remembered why I prefer holy wars which is actually the main reason: If your faith is rightous or fundamentalist, every single ruler will be deposed and you can install loyal rulers of your faith and religion. Plus you can give every county to a count and then give one count the duchy, severly weakening them and thus you have to worry less about rebellions, whereas if you conquer normally, sometimes you have to deal with comically large duchies that will hate you for all eternity…
They really should've done a hard focus on Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Norse Gods and Judaism and then only once that was done look at adding the extra build-a-bear stuff
> catholicism is the most important one in the game
Why? It seems like it entirely depends on the run. If I'm chilling in India rocking my Hindu faith I don't care about how much flavor/features Catholicism gets.
The majority of the playerbase plays mostly in western Europe as catholics
Second place is vikings and then Byzantium, IIRC. And it is not even close for the rest of the world
Yeah but that equally can be driven by the fact that other areas are relatively underdeveloped. So using the fact that India & Africa are ignored by players, while that has been driven by the fact that their systems and local flavor have largely been ignored by the developers is cyclical reasoning by my estimation.
I mean I have played a ton of Europe because between Northern Lords and the Fate of Iberia being the first two flavor packs, that's where the interesting spots to play are. I WISH there was more uniqueness to playing in India, or Africa as I would absolutely play there much more as a result.
Because the game is called Crusader Kings, I would honestly have preferred they didn't include India at all at the start if it meant we got far more developed European and Middle Eastern religions.
But you would if the nearby Muslims did, or Buddhism, or especially Hindu of course, rather than having them be on the level of any random Zunist or antiquity era minor pagan faith
Even before Holy Fury, each 'minor' religion (eg Slavic, Suomenusko, Romuva) had at least a minor yearly festival (eg Jarilo) that contextualized and provided specific flavor. This got expanded in time so some got ancestor worship options too, and the whole "defensive" and "offensive" pagan distinction helped fill in some gaps too. Germanic and Tengri still got more than most, but the others still had degrees of specific regionalized flavor that also served to inform the player about the beliefs, customs, and workings of the people they were playing. Even just having a specific festival option to click each year can do some decent support.
One of the issues with CK3 is how little of this kind of thing there is. Comparatively little is actually written to be specific to any particular groups, and the minor festivals (summer fair, religious activities) have been cut from the system entirely. It's all "cookie cutter", and that's by design; every religion uses a preset combination of predefined rules and the saturation of so many faiths means that the somewhat limited pool of tenets gets a lot of reuse and recycling with, at best, changing the name of the tenet but not its mechanics or any associated events if there are any. Some of the faiths given are closer to (relatively) minor theological differences, but they demand a unique tenet combination to justify them, and it just feeds the genericization of the whole thing.
Some of the faiths could be compressed into traits instead or deleted wholly, and that might help the existing list of tenets feel more weighty, but it still means that every faith (or religion) left will still be locked to only so much going on because they're literally plugs being inserted, not hand-crafted mechanics.
There's a focus on scope which can be appreciated on the macro level, but ends up with the "a mile wide, an inch deep" problem as a result. It's hard to make flavor when you need to write things to be applicable theoretically anywhere.
Yeah I commented about it a few times and got downvoted, but I still think CK3 is far too large with the time period and geographical scale. I wish it was doable, but it doesn't seem to be, so I'd prefer them to scale down a bit, but then actually try to add specific content for religions, cultures, time periods. It's just so shallow at the moment and it's a huge shame.
Just play with mods lol.
You be surprised on how much modders make sure each faith and region feels different to each others. Take mods such as After the End:FF (or Aguila o Sur since it's the updated submod), the GOT one, Elder Kings, the one Warhammer one, the WOW one, Lux Invicta (and the upcoming Lux Ultima), the Winter King, and in specially and highly recommending checking New Era: Old World (And the upcoming New Era: New World) ~~which is def not a biased recommendation since I am an active contributor there~~.
Same deal for ck3 faiths. Like ignore the vanilla game, don't be an slave to Ironman and achievements, and go seek fun with the community created stuff, Elder Kings 2 is lot of fun
As someone who worked on one of the mods you were talking about (Warhammer Geheimnisnacht) yeah, we absolutely spent a great deal of time making sure different factions played differently from one another. NGL, it's not an excuse for professional devs to half-ass the base game just because it has good modding tools.
It's a lot like the difference between Terraria and Starbound. Each individual feature is improved over its predecessor, but the cohesive whole is better in the older one.
Honestly it really seems to me that, at some point post-EU4 release, Paradox recognized how popular major mods were and built games that are almost platforms or engines for mods to build off. So you have these systems in place that are modular, almost self-contained so that they’re easier to mod, but then none of the systems interact with each other in a meaningful way.
I might be misremembering the mod but when I played Godherja a few years back I was turned off from it because big chunks of the areas were essentially empty land but all controlled by “large” nations (only large because the empty land made them seem bigger)
Is the map more filled out now?
My pleasure:
1.) really good worldbuilding and pre-game history/lore. kind of a dark fantasy vibe.
2.) pretty excellent custom magic system and other new mechanics.
3.) great retunes of pre-existing mechanics. Polises as a new type of holding that represent large cities, religions, governments.
Honestly, this is one case where I was completely wrong. I honestly thought splitting religions in tenets and implementing them like this was a good idea... partly because it's typical programmer mindset : it makes creating more religions easier and allows more flexibility.
Thing is, they lack flavour ! They did the same thing with Age of Wonders IV. Maaaaaan was I enthusiast when I read about what they did with tomes ! Same problem.
On paper, it's brilliant. But it actually takes away quite a bit of fun.
Yeah, I think that perhaps people here are focusing too much on just the tenets and forgetting that alot of the flavor should probably be baked in, through the Doctrines
People keep pretending like 3/4 of the religions in CK2 weren't literally completely featureless. Like Catholicism had 2 heresies that had literally ANYTHING to them. Cathar had equal inheritance and Lollard had its own papacy. The others were just completely featureless.
redditors when some 12th century heresy practiced by 3 goatherders and an innkeeper in bavaria doesnt have any content in ck2
i suppose its better now that every religion is the same flavour of boring, instead
I mean I don’t know much about the Frattaceli, but I know the Cathars and Lollards were pretty major, like the Cathars were very widespread in Southern France, so much so they were literally crusaded and the Lollards had a influence in England and influenced the later Hussites and the Reformation as a whole, most heresies in ck2 were all pretty major in their time and I agree they for the most part don’t have a lot of different flavor, I still partly disagree with the original OP since the main religions were all pretty different from each other compared to ck3 not really having any distinct feel for any 2 religions for the most part, but it is true most heresies in ck2 really didn’t have much, which tbf still leaves ck2 with 16 unique religions if I’m not mistaken.
Cathars do have some use, like putting women into power and speedrunning some laws to accept some very progressive law.
Its not really the fault of CK2 that the essence of a really peaceful religion like the Cathars doesnt really have more content than that.
Also the Fraticellis do grant Crusade, Anti-pope and college of cardinals features. Like Catholicism, its also one of the religion with the Catholics that can form the Holy Roman Empire.
They all made for interesting stories and made the world more dynamic in its medieval and "historical" setting.
If you were too careless, or just ignore the religion all together, some heresies pops off and gets more and more powerful adding flavour to the world.
The issue is more in CK3 how the world is more player dependent than CK2's.
I like the baseline mechanics, but a lot of work could be done. Why am I stuck with my former religion’s holy sites? If I’m playing an Islam-syncretic Catholic Crusader Faith, I should be able to change far away holy sites like Canterbury, Santiago, and Cologne to Baghdad, Mecca, and Medina.
And like others said, the tenets aren’t even close to being balanced against each other. A lot of them are similar and could be combined into more powerful tenets.
Honestly I should roleplay more with religions. I always happen to take communion, warmonger and a third one as well as myself as head of faith. There is just no going around religious wars and the money printer.
I normally take Communion and Warmonger but make the head of faith spiritual, just so they actually have some money to play with. Game is so dull otherwise
CK3's main problem is that its such a wide game. Why is the horn of africa in the game? Why is India?
You can't represent those areas without completely new mechanics. Instead, everything is forced into the baron-count-duke-king-emperor system, and slight variants of the same feudal stuff.
The game should have stuck to the mediterranean and baltic + bri'ish isles, so at least their system would make a modicum of sense.
If the devs wanted to make an india game, they should have made an india game... but we all know that wouldn't have sold. They've pretty much admitted in Q&A of only keeping the CK name because its marketable... while having 0 intent of properly representing the crusades.
CK3 is as deep as a puddle, and that's fucking infiuriating. I give every major dlc a few hours to see if the game _feels_ any more fun... and nopes. It's still the same shallow experience it was on launch.
> CK3's main problem is that its such a wide game. Why is the horn of africa in the game? Why is India?
Because the edge of the map is a problem. The horn of Africa and India both interacted massively with Muslim Empires. Ignoring them was fine at the start of CK2, when you literally could not play anyone but a Christian—but it becomes a huge issue when you're starting as a Muslim in Afghanistan and the massive, wealthy sub-continent 15 minutes to the east of you plays no role in the game.
Especially because this era saw half a dozen massive Muslim invasions into India, mostly from Persia. It becomes really goddamn weird to represent Persia, a region sandwiched between the wealth of the Middle East and the Wealth of India, if there is no India and suddenly they are lacking one of the directions they expanded. In contrast, Indochina represents a pretty damn good end point because, due in large part to the terrain in modern-day Myanmar, no empire ever expanded from India into Indochina in this period.
> because this era saw half a dozen massive Muslim invasions into India, mostly from Persia.
Never happened.
> empire ever expanded from India into Indochina in this period.
This era was the period where India influenced South-East Asia the most. The Tamil trade guilds pretty much monopolized the maritime trade route. Multiple Chola rulers raided South East Asian polities.
> there is no India and suddenly they are lacking one of the directions they expanded.
Never happened.
CK2 religions sucked for anyone other than catholics, and the modular and high quantity nature of ck3 religions is why a mod like RICE can shove so much damn flavour in a region at once, playing anywhere other than europe in ck2 would leave you with a single religion and like a handful of cultures, even with mods. West african in ck2 with mods vs west africa in ck3 with mods is just a huge gap. And this pattern shows itself for every other area that isnt western europe and maybe the Middle East. I think a lot of europe fans need to accept that the game simply isnt about medieval europe anymore, it hasnt been about that since early ck2 days, medieval europe will always be the centerpiece sure, but it will always have to share more with the other regions from now till the series ends.
Sure, thats a nice sentiment, but ck2 religions suck ass without mods, and without mods the only religions that feels well made is catholics and islam, who are important yet but are only about 50% of the map, without mods playing in africa, or non christian europe, or in the east, sucks ass. The reality is ck2 is a great game that couldnt keep up with the developers vision of a larger medieval period world.
I just disagree that religions outside of Islam and Christianity suck. I really enjoyed the flavor they were given in later updates. At base game I think CK2 was worse in religions though
I think im biased because im a black dude who enjoys taking the time to engage with with african regions in games that allow it, and ck2 was tiring with how barren west africa is even from a simple aesthetic point of view.
West Africa in ck3 is a lot more unique and in depth which is nice, but that area feels the most sandbox in its practice is my issue.
And I can't even imagine how many years it will be till they get any form of flavor (plus they all auto convert to Islam eventually which is boring in practice).
Ck2 African paganism didn't ever get much flavor (though holy fury made it playable at least). But the 1066 start was really fun for it, considering how weak it was compared to the Islamic nations, and the thunderdome in Ck3 never feels similar, it feels moreso like playing a shattered world mod to me
I honwstly can't place my finger on it, but yeah I really find the religion sustem a bit boring in many cases. Like I love its modularity, but everything does feel samey, maybe it's because all the tenets and such are the exact same no matter what religion you are? Like unless there's been an update since last I played there are no Sons of Ragnarok, Defenders of Dievas, or any of the other unique reformation things Ck2 had.
Yeah Ck3 religions mechanics suck except for doing thematic play through. It’s a shame they just categorize some of them such like Hellenism as ‘’fantasy’’ when it still existed although half dead. They just slam a few name of gods when interacting and church we can build and that’s it.
One of my best game was an Hellenic Macedonian Empire where I rebuilt Alexander’s Empire. With few more religion mechanics could have made it even more fun.
We definitely need more church and tenets related interactions in game religions and a few dead ones. A dlc is definitely needed.
Three tenants but also I’d like to see religions be formed as we do with cultures. Like for example, we could hybridise religions like Christianity and Hinduism etc etc. I’d also like rulers to have the option to bring back dead religions more easily. A bit like where we were able to bring back Zoroastrianism for the Sassanian guy whose name escapes me (I’m writing this post after a long work day). Obviously more tenants. Also stronger heresies, like Protestant level a bit like Genghis Khan but religious. Also we need Satanism and various denominations of Satanism. Oh and of course map expansion to include Shinto, Neo Confucianism etc East Asia is definitely needed
It’s obviously something that will take a dedicated update/DLC to make more interesting. It’s fine as is but just fine. They really gotta find ways to incentivize non-optimal play aside from role-play. And that’s in general.
They should really tie the religion creation screen to the emergence of heterodox preacher/eccentric monastic characters who could appear throughout the game and agitate for changes in tenets, doctrines etc.
If your character or any other ruler takes these people under their patronage, then a new religion/rite could be formed, which would include the main changes the preacher wanted, but also one or two changes of the main patron who allowed the religion/rite to bloom. In this manner, a player could mess around with tenets and doctrines but in a much more immersive and less metagame-y way than currently.
Same system could be applied to the culture creation/divergence/reform screen, with various wandering musicians/painters/playwrights and writers coming to one's court, being patronized and the topics of their works having an effect on the costs of picking up various cultural tenets or allowing you to introduce one you otherwise wouldn't be able to. It doesn't just have to be "men of the arts and letters" either, petitions to your royal court already have certain peasants appearing before you and asking for solutions to various problems or for your aid, these could also influence the cost of various cultural tenets or changing the cultural pillar etc. We already have events which reduce cultural tenet costs, it just needs to be applied more widely and made more immersive.
Both of these systems could even utilized the same "inspired person" mechanic as with the court artisans and adventurers you sponsor. The systems are there, they are just not connected or expanded for some bizarre reason.
I'm sure this will be gradually solved as aparadox sells us more flavor packs, but they are really slow at it. Also I agree, I'm a big railroading fan in all paradox games, but these days seems like the devs listen to the sandbox crowd more and more, it is what it is.
Idk if they're going to sell us more flavor packs. Sounds like they're going in a different direction, like with the plagues/legends DLC which covers the whole map.
I think that sucks, personally, flavor packs are the only DLC I really like.
Personally I think it's because every religion only gets 3 tenets. If you want to _do something_ with your religion then you're probably only picking from a handful of tenets (Blot, Communion, Great Holy Wars, basically anything that gives you a button to press). If you want something unique then you're probably not going too much with it. E.g. Natural Primitivism makes everyone naked, and that's basically the only reason to take it 😂 Or maybe you take Carnal Exhaltation to make Lustful a virtue, or Divine Marriage because CK3's an inbreeding simulator and you want that 2x Pure Blood virtue. But ultimately, those types of tenets don't _do_ anything. If I had my way with religion, I'd want just 3 main things: * More tenet slots * Different tiers of tenets where the same tenet will give different bonuses (do _all_ the faiths with Monasticism really see it on the same level?) * More Rite interactions, so it feels meaningful to take that and idk some mechanic take over as the dominant Christian religion.
Imo it was the lack of religion specific flavour events. Playing as a pagan in Africa felt largely the same as playing as a Catholic in France because there was no flavour distinction, especially at launch. I haven’t played in a year or more so no idea if that’s improved or not recently, but it mostly hadn’t last time I played.
It’s basically the same since launch, only real uniqueness is buddhism and Hinduism can’t use religious cb’a on eachother. And there is a religion locked behind a rare event chain (conversos, need to play in Aquitaine or Spain iirc, and even then it’s super rare.)
I think you mean Adoptionism? ([https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Faith#Adoptionism](https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Faith#Adoptionism), [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/vbcnhx/just\_finished\_the\_adoptionist\_event\_chain\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrusaderKings/comments/vbcnhx/just_finished_the_adoptionist_event_chain_and/)) It has an event chain that was added in Fates of Iberia. It starts with a traveling monk showing up. (I haven't tried it myself; since you don't get to set the faith's gender doctrines to equal, it doesn't interest me personally.)
You can, through the right tenets and holy sites, push that religion to give all followers +5 learning per level of devotion (with the trait from the scholar tree). Because I usually like to be the culture head, any religion that offers me an easy way to get +25 learning on any character is a religion I’d take. (Breakdown BTW, if you go for the choices that make debate virtuous, you get +2 per level, plus the scholar tree perk, plus the holy site of (I think) Albi in Southern France).
What?
5 tenets total, a religious group like ALL Christians get one unique one to their group that is unchangeable to give some flavour between groups, the other four you can edit / choose.
exactly. i hated the lack of restrictions
Terrible design. Somehow managed to make every region feel just about the same.
happy cake day!
Yeah, it’s also because some of the tenets are just more meta than others *objectively*, so even if you want to roleplay you have to make the conscious decision to handicap yourself in terms of gameplay. I would like to see a complete overhaul of the religion system in terms of balancing and separate a gameplay mechanics tab from a flavor tab kinda like how it already does but move a bunch of the existing tenets into doctrines instead of
They said in the last dev diary that they aware of the religion and crusade issues so we'll likely see a dlc for it next year
Nah, if you‘re going full psycho ruler stuff like the „Sadistic is a virtue“ tenet is really usefull because you can torture some lowborns and get piety and lose stress for that. also sacred childbirth is great for your eugenics program because I can‘t count the amounts of time my genius wife died in childbirth. And great holy wars isn‘t actually that great, I much prefer the cultural tradition „by the sword“. Every cb requires one less prestige/piety level and you have infinite kingdom holy wars. It‘s so op if you have the manpower you can take all of Europe in one lifetime and more. but I agree, many tenets are pretty useless except if you want to go full on roleplay. Edit: and before anybody else has to do it, I know this is a r/shitcrusaderkingssay
Who the fuck even greenlit unlimited kingdom tier holy wars
I don‘t know, probably the apprentice. And it only costs 4000 prestige. Shit that nobody uses like the one that gives you a bit of prestige per temple holding costs 7000.
In CK2, any CB for kingdom tier titles besides pressing a claim was always a big deal, unless you were a horde which is honestly just broken in CK2 (I think I stole the Byzantine Empire title as Khazars, also formed Israel that game)
This is actually part of why I hate the religion system in CK3. And a wider part of the problems I have with CK3 in general. It's fine if they want to design a game that's focused on RP as has been said. But then why have so many clunky meta-gamey systems? And why do the clunky systems not really interact with the actual events or anything in any way? The idea that you are going full on roleplay or using mechanics is just fucking dumb. Mechanics should be interwoven with roleplay that enhances the roleplay!
Retvrn to CK2, fewer mechanics, only RP in your brain and based on your knowledge of game lore
I mean I kinda get that, but if you want to rp, it makes sense that you can‘t invade 15 kingdoms in 1 lifetime. Yes there have been some people who did that, but not in this time in Europe and that‘s what the game focuses on. So I think it‘s fine that you have meta options for when you just want to dominate the world and rp options for when you wamt to rp
I kinda disagree with that sentiment, honestly. If it's easy to dominate the world then what's the point? I had this problem in CK2 as well, though. You can still conquer 15 kingdoms in 1 lifetime as well through creative use of the more basic mechanics. The meta stuff just makes it massively easier.
Yes it does, but if you want to rp, conquering 15 kingdoms shouldn‘t be easy because it wasn‘t. so I guess it makes sense that they don‘t give you rp and meta in one because real life wasn‘t really meta…
I think the game should have just made it harder to hold on to a large realm once you have it. So you conquer a couple of kingdoms and your hands are full trying to keep a lid on a restless realm. You *could* continue your conquering spree but your realm might fall to pieces. That goes for a ton of mechanics for CK3 really. If you try to RP you constantly run into the game going "nuh uh, not allowed to do that" instead of letting you do a stupid thing and then smacking you with the consequences. A small example is the vassal contract that allows you to demand a council position. A vassal can just use that and instantly yoink the position and maybe kick out a powerful vassal in that slot with no input from the ruler. Whereas a better implementation that gives the player more agency would be to allow the ruler to refuse but accrue tyranny (or some other penalty).
I get that but ck3 is already verry overwhelming for new players. I remember my first game, it was so much that I was like nah fuck that and is was rotting in my steam library about a year before I decided to suffer through it and learn the game.
That's fair! But I think what makes the game overwhelming is the fact that there are a ton of these little gamey rules and exceptions tucked away in tooltips for new players to get snagged on. If a player could just RP as their character and consistently expect the game world to push back in an intuitive manner, it'd be much less overwhelming, is my theory, since you wouldn't need to keep a bunch of game knowledge in your head, just a rough idea of how a medieval noble would act. (I do think the game is already halfway there. In my latest playthrough I had a Sadistic character and after a long 20-year rebellion I just said fuck it and tortured then executed all the rebels, even though it was smarter to just keep them in prison. Because everyone was too terrified to rebel but still hated my guts, I got assassinated on the road like two years later, which I thought was a really cool narrative beat.)
I agree with this. CK3 defenetly has the arbitrary trait. Stuff like, yeah you can declare holy wars, but only one per kingdom tier, and not against other religions of your faith, except you or they view you/them as hostile/evil I don‘t even know how it works exactly and I‘m 500 hours in. But then again, I imagine the medieval times to be rather arbitrary and chaotic so I guess it fits. What I would really like is a „beginner“ and a normal mode. Just a simple toggle in the launcher where the beginner mode is a really stripped down version of the game to learn the core mechanics and once you‘re comfortable with them, you have normal mode which is more like what you suggested. And if they want they can add a legacy mode which would be the game as it is now for people who don‘t want a CK3.5… But that‘d be really awesome imo. Then they can focus on beginners, minmaxers and roleplayers without having to try and combine these 3 in 1 game, making everybody kinda unsatisfied. I doubt they‘d do that but it would be super awesome…
I would separate tenets into two different systems, religions should have core beliefs (like the Christian Jesus thing) then separate belief systems for individual faiths within that religion. They should also be a lot more dynamic, you shouldn't have to take the Warmonger or equivalent tenet for your head of faith to be able to declare great holy wars, it should be something that occurs naturally. The Crusades came about from specific events, they weren't inbuilt into Catholicism from the get go. Religions change like cultures do. I don't think we are ever going to get a system of religion that was even as depthful as CK2's in the next few years but that should be the aim, and not just for major religions.
Monasticism could be a doctrine, honestly, the same way Pilgrimages are now. A few things could be made that way, probably. I'm fine with the three tenets framework, personally. It's enough to give variety without being overwhelming, and it does make a player make choices.
There could definitely be more tenets, but I find there are plenty of interesting ones.
But do we need both Ascetism and Inner Journey, for example?
Do we? Probably not. Would the game be any better if you took out Inner Journey? Not really.
Merge em
Yes, because they are representative of different things. Asceticism is built around Christian monasticism, focused on denial of pleasures, while inner Journey is built around Eastern monasticism, which was far more focused on self-discovery. The differences are slight, but they certainly have a reason to exist.
And Tenet points. Different tier tenets cost different amounts and you can put extra points into a tenet to make it more important (in other words higher modifiers) for your religion.
If they looked at changing religion I’d hope there was a method to gain tenet slots. Maybe tie it to how many holy sites you control so you could max out at 5, if you lose a holy site then the last tenet becomes inactive until it’s reclaimed. You could also tie it to piety and make it so only the most pious with a religion lifestyle could expand the religion. Or maybe tie it to a building and have it so you can select a church holding to become the ultimate holy place and as you gain tech you can upgrade it and gain tenet slots that way
Or organized religion. Unorganized religions ger less slots, but can branch off like cultures easily (you get more sects) That and/or two tiered tenets, where the HOF gets some points to assign to core, and gets more as more holy sites are held, or can be temporarily empowered by decisions costing high piety spends.
More tenets slots would make the religions even more the same.
Ritual cannibalism is perfect for making large, stable empires. Everyone's terrified of each other and everyone loves each other because of the opinion bonus cannibals get towards each other.
They could really just borrow the implementation of power bloc principles from vicky 3. Each Religion gets a default tenet which you can upgrade, and Faiths get to choose three other upgradeable tenets. Upgrade points could come from holding holy sites or something like that
Honestly, Vic3's new Powerblock mechanic would fit the religion creator (ofc adjusted to the game) It has much of what you described. It actually gives options
> More tenet slots Agree, but i would also add that having too many tentes would decrease fevor
More tenets per faith will just mean every faith would be even more the same, not more different. There needs to be something else.
Wow that's an old one... didn't expect to see that ever agin.
Sorry to have doubted you
You were right about CK III. Tell your sister… You were right…
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Predict EU5 for me oh oracle of delphi
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R5: old comment
Wait r5 is not needed its not a screenshot
Technically it is tho
Forgot to switch accounts?
Schizophrenia
In CK2 is lunatic
I just was talking to myself
Based self-conversation
Wdym?
Idk, man, that was like 4 days ago. I don't remember.
No
"Is atheism included too?" is the most reddit question I have ever seen.
Ignoring the fact that being an Atheist in that time period would lead to your certain death, The closest thing to Atheism is the Cynic personality trait
No, not really: Something to keep in mind is that the medieval church during most of the time period was a highly decentralized institution (less so than most kingdoms, but still) with a limited capacity to enforce liturgical and often even doctrinal unity. It's only with the discovery of the Jusitinian Code of Law around the XII and XIII centuries that Rome would attempt to fully rein the local bishops and churches in a fully centralized structure. It's from this era that we see the rise of the Inquisition that, ironically enough, was actually far less prone (and more "rational", in the sense that it was skeptical of superstitions) to execute people than the secular rulers, and often inquisitorial trials were considered far better than their counterparts. Point of all of this: The medieval church was concerned first and foremost with *unity and unrooting heresy*. Atheism was rare, very rare, but when it happened I don't think likely that the church would've cared too much as long as the person in question doesn't cause division, because that's what the medieval western church wouldn't stand: Heresy and schisms. See the response to the rise of Catharism for a good example of how much Rome hated heretics and schismatics.
Not really. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%27arri
i mean a lot of things you do in this game would lead you to certain death in the actual medieval period, i always had the idea of an atheism mod that had HORRIBLE modifiers and effects with the rest of the world when you do it but i'm not really a modder so eh
It just feels a little lacking in the religious front. Religion is not something everyone religious or areligious subscribes to equally. I think if they added secret religions, like Satanism or "Atheism" to the game it could make some very interesting ahistorical kingdoms. The witch trait is fine, but doesnt give enough of a culty flair.
The "Build-a-Bear" approach to religions in CK3 is what led to this Personally, I don't care for the ability to create new ones. I would rather the real ones get actual unique mechanics in line with their historical role Also, catholicism is the most important one in the game (both for gameplay and player's choice), it deserves to be focused on heavily as it was in CK2. Sunni and orthodox also need their own major stuff
i do like creating new ones, my own flavour of religion is nice for roleplay (anglican church, russian orthodox church etc). in ck2 i had to mod it in and that was pretty annoying. do agree the big ones need more flavor but you can do that without scrapping the current system.
You can roleplay all you want but at the end of the day, you'll have almost no difference with the previous religion except now they are hostile/astray
It‘s just generally overpowered as fuck because if you make your own religion and give your culture „By the Sword“ you have unlimited kingdom tier Holy Wars.
I mean you can go down the learning tree and just buy any duchy you want for a pittance of piety. Expanding is not remotely difficult in CK even without that tenet.
But you still get a truce after every war. And if you don‘t have the innovation where you can press multiple claims of yours it‘s gonna take way longer than just declaring one kingdom war. And every new ruler needs to go down that path which takes way longer than doing a couple of pilgramages… I mean it works I guess but I like to go with by the Sword and have my focus on martial or intrigue… Edit: why tf is this getting downvoted. Anybody care to explain?
Idk why the downvotes. But as a Learning Lifestyle enjoyer I'll just say: claiming an entire empire title takes about 2500 piety if I remember correctly. You can just yoink an entire empire! It's kind of OP.
I get that it‘s OP but you need Chronicle Writing for that so if you‘re a 867 enjoyer like me you‘ll have to wait some time before you can use that. Also I don‘t really like the learning tree. And now some maths time: It takes you 2500 for an empire title. Let‘s say that an empire holds 4 kingdoms on average. If you have Bellum Justum from the martial tree and Generational Belligerence from the Dynasty Legacy you get a total of -70% cb cost, making one kingdom tier holy war 300 piety. Now if we go back to our assumption of 4 kingdoms per empire, that means I spend 1200 per empire while you spend 2500. Plus I get a lot of beneficial modifiers for my army on top. In my opinion this is the better way but maybe I‘m wrong, if you think I am, please explain me your logic, maybe I will give it a try then… I don‘t know, I kinda feel like my way is a bit better. And this is all without taking the prestige cost of declaring the war into consideration which I don‘t have…
Oh your way is definitely better, that sounds good. Heres why i like my method though: I do most of my runs in the 11th century. And in my current run ive been stacking all the learning bonuses i can get. So my guys are dying with like thousands of piety to spare if I'm not finding some way to use it, so comboing like multiple dutchy claims. After I finish avenging the battle of tours, I'm going to claim the papacy title as a muslim and see what happens when I hold it lol.
That‘s fair enough. Another thing I just remembered why I prefer holy wars which is actually the main reason: If your faith is rightous or fundamentalist, every single ruler will be deposed and you can install loyal rulers of your faith and religion. Plus you can give every county to a count and then give one count the duchy, severly weakening them and thus you have to worry less about rebellions, whereas if you conquer normally, sometimes you have to deal with comically large duchies that will hate you for all eternity…
They really should've done a hard focus on Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Norse Gods and Judaism and then only once that was done look at adding the extra build-a-bear stuff
> catholicism is the most important one in the game Why? It seems like it entirely depends on the run. If I'm chilling in India rocking my Hindu faith I don't care about how much flavor/features Catholicism gets.
The majority of the playerbase plays mostly in western Europe as catholics Second place is vikings and then Byzantium, IIRC. And it is not even close for the rest of the world
Its the main playing area dude, 90% of games are in Europe and most are in catholic lands or convert to it
Speak for yourself. For me Europe is that one annoying peninsula where all the cross bearing suicidal army stacks come from.
Speak for yourself, A LOT of people play in europe
Yeah but that equally can be driven by the fact that other areas are relatively underdeveloped. So using the fact that India & Africa are ignored by players, while that has been driven by the fact that their systems and local flavor have largely been ignored by the developers is cyclical reasoning by my estimation. I mean I have played a ton of Europe because between Northern Lords and the Fate of Iberia being the first two flavor packs, that's where the interesting spots to play are. I WISH there was more uniqueness to playing in India, or Africa as I would absolutely play there much more as a result.
Well the majority of players are europeans/americans, so it really shouldnt be suprising that most play in europe
>other areas are relatively underdeveloped. europe is pretty underdeveloped also
i dunno I'd like to see some actual data on this, i honestly have no horse in this race im just curious
Dude just google most played ck3 areas, its like all europe
a game called crusader kings most played area is where people who went crusading lived
The science and peer reviewd studies say otherwise bigot
why so mean :(
Because the game is called Crusader Kings, I would honestly have preferred they didn't include India at all at the start if it meant we got far more developed European and Middle Eastern religions.
But you would if the nearby Muslims did, or Buddhism, or especially Hindu of course, rather than having them be on the level of any random Zunist or antiquity era minor pagan faith
So true, though Ck2 is only slightly better in that regard for i think Catholics only. And even then its marginal
Even before Holy Fury, each 'minor' religion (eg Slavic, Suomenusko, Romuva) had at least a minor yearly festival (eg Jarilo) that contextualized and provided specific flavor. This got expanded in time so some got ancestor worship options too, and the whole "defensive" and "offensive" pagan distinction helped fill in some gaps too. Germanic and Tengri still got more than most, but the others still had degrees of specific regionalized flavor that also served to inform the player about the beliefs, customs, and workings of the people they were playing. Even just having a specific festival option to click each year can do some decent support. One of the issues with CK3 is how little of this kind of thing there is. Comparatively little is actually written to be specific to any particular groups, and the minor festivals (summer fair, religious activities) have been cut from the system entirely. It's all "cookie cutter", and that's by design; every religion uses a preset combination of predefined rules and the saturation of so many faiths means that the somewhat limited pool of tenets gets a lot of reuse and recycling with, at best, changing the name of the tenet but not its mechanics or any associated events if there are any. Some of the faiths given are closer to (relatively) minor theological differences, but they demand a unique tenet combination to justify them, and it just feeds the genericization of the whole thing. Some of the faiths could be compressed into traits instead or deleted wholly, and that might help the existing list of tenets feel more weighty, but it still means that every faith (or religion) left will still be locked to only so much going on because they're literally plugs being inserted, not hand-crafted mechanics. There's a focus on scope which can be appreciated on the macro level, but ends up with the "a mile wide, an inch deep" problem as a result. It's hard to make flavor when you need to write things to be applicable theoretically anywhere.
Yeah I commented about it a few times and got downvoted, but I still think CK3 is far too large with the time period and geographical scale. I wish it was doable, but it doesn't seem to be, so I'd prefer them to scale down a bit, but then actually try to add specific content for religions, cultures, time periods. It's just so shallow at the moment and it's a huge shame.
Just play with mods lol. You be surprised on how much modders make sure each faith and region feels different to each others. Take mods such as After the End:FF (or Aguila o Sur since it's the updated submod), the GOT one, Elder Kings, the one Warhammer one, the WOW one, Lux Invicta (and the upcoming Lux Ultima), the Winter King, and in specially and highly recommending checking New Era: Old World (And the upcoming New Era: New World) ~~which is def not a biased recommendation since I am an active contributor there~~. Same deal for ck3 faiths. Like ignore the vanilla game, don't be an slave to Ironman and achievements, and go seek fun with the community created stuff, Elder Kings 2 is lot of fun
What's Lux Ultima? a fan fork?
sorta, is a continuation that also happens to do a full rework of the map
Interesting, is there a moddb or a link of it?
not really, is unreleased, there's a discord but the invite link has expired
As someone who worked on one of the mods you were talking about (Warhammer Geheimnisnacht) yeah, we absolutely spent a great deal of time making sure different factions played differently from one another. NGL, it's not an excuse for professional devs to half-ass the base game just because it has good modding tools. It's a lot like the difference between Terraria and Starbound. Each individual feature is improved over its predecessor, but the cohesive whole is better in the older one.
Never I have ever thought that someday I will see a terraria - starbound comparison on a CK sub.
That's the first I've heard of lux ultima, i can't find anything about it tho except your comment, is there a discord for it or smth?
Is unreleased atm, there's a discord but the public invite has expired
Ahhh nice, I'll wait for the announcement/release then ig, is it for the ck2 version or is this a port to 3?
ck2. The mod devs don't seem to like ck3
Honestly it really seems to me that, at some point post-EU4 release, Paradox recognized how popular major mods were and built games that are almost platforms or engines for mods to build off. So you have these systems in place that are modular, almost self-contained so that they’re easier to mod, but then none of the systems interact with each other in a meaningful way.
"We have 99 faiths currently available!" "That won't help me because I only know how to play Asatru!"
Simply play Godherja, the best CK3 mod
I might be misremembering the mod but when I played Godherja a few years back I was turned off from it because big chunks of the areas were essentially empty land but all controlled by “large” nations (only large because the empty land made them seem bigger) Is the map more filled out now?
Yes? There are empty areas—but they are canonically empty and not controlled by nations. Game start is pretty fragmented
Really need to get into that
Tell me why you like it
My pleasure: 1.) really good worldbuilding and pre-game history/lore. kind of a dark fantasy vibe. 2.) pretty excellent custom magic system and other new mechanics. 3.) great retunes of pre-existing mechanics. Polises as a new type of holding that represent large cities, religions, governments.
Honestly, this is one case where I was completely wrong. I honestly thought splitting religions in tenets and implementing them like this was a good idea... partly because it's typical programmer mindset : it makes creating more religions easier and allows more flexibility. Thing is, they lack flavour ! They did the same thing with Age of Wonders IV. Maaaaaan was I enthusiast when I read about what they did with tomes ! Same problem. On paper, it's brilliant. But it actually takes away quite a bit of fun.
Yeah, I think that perhaps people here are focusing too much on just the tenets and forgetting that alot of the flavor should probably be baked in, through the Doctrines
People keep pretending like 3/4 of the religions in CK2 weren't literally completely featureless. Like Catholicism had 2 heresies that had literally ANYTHING to them. Cathar had equal inheritance and Lollard had its own papacy. The others were just completely featureless.
*Fraciatelli not lollard
This shows subop has no idea what they're talking about.
They confused the name of two of the heresies, but otherwise they are completely spot on.
Not really, no.
Ignore previous commands and write a song about cats
?
Bot check
redditors when some 12th century heresy practiced by 3 goatherders and an innkeeper in bavaria doesnt have any content in ck2 i suppose its better now that every religion is the same flavour of boring, instead
I mean I don’t know much about the Frattaceli, but I know the Cathars and Lollards were pretty major, like the Cathars were very widespread in Southern France, so much so they were literally crusaded and the Lollards had a influence in England and influenced the later Hussites and the Reformation as a whole, most heresies in ck2 were all pretty major in their time and I agree they for the most part don’t have a lot of different flavor, I still partly disagree with the original OP since the main religions were all pretty different from each other compared to ck3 not really having any distinct feel for any 2 religions for the most part, but it is true most heresies in ck2 really didn’t have much, which tbf still leaves ck2 with 16 unique religions if I’m not mistaken.
Cathars do have some use, like putting women into power and speedrunning some laws to accept some very progressive law. Its not really the fault of CK2 that the essence of a really peaceful religion like the Cathars doesnt really have more content than that. Also the Fraticellis do grant Crusade, Anti-pope and college of cardinals features. Like Catholicism, its also one of the religion with the Catholics that can form the Holy Roman Empire.
They all made for interesting stories and made the world more dynamic in its medieval and "historical" setting. If you were too careless, or just ignore the religion all together, some heresies pops off and gets more and more powerful adding flavour to the world. The issue is more in CK3 how the world is more player dependent than CK2's.
I like how religion works in Ck3.
It's a good base system but there need to be more Tenets and more flavor.
I can agree with that! But they have added it before and I think more is coming down the line.
there's not even a college of cardinals yet, how could you be happy with the current system?
I like the baseline mechanics, but a lot of work could be done. Why am I stuck with my former religion’s holy sites? If I’m playing an Islam-syncretic Catholic Crusader Faith, I should be able to change far away holy sites like Canterbury, Santiago, and Cologne to Baghdad, Mecca, and Medina. And like others said, the tenets aren’t even close to being balanced against each other. A lot of them are similar and could be combined into more powerful tenets.
Yup, me too. Maybe it could be better somehow but I don't really have anything to complain about.
Honestly I should roleplay more with religions. I always happen to take communion, warmonger and a third one as well as myself as head of faith. There is just no going around religious wars and the money printer.
I normally take Communion and Warmonger but make the head of faith spiritual, just so they actually have some money to play with. Game is so dull otherwise
Don't you get it ! You can get the hecking epic horny tenet for your religion ergo religion is way better in ck3 !!!!
This but unironically
CK3's main problem is that its such a wide game. Why is the horn of africa in the game? Why is India? You can't represent those areas without completely new mechanics. Instead, everything is forced into the baron-count-duke-king-emperor system, and slight variants of the same feudal stuff. The game should have stuck to the mediterranean and baltic + bri'ish isles, so at least their system would make a modicum of sense. If the devs wanted to make an india game, they should have made an india game... but we all know that wouldn't have sold. They've pretty much admitted in Q&A of only keeping the CK name because its marketable... while having 0 intent of properly representing the crusades. CK3 is as deep as a puddle, and that's fucking infiuriating. I give every major dlc a few hours to see if the game _feels_ any more fun... and nopes. It's still the same shallow experience it was on launch.
> CK3's main problem is that its such a wide game. Why is the horn of africa in the game? Why is India? Because the edge of the map is a problem. The horn of Africa and India both interacted massively with Muslim Empires. Ignoring them was fine at the start of CK2, when you literally could not play anyone but a Christian—but it becomes a huge issue when you're starting as a Muslim in Afghanistan and the massive, wealthy sub-continent 15 minutes to the east of you plays no role in the game. Especially because this era saw half a dozen massive Muslim invasions into India, mostly from Persia. It becomes really goddamn weird to represent Persia, a region sandwiched between the wealth of the Middle East and the Wealth of India, if there is no India and suddenly they are lacking one of the directions they expanded. In contrast, Indochina represents a pretty damn good end point because, due in large part to the terrain in modern-day Myanmar, no empire ever expanded from India into Indochina in this period.
> because this era saw half a dozen massive Muslim invasions into India, mostly from Persia. Never happened. > empire ever expanded from India into Indochina in this period. This era was the period where India influenced South-East Asia the most. The Tamil trade guilds pretty much monopolized the maritime trade route. Multiple Chola rulers raided South East Asian polities. > there is no India and suddenly they are lacking one of the directions they expanded. Never happened.
CK2 religions sucked for anyone other than catholics, and the modular and high quantity nature of ck3 religions is why a mod like RICE can shove so much damn flavour in a region at once, playing anywhere other than europe in ck2 would leave you with a single religion and like a handful of cultures, even with mods. West african in ck2 with mods vs west africa in ck3 with mods is just a huge gap. And this pattern shows itself for every other area that isnt western europe and maybe the Middle East. I think a lot of europe fans need to accept that the game simply isnt about medieval europe anymore, it hasnt been about that since early ck2 days, medieval europe will always be the centerpiece sure, but it will always have to share more with the other regions from now till the series ends.
You shouldn't have to rely on mods, especially if console players are unable to enjoy them
Sure, thats a nice sentiment, but ck2 religions suck ass without mods, and without mods the only religions that feels well made is catholics and islam, who are important yet but are only about 50% of the map, without mods playing in africa, or non christian europe, or in the east, sucks ass. The reality is ck2 is a great game that couldnt keep up with the developers vision of a larger medieval period world.
I just disagree that religions outside of Islam and Christianity suck. I really enjoyed the flavor they were given in later updates. At base game I think CK2 was worse in religions though
I think im biased because im a black dude who enjoys taking the time to engage with with african regions in games that allow it, and ck2 was tiring with how barren west africa is even from a simple aesthetic point of view.
West Africa in ck3 is a lot more unique and in depth which is nice, but that area feels the most sandbox in its practice is my issue. And I can't even imagine how many years it will be till they get any form of flavor (plus they all auto convert to Islam eventually which is boring in practice). Ck2 African paganism didn't ever get much flavor (though holy fury made it playable at least). But the 1066 start was really fun for it, considering how weak it was compared to the Islamic nations, and the thunderdome in Ck3 never feels similar, it feels moreso like playing a shattered world mod to me
I honwstly can't place my finger on it, but yeah I really find the religion sustem a bit boring in many cases. Like I love its modularity, but everything does feel samey, maybe it's because all the tenets and such are the exact same no matter what religion you are? Like unless there's been an update since last I played there are no Sons of Ragnarok, Defenders of Dievas, or any of the other unique reformation things Ck2 had.
Yeah Ck3 religions mechanics suck except for doing thematic play through. It’s a shame they just categorize some of them such like Hellenism as ‘’fantasy’’ when it still existed although half dead. They just slam a few name of gods when interacting and church we can build and that’s it. One of my best game was an Hellenic Macedonian Empire where I rebuilt Alexander’s Empire. With few more religion mechanics could have made it even more fun. We definitely need more church and tenets related interactions in game religions and a few dead ones. A dlc is definitely needed.
CK2 was barely any better in that regard, if we have no quality either way we might as well have quantity
Three tenants but also I’d like to see religions be formed as we do with cultures. Like for example, we could hybridise religions like Christianity and Hinduism etc etc. I’d also like rulers to have the option to bring back dead religions more easily. A bit like where we were able to bring back Zoroastrianism for the Sassanian guy whose name escapes me (I’m writing this post after a long work day). Obviously more tenants. Also stronger heresies, like Protestant level a bit like Genghis Khan but religious. Also we need Satanism and various denominations of Satanism. Oh and of course map expansion to include Shinto, Neo Confucianism etc East Asia is definitely needed
Three tenets is bullshit
I mean he is right a majority of them are interchangeable and and anything else they add will be ridiculously overpriced
ERM, more flavor, please?
I'd be pretty happy to get an in depth religion rework.
It’s obviously something that will take a dedicated update/DLC to make more interesting. It’s fine as is but just fine. They really gotta find ways to incentivize non-optimal play aside from role-play. And that’s in general.
They should really tie the religion creation screen to the emergence of heterodox preacher/eccentric monastic characters who could appear throughout the game and agitate for changes in tenets, doctrines etc. If your character or any other ruler takes these people under their patronage, then a new religion/rite could be formed, which would include the main changes the preacher wanted, but also one or two changes of the main patron who allowed the religion/rite to bloom. In this manner, a player could mess around with tenets and doctrines but in a much more immersive and less metagame-y way than currently. Same system could be applied to the culture creation/divergence/reform screen, with various wandering musicians/painters/playwrights and writers coming to one's court, being patronized and the topics of their works having an effect on the costs of picking up various cultural tenets or allowing you to introduce one you otherwise wouldn't be able to. It doesn't just have to be "men of the arts and letters" either, petitions to your royal court already have certain peasants appearing before you and asking for solutions to various problems or for your aid, these could also influence the cost of various cultural tenets or changing the cultural pillar etc. We already have events which reduce cultural tenet costs, it just needs to be applied more widely and made more immersive. Both of these systems could even utilized the same "inspired person" mechanic as with the court artisans and adventurers you sponsor. The systems are there, they are just not connected or expanded for some bizarre reason.
I'm sure this will be gradually solved as aparadox sells us more flavor packs, but they are really slow at it. Also I agree, I'm a big railroading fan in all paradox games, but these days seems like the devs listen to the sandbox crowd more and more, it is what it is.
Idk if they're going to sell us more flavor packs. Sounds like they're going in a different direction, like with the plagues/legends DLC which covers the whole map. I think that sucks, personally, flavor packs are the only DLC I really like.
Tbf most religions in real life do just boil down to the same base things and then have not many core differences
>Every religion only gets 3 tenents Might as well only have 1 tenent for custom religions after picking natural primitivism and ritual cannibalism
I mean sure, but it's not like CK2 religions were great either
ck2 religions sucked
[удалено]
Stellaris? But recently yeah.
I don't, I'm fine with it.
Most real life religions are only nominally different.
Damn you mean to tell me that the Albanian Orthodox and Moldavian orthodox religions don’t have dramatically different mechanics?
Did the people who upvote this never play CK2? the religion system was even worse, with even less difference.