Religion, new staff, spies (Sugestions)

[AlxGvr]

Ok, I think this deserves its own topic:
Here are some suggestions which can bring more sense to religion feature in Brytenwalda (in my humble opinion  ) 



1. Make pagan temples on the map like monasteries where you can hire pagan priests in your party. Connect "Make sacrifice to the gods" feature to amount of priest in your party. More priests - more chances to do this, no priests - no chances.

2. Make religious rating (like honor or renown), you can increase it by donating to monasteries\pagan temples, helping and protecting priest\villages, building religious structures. If you do nothing it will decrease with time. 

3. Make some Elite mercenaries who will be addicted to specific religion (fanatics). They will be very cheap to maintain. But very powerful warriors and you can hire them only if you have very hight religious rating.

4. Assign all troops in the game to religion (double them)  Ang. Lig. I (pagan), Ang. Lig. I (christian), Sax. Hv. I (chtistian), Sax. Hv. I (pagan). It will depend now on where  did you hire them. If it was christian village - the will be christian, if pagan - they will be pagan. If you have both pagan and christian troops in your party - moral will go low. So it will be sense to convert fiefs in your faith. 

5. Make spies be able to do religion propaganda (slowly convert village, especially those which doesn`t have church\forest of celtic gods ). Make AI use spies. Hire stuff in the villages who will do anti-spy job. Or just inform you that in this village may be enemy spy, and you will send your spy than to find him. If you have a prison in the city, he will be escorted there, and you can torture him (hire torturer)). If you succeed, he will tel you who has sent him, and you can declare war on this faction now without losing any honor and relations

6. Hire tax-collector in cities and villages, who can reduce tax-inefficiency.

7. Enemy spies can kill all your staff in village or in the city (you can do the same). Also villagers cant revolt and kill all your staff too. 

8. Make three upgrade levels to spies. Now it almost impossible to send spy to a hostile fief (relation near -75). He will be detected very quick. Leave this job to experienced veteran spies. Spies will gain experience not in the battles or due to training, but only working as spies and doing sabotage tasks.

What do you think?

 

[Mooncabbage]

[list type=decimal]
[*]I don't think the pagan religion needs monasteries, it would be inappropriate and inaccurate to add them simply to mirror the christian monasteries.
[*]How about REPLACING honour, which doesn't really make sense for the era, with Religion. Positive religion could represent christianity, negative religion could represent paganness. Yes, you lose some of the complexity of catholic christianity vs celtic christianity, etc, but I think the end result would be better. Then also it becomes more interesting in that some lords will be christian and some pagan and react to you accordingly.
[*]I don't think this is necessary or appropriate either. This period isn't a particularly religiously fanatical one, religion is more politics.
[*]I don't think that this is necessarily a bad idea, but I feel there are already too many troop types in the game. If you were to do this, I think you would need to merge all similar troop trees in to one. No more Gebur Jutes and Gebur Seaxe, just Gebur (Christian) and Gebur (Pagan). Otherwise I think it's a good suggestion. Regardless it's probably far too much work.
[*]I think that it would be more sensible to use priests in this capacity.
[*]Hiring a tax-collector or perhaps assigning a companion to the role might be a good idea, but as a central administrative position. Perhaps tax inefficiency could be reduced by 1% for each point of the tax collector's trade skill, and the generic tax collector has trade skill 3 or something.
[*]This is an interesting idea except staff are basically useless. It's pointless even having to pay for them as they are now as they do virtually nothing and cost very little also.
[*]I think spies should be able to gain experience equally from battles, skirmishing and other covert activities. I don't necessarily disagree about having multiple level of spy however.
[*]As part of my ongoing "why can't companions do it?" theme, Why can't companions be sent on spying missions? They could be arrested if caught and then you'd have to break them out. The other main task of spies is to skirmish. If companions can lead troops like mercenary commanders (as I have suggested), perhaps skirmishing could be a command given to companions, similar to patrols and escorts. Why not? Assign the companion light cavalry only, and send him off to skirmish. Works perfectly.
[/list]

 

[Celtichugs]

I agree with all your points, bar the first. Where I agree with Mr.Cabbage.

It would be inaccurate and uncorrect. Holy Groves, Celtic Barrows (as opposed to Saxon ones) & more standing stones is just a must for me, though.

 

[AlxGvr]

• I don't think the pagan religion needs monasteries, it would be inappropriate and inaccurate to add them simply to mirror the christian monasteries.

Pagan religion doesn`t need monasteries) It needs caves, forests, stones, etc. Every cult or religion has its own sacred places.

I don't think this is necessary or appropriate either. This period isn't a particularly religiously fanatical one, religion is more politics.

It always place in this world for religious fanatics who are ready to cut your head of in the name of *god`s name*.  They were, a lot of them in 21 century, and they will be always
It will just add some sense to religion feature.

Hiring a tax-collector or perhaps assigning a companion to the role might be a good idea, but as a central administrative position. Perhaps tax inefficiency could be reduced by 1% for each point of the tax collector's trade skill, and the generic tax collector has trade skill 3 or something.

I think it will be more interesting to hire them in every fief, and they could be killed by spies or peasants. But also it would be nice to replace your economic minister with your companion, and he will improve taxes also. Both variants can exist at the same time. Also it would be nice to replace your military minister with companion who has hight leadership skill. It will improve troops moral or reduce maintain. maybe we should write this suggestions in Diplomacy mod thread?

As part of my ongoing "why can't companions do it?" theme, Why can't companions be sent on spying missions? They could be arrested if caught and then you'd have to break them out. The other main task of spies is to skirmish. If companions can lead troops like mercenary commanders (as I have suggested), perhaps skirmishing could be a command given to companions, similar to patrols and escorts. Why not? Assign the companion light cavalry only, and send him off to skirmish. Works perfectly.

You are completely right!  I suggested it too. Companions should do all things that m. captain can do, and more. Especially to chase fast enemy lord and begin battle.

 

[Mooncabbage]

I would suggest that having a full compliment of advisors and staff in every village would be excessive. Perhaps just a mayor or similar in villages, a full compliment in cities/towns, and a different set in castles (an engineer, to build defenses, a martial, to train and recruit staff, and a quartermaster, to make training and equipping troops easier).

I don't disagree about pagan religions having sacred ground, but it must be remembered that they are fundamentally different to monasteries. A sacred ground is more in line with a church, a place of worship and ceremony. Early monasteries were places for private contemplation and pure living, but they quickly became a kind of industry, since the perception was that the purer one's lifestyle, the more god heard your prayers. It thus became commonplace to contract out to monasteries to pray for your soul. Kings and noblemen could then continue to fight their wars and sin, in the knowledge that for a price, god would hear their absolution. A whole economy grew up around it. Different monastic followings became like different corporations, competing with each other to win the sin money.

I don't know much about the pagan religions of the period, I doubt anyone knows much as they are dead, but it's possible for gameplay purposes that while similar, the two organisations could behave divergently. At the monasteries, you might donate sums of money to have your soul prayed for, while at the pagan sacred sites (to be grossly unfair to pagan religions), you might donate prisoners to be sacrificed to the gods, so that they might see you and bless you. You might even build up a whole system of different pagan holy sites, with different sacrifices to be made. I feel it's important that both sides of religion are equally well fleshed out however, for gameplay balance purposes.

 

[AlxGvr]

while at the pagan sacred sites (to be grossly unfair to pagan religions), you might donate prisoners to be sacrificed to the gods, so that they might see you and bless you.

I would suggest that having a full compliment of advisors and staff in every village would be excessive. Perhaps just a mayor or similar in villages, a full compliment in cities/towns, and a different set in castles (an engineer, to build defenses, a martial, to train and recruit staff, and a quartermaster, to make training and equipping troops easier).

Try WF&S, look at the village and cities staff there (but some of them are not for Brytenwalda period), would be nice to take some of them.

 

[Mooncabbage]

I played WFaS but not far enough to have any fiefs, I take it that's necessary?

Also I'd like to adapt what I said before to better reflect my made up pagan religion: Sacrifice prisoners to honour the gods, in order to gain their favour.

Question: What effect, if any, should religion have on gameplay? Given the historical nature of the mod, it seems to me that any for of direct divine intervention or blessing would be inappropriate. How then, can the player be rewarded for serving his faith, faithfully? A popularity bonus of some sort? If the diplomacy mod were extended in more EU3 type directions, to require a cause for war, perhaps it would be more difficult to attack a nation with a pious leader? I really have no idea. The mechanics of service seem sound, donating wealth and prisoners (a good source of wealth), but what of reward?

Ofcourse I doubt any of this will be implimented in BW as it stands, but it's interesting to think about.

 

[Celtichugs]

We need to steer away from this steryo typical Celtic polytheism!

Human sacrifice in Celtic religion was rare. It did happen, but was rare in Britain. There is very little evidence to suggest that it happened regularly, the only evident being Pliny the Elder and some remains - the remains being rare findings. Also, human sacrifice in Britian was banned under Roman law, now this isn't to say it never happened, but it would have certainly increased it's rareity.

The most common Celtic offering to the Gods where through burrying items and other votive offerings. Somthing like this would be awsome, though difficult to portray ingame I supose!

Germanic paganisim, I am entirely unsure about however!

 

[Mooncabbage]

For religion to work well as a system, it would be necessary not to differentiate between celtic christianity and catholocism, and celtic paganism and germanic paganism. In most cases the game does not differentiate anyway. For example if you go to a village or town it doesn't say if it's celtic christianity or germanic pagan, it just says christian or pagan. I do not believe in the game there is actually any difference between germanic paganism and celtic paganism.

Whilst I am aware that human sacrifice was rare, relatively little about the religions of the period is recorded, and that which is is of questionable accuracy. The human sacrifice of prisoners just makes a good gameplay option, I doubt it would be a realistic depiction of the religion.

 

[AlxGvr]

I played WFaS but not far enough to have any fiefs, I take it that's necessary?

I can give you a saved game. You can see village staff (about 5 person). There is one guy (some kind of village lawyer) when you hire him, you can have a random income like "some lonely woman died... bla bla bla.. she had no relatives so she bequeathed all money to you" or "band of smugglers was caught. you receive 1500 shilingas"

I recommend to play WFaS. It has some fresh ideas.