The default game has made state religions a huge part of AI diplomatic behaviour (we care for our brothers and sisters of the faith!), and pretty much determines who an AI will befriend/crush. This seems a bit silly when compared to a human player, who won't care what religion another player is because there is little in-game reason to. The only exceptions might be if you had the apostlistic palace, or the holy city gold bonus, which both give some "real" benefit.

So I was thinking if the revolution mod could give some kind of in-game reason to care about other people's state religion, and so make the AI's behavior make more sense.

My idea was that the revolt risk could be affected by the global standing of the state religion. So if 6 civs were Hindu and only 2 were Jewish, the Hindu civs would suffer less instability than the Jewish because of their "stronger" religion. So when AI Isabella tries to convert the entire world, she at least has an in-game reason to do so - more civs converted = stronger religious authority = less revolts.

And although this is mainly a game mechanics issue, I think there is some historical justification for it. If governments are part of a huge, well-established religious community, it does provide some stability. Look at medieval christendom - when a 'new' religion appeared in france (the cathars), the rest of christian europe promptly launched a crusade to help the french eradicate the rebellion and protect the status quo.

just an idea. any thoughts?

Welcome to CFC!

I certainly agree that the revolution aspects of religion could use some more effects for how strong the religions are, but my plan was to do things a little more local. Your example of Christendom in Europe is exactly what I'm going for, if Isabella is Christian and is surrounded by other Christian nations, then all her cities with Christianity would be a bit more stable. Conversely, if one of her cities has Hinduism and that's the state religion of a nearby neighbor, then that city would be a little more unstable.

The thought is that up until about the 1500s or so at least the focus should be mainly on fairly local influences. Once galleons and nationalism enter the scene, the effect of religion starts to taper down a bit anyway.

I think the result is largely the same, Isabella still has extra incentive to convert her neighbors to avoid instability but converting far away civs doesn't help her border stability if one of her neighbors is staunchly Hindu or something. She would of course still have the normal incentives of gaining an ally and perhaps the money from the holy city for expanding her religion.

How does that sound?

thanks for the response!

the idea of local influences is a lot more logical; i only suggested a global mechanic because the AI's love/hate system is global as well. (but if they're an ocean away then there's not a lot they can do about it!) the main thing is providing a rationale for same-religion civs to stick together, outside of the apostolistic palace, which your system would provide.

one question: would this help the issue of minority holy cities always rebelling? in theory, a continent full of same-religion civs could have enough stability to ensure that the minor religions were forced to accept the obvious status quo. (and so give an AI who founds multiple religions a small chance of staying in one piece)

either way, having an actual, game-play reason for religious tensions would be great. (yet another improvement on vanilla...)

Yes, it will help with minority holy cities ... I know something needs to be done to make it possible to hold on to those, I have several ideas in the works.