Religions and Alignment

[Verdian]

One of my favorite themes of FfH is Good vs. Evil. While these lines are blurred in any Dark Fantasy setting, FfH being no exception, it is the classic struggle in any fantasy work. As a typical game of FfH drags on, angels and demons take side in this great battle and there is epic-fantasy goodness all around. But looking at the religions and how they affect alignment shifts, it seems the world of FfH really favors neutrality. Here is a chart that shows how religion effects alignment, with starting alignment being on top.

Spoiler :

Starting Alignment...Good...Neutral...Evil​

Order...........................Good.....Good....Good
Empyrean......................Good....Neutral..Neutral
Runes of Kilmorph...........Good.....Neutral..Neutral
Fellowship of the Leaves..Good....Neutral..Evil
Octopus Overlords..........Neutral..Neutral..Evil
Council of Esus..............Neutral..Neutral..Evil
Ashen Veil.....................Evil......Evil.......Evil

G - 6
N - 9
E - 6

The only way to change from Neutral to Good or Evil is through Order or AV. And Empyrean/RoK and OO/CoE have the same alignment shifts. This is enhanced by religion switching, as Emp and CoE are both late game religions that usually lead to Neutrality.

I would like to suggest that CoE and Emp have their alignment modifiers changed to move the civilization's alignment over one (to Evil and Good, respectively) to balance out the number of Good and Evil alignment outcomes.

Spoiler :

Starting Alignment...Good...Neutral...Evil​

Order...........................Good.....Good....Good
Empyrean......................Good....Good....Neutral
Runes of Kilmorph...........Good.....Neutral..Neutral
Fellowship of the Leaves..Good....Neutral..Evil
Octopus Overlords..........Neutral..Neutral..Evil
Council of Esus..............Neutral..Evil.......Evil
Ashen Veil.....................Evil......Evil.......Evil
G - 7
N - 7
E - 7

I think this change would even out the diplomacy modifiers a bit, making Neutral slightly less envious (they already get druids *shakes fist*), but more importantly increasing conflict (in a Good vs. Evil sense) as the AC rises and late game sets in.

 

[ExMachina]

OO seems more evil than CoE, to me anyway. Other than that, I think this is a good idea.

 

[KillerClowns]

I'd be tempted to switch the Overlords and Council of Esus there. I should think mass human sacrifice, shamelessly insane experimentation on people, and raising forth armies of the undead is more evil then the thievery, assassination, and general mischief of the servants of Esus.
EDIT: Ninja'd.
EDIT 2: Now I think about it, this would also cause Hannah and Falamar, both of whom are neutral, to end up evil if they go with their favorite religions. This is fine for Hannah, though, and could be easily rectified by giving Falamar no religious preference, or one for the Council of Esus (which fits him better, IMHO, anyways).

 

[Emptiness]

What bothers me most is how readily the AI will adopt a religion that will change its alignment. A human might stop to consider the consequences, but good civs in AI hands will convert to AV, for example, as soon as it spreads into one of their cities (if they don't have another faith already, of course). The Elohim are supposed to be working to avoid or delay armageddon, but I've seen them gleefully spreading AV several times.

In many games I play one religion tends to dominate, with the first to be discovered being spread to every civ passively regardless of their starting alignment. A nice good vs. evil game is hard to find because of this. I'd like to see the chance of the passive spread of an evil religion into a good civ's cities (and good into evil) be either dramatically reduced or, preferably, complete eliminated. This would have no effect on spreading religion with disciples.

I also agree with Verdian's position that a religion that shifts a good civ to neutral, for example, should also shift a neutral civ to evil. However, I feel that there will still be many games where no one is left who is good, or no one who is evil. An improvement to the AI that allows a computer civ to choose when not to change to a religion is very important if quality endgame good vs. evil action is to be common.

 

[Stoik]

I agree about empyrean, OO and CoE to alignments change the way you say. What about RoK? I always thought it should work like the FoL, without changing anything. Sorry if i'm wrong about the lore...I'm only french...

 

[Stoik]

What bothers me most is how readily the AI will adopt a religion that will change its alignment. A human might stop to consider the consequences, but good civs in AI hands will convert to AV, for example, as soon as it spreads into one of their cities (if they don't have another faith already, of course). The Elohim are supposed to be working to avoid or delay armageddon, but I've seen them gleefully spreading AV several times.

Maybe it will be a good thing to give penality to evils adopting good religion and opposite, something like +1 people unhapiness (or more).

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

what Emptiness said. AIs REALLY need to be told not to switch to a religion as soon as it spreads to one of their cities. I've had countless games ruined by all the world being FoL/RoK, resulting in no conflict. ARGH!

snarko has some code that affects the chance for a religion to spread to an opposite-alignment civ. I think that would be an awesome feature.

 

[Jules.lt]

Well, you could still add some lasting unhappiness on alignment change.
Something like 2 in every city becoming one after 20 turns and disappearing after 20 other turns, and add a 20 turns of 3 unhappiness before that if you change directly from Good to Evil or vice versa. The population needs time to adapt...

That would make the human players think about it more seriously too...
Otherwise, you're just reducing the AIs' strategic options while the human player still does as he pleases.

 

[Skitters]

I'd be tempted to switch the Overlords and Council of Esus there. I should think mass human sacrifice, shamelessly insane experimentation on people, and raising forth armies of the undead is more evil then the thievery, assassination, and general mischief of the servants of Esus.
EDIT: Ninja'd.
EDIT 2: Now I think about it, this would also cause Hannah and Falamar, both of whom are neutral, to end up evil if they go with their favorite religions. This is fine for Hannah, though, and could be easily rectified by giving Falamar no religious preference, or one for the Council of Esus (which fits him better, IMHO, anyways).

whilst I agree with that thematically, it would be a little more unbalanced in the sense that whilst Empyrean is a late religion, OO is early - therefore making the likelihood of more Neutral civs becoming Evil than good.

Although having said that, CoE spread doesn't exactly balance up well against Empyrean anyhow, so perhaps that is one reason as to why CoE and Empyrean have less effect on alignment shift than verdian's proposal?

 

[Lone Wolf]

I've had countless games ruined by all the world being FoL/RoK, resulting in no conflict. ARGH!

Now I disable RoK in my games for more confrontation. I also made an XML experiment, increasing every absolute value of AI's religious weights by 10.

Why there's no conflict with FoL? It doesn't change your aligment.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

sure, RoK is even worse since it tends to make civs neutral. but even having the whole world share the same tree-hugging religion doesn't incentive conflict at all ( they'are all like: "oh, you're evil and I'm good but we both love trees so let's hug and kiss )

 

[Stoik]

Something else i disagree with: for example, if an evil civ become good after adopting order and adopt FoL after, the native evil civ following FoL stay good. With that system you can finish with doviellos-FoL-alignmentgood, or worst, with Arendel-FoL-alignmentevil>not logic (particularly now that you can find a religious "spreader" in abandoned ships or lairs, etc...

 

[Aroldo]

Agree with emptiness&gekko.

 

[cabbagemeister]

I agree with the proposal in concept, because I like the idea of increasing the ways that neutral civs can turn good aside from just Order (and the reverse with Evil/AV). In practice, however, I rarely see a shortage of Good/Evil civs. I think I've only ever played one game where most everyone turned Neutral and the world was too lovey-dovey peaceful because of it. Hyborem and Basium really help in this respect, driving the world towards the extremes of good and evil. In summary, I like the balanced concept of religions moving civs to neutral, moving civs one alignment towards good/evil, or moving civs all the way to good/evil. I'm just not convinced it's really needed.

AIs REALLY need to be told not to switch to a religion as soon as it spreads to one of their cities. I've had countless games ruined by all the world being FoL/RoK, resulting in no conflict. ARGH!

IMO, this is the REAL problem: not alignment issues, but too-quick spread of the early religions. Of course it's worse on mapscripts which allow for early contact and easy trade.

 

[Earthling]

I share the same opinion as Stoik - I'm not having problems with the current alignment setup but the fact that civilizations never change back. Of course, maybe if you made leaders less willing to adopt opposite religions (AV Cardith Lorda has happened a few times to me already ) that would help. However, I would most prefer that if leaders switched religions they fall back to their natural alignments dependent only on that religion. In other words, as already mentioned, if an evil civ adopts Order, and then, say FoL or RoK - they don't still stay good but their alignment goes back to evil (or neutral).

 

[civ_king]

we could have 7 alignments... one for each religion, with FoL being neutral... good to evil: Order-Emp-RoK-FoL-CoE-OO-AV

 

[Emptiness]

That would make +relations for having the same alignment much less common. If each religion is it's own alignment then the alignment system becomes somewhat redundant, merely a boost to the +/- from religion and not a separate factor. I prefer the current method, where your neighbor might dislike you because you follow a different religion, but that might be balanced out by the fact that you share the same alignment (for example).

Also, I agree with the points being made about religion alignment changes being permanent. A civ's base alignment should persist, and their actual alignment should based on that base alignment modified by their current religion. So, for example, a civ that adopts FoL should have a current alignment that matches its base alignment irregardless of whether that civ has followed AV in the past.

 

[civ_king]

I mean the alignments so that If a person is very good vs. you being mildly good you wouldn't get as big a bonus however a guy strongly evil would not hate you as much as if you were strongly good