The Great Schism

[thomas.berubeg]

Real Life:
In the terrifying place called the real world, religions are not just static, unchanging things. people argue about their ideologies, even within one religion. very soon after a religion is founded, it breaks apart into many different "churches" and Sects.

To apply this to FFH2:
Most of the Religions in Fall from Heaven (aside from the Ordor) seem like ideal candidates for this "schisming:" isn't Octopus Overlords a worship of many different "octopus gods?" wouldn't some people prefer an overlord, as opposed to another. Fellowship of leaves also is a religion that could break apart: Protecting trees is a pretty loose idealogy. it is easy to see that people would find a reason to argue about such things.

What would this Do?
Civs that adopt a religion more closely associated with thier own might hate each other more, calling the other a defiler of the Word, or words. (you'de hate someone more if you believed them to be desacrating all you hold dear, rather than someon who believes something entirely different.) instead of "-2: You follow a heathen religion" it would be "-4 you defile the sacred word"

Uniques Attributes of Cults:
I'm still thinking on this, but maybe some different rituals and spell open to different Cults, maybe some unique religious Units or hereos.

Sincerely
Thomas.berubeg

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Another Effect:
If a city has two cults stemming fromthe same Religion, there will be some unhappiness, increasing by the amount of Sects in the city

 

[Civkid1991]

i like and dislike this idea... this probably would be somewhat hard to do and it seems a bit messy. It would be hard to manage all of the diffrent types of religions and subs to those religions. I do like what you said about the fellowship of the leaves though... and it would go good with the whole light/dark elf thing. There would be a Dark Fellowship of the Leaves and Light Fellowship of the Leaves. I guess you can put in some cool effects and UUs there too... like Ancient Dark Forests and like Dark Druids or something. I'm not really sure how it would work out with the other religions especially the order. It wouldn't be the same religion if there were sects. It may work with the Ashen Veil.. like the worship of diffrent demons ( and it would have a cool +diplomatic effect if your ashen and meet up with the infernals). But then again you would have a whole mess of diffrent temples and UUs and things. I would be more of a fan of just having this for the Fellowship of the Leaves and the Ashen Veil.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

(From the other thread

I was wondering... what if after a certain amount of time, the existing religions break off into different cults, still worshiping the same basic idealogy, but with some minor differences. in the real world, almost as soon as Christianity was founded, it started to break apart.

I'd suspect that this could be traced back to the fact that Jesus wasn't exactly taking an active role in the church after its founding. Gods that are alive, well, and obsessed with their followers might not tolerate a Martin Luther or Joseph Smith Jr. preaching an alternate view.

 

[DieselBiscuit]

Got to go with Chandrasekhar on this one.

 

[Iblis]

(From the other thread
Gods that are alive, well, and obsessed with their followers might not tolerate a Martin Luther or Joseph Smith Jr. preaching an alternate view.

Or, to put real history into FFH context:

Martin Luther: There, my theses on the errors of the church are complete and nailed to the door of the castle church to make them known to all. Now the world will begin to question the one view tolerated by the corrupt church and, hopefully, one day there will the chance for reform and consideration of the true word of...

Luther is cut short as the doors of Wittgenberg castle church "mysteriously" come loose from their hinges, fall on him and crush him to death

A priest who happens to be passing by: You tell him Lord.

 

[Sureshot]

A simple enough way to get this schism thingy, would be to have a wonder that you can only build if you have the religion but not the holy city, which then gives the negative diplo modifier with the holy city holder. Perhaps the wonder could be like the holy city wonder... tho can't say im too keen on the idea of schisms, would rather just have more religions with their own flavour.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

A simple enough way to get this schism thingy, would be to have a wonder that you can only build if you have the religion but not the holy city, which then gives the negative diplo modifier with the holy city holder. Perhaps the wonder could be like the holy city wonder... tho can't say im too keen on the idea of schisms, would rather just have more religions with their own flavour.

Hey, that gives me an idea. Perhaps a new religion might be researched only if you had adopted an existing one, similar to the advanced religion techs currently (arete, etc.). So you could have a primal, lizardman worshiping survival of the fitest relgion branching off of fellowship of the leaves.
Schism, but with new religion flavor.

 

[Oldfrt]

A take on this could be along the lines of:-

Each year after a religion is founded there is x% chance of a "chism unit" being spawned (much the same way barbarians/skeletons/etc are spawned). Base chance is multiplied by the number of cities that have the religion (ie the more cities with a religion, the more chance of throwing one of these units.

The unit could do something simple like:

-99 move
-5 happiness
-5 gold
str 5

Then you get to go in and "purge" the heathen!

 

[thomas.berubeg]

Gods that are alive, well, and obsessed with their followers might not tolerate a Martin Luther or Joseph Smith Jr. preaching an alternate view.

But is the (god? (i'm not really sure what Fellowship of Leaves worships)) of Fellowship of Leaves Going Around telling his followers "do this. NOW."? and i see the different Demons of the Viel, and the Various Octopus Overlords actively undermining their Rivals...

[QOUTE=Sureshot]A simple enough way to get this schism thingy, would be to have a wonder that you can only build if you have the religion but not the holy city, which then gives the negative diplo modifier with the holy city holder. Perhaps the wonder could be like the holy city wonder[/QUOTE]

this would probably work with :

Perhaps a new religion might be researched only if you had adopted an existing one, similar to the advanced religion techs currently (arete, etc.).

In other words, if you Follow OO, and you research Mind Stapling, and you don't have the Holy City, (alot of Ifs there) you get a selection of Wonders to build that would create a rival sect to OO Maybe involving Oldfrt's idea...

Hell, this might even (at a stretch) tie into QES's paragon idea

Sincerely,
thomas.berubeg

 

[Chandrasekhar]

But is the (god? (i'm not really sure what Fellowship of Leaves worships)) of Fellowship of Leaves Going Around telling his followers "do this. NOW."? and i see the different Demons of the Viel, and the Various Octopus Overlords actively undermining their Rivals...

The only religion I could see having different views is the Fellowship (I don't believe they directly worship Sucellus... do they?), and even then the different cults would be so similar that adding different features would only needlessly complicate things.

The Order worhips Junil, and he certainly wouldn't tolerate any different sects. The Runes worship Kilmorph, again one entity. The followers of the Overlords don't directly expose themselves to their masters, so I don't see how different ones could found different sects. And of course the Veil ultimately follows Agares.

 

[Kael]

This was actually the concept we were trying to get across with the advanced temples. That a civilization could go one of 2 directions in their worship. Building either of the advanced temples kept the civilziation from being able to build the other one so it "flavored" their religious experience.

They didnt turn out to be unique enough so they were removed and the ideas we really liked from them were moved to other places.

But I personally have no problems with schisms of faith. The fact that the Bannor deviated from the balanced worship of Junil into a hyper-lawful branch is pretty well known. But Erebus was full of distinct differences between "religion" and the "gods". Erebus had hundreds of religions, different regions may have worshipped the same god in different ways, and under different names (and tons of religions that didnt have real gods, or worshipped demons or elemental spirits).

Anyway, Im with you from a world flavor perspective Thomas. But from a game design aspect I dont think we will be adding schisms anytime soon. If we did it would probably be a unique design for a new religion. Maybe a religion that fragments at a certain point and can be brought back together or remain in multiple versions (sounds like the type of quest activity we may include in "Shadow").

 

[Bad Player]

The problem I see with schisms is that you still want different civs to share the same religion for interesting diplomatic reasons. However if you have 2 subreligions per religion and still only a few civs then everyone will end up having different religions IMO and there won't be that strategic diplomacy.

 

[DieselBiscuit]

How about a (possibly national) wonder available to the holder of a holy city that purges the religion from selected opponents, gives them potential unrest and negative modifiers to the remaining holders of the religion? That would give something to the effect of a schism, though the victims would probably just switch to another religion and the holder of the holy city would lose potential for religious victory and income from the shrine. Even so, it would be a cool option be able to punish those heretic swine worshipping Kilmorph in her godess of wealth aspect only.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

I would definantly like to see something add more religions, and more flavor to existing religions...