Some Thoughts on Designing New Religions

[Falkeep]

I have come up with a form of a new religion over a few starts now that I like. Here are some thoughts that I have had / changes I would like to see made to the mechanics of it based on my own experiments with creating my own religion.

1.) There are 3 Tenets that you have to / get to chose. I would like to see an option where you could get up to, say, 5. The additional ones would cost a lot of Piety each to add... maybe 2.5K to 5K each, although they could be added later, maybe even by later generations, as piety is built up after the founding of a new religion. I think that this would allow more customization with some of the stranger options, like the Cthonic Redoubt. The more slots there are the more that people would be willing to use some of them in more experimental ways.

2.) When you start a new religion, before you pick Tenets and Doctrines, which change sins and virtues of a religion, you should be able to pick 5 of each that will then be changed as necessary when Tenets and Doctrines are chosen. For myself, I do not want Chastity to be a virtue but I also don't want Lust to be one either. However, the ONLY choice that will take Chaste out of the virtue list is the Carnal Exaltation Tenet, which I feel forced to choose just to get Chastity out of the virtue list. In addition, any choice you make will put opposites as sins and virtues. For example, if Chastity is a virtue then you are stuck with Lust as a sin and vice versa. However, even the game has Tenets that don't deal in opposites. Specifically, two of the the Syncretic Tenets. For the Jewish Syncretism, Patience is a virtue but the corresponding sins are Greed and Cynicism, while for the Eastern Syncretism Honesty is the virtue while the corresponding sin is being Wrathful. The traits don't have to be polar opposites, they can simply be neutral.

Most of my thoughts for now have to do with the Head of Faith.

3.) I didn't like making myself a Temporal HofF because my office titles stopped being "King" and, instead became Pope of __ __ Religion (or something like that. Being King is always what I want to be, with the religion title being just an additional facet. At the very least, if you name yourself HofF for your own faith, you should at least get to chose what you want your primary title to be. My own preference, however, would be an Anglican (CofE) model of a secular monarch who is also the HofF without really having to do a lot with the "spiritual" side of things. The British Monarch is the "Defender of the Faith" without being the "Pope of the Church of England."

4.) Whenever the AI chooses any character for a role, like HofF, instead of choosing the best of the existing characters, they create an entirely new NPS (Really? That "person" is significant enough to be the ultimate decider of something like an entire religion but we have never heard of them before?) and, inevitably they have REALLY poor stats AND are full of traits that are considered sins in that religion. I see this whenever I see someone in an important role, like being the Regent for a minor who is given a title. They are just REALLY bad instead of being someone who would stand out and be worth the role they are chosen for.

5.) My idea way to choose a Spiritual HofF is by election from the Temple Holders. For the Temple Holders, there would be one Archbishop per de jure Kingdom, elected by the Kingdom's County Bishops. When it comes time to elect a new Spiritual HofF, the King and each Archbishop get to nominate a successor (they don't have to be different). The King could nominate anyone while the Archbishops might nominate a candidate from their Kingdom (even themselves). Nominees don't have to be Bishops / Archbishops... Kingdom / County Court Clerics could also be nominated. The criteria for nomination and election would be:
A.) Learning Stat,
B.) Sum of all skills,
C.) Sins and virtues,
D.) Preference given to Bishops / Archbishops with the Scholar and/or Theologian traits.

6.) If the King is a Temporal HofF, they could wield an ultimate final approval of nominees and winners but, they would risk tyranny and religious revolts is they use that power. Also, while a Temporal HofF can fire Bishops / Archbishops / Spiritual HofF, the more they use that power to thwart the clergy, they would also accumulate tyranny points, with the people ultimately deciding who they would support in a Clergy / Monarch dispute. Church politics.

To have these as, at least, options is what I would like to see... having a Temporal HofF with a Spiritual HofF and Spiritual Clergy to run the actual religion.

[Falkeep]

FYI, one of the things that I'm trying to accomplish is that I want to be able to personally place my own courtiers as priests, with marriage disallowed, so that I can take problematic claimants and banish them to temples where they will die without progeny of their own to pass their claims on to.

As for a Spiritual HofF, in the description it says "Position is given to a prominent clergy member." Now, how can it be a "prominent clergy member" if they didn't already exist AND if their stats suck?