Hermetic Society as Emperor

[SkiRich]

Back when I was a low count I joined the hermetics and experimented a bit with that but ever since becoming king and now emperor I havent done anything except benedictine.
Is it wise at all to be hermetic when emperor?

[OathKeeper81]

I always prioritize being in the Hermetic Society when playing an eligible government/religion because of its immense benefits to gaining artifacts and technology. Rank has no impact to my decision. If I'm Catholic I just have to make a little extra effort to ensure the Pope has a decent opinion of me.

[galadon3]

Hermetics are great when you want to tech up, also the ability to make somebody appreantice helps control difficult vassals as long as they haven't joined another society yet.

Making somebody apprentice, gives an opinion bonus for the apprentice title, one for being in the same societey AND one for you being higher rank in the society. When inviting to stargazing regularly, theres also a pretty good chance to become friends.
A realm becomes pretty easy to ruler if the 3-4 mightiest vassals are all personal friends^^ and the "good opinion of predecessor" even helps easing the transition to your heir.

Just don't take the missions to observe the stars (many potential bad events in that) or to destroy somebody elses lab (chance to get imprioned), not a big problem as long as you keep writing papers for the society (decision), that gets you enough points to advance easily.

And the Magnum Opus on Universal Panacea (from alchemy) is good to prolong your life (+0.5 or +1 health on the highest quality), if you actuvate it when you get old or fall ill.


While the monks are better at getting good traits and pretty helpfull if you want to convert a realm, I usually prefer the hermetics.
Small drawback when you are catholic is ofc the -10 from the clergy not helping with getting the taxes from those fickle bishops.

[Azunai]

hermetics were more useful when the number of active book type artifacts wasn't limited. having the tier 4 version of all 6(?) hermetic books on top of all the other books you can write with the JD "compose book" feature was really strong.

the ability to remove stressed and depressed is very valuable, though.

one annoying aspect of the hermetics is that most of their artifacts require being either a member or having a very high learning score, so if one of your characters doesn't have a high native learning score you pretty much have to make them a hermetic to keep the artifacts active.

[galadon3]

tbh when you could have unlimited books active the hermetics were straight up OP^^

And yea forget the potion, thats a real boon too.

But yea you kinda have to stay hermetic with your dynasty if you want to have the full benefits, btw thats another nice thing about the apprenticeship, you can use it on your heir as soon as he is adult.
For once that is a way to get around the learning-requirement for joining the hermetics, should your the learning score of your kid rather resemble... toast. And if you do it early, he might very well finish his apprenticeship and start climbing the rank-ladder of the society while you still play his dad.
I had heirs that were already rank 3 when they inherited.

[Сааребас]

What I used to do was, getting my learning up through monastic orders, then join hermetics for the books (heir and other family as apprentices), when I had all the books I would switch over to monastic orders.

Teaching kids has also 2 stat points increase instead of one when being part of a monastic order.
Plus a whole bunch of good traits. The only downside is that you have a little reduction in fertality.

[Malus]

Only if you still have to acquire your favorite hermetic artifacts

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Small drawback when you are catholic is ofc the -10 from the clergy not helping with getting the taxes from those fickle bishops.

For that reason it is best to also pick the Theology Focus. Catholic kings probably should start their reign with that anyways, so the Pope won't send you on impossible suicide missions for your coronation (e.g arrest an excommunicated nomad khan 3000 miles away with hordes twice your levy size).
The theo focus also gives health, good traits and tons of piety from the meditation events (which have no drawbacks, unlike penance).

Originally posted by Borat:

Teaching kids has also 2 stat points increase instead of one when being part of a monastic order.
Plus a whole bunch of good traits. The only downside is that you have a little reduction in fertality.

I think you can actually invite monks as teachers to your court, they should give the same benefit.
This also helps to avoid the rivalry or stressed / stat debuff from education events.
And you don't have to dress up as a monk yourself, which probably bothers me the most about the catholic monastic orders.

[Malus]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Originally posted by galadon3:

Small drawback when you are catholic is ofc the -10 from the clergy not helping with getting the taxes from those fickle bishops.

For that reason it is best to also pick the Theology Focus. Catholic kings probably should start their reign with that anyways, so the Pope won't send you on impossible suicide missions for your coronation (e.g arrest an excommunicated nomad khan 3000 miles away with hordes twice your levy size).
The theo focus also gives health, good traits and tons of piety from the meditation events (which have no drawbacks, unlike penance).

Why not just convert those theocrats to a different religion? You will keep getting the taxes and they won't be able to do much anyway.