The number of religions that form during world gen can get out of hand as history progresses.
That's six different religions dedicated to the same god, out of a possible thirty-one objects of worship, in a hamlet with less than a hundred people. I haven't bothered to do the math, but at a glance it just doesn't look right to me. This is not an isolated incident, neither in the world I used as an example, which is 256 years old, or my experiences as a whole, with worlds which are generally 500 years old.
Having so many identical groups seems redundant. It would be one thing if these were isolated sects unique for every site, but right now you can get any number of different religions to the same god spread unevenly across a civilization, and the only thing distinguishing them is their name. Sometimes, they don't even have that much going for them.
I think there needs to be a way to cull the number of religions down to something more manageable, or at least keep it low enough that the chances two religions share the same name are slim to none.
One way would be to consolidate redundant religions as time goes on. If two religious orders worshipping the same figure occupy the same site, sooner or later their members are going to mingle. If this happens, the two religions may officialy merge to form a new faith. This could snowball until you have a single religion for a given deity encompassing an entire site or possibly the whole civilization. New religions dedicated to that deity may periodically branch off or form independently, and they may or may not merge into the larger faith as time passes.
Another method would be to give people the ability to abandon religions and convert to new ones, either worshipping a deity or religion observed by at least one other person in their site, or simply going faithless with a chance to adopt a new religion at a later date. They could choose to do this for a number of reasons, such as being convinced or forced to convert by someone else, through a bad experience such as a deity curse, or simply because they lose interest in the religion. The number of living members a religion has should play a factor, with larger religions being more appealing than smaller ones that worship the same deity. Personal relationships should matter too, with people being more likely to convert to their spouse's religion, or remaining with their current one solely because their parents were members.
Both methods would lead to a pattern of larger religions eating up smaller ones as time goes on. This would keep the number of religions down to something more sane, but it would also make it harder for new religions to form. This may not appeal to everyone, but personally I would prefer something like this over having to sift through three or more pages of religions just to find one that doesn't worship a god of lies when I intend to play as an honest do-gooder, or just worship a deity directlty.
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Topic: Religious Consolidation (Read 1083 times)