So the kickstarter comes to a close in six hours and the new stretch goal is just out of reach. How important is that last $2,000? I'm fine without those culture graphics, but can we see the ascended option added in anyway?
The Ascended is a LOT of work, we'd be more likely to let a culture in then commit to the Ascended. Though he is pretty great, so you may see him down the road.
I see where you are coming from, it may make sense to tie this to an imbue on an Agent if we decide to give a thematic bonus.
I'm glad it didn't come out as jibber jabber! Full disclosure, I really care so I can vote for Moloch and still see some support for abilities influencing religions. At least one of the GOOs I want to mod in would really want a religion. Though it's a mystery whether I'll really be able to make her without Tzadar in (I finally remembered his name X3). But even without that, it would legit feel really weird if Aspects that were similar to your god were not things your god were better at manipulating, either metaphysically (For the win-via-godhood) or more viscerally in terms of their followers.
So, I remembered some of the other stuff you said about religion. What does religion actually do for you, aside from serve as a flashpoint for conflict or wake up Tzadar? Using Karth as an example, it occurs to me that there's really no point in getting the orcs all religious; they already <3 you. Them worshipping you doesn't give you power, since it isn't Dominions, and they're not some sort of window or backdoor into another God somehow, I'm guessing (Since they weren't worshipping anyone else; I imagine other religions are this). Much like with, say, lumber or food, I can definitely see plausible uses. Corruption through followers seems easy, for instance. Using them to stir up conflicts is another. But what else is the sort of thing we can do with them?
POIs, Heroes, Nations, Kings have history panels that should suffice for this - they're rather bland right now (just dumps of text) but we will probably group them up by age and highlight the most important events.
I always love clicking on the history of provinces I've captured some time into the game in EU4.
Yeah I love that historic narrative, and it gets so much weirder in a game like That Which Sleeps ('Shady Glen was ravaged by Deep Ones in 205.1').
So Religions play two parts in the game, one is the "Hearts and Minds" element of cultures - people who are very religious will likely do what the head of their Religion says - in this sense they function much like a guild but with a much larger basis. On the other hand their are the Gods themselves, some of whom will meddle in the world at their leisure others who will simply ignore their followers pleas - Gods can be spend their faith (accumulated by their aspect - so wars breed faith for the war god) for miracles in the world, which can help or hinder your progress. You can also attempt to battle the Gods in their own realm, but you'll need to "sacrifice" some of your Ancient Power to do this, and you may never recover it. The lower the God's faith, the easier it is to usurp his position - and disrupting his affairs on the mortal plane will lower his defense even further.
Follower's of a faith, as a populace, can be pulled in cultural directions ( change a cultural personality ), can be called to crusade, can lynch people, can riot, can be used as a sacrifice - lots of fun options when you need a massive amount of people. You can also gain sway over the Heroes that call that religion their own, and have them turn against friends or challenge their morality.
So the kickstarter comes to a close in six hours and the new stretch goal is just out of reach. How important is that last $2,000? I'm fine without those culture graphics, but can we see the ascended option added in anyway?
6 hours left and 85000-82991(Kickstarter)-700(Paypal)= 1309$ to go. That seems pretty doable considering the speed at which we've been going.
I have faith