Magic And Politics: Fantasy Religion In Axioms

Extra-state social conflict and political action

Religious Expansion And Conflict

Much like intelligence networks religions in Axioms essentially function as a system similar to military conflict or even political conflict. Unlike most games where you can, and must in some cases, deploy a rare and limited number of individual characters/abstract agents to provinces Axioms has a more holistic religion system. It is more integrated into other systems as well. Appropriate characters can spend attention, subordinates, and resources in promoting or weakening the control of a given religion in a location on charactors and/or populations.

It is somewhat ironic that it was the Civilization franchise, often considered boardgamey and simplistic that made the biggest move to shake up religion in strategy games. Of course that system was a mess flooding the map with church units which had minimal impact and which couldn’t be interacted with in any meaningful way beyond deploying your own church units. You might have expected Slitherine or Paradox to be the first and most serious at religious gameplay innovation.

Religious power, like intrigue capacity, exists as a sort of extra layer over military power. Characters can have a shadowy puppeteer, a public political superior, and a religious superior. In theory a character could have multiple public political superiors although such a position would obviously be shaky.

Evangelism

In Axioms you have a religious network which is connected to some degree with your intelligence network. Depending on the way the religion is organized secular leaders may have more or less capability in this area. Secular and religious authority can be held by the same character if the religion operates that way. Most will likely have roles for the nobility while also having a separate religious hierarchy.

A character can invest in their religious network with other characters as well as financial resources. Intelligence and religious networks can cooperate between each other and even between different characters. These networks can support utilize the Propaganda system to increase or decrease the feelings about various religions. Religious networks can promote pluralism, syncretism, polytheism, or monotheism through propaganda missions as well as directly engage in conversion to their religion.

The distinction between the function intelligence network and the religious network is that the latter typically operates in the open. After all the publicity is the point to some degree both for characters trying to get in good with a religious hierarchy and for the religion itself. Secret religions are possible but limited for obvious reasons given the need to convert. Characters and “cadres” can be employed by a religious and intelligence network at the same time. Similarly public diplomatic representatives can have secret roles as intelligence operatives.

Religious Actions

Religious actions such as duels of rhetoric and duels of magic can be employed to gain support. Religions also gain support based on the rise and fall of their adherents. Military conflicts between faiths can cause such effects. Specifically religious wars have an increased risk and reward compared to secular wars.

Gods themselves are characters, although somewhat limited ones, and can engage in various actions. Since Axioms is a fantasy game the gods actually exist. For this reason the situation is somewhat different from our actual history.

Boons can be requested of the gods and offerings can be made to them. As noted in a previous post primal gods are eternal while other gods are sustained or even created by faith. Ascendants are existing beings including characters, spirits, and superorganisms who have gained power through faith. The neogenic gods are new gods created ex-nihilo from concerted acts of faith. In-world characters and populations aren’t conscious of this such that they would intentionally spawn a god.

In a set of features cut for the sequel, rather than the base game or expansions, both primal gods and elder/outsider gods *can* intentionally create puppet gods, or even true neogenic gods if they have a reason, for various purposes. Similarly cut features, to avoid feature creep, include multiple planes of various natures rather than the material plane.

Boons, Investments, And Magic

The gods are magical as well as divine and they can be a source of magical knowledge or power. Investments are rare, unique, and powerful actions by gods to empower corporeal representatives. Boons are more commonplace and and be traded for in a more mercenary way with lower requirements.

A boon might be a magical artifact or a spell forgotten by time. Perhaps a creature or monster bound to a character. A boon might also be a small boost to magical power. An Investment or Bestowal, haven’t decided, is an action which gives a character access to a significant percentage of a god’s personal power.

I provided some minimal information on how gods work before. We’ll need more detail for this discussion. Concepts and substances all have a sort of essence in the game. A god, of any kind, has a number of domains which can be based on any essence. War, Purity, Knowledge, etc. are examples of concept essences. Stone, Shadow, Sun, etc. are examples of material essences. Gravity, Force, Time, Space, etc. are examples of force essences. Not that it matters to gameplay what kind of essence an essence is.

So a god may have a domain of Time, Shadow, and Knowledge or something. Each Domain draws from the same essence well regardless of the god or type. So neogenic gods compete for the power of a divine well based on the scale of their worship. If they become too weak they fade away. Primal gods always exist and their power functions as though they control 50% of a well while the other 50% is available to the neogenic gods. Wells are refilled by faith for neogenic gods but by time for primal gods.

Primal gods award boons based on the actions of a character. Neogenic gods based on service. Typically neogenic gods support a particular polity although a religion could be followed by multiple polities.

Political Impact

A character in the good graces of a religion gains legitimacy in the eyes of the followers of that religion, both in the case of superiors or inferiors politically, that of the populations connected to them, and even of same religion characters outside their chain of authority.

Legitimacy in a directly controlled province increases 20% faster with same religion populations in the province. It increases 20% slower with those of other religions. For characters the increase in speed is 10%. You also get an opinion boost which is distinct from legitimacy.

Additionally any action a character takes modifies the opinion of characters and populations based on religious affiliation, just as it does for other inherent characteristics. Actions against a character or population have a smaller negative or positive impact on all characters or populations of different religions. The same mechanic affects cultures/races/nations of origin, and so forth.

Ongoing conversion efforts and effective character conversions apply bonuses as well. You could play a character in the role of St. Stephen or St. Jadwiga converting the heathans.