North Chinese Religion

[Firesoul7]

Confucianism was really entrenched as the 'religion' of China by the Han dynasty, before this there were many competing philosophies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought#Schools_listed_in_the_Shiji These philosophies should be made into religions in my opinion, and assigned to states in the Warring States and Spring and Autumn periods, based on the best information we have. I argue for using the Reformation mechanics to make these religions spread on what would, before the Warring States period, be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_folk_religion Shenxianism. For initial release, the religion of China will be inaccurate. The Qin dynasty was anti-Confucian, and as I mentioned, there were a great many competing philosophies which were opposed to Confucianism, fundamentally different, etc. With future iterations of the mod it will become even more ridiculous, imagine the whole of China being Confucian before the birth of Confucius.

[Firesoul7]

I'm hoping it's possible to have these religions use both Reformation and Confucian mechanics. Ideally a state should have a decision to adopt a philosophy religion in their territory if they're Shenxian, then be able to freely change between philosophies, just as Christians can freely change between Catholic, Protestant, and Reformed. It would be nice if all the philosophy religions could harmonise too, as Confucianism can in ET. If it's not possible however, I argue that for the AT timeline, reformation mechanics are more fitting to Confucianism and the other philosophy religions than actual Confucian mechanics, however.

[qweytr]

Wuism will be the religion of China before Confucianism, or at least that's how I planned it.

[qweytr]

The problem with having different religions for the different philosophies is that they were not mutually exclusive and were often practiced simultaneously. Confucianism is not even really a religion and has always been an abstraction of the various religious and philosophical practices of China, which includes Taoism, Legalism and several other things.

[Firesoul7]

Perhaps, but those philosophies and the conflicts between them were extremely important in shaping modern China. At the absolute minimum there should be Legalism too, since a dynasty had that

On 19 May 2017 12:20, "qweytr" notifications@github.com wrote:

Wuism will be the religion of China before Confucianism, or at least that's how I planned it.

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[qweytr]

Legalism can't be made into a religion. It is already an institution.

[Firesoul7]

There are alternate names, such as Fajia

On 19 May 2017 12:27, "qweytr" notifications@github.com wrote:

Legalism can't be made into a religion. It is already an institution.

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[Firesoul7]

Personally, I think the player would very much enjoy having the Reformation mechanics with plenty of philosophy religions, and the mixing could be done by giving all of those religions harmonising mechanics, harmonisation takes time and such, so there are alternate strategies to secure the dominance of your religion. This would provide historical accuracy (there were frequent brutal conflicts between branches, and Confucianism was only established due to long Han rule, in which time they would have harmonised or eliminated the others, historically harmonised) 

[qweytr]

Legalism is a philosophy on how to rule a country. The common people didn't practice it as a religion. It would basically have to be implemented as a state only religion like secularism in ET. And having several different religions multiplies the work required to make them interesting. I think the best option would be to have a single religion with the ability to choose which school you want to follow, Confucianism, Taoism or Legalism.

[Firesoul7]

Fair enough, then what should that religion be called?

On 19 May 2017 12:41, "qweytr" notifications@github.com wrote:

Legalism is a philosophy on how to rule a country. The common people didn't practice it as a religion. It would basically have to be implemented as a state only religion like secularism in ET. And having several different religions multiplies the work required to make them interesting. I think the best option would be to have a single religion with the ability to choose which school you want to follow, Confucianism, Taoism or Legalism.

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[Science-Recon]

Hmm, the multiple religious thing would probably be quite interesting from a gameplay perspective and a state-only religion could work well with the Confucian mechanics. As for having different 'schools' that sounds like it would fit with the cult mechanic? (Though would obviously have to be renamed) However, that would mean this religion wouldn't be able to have Confucian mechanics unless you can add harmonised religions to non-harmonising religions (I'll check that).

From a gameplay perspective, I think that the reformation mechanics would probably be more fun, but I don't know much about ancient Chinese religion/philosophy to say which is more accurate.

[Science-Recon]

So, which implementation are we going to do, or are we killing this and leaving it as it is?

[qweytr]

I support leaving it as it is for the initial release.

[Science-Recon]

Ok, so unless Firesoul particularly objects, then I'll leave that for now at least. In line with this, I've added the confucian mechanics to confucianism. Would it be worth adding it to any of the other chinese religions? I don't really know enough about them to make that judgement.

[Firesoul7]

I'm back. Well, I don't think that the Confucian mechanics really fit with any other religion. We can leave it as is for now, but I don't know about leaving it for initial release, being as we won't release for a fair while yet while we work on sorting out the rest of the stuff.

[Science-Recon]

Ok, well then I suggest we close this issue and re-open it when we want to go back to it.

[Firesoul7]

I don't know, doesn't hurt anyone to leave it open