More insight on the Balance File Editor...

What they should do is have light power, belief and dark power. Light power is generated by the wellbeing of your people (note I've differentiated this from happiness because I dont think gods should care if people are happy) which would be related to time spent in peace, quality housing, food, etc. Belief (the neutral power) should come from sheer numbers of people whatever their happiness. Dark power should come from sacrifice (your followers or other people's followers captured in war) and general blood letting. Belief should do the basic middle of the road stuff, while light power and dark power should unlock really awesome stuff.

Also if you want to go all bad you should be able to starve your people (not build enough farms to feed everyone), the more people who die of starvation the more dark power you get. Perhaps you issue a commandment that they have to live in shitty houses - more dark power.

The thing about belief is it will accumulate most when you act either for good or bad. I havent thought this through but I think it would be awesome.

You'd end up getting a lot of belief and a bias towards light or dark. Another cool idea would be if you were generating a lot of dark power your people might start sacrificing on their own to make you happy. I also think sacrificing should be more automated so you punch in sacrifice 100 people and your priests find 100 unemployed people to kill.

If you had dark power you could introduce necromancy which would just be damn cool in a multiplayer battle. Imagine resurrecting fallen opposition to fight for you. Obviously there'd have to be equally awesome light powers or perhaps more passive benefits like different unit types.

I'm actually a pretty big fan of the idea that your activity reinforces their belief in you and results in auto-collection of belief.

The idea that "good" actions give less overall belief but last longer.
And that "evil" actions give more direct results, but need to be reinforced more consistently actually sounds like a pretty good balance.
Especially if you add in diminishing returns where your followers get "used to" certain things.

A gallows or cage with bones/prisoner may be an effective repellant/deterrant to someone not used to it.
But after a while people just come to ignore it and you'll need to do better.
So at first it works quite well and the response is strong - but as the object remains, they get used to it and "revert to their old selves" so to speak.
And next time you place such a deterrant it'll work a little bit less on those already exposed to it.

Positive reinforcement would work in a similar fashion, but perhaps the diminishing returns are less extreme resulting in you needing less variety to keep people faithful.

It would very much become like the industrial/consuming versus environmental/sustaining balance.
If you chop down the entire forest you have a lot of wood now - but you'll lack trees later.
If you chop down part and replant it slowly, you'll have a sustainable line of wood coming in over a longer period of time - but less instantly.

Which is a concept that I can appreciate since it has direct results in gameplay.
It offers the player a valid choice (since both ways "work" if implemented well).
And thus it will add diversity into the game. One choice at a time.


For those interested, look at Anno 2070 - it does a decent job at counterbalancing the "consuming" and "sustaining" factions against one another.
With one having superior production but more pollution and negative side-effects. And the other focusing more on sustaining and diminishing the negative effects.
Even SimCity does a decent job with OmegaCorp vs The Academy and their controlnet.

I agree. There's really no sense having the opt-in if they're not going to use it.

So, 1~2 weeks untill we get to see more delays and excuses?
Or do you think they'll learn this time around?

Does anyone else find it tragically comical that 22cans has become a real-life pardoy of it's own awful in-game waiting system.

I do.