Matrix Games Forums

Hello All,

I have some questions and prehaps suggestions regarding cults;

1. Im not to fond of the Shadow Cult lowering pop happiness and going into Pogroms. The Apocrypa cult (who are new to me) I was liking to begin with because they where converting and bringing free folk in to the citys but now the little scroat bags are assassinating rival cults - and not the shadow cult but the more productive ones...

2. What drives this behavior??? Does the more negative behavior drop off as they become more culturally integrated??
Is it driven by differences between your regime profile and their preferred profile???? Do they knock it of once they have become the dominant cult??? What is a cults preferred profile if they have one???

Be good to have more in game info I think on what drives the behaviors of the various cults. I have no idea if its effected by my regime profile and feats or just baked into specific cult behaviour....

So the next question is how to deal with them and when???

a. If their is now way of curbing the excessive behavior then I guess you have to either accept it or persecutue the cult. Im doing this currently in one game with the Shadow cult - and its a slow process. You end up with quite a few rebel units being deployed and the cult seems to be dug in in some of the recently conquered towns. So the persecution has reduced the overall % of Shadow Cult followers in the empire but in one zone they seem to be holding static and I havent been able to reduce their numbers in the population...thus I can see they will perpetually spawn rebel units in my rear areas....

b. I dont have a lot of games under my belt - but it appears the various cults have the same overall traits in each game. In some games their bad behavior is far more severe - in others not so much....

c. what other levers do you have to pull to influence them???

Cheers

Gaz

>In some games their bad behavior is far more severe - in others not so much....

This is my experience as well, and I'm kind of in the same boat. If I get a lucky role, they can just be a mild aspect to the game that I can safely ignore for long periods of time. Other worlds, they start causing issues from the start. Does anyone have a good strategy to handle them if they are a and immediate problem?

There's an overview of the cult effects here:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4852426

I think the shadow cult is intended to be mostly a negative one, because lore-wise, they kinda worship someone who is directly opposed to your rule, because he (it?) wants to rule the world himself. I'm guessing that Vic might plan some more interaction with the shadow cult once he gets to actually implementing more of the shadow's presence on the planet.

For interacting with cults, I don't think you can do much besides changing the overall status between encouraged/accepted/persecuted. Would be nice if there was more to it.

Thanks that list was quite interesting and lines up with what Ive being seeing.

Im starting to think the cult actions may be affected by your civilisational score as well....though very much a guess.

Im also wondering if the darker cults go hand in hand with the cultures of the zones - ie raiders have a preference for shadow cult etc....

Ive now been persecuting the shadow cult in one game for over 10 turns and I cant get their numbers to drop below 4%. Ive got the mystics as the majority and the most preferred religious preference but the darkies just seem to be holding out.

They continously have about 300-500 joining the rebels per turn as they are persecuted - so next turn Im going to relax the policy to suppress and see what happens....

I embrace the cults. Especially the Eternity Movement. Sweet, sweet science bonus..

Ew, so letting the Anima Circle flourish means at some point half your leaders are going to start having relation problems deeper into the game where they would have otherwise been just fine? That sounds awful.

How bad is this? Worth suppressing them?

Yep - Ive seen the leader relationship issues with Anima Circle before as well....very interesting. I didnt realize it was specific to Anima Circle though....

I think what plays out is affected by other factors as well - for example the The Apocrypa cult keep trying to assassinate the mystics - but since security assets being built have not been successful....They typically loose 100 followers each turn due to them being killed by security forces whilst trying to kill the other cult!!!

Ive also moved from persecuting the shadow cult to suppressing them and this has stopped them joining the rebels but is possibly reducing their influence amongst the general pop as well...