6: Piety +2.5/Month: Quantifying Faith and Morality in Crusader Kings III

Robert Houghton, @robehoughton, University of Winchester

Crusader Kings III uses complex mechanics and roleplay elements to create a different experience from many strategy games. The game represents a deeper dive into the medieval world through its detailed consideration of economic and political issues alongside warfare while also providing gameplay which focuses on the strengths (and weaknesses) of individual characters and their position within complex relationship networks. In combination, these elements allow the game to portray many aspects –including Faith and Morality – more deeply than most medievalist strategy games.

Religion sits in a weird place in medievalist games (and medievalist media more generally). It's absolutely central to the modern perception of the period and shows up everywhere in the architecture, material culture, rituals, acoustics, story etc. of games across genres. Cathedrals for example appear across games such as Assassin’s Creed and Kingdom Come: Deliverance as key indicators of the period, and are adopted within fantasy works from Dark Souls to Skyrim with no link to Christianity.

But these uses of religion are typically shallow. We get churches and mosques without context, ritual without faith, and ominous Latin chanting for the sake of atmosphere. A few games go deeper – as Lobitz has highlighted, the backstory of Dragon Age provides a surprisingly detailed parallel to the 1054 Great Schism for example. But mostly it's aesthetics without substance, often as studios are reluctant to engage with potentially controversial religious subjects and the accompanying possibly ruinous backlash.

Morality is one of the few themes with links to religion which is addressed in any depth by medievalist games. Roleplaying games in particular frequently make use of ethical choices, ‘karma meters’ and other mechanics to allow players to engage with moral issues, weigh difficult decisions, and live with the consequences through changes to abilities (in Baldur’s Gate for example) or story (as in The Witcher). But these systems are often blunt and arbitrary: Mass Effect was particularly notorious in this regard for neatly colour coding the ‘good’ and ‘less good’ dialogue choices within conversations, removing any requirement for thought or contemplation – a factor compounded by the fact that the ‘good’ choice almost invariably led to better narrative and mechanical outcomes. Morality is likewise almost always stripped of any link to religion despite its very visible presence within many games. Good is good because the devs say so.

Within strategy games like Civilization and the Total War series, these trends run into a set of mechanical needs and assumptions. These games need a model of society reduced to a series of values which works for any culture within the game. Food production, population growth, and the creation of armies are all abstracted and quantified – indeed, must be abstracted and quantified – in order for the game to function and to be remotely accessible to players.

This abstraction and numeration leads to the quantification of religion as a resource within strategy games – often as a central element of these games. In Civilization VI 'Faith' is produced by religious structures, citizens and a number of other sources to be spent on the construction of buildings or armies. Religious buildings within the game provide particular benefits: often boosts to happiness or access to new units. In this manner, ‘Faith’ acts in a similar manner to ‘Food’, ‘Production’ and ‘Gold’

17

and the less tangible ‘Science’ and ‘Culture: it is accrued and spent to gain advantages for the player’s civilization.

Morality is less visible, but still plays a role. Medieval II: Total War allows generals and rulers to acquire Dread and Chivalry for ‘evil’ and ‘good’ actions respectively. Hence, releasing captives after a battle will increase a character’s Chivalry, while executing them will boost their Dread. These can have an impact on their combat abilities: Chivalry boosts the morale of troops under the character’s command, while Dread lowers the morale of opposing forces.

But these systems are pretty shallow. Every faith and every culture has access to the same religious and moral mechanics. Civilization VI allows the creation and customisation of religions, granting the player the ability to attach beliefs to any given religion, gaining mechanical benefits which may be wildly divorced from doctrine. Hence it is perfectly possible for Confucianism to emerge as a religion with and emphasis on choral music, worship conducted in mosques, a system of tithes, and practicing crusades. Representations of morality are likewise typically basic and lacking in nuance. Beyond facilitating a clash of civilizations narrative, Christianity and Islam are functionally similar within Medieval II: Total War: Chivalry and Dread and the morality they represent are identical for every character regardless of faith.

Crusader Kings III is bound by similar core mechanical restrictions as Civilization and Total War, but still manages to create a more nuanced representation of religion and morality. Characters still accrue and spend Piety like any other resource, gaining Piety through their traits and Learning skill, alongside constructing religious buildings and taking pious actions, and can use this Piety to justify wars or sway religious characters. However, each religion has a different ideology with each faith viewing different attributes as virtuous or sinful. Hence Christianity values chastity while Norse praises vengeance and Yoruba focuses on patience. Morality is more complex and different religions can play differently.

More importantly though, the character driven play of Crusader Kings III centres these moral issues. Players do not simply collect ‘Faith’ for mechanical gain as is the case within Civilization. Instead, characters’ actions and traits build emergent personal stories and interactions. These are fairly rudimentary and can often be repetitive, but ultimately dictate that character with pious traits can play very differently from those with sinful ones. Morality and religion are complex and varied.

There are certainly problems and limitations with this system. The game is still abstract and limited in the variation and depth of issues it discusses. Further, beyond some mechanical checks, there is nothing to stop players from ignoring the morality of their characters and its interaction with their faith’s doctrine. But the blurring of genre boundaries between Strategy and RPG within Crusader Kings III allows a deeper exploration of faith and morality and neatly dodges many of the pitfalls present in other games.

18