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Less Sinful Priest Scandals - No More Fervour Collapse

Large numbers of local priests no longer cause the global collapse of large religions

The Sinful Priest Scandal event in vanilla only needs one priest to have one sinful trait to cause an entire faith to lose -10 fervour, and relaunches it every four to five years, causing an average of -155 fervour loss per century to large religions like Catholicism.

Less Sinful Priest Scandals reserves the event for the truly reprobate rather than the mere lapsed. Like CK2's Wicked Priest trait the scandal will now require multiple sins (2) and no virtue traits to fire. The cooldown timer on the event is extended to 12.5 years, up from four. This caps the maximum possible fervour loss over a century to -35, down from vanilla's -200 to -240.

While large religions will still be disproportionately afflicted by it, the increased rarity, longer cool downs and decreased fervour loss each time make it a flavour event, like Wicked Priest was in CK2, rather than the present massively gameplay altering occurrence it is in vanilla.

• Increases the cooldown timer on the Sinful Priest Scandal event to 12.5 years, up from 4 years in vanilla.
  
• Increases the number of sinful traits needed to trigger the Sinful Priest Scandal event to 2, up from vanilla's 1.
  
• Adds a requirement that the priest have no virtuous traits. The remaining traits must be neutral to the priests faith.
  
• Decreases the fervour loss suffered to -5, down from vanilla's -10.
  
• Cuts the maximum possible fervour loss over 100 years to a manageable -35, down from vanilla's -200 to -240 (Head's of Faith scandals exempted).
  
• With MTTH of one year post-cooldown the maximum number of times the event can fire over 100 years is now 7, down from vanilla's 20 to 24.
  
• However the event is likely to fire less than 7 times per century because:
  
• It will only fire if there is an truly reprobate priest eligible, unlike vanilla which always had dozens to a hundred eligible one sinful trait priests.
  
• If the mirrored Virtuous Priest +5 fervour event fires first, the Sinful Priest Scandal event is placed on a new 12.5 year cooldown timer

Head's of faith will still cause 20 fervour loss as in vanilla if they are the subject of a scandal, but will likewise require two sinful traits, up from one, and require the HoF to hold no virtuous traits, making it well earned. Global apostasy should be expected from the severe sins of a global religious leader.

The mirrored Virtuous Priest event is likewise changed to require two virtues, up from vanilla's one, and no sinful traits. It increases fervour by 5, down from vanilla's 10. This similarly reduces it to a flavour rather than major gameplay event. The event shares the same ~12.5 year cooldown timer with the Sinful Priest Scandal event, the first to fire as determined by the game (provided there are eligible candidates) based on faith county number, disables the other event for the duration of the cooldown.

Highly Recommended Complimentary Mods

Fixes the greatest problem with fervour by inverting how vanilla awards fervour in Holy Wars. Vanilla counterintuitively decreases fervour for winning a Holy War and increases fervour for the losing side, causing Catholic Europe to collapse to minimum fervour and into heresies because it wins wars. Victorious faiths are no longer punished with doubt and heterodoxy for being successful in battle. Faith is now justified by trial of combat, victory in Holy Wars increases fervour, faith, and cohesion, while defeat now decreases it. Also includes an early stability fix for Crusade realms.


Fervour will tend towards a midpoint of 50%. Fervour will decay when above 50%, and will gain when below 50%. Gives fervour freedom of movement from starting and returning to a mid-point, will not get stuck at minimum or maximum and do nothing. Less fervour snowballing, less fervour collapse, less implausible stickiness at 100% fervour for small faiths, and less inexplicable stickiness at 25% for large faiths.


See Also
My Collection of CK3 Fixes, Features, & Reworks