In a message dated 5/20/04 9:46:08 PM Mountain Daylight Time, juha.vesanto@iki.fi writes: >RulingNations@aol.com wrote: >>Currently (1443-1444) Exquaestio has a population of 3328 which is a >>scope of very small. For converts they are drawing upon a population of >>9,500,000+ which is scope fair. Since a larger population means a >>reduction in conversion chances, the three step difference in population >>should give them a +3 to opportunities to convert, correct? > >No. They are definitely not in contact with 9.5M people. I never said they were. They are, however, active in a region with that population. >I'd say they are more likely to be in contact with about 200,000 >people. Most of which have "thanks, but no thanks, we're perfectly >happy with our current religious practices, unless you have some >interesting special offers?" -attitude. More than that 200 thousand >have heard of them, but to make a convert, you have be in regular and >frequent contact. Yes. But that's already accounted for by the percentile growth rules used. Growth is already limited by the existing population. Since Exquaestio is widely distributed, efforts won't be much duplicated until they reach 1/9 (call it 10%) of the population. >>To aide in conversion they have a Legendary religious sophistication >>(+4) and are able to deal with all questions that might arise. They also >>have a craft to support this conversion (+1). The people doing the >>converting are culturally similar, so there aren't really any cultural >>mods involved here. > >Well, I'm mentally giving you a +1 for the conversion because of that >orientation. > >>Opposing this is the how well a potential convert's current religion >>deals with questions (religious sophistication averages +1 and is >>treated as a negative for -1) and how open he has been taught to be to >>religious ideas (religious tolerance on average -2). > >IMHO, the people in Celandra (and Free Cities in particular) do not >choose their religion based on what kind of answers does it offer, but >based on what kind of benefits do they get. OK, there are idealistic >and more philosophically oriented people who really hook into the >belief structure and the ideals -- and these are the best kind of >converts -- but they are a minority. Religious sophistication is >a factor of course; it's roughly speaking the frills around the basic >idea; but it's not a direct factor. So what is the direct factor and what attribute is it based on? To my mind if religious participation is based on benefits then part of religious sophistication is how well the benefits of particular religion are presented. >>So far Exquaestio has not met any organized opposition from governments >>or religions, so those can be considered a wash (0). > >It's Free Cities you are operating in. There's no organized >operation against Exquaestio, but that's mainly because the whole Free >Cities is a complex mixture of organizations and small societies, each >fighting against each other. It is definitely not a religious vacuum >you are in. On the other hand, the religious diversity in Free Cities >is quite high (this is IMO; it seems that most determinants are missing >for Free Cities), so changing from one religion to another is not an >issue, as it might be in other areas. > >>No background factors have been described, so that's also a wash (0). >> >>So, where does the -5 come from to make Exquaestio's chances of >>conversion normal (0), and how come I don't see other player's actions >>having the same factor? > >Nobody is else growing as fast (ratio-wise) as you are. You started from >scratch 8 years ago. Do you have any real-life examples of religious >expansion that you aspire to? The early years of Buddhism and Islam are well documented. In the second decade of their existence they were able to field _gatherings of thousands_ of believers. That wouldn't have been possible for Exquaestio even before you lowered the conversion rate. >What kind of expansion rate have you envisioned for the Exquaestio? Something that would put me on a rough parity with other players within a year of game play. >One problem might be that we really don't have any written-down >rules on society expansion. Care to propose any? I thought that's what we were doing? Jefferson (Exquaestio) http://www.picotech.net/~jeff_wilson63/rpg/ ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send mail to celandra-off@phoenyx.net.
