[Suggestion] Theocracy Policy Protection

[Crumpetopia]

I do not rightly know if this belongs here or in Got Issues, but here seems more appropriate.


Based on the experience of other members of my region, and this comes up not infrequently in the RMB, it seems to be that the Theocracy policy is amongst the hardest to maintain. This is because a player who seeks out Theocracy will naturally choose pro-religious issue answers, but a great many pro-religious issue answers cancel the Theocracy policy. For example, #648 involves the sanctity of confession, but choosing to uphold the right of a priest to withold knowledge he gains by confession cancels Theocracy. While I can broadly see the logic, it does not make sense that a Christian Theocracy would not uphold the sanctity of confession.

There are a number of other issues like this, wherein ordering a day of prayer or allowing street preaching or cancelling human sacrifice cancels Theocracy also.

My proposal is that the number of these that cancel Theocracy should be rolled back (specific issues seem to be at the root of the complaints I've seen caused by this, so identifying and fixing those would be the priority), because it is not intuitive in many cases and is contrary to the way a player attempting to raise their nation's religiosity would decide, creating frustration.

[Novele Anjou]

I do not rightly know if this belongs here or in Got Issues, but here seems more appropriate.


Based on the experience of other members of my region, and this comes up not infrequently in the RMB, it seems to be that the Theocracy policy is amongst the hardest to maintain. This is because a player who seeks out Theocracy will naturally choose pro-religious issue answers, but a great many pro-religious issue answers cancel the Theocracy policy. For example, #648 involves the sanctity of confession, but choosing to uphold the right of a priest to withold knowledge he gains by confession cancels Theocracy. While I can broadly see the logic, it does not make sense that a Christian Theocracy would not uphold the sanctity of confession.

There are a number of other issues like this, wherein ordering a day of prayer or allowing street preaching or cancelling human sacrifice cancels Theocracy also.

My proposal is that the number of these that cancel Theocracy should be rolled back (specific issues seem to be at the root of the complaints I've seen caused by this, so identifying and fixing those would be the priority), because it is not intuitive in many cases and is contrary to the way a player attempting to raise their nation's religiosity would decide, creating frustration.

The following issues have non-intuitive cancellation answers.

Issue #146 answer 3 (and potentially 4). 3 definitely should have zero bearing on a state religion. 4 arguable (secular education exists) but only if you take a really strict interpretation of theocracy.
Issue #245 answer 2 is an answer regards to compliance, not official position. This one I can see why it would but again, it's not intuitively going to cancel Theocracy.
Issue #363 answer 2 should implement theocracy, not cancel it.
Issue #616 answer 2 makes no sense at all in terms of theocracy

Issue #648 This one is the big complaint. None of the answers should cancel theocracy, 1 and 3 do. 3 I suppose because the wording could imply that there's more than one religion, but it's tenuous at best.

Issue #674 answer 1/2 (same answer) cancel theocracy for absolutely no conceivable reason
Issue #819 answer 3 - pro-religious laws again cancelling theocracy

Issue #892 This is another large complaint. Answer 2 (allowing street preaching) cancelling theocracy is actually an insane result

Issue #1180 Ends human sacrifice, should have no bearing on theocracy
Issue #1197 answer 1/2 Official state religion does not immediately imply zero minority religions (Christians and Jews allowed to exist under Islam if they pay the tax, for example. Jews existing in the Holy Roman Empire for another).
Issue #1198 answer 2 choice in how long you grieve a loved one cancels theocracy because reasons? I guess?

Issue #1232 answer 6 reforming a religion doesn't stop theocracy. The real world example that it's referencing (the protestant reformation) famously kept theocracy after the reforms. The answer even specifically says "he's not starting a new religion" so there's in-built confusion to the cancelled policy

Issue #1468 answer 1 allowing religious animal slaughter does not intuitively cancel your state religion.
Issue #1522 answer 2 star signs are not incompatible with state religion
Issue #1566 answer 4 has nothing to do with religion, yet cancels theocracy
Issue #1607 answer 1 has nothing to do with religion, yet cancels theocracy
Issue #1700 answer 1 faith-based exemptions from organ harvesting does not intuitively cancel theocracy, but I can see the argument for this one.
Issue #1742 answer 4 holding a day of prayer cancels theocracy for reasons?

[Vuvuvia]

Street preaching I guess could if it was said to be blasphemous but it simply does not.

[Trotterdam]

The issue is that the game is built around binary axes (religious freedom vs religious suppression), and has trouble handling three-way distinctions such as enforced state religion vs religious freedom vs enforced atheism. In some ways religious freedom should be the "neutral" option because it's intermediate between two opposing positions (theocracy and secularism) that definitely don't get along, but in other ways religious freedom should stand out as the freeest option, contrasting with both extremes which are less free due to the horseshoe effect.

It probably could be solved by adding alternative versions of those options, so that endorsing a religious practice in a theocracy is written and understood as affirming its canonicity in your national religion rather than permitting religious freedom (but likewise suppressing the religious practice is understood as establishing that this one practice isn't part of your religion rather than opposing religion as a whole), but this would require considerable work on the editors' part.

[Vuvuvia]

The issue is that the game is built around binary axes (religious freedom vs religious suppression), and has trouble handling three-way distinctions such as enforced state religion vs religious freedom vs enforced atheism. In some ways religious freedom should be the "neutral" option because it's intermediate between two opposing positions (theocracy and secularism) that definitely don't get along, but in other ways religious freedom should stand out as the freeest option, contrasting with both extremes which are less free due to the horseshoe effect.

It probably could be solved by adding alternative versions of those options, so that endorsing a religious practice in a theocracy is written and understood as affirming its canonicity in your national religion rather than permitting religious freedom (but likewise suppressing the religious practice is understood as establishing that this one practice isn't part of your religion rather than opposing religion as a whole), but this would require considerable work on the editors' part.

Make it 4 way.

[Crumpetopia]

The issue is that the game is built around binary axes (religious freedom vs religious suppression), and has trouble handling three-way distinctions such as enforced state religion vs religious freedom vs enforced atheism. In some ways religious freedom should be the "neutral" option because it's intermediate between two opposing positions (theocracy and secularism) that definitely don't get along, but in other ways religious freedom should stand out as the freeest option, contrasting with both extremes which are less free due to the horseshoe effect.

It probably could be solved by adding alternative versions of those options, so that endorsing a religious practice in a theocracy is written and understood as affirming its canonicity in your national religion rather than permitting religious freedom (but likewise suppressing the religious practice is understood as establishing that this one practice isn't part of your religion rather than opposing religion as a whole), but this would require considerable work on the editors' part.

Thing is, Theocracy does not necessarily involve zero religious freedom. As NA correctly noted, there are real life examples like Christians and Jews allowed to exist under Islam if they pay the tax, and Jews existing in the Holy Roman Empire.
Apart from that, many of the problematic issues are either not to do with religious freedom or would not be inherently contradictory to Theocracy, such as the confessional seal.

I think that my proposed solution of simply paring back the number of Theocracy-cancelling issues works because a Theocratic player would naturally choose them yet would not naturally intuit that they cancel theocracy.
And once that work was done, the number of Theocracy-cancelling issues that would benefit from adding a Theocracy-specific answer would be very small, probably less than 5.

[Fauxia]

The issue is that the game is built around binary axes (religious freedom vs religious suppression), and has trouble handling three-way distinctions such as enforced state religion vs religious freedom vs enforced atheism. In some ways religious freedom should be the "neutral" option because it's intermediate between two opposing positions (theocracy and secularism) that definitely don't get along, but in other ways religious freedom should stand out as the freeest option, contrasting with both extremes which are less free due to the horseshoe effect.

It probably could be solved by adding alternative versions of those options, so that endorsing a religious practice in a theocracy is written and understood as affirming its canonicity in your national religion rather than permitting religious freedom (but likewise suppressing the religious practice is understood as establishing that this one practice isn't part of your religion rather than opposing religion as a whole), but this would require considerable work on the editors' part.

Thing is, Theocracy does not necessarily involve zero religious freedom. As NA correctly noted, there are real life examples like Christians and Jews allowed to exist under Islam if they pay the tax, and Jews existing in the Holy Roman Empire.

This seems to amount to an argument that nations that are not "theocracies" according to NS could be called theocracies if NS used a different definition than it does. While I agree that the definition used by the game, like several of its policies, is a bit idiosyncratic, its use seems to mostly line up with its stated definition: "Worship of the official state religion is mandatory." More accurate definitions of theocracy (where the government is actually run by the state religion) are not really something the game has a way of determining; that's where the simulation ends and roleplay begins.

I think that my proposed solution of simply paring back the number of Theocracy-cancelling issues works because a Theocratic player would naturally choose them yet would not naturally intuit that they cancel theocracy.
And once that work was done, the number of Theocracy-cancelling issues that would benefit from adding a Theocracy-specific answer would be very small, probably less than 5.

Some of this is speculation, so someone can correct me, but I think the gist of this is correct: Most NS policies are not binary, but rather exist on a spectrum. This is no exception, as seen from the many issues that may or may not install the policy. While there are a few options that automatically install the policy, most of it is determined, basically, by behind-the-scenes stats; push the "theocracy" stat high enough and you get the policy. Trott's point, I think, is that religious freedom is inversely correlated to this behind-the-scenes stat, and so in these "unexpected reversal" issues, it's not that the removal of the policy is hard-coded, it's that the increase to religious freedom is always enough to remove it. So this isn't simply a matter of changing options from removing the policy, it's fundamentally rejiggering how the policy is determined, or else by, as Trott suggested, modifying all the options to account for it. Both of these would probably involve fairly substantial effort, far more than simply altering options not to include policy removals.

[Trotterdam]

Even in nations that aren't theocracies, a distinction could theoretically be made between "we support this practice because it is part of our national religion", and "although this practice is not part of our national religion, we support it in the name of religious freedom". However, many issues currently don't do this.

[Crumpetopia]

Thing is, Theocracy does not necessarily involve zero religious freedom. As NA correctly noted, there are real life examples like Christians and Jews allowed to exist under Islam if they pay the tax, and Jews existing in the Holy Roman Empire.

This seems to amount to an argument that nations that are not "theocracies" according to NS could be called theocracies if NS used a different definition than it does. While I agree that the definition used by the game, like several of its policies, is a bit idiosyncratic, its use seems to mostly line up with its stated definition: "Worship of the official state religion is mandatory." More accurate definitions of theocracy (where the government is actually run by the state religion) are not really something the game has a way of determining; that's where the simulation ends and roleplay begins.

But that's not the definition the game would seem to be using in a lot of these cases. In the confessional seal example, there is absolutely no question of the worship of the state religion being mandatory or not - indeed, if your nation is supposed to be Christian, or in some way has confessional, NOT upholding it would make more sense as something that removes theocracy.

Now obviously not every theocratic state will have confession, but even so, doesn't it make far more sense to err on the side of sense, i.e. that the pro-organised-religion option doesn't cancel theocracy?
That is, to me, the important part: that a player pursuing a specific path for their nation should not be penalised for choosing options that would intuitively seem to support that path.

[SherpDaWerp]

Trotterdam broadly has the right of it. We track freedom in one dimension: how much freedom religious people have to do what they want with regard to their religion. Of course, we have an opposite-day scale for religion specifically, which is how we come up with the mandatory-state-atheism stuff, but in general, the core tracker is "How free are you to practice religion how you want?".

The problem is that we enforce Theocracy as being "Total lack of freedom to practice religion how you want". This is fine and dandy most of the time, when the questions are something like "hey, am I allowed to worship $other_god?" and the answer is "No! You have to worship $state_religion!". But there are several aspects of religious practice that you may or may not want to inherently be a part of your state religion, and we have no way of tracking whether you're choosing a particular option because you're building a state religion that does that (i.e. preserving Theocracy, religious freedom doesn't change because you still have to follow $state_religion), or whether you're choosing the option because you think that some people should be allowed to do that regardless of your state religion (i.e. cancelling Theocracy, because you're actually not 100% restrictive on religious freedom).

Like, in the specific example of the confessional seal, we can't tell whether you're choosing to uphold the sanctity of confession because your religion believes in that, or whether you're choosing to uphold it because you think it's important generally and are therefore giving more "religious freedom" to priests/etc who can't be forced to report anything they hear about in that context.

Really, the answer is to make Theocracy not a pseudopolicy, tied to religious freedom, but a real policy, tied to specific options that turn it on and off. Doing this would require someone to go back over all 1,777 issues and reconsider whether they need policy checks & make them activate the new policy in line with the options being proposed, which is a lot of hassle. It would also probably (though I haven't looked recently, maybe we already have enough of these) require someone or multiple someones to write more issues that talk about actually cancelling a theocracy policy, which would now have to be explicit-in-text, rather than being able to be cancelled by any religious-freedom issue ever.

All in all, it's one of the many small things that would-be-nice, but is not currently super feasible, just due to unavoidable time constraints. It would be good to one day have no pseudopolicies at all, but that's a larger and weirder question to work on.

[Crumpetopia]

Trotterdam broadly has the right of it. We track freedom in one dimension: how much freedom religious people have to do what they want with regard to their religion. Of course, we have an opposite-day scale for religion specifically, which is how we come up with the mandatory-state-atheism stuff, but in general, the core tracker is "How free are you to practice religion how you want?".

The problem is that we enforce Theocracy as being "Total lack of freedom to practice religion how you want". This is fine and dandy most of the time, when the questions are something like "hey, am I allowed to worship $other_god?" and the answer is "No! You have to worship $state_religion!". But there are several aspects of religious practice that you may or may not want to inherently be a part of your state religion, and we have no way of tracking whether you're choosing a particular option because you're building a state religion that does that (i.e. preserving Theocracy, religious freedom doesn't change because you still have to follow $state_religion), or whether you're choosing the option because you think that some people should be allowed to do that regardless of your state religion (i.e. cancelling Theocracy, because you're actually not 100% restrictive on religious freedom).

Like, in the specific example of the confessional seal, we can't tell whether you're choosing to uphold the sanctity of confession because your religion believes in that, or whether you're choosing to uphold it because you think it's important generally and are therefore giving more "religious freedom" to priests/etc who can't be forced to report anything they hear about in that context.

Really, the answer is to make Theocracy not a pseudopolicy, tied to religious freedom, but a real policy, tied to specific options that turn it on and off. Doing this would require someone to go back over all 1,777 issues and reconsider whether they need policy checks & make them activate the new policy in line with the options being proposed, which is a lot of hassle. It would also probably (though I haven't looked recently, maybe we already have enough of these) require someone or multiple someones to write more issues that talk about actually cancelling a theocracy policy, which would now have to be explicit-in-text, rather than being able to be cancelled by any religious-freedom issue ever.

All in all, it's one of the many small things that would-be-nice, but is not currently super feasible, just due to unavoidable time constraints. It would be good to one day have no pseudopolicies at all, but that's a larger and weirder question to work on.

So to summarise, the practical steps necessary are to:
1: go through the outstanding issue pool and make a judgement on each option and result as to whether or not each one should directly affect theocracy
2: make a judgement as to whether or not the pool of instating and cancelling issues is large enough to support the policy
3: write new issues if not

I know there's at least a couple of people just in the FE who would probably volunteer their time for step 1, though of course it would require the full text of issues and choices to be available. Shouldn't take more than a month at most, especially since a lot of issues are irrelevant to religion. Is that something the issues team is in any way open to?

[Sedgistan]

No - those are things that only staff members can do.

[Crumpetopia]

No - those are things that only staff members can do.

Is there any possibility of that changing in the future, or is it a technical limitation?
Because if this process of flagging issues can be opened up, you have a community with many people who would surely be willing to undertake that kind of work, and even if that meant a higher % of errors - you also have a community which can massively engage with the revised content and then report those errors via the "help us fix old issues" thread. This would also enable a higher degree of control over the policy feature generally, since implementing new policies would be in part outsourceable.

Equally, it's quite understandable if the potential headache of coordinating that isn't considered worth it.

[United Calanworie]

No - those are things that only staff members can do.

Is there any possibility of that changing in the future, or is it a technical limitation?
Because if this process of flagging issues can be opened up, you have a community with many people who would surely be willing to undertake that kind of work, and even if that meant a higher % of errors - you also have a community which can massively engage with the revised content and then report those errors via the "help us fix old issues" thread. This would also enable a higher degree of control over the policy feature generally, since implementing new policies would be in part outsourceable.

Equally, it's quite understandable if the potential headache of coordinating that isn't considered worth it.

It’s a technical limitation. The largest issue here is that not all issue effects are necessarily direct, some are knock-on effects. This would therefore require allowing access to backstage statting, which is not tenable.

[Sedgistan]

I consider it a policy decision, rather than a technical limitation. It's part of our game design to keep raw nation and issue stats backstage only. That means that changes to those can only be made by staff members who have access to them, and that staff team (the Issues Editors) makes their own call on prioritising projects. There are countless "nice to have" changes that could be made, but they are not all achievable.