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[kemoT]

Based upon how things work in human religions I would propose that things work as follows.

Religious dwarves get unhappy if they do not have a temple in which to pray to one of the gods they believe in.  A temple in order to work but have a priest and must meet particular requirements, say a particular material which can be randomly generated. 

Once you set up a temple you must appoint a high priest.  Once a high priest is appointed then a new religion is formed that will recruit people that worship their god and attend their temple.  The high priest is given a possibly silly name like the existing high priests are as well (Supreme Baby comes to mind).  Without appointing a priest however temples do not function and you cannot appoint a priest unless you have a high priest.

As you build more temples you appoint more priests to attend them.  This is all managed on the nobles screen, priests are considered nobles and religious work is considered noble position work.

I like the idea, but I think it would be better if High Priests appointed "normal" priests alone. This could lead to FUN, if the priests won't have good enough skills to preach your dwarves.

[AceSV]

There's more than one religion though, right?  You'd need a way to appoint priests to (Osiris) or (Set) or (Ra) not just to your temples in general. 

[Dirst]

Worship does not require a priest... Priests are simply professional worshippers.  Just like a tavern can function without a Piano Man, the faithful at a site can fulfill most of all of their spiritual needs without a priest or temple, and could even do it in secret if necessary (witness any religious minority in a theocracy or religious monarchy).

A shrine would be a worship zone without an assigned priest, though someone might take on some kind of lay clergy caretaker role.  Lack of a shrine causes stress, the shrine itself probably has no direct benefit other than people admiring its components.

When a priest is assigned to your site's Quiet Place to Contemplate the Man in the Sky, it becomes a "real" temple and might confer tangible benefits when and if certain thresholds are met (which vary by religion).  The two that don't require any "magic" involve the catharsis (stress relief) of religious services, plus someone to share the defusing duties with your mayor.

One AI detail will be interesting: do the dwarves accept worship of a deity just because the player ordered construction of a shrine?  Would a non-believer take the job to construct it?  Would members of oppressed faiths be dumb enough to gather at it (setting aside the possibility of protest meetings to attempt to gain acceptance through a show of numbers and/or influential members)?

If we do get divine strange moods that turns their creators into priests, hopefully priests aren't a "lazy" type of noble.

[GoblinCookie]

Worship does not require a priest... Priests are simply professional worshippers.  Just like a tavern can function without a Piano Man, the faithful at a site can fulfill most of all of their spiritual needs without a priest or temple, and could even do it in secret if necessary (witness any religious minority in a theocracy or religious monarchy).

A shrine would be a worship zone without an assigned priest, though someone might take on some kind of lay clergy caretaker role.  Lack of a shrine causes stress, the shrine itself probably has no direct benefit other than people admiring its components.

Dwarves should certainly pray on their own.  However not having a shrine to their god with a priest to pray in makes them unhappy when they do so.  I think that we should actually have temples separate to shrines and have religions mandate the creation of a specific temple, which is assigned as a shrine to the high priest.  This distinction has a historical precedent but more importantly it makes the religion game playable, a shrine only requires say a statue and some furniture while a temple requires a certain value. 

The temple on the other hand is only required once the religion reaches a certain number of members and has far more complex requirements as well as having to be of a certain value. 

When a priest is assigned to your site's Quiet Place to Contemplate the Man in the Sky, it becomes a "real" temple and might confer tangible benefits when and if certain thresholds are met (which vary by religion).  The two that don't require any "magic" involve the catharsis (stress relief) of religious services, plus someone to share the defusing duties with your mayor.

One AI detail will be interesting: do the dwarves accept worship of a deity just because the player ordered construction of a shrine?  Would a non-believer take the job to construct it?  Would members of oppressed faiths be dumb enough to gather at it (setting aside the possibility of protest meetings to attempt to gain acceptance through a show of numbers and/or influential members)?

If we do get divine strange moods that turns their creators into priests, hopefully priests aren't a "lazy" type of noble.

Priests are just ordinary nobles mechanically and what they do is handled like other noble jobs. Just like with all existing nobles, priests do normal jobs but also have special priest jobs that do not appear on the labours menu.  Priest jobs are scheduled to trigger at a given day in a month, say on day 15 priest will go to his assigned shrine.

Once the priest is there other dwarves of his religion will gather to take part in religion, meeting their present religious needs.  It works basically like a military training exercise in lots of ways for members of the religion.  However dwarves that are not part of a religion will go there is a service in progress to any religion and they have religious needs, causing them to be converted to the religion.

Temples are created using the normal labours and nobody would have any objection to doing work to build a temple to a religion simply because he does not believe in it. 

[Bumber]

Priests are just ordinary nobles mechanically and what they do is handled like other noble jobs. Just like with all existing nobles, priests do normal jobs but also have special priest jobs that do not appear on the labours menu.

Certain nobles (barons, dukes, etc.) aren't supposed to do normal labors, but I think it might be broken currently, as my elected monarch still takes his old farming duties seriously.

[Dirst]

Priests are just ordinary nobles mechanically and what they do is handled like other noble jobs. Just like with all existing nobles, priests do normal jobs but also have special priest jobs that do not appear on the labours menu.

Certain nobles (barons, dukes, etc.) aren't supposed to do normal labors, but I think it might be broken currently, as my elected monarch still takes his old farming duties seriously.

That's what I meant.  The position flag is called LAZY, though I hadn't paid close enough attention to notice it was broken.

[Wooster]

Worship does not require a priest... Priests are simply professional worshippers.  Just like a tavern can function without a Piano Man, the faithful at a site can fulfill most of all of their spiritual needs without a priest or temple, and could even do it in secret if necessary (witness any religious minority in a theocracy or religious monarchy).

This is a very Westernised and modern (in the bad sense) view of religious practice and devotion. I'm a Protestant, so I sympathise with the point of view, philosophically and theologically; but it's simply not accurate, historically or even as a matter of current affairs. Some religions have required and continue to require sacrifices to be offered to placate the gods, and they do not offer "Quiet Places to Contemplate the Man in the Sky". A temple full of animals being killed is hardly a quiet place! Nor, for that matter, a clean one. Toady can set whatever rules he likes for religion, of course, but I don't want discussions around religion to take the line that this Westernised "religion as quiet and sanitary philosophy" approach is definitive. It is quite possible to imagine a system of religious belief that does not permit private prayer.

In terms of behaviour and expectations of religions, it seems to me, at least, more likely that one factor (though only one) in how devotees of different sects operate differently would be their particular god's patronage. (Spheres of influence are meant to be coming, aren't they?) So suppose we can get a sect dedicated to the God of Social Order, to take a particularly obvious counter-example to your suggestion: it is not going to be remotely satisfied with loosey-goosey nonsense like, "We don't need a priest, we're all able to access the divine," and instead will simply not operate until it has a priest authorised and ordained by a duly constituted authority, whereupon devotional practices may be undertaken only under the supervision of a properly ordained priest. On the other hand, sure, a sect dedicated to the God of the Common Dwarf is highly likely to consider ordained priesthood to be sacrilegious, and might encourage its devotees to pray wherever they feel like.

[Deboche]

Since at some point - if I'm not mistakened - dwarves will have their own money and buy things, I'd like to see some dwarves build little altars in their own rooms. It could be just a statue of their god or a saint in a little table or be lavishly decorated.

You can look at them to see what they've come up with and eventually destroy them giving the dwarf an unhappy thought.

[GoblinCookie]

That's what I meant.  The position flag is called LAZY, though I hadn't paid close enough attention to notice it was broken.

The position tage is actually called MENIAL_WORK_EXEMPTION and it does nothing at all.  You could simply remove it and nothing in the game would be changed.  I think that Toady One have problems with the initial mechanics and then decided the idea was not such a good one anyway and so never bothered to fix it. 

Another defunct tag is ACCOUNT_EXEMPT that is still in there even though it does nothing since the 'economy' was abolished (actually the economy was not abolished but rather the intial DF communism economy was made sustainable over time).

Both of these tags are fossils from older versions that have no meaning in the present version.  There plenty of tags left over from older versions in the raws that have no present functionality. 

Since at some point - if I'm not mistakened - dwarves will have their own money and buy things, I'd like to see some dwarves build little altars in their own rooms. It could be just a statue of their god or a saint in a little table or be lavishly decorated.

You can look at them to see what they've come up with and eventually destroy them giving the dwarf an unhappy thought.

I do not see why we will have to wait until they have money and can buy things.  We can simply have them place an order an alter in their room, you order the construction of an alter for your stockpile and they fetch the alter.  The number of alters in ordered would appear on the demands list.  All reported personal demands could be listed in a window so we can simply order the manager to produce those items. 

The main difficulty here is that alters will presumably be buildings.  Dwarves will have to be able to build constructions autonomously of the player in their rooms.  They will also have to track their dependance on the alters so that the player cannot simply demolish the alter, that is not much of a problem since we already do that with nobles demanding armour stands.

That is basically part of dynamic demand, instead of only nobles having demands, every dwarf has their own personal demands that develop over time and are listed in the same manner as noble demands are listed and the noble demands are simply added on top. 

[Dirst]

"Quiet Place to Contemplate the Man in the Sky" was a reference to the movie The Invention of Lying, and not meant to imply that all DF religions ought to behave the same.  Man-in-the-Sky forbid.

That said, making it intentionally difficult to cold-start a new site does not sound like fun for the player, so I would suggest ensuring that there was something that can mitigate we-don't-have-proper-services-here stress, and that it be communicated to the player.  If that sounds too simplistic, remember that the player will be seeing requests from several faiths, and needs to pick.  Imposing stress for they have a temple and we don't can add some complexity to scheduling.  Even then, it should take a while before it becomes an issue so that the game is playable.

[Wooster]

"Quiet Place to Contemplate the Man in the Sky" was a reference to the movie The Invention of Lying, and not meant to imply that all DF religions ought to behave the same.  Man-in-the-Sky forbid.

That said, making it intentionally difficult to cold-start a new site does not sound like fun for the player, so I would suggest ensuring that there was something that can mitigate we-don't-have-proper-services-here stress, and that it be communicated to the player.  If that sounds too simplistic, remember that the player will be seeing requests from several faiths, and needs to pick.  Imposing stress for they have a temple and we don't can add some complexity to scheduling.  Even then, it should take a while before it becomes an issue so that the game is playable.

Ah, so pop culture references I generally miss.

I see what you mean about the cold-start issue. My guess is that one part of that, thinking further along that line, is that devotees of a sect requiring a priest (let's run with the God of Social Order) are highly unlikely to go anywhere long-term unless they can access the services of a priest ordained subject to due process. So the game logic is simply that for dwarves with Social-Orderist beliefs, laity will only arrive when there is a practising priest, but priests will arrive at any time. Hey presto, automatic narrative: your first Social-Orderist will be a missionary priest!

[Dirst]

The shrine of the fertility deity is going to be an interesting place.  Almost don't want to see it get a priest and get all orderly.

Though the religious make-up of the fort ought to influence who wants to migrate there, formal progress triggers for each randomly generated religion would probably be overwhelming for the player.

[Deboche]

I do not see why we will have to wait until they have money and can buy things.  We can simply have them place an order an alter in their room, you order the construction of an alter for your stockpile and they fetch the alter.  The number of alters in ordered would appear on the demands list.  All reported personal demands could be listed in a window so we can simply order the manager to produce those items. 

The main difficulty here is that alters will presumably be buildings.  Dwarves will have to be able to build constructions autonomously of the player in their rooms.  They will also have to track their dependance on the alters so that the player cannot simply demolish the alter, that is not much of a problem since we already do that with nobles demanding armour stands.

This is why I mentioned dwarves buying things. Will they just buy stuff they can keep in a chest or will they get lamps, statues and things they can place around their personal space? Because I would love it if dwarves customized their own things. Similarly, they'd build their own little altar if religious.

Requests such as these - similar to mandates - for all dwarves would be a gigantic headache. It'd be better to let dwarves do what they want inside their own bedroom.

[vache]

I'd like to see it go a little deeper than that, like a cultist dwarf decides to live in a tiny out of the way hovel, so he can dig a secret tunnel in the floor to a hidden altar.  It seems like stuff like this would be very hard to do in your own fortresses (dwarves autonomously deciding to dig in their home), but it could be done through worldgen.

[GoblinCookie]

This is why I mentioned dwarves buying things. Will they just buy stuff they can keep in a chest or will they get lamps, statues and things they can place around their personal space? Because I would love it if dwarves customized their own things. Similarly, they'd build their own little altar if religious.

Requests such as these - similar to mandates - for all dwarves would be a gigantic headache. It'd be better to let dwarves do what they want inside their own bedroom.

We will still have to arrange those things to be made, whether dwarves 'buy' them or not, so there is nothing special about their bedrooms unless they can conjure the alters out of thin air.  It would not be a headache because the game would keep track of the entire demands of all your dwarves, including the noble mandates and requirements on one screen.  We can see what the dwarves demand at a glance and plan as to how to meet those demands. 

We could therefore see at a glance that we need to produce 10 alters for our dwarves. The dwarves can then pick the alter they like the most and build them inside their rooms at a random location.  The same system can be used for armour stands, weapon racks, cages and all manner of other buildable items.  Non-buildable items are either dumped on the floor next to the bed or they are placed inside a container. 

We are bundling all demands into a single screen.  It gets better in that this would actually allows us to automate production, instead of us manually assigning jobs an AI automatically orders the manager to produce the needed items.  Once we have that we have done 50% of the work for creating completely AI controlled fortresses. 

"Quiet Place to Contemplate the Man in the Sky" was a reference to the movie The Invention of Lying, and not meant to imply that all DF religions ought to behave the same.  Man-in-the-Sky forbid.

That said, making it intentionally difficult to cold-start a new site does not sound like fun for the player, so I would suggest ensuring that there was something that can mitigate we-don't-have-proper-services-here stress, and that it be communicated to the player.  If that sounds too simplistic, remember that the player will be seeing requests from several faiths, and needs to pick.  Imposing stress for they have a temple and we don't can add some complexity to scheduling.  Even then, it should take a while before it becomes an issue so that the game is playable.

I think that the initial costs required to build a shrine should not be high.  Basically all you would need is a wood or stone statue of a particular god and a sufficiant number of chairs.  All these could simply be ordered from the carpenter's or mason's workshop right from the start.

It is when the religions get to a certain size (and thus your population is also of a certain size) that things get expensive.  Religions of a certain size demand a temple, which unlike the shrine has a far higher required value and a load of other proceedurely generated requirements unique to that particular deity.  As they get bigger they want grander and grander temples to be built and shrines eventually start to need upgrading so they are equal to low-level temples too.