Thats a cool concept, would make for a very awesome mod.
hint hint someone who has awesome modding skills 
You would receive much praise and adoration.
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Would be cool if faith played a role in professions as well. Maybe it could add to a saving roll in combat or improve crafting, maybe save crops from blight? Would be interesting. More interesting would be negative faith. Perhaps someone with negative faith would be a downer to those around them, seen as sort of a pessimist. Could add a lot of weight and variation to villagers if faith was a concrete attribute instead of a skill.
Like holy warriors were better fighters but were downed by pasifist monks or vice versa. While the monks were better farmers or something.
The problem is you donāt want to encourage certain ideas like how your suggestion can be condensed down to āReligion good, Atheism badā. Youād need both sides to balanced and minor bonuses enough that choosing the same thing every time isnāt required for a certain strategy. The ability to shape a religion (or lack of one) with beliefs coming under a culture scope would probably be better, make some beliefs inherently religious and inherently not and have that shape the result. Still be tricky though.
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I was looking at it more from the faith good, lack of faith bad. Simplified to an optimist/pessimist system with religion tied in for flavoring.
Yeah, but that then gets translated as āreligion good, atheism badā, as mentioned above.
Personally, Iām very partial toā¦ shall we say cultural effects and professions (rather than specifically religious ones). The Ascendancy could be a jack-of-all-trades faction easily enough, with some generic buffs. The Northern Alliance folks could get buffs for smaller settlements and combat (ie hardy, isolated types), whilst the last lot (I forget the name 
) get some sort of trading or population growth buffs. Cultural structures (church / market square / armoury / whatever) and the related profession(s) could then enhance / alter some of those buffs.
Rayaās Children is the name you are looking for. (y)
Yeah thatās it. I was thinking āChildren of R-somethingāā¦ urgh 
.
What we could have is that while religion gives you lots of buffs, it would also cause your population to fragment into different sects of religions, causing them to work less well with each other. If you stick with being atheist, you wonāt have the population friction issues.
Could make that instead of different sects you may have tradeoffs with religion as well. Maybe X religion buffs artistic aspects and debuffs combat ones, then religion Y can buff agricultural aspects and debuff industrial ones. Atheism is also a religion all, not a lack of it.
Definition of religion from dictionary.com below
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2.
a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3.
the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4.
the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5.
the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
And definition of Atheism
the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2.
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Ćmile Durkheim provides a fascinating analysis of early religions, particularly totemic religions.
The reason Iām posting the following quote as for me if religion were to be in Stonehearth it would be of an early or primitive variety rather than the advanced modern religions we encounter today.
The benefit of this is that it keeps things relatively neutral, we tend to have very romanticised views of these early religions and early societies. It also provides wide scope for gameplay reasons, because I think the one thing the team are trying to avoid is to force players into certain ways of playing.
Anyway:
āOur analysis suggests that the totem expresses and symbolizes two different kind of things. On the one hand, it is the external and tangible form of what we have called the totemic principle, or god. But on the other, it is the symbol of that particular society we call the clan. It is its flag; it is the sign by which each clan distinguishes itself from others, the visible mark of its personality, a mark that embodies everything that belongs to the clan in any way: men, animals, and things.ā
āThe god of the clan, the totemic principle, must therefore be the clan itself, but transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal species that serve as totems.ā
Essentially Durkheim is saying that religion is society worshipping itself - society is god.
The signs and symbols of the primitive religions are reflections of the society in which they live, so for example, those early clans and tribes that lived in northern Europe and Britain long long ago were living in densely forested regions, consequently a lot of their rituals, or sacred principles, revolved around the forest etc.
Going back to my original point, (and I know this is entirely unreasonable and difficult from a development point of view) an extremely interesting solution would be to have some sort of emerging and evolving religion that reflected your play and your settlement. In terms of gameplay, Iām not sure whether there should be any benefits to it ā¦ at least, not until there is a very balanced way that doesnāt favour one religion over another, or no religion at all.
For me, it would be more than enough to have these things as aesthetic additions.
Anyway, sorry for the above ā¦
Maybe, although personally the Stonehearth settlers always seemed rather advanced to me - certainly the equal of any Classical iron age civilisation, and the Ancient Greeks et al had some rather sophisticated religions.
Perhaps something like the Civ5 model? Basically they use religion as a kind of player-picked series of buffs: belief in a Fertility Goddess means better food production or whatever, belief in a Sea God means more gold from sea tiles, etc.
I think a sort of ābasicā religion wouldnāt be all that bad though. Eg you build a Temple, can promote a worker to priest, and his temple then acts as a combination hearth and healing centre. Maybe he preaches to people when they come & visit; however unless he actually speaks in a recognisable language etc, I canāt see that as being particularly offensive. In such a case I frankly imagine the thing most likely to cause offence is the design of the temple itself 
.
Well this is part of the problem isnāt it, everyone has their own interpretation and ways of wanting to play the game
Especially when you start introducing buffs/debuffs into it all, it all becomes rather problematic.
I think the reason I mentioned these primitive religions etc. is because whilst the ātechnologyā and what not that the settlers use might be the equivalent of the middle ages or whatever, its unlikely that your city will ever have a massive population, all things are indicating that it will fall somewhere in the region of like 50 - 200 which is why I felt things should be kept smaller and less intrusive as ābuild a templeā.
Itās quite an interesting topic at least. Visual details can be easily dealt with by being based around the factions theme and kept deliberately vague or stereotyped. Things like robes for an outfit or something.
As for the actual link to gameplay, I believe it should be kept minor at best. As the primary effect of religion throughout all of history and the modern world is as a motivator, a driving force and a reason for optimism and hope it should tie into that. Have it so that it tries to recognise what you focus on and shape the religion so that your people try harder at it, this could be probably be best represented as something like slightly higher rate of xp gain for those jobs to show that they put more effort and try harder to learn it. The hard part would be code to analyse your playstyle to determine what effects to give although it could have a wide variety of uses for adaptive difficulty and challenges, even just the stat recording system the analysis would be based off would have to be quite encompassing. Another issue is how to deal with the more lore based parts, deities as it were. A simple way would be to mention it as little as possible and when needed have vague references to suggest itās the player, alternatively have a title of God/dess Of X for whatever your bonuses are, possibly give them a name from the factions name pool.
It could be interesting to see it used in other ways in mods though, for example a race whose factions are primarily differentiated by religion.
However, while I am sure the buff tradeoff has been analyzed before, it still penalizes users for being atheist. You wouldnāt benefit from not choosing a religion.
You also wouldnāt receive a trade off. Neutrality is not a penalization. You choose no buff, you get no debuff. I see nothing unfair about that.
What I meant by trade off was exactly what you said aboveā¦
I donāt know what youāre trying to get across, I think weāre having a bit of a miscommunication hereā¦
Why I disagree is that you can essentially get free buffs. Letās say my playing style doesnāt involve religion and someone elseās does. Why should I have no buffs and why should they get buffs just because they clicked a few buttons? Atheism and having a religion should both have their upsides and downsides: with Atheism, there isnāt friction in your society but you donāt get a buff, and with religion you can get buffs but your society will be more factional. That just makes more sense to me.
Right but in my example if you chose no deity you are correct you would receive no buff, but you would not be debuffed. In other words you wouldnāt have any downside, just no buff. Typically in fantasy games Humans are treated this way. They have no strength but no weakness.
You wouldnāt get a free buff. The price of the buff is the debuff. In the artistic buff example you pay with a weakened military, and in the agricultural buff you pay with weakened industry (blacksmith, and engineer). I donāt quite understand what you mean.
So as civilization evolves Idols and Gods become a thing so maybe they could be incorporated into Stonehearth.
A choice of gods that can and will affect your Hearthling and their behavior.
I have build a Church like structure in my town so maybe a job could be Priest or Missionary.
I know nothing but my belief of āThe Almighty Sphereā
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