Agreed there with you, any rail line uses them more than us so our favour should be specially for tech transfer and providing work force and parts. We certainly wont shoulder the costs ourselves and if we do it will be via credits and loans (tariffs will depend on their relationship with us).
Lets not forget empowering our home religions as well, like ancestor worship to balance Crystal heart at home. Generally i prefer that all main religious seats of power be at home.
Honestly it's a bit of a shame that the Yaks simply don't have that much to offer to us, beyond orichalcum and generic trade.At this point their prophecies are literally the ONLY thing they can offer to us that would really make a difference.
I don't really care that much about empowering our own religions, honestly.
They're just not as interesting, and they're kind of proven to be fake in my opinion.
let's see them all in order:
1)Griffon Pantheon: ...where were those gods when Discord attacked? If we get some kind of vision/visit from a spirit god I MIGHT be willing to reconsider, but right now i tend to believe that they were simply made up. Or maybe they once lived, but they're now dead.
Not harmfull, and they seem to promote good values, but i kind of dislike the idea of worshipping gods that either don't exists, are dead, or abandoned us. I might feel a bit guilty about it if they actually confronted Discord and were defeated like, say, the celestial dragons of Neighpon, but that's a problem for if/when we discover more about them.
2) Crystal Heart: it's both useful AND mostly harmless. They venerate an object, which means it can't actually order them to go against us. And that object has shown multiple times to actually have sort of a benevolent will. I would honestly be fine with this one becoming THE religion of our country. Who knows, maybe if we love it enough it will develop sentience, just like the Tree of Harmony did in Mlp. Maybe it could even tell us who created it and why.
I would prefer that our appreciation for the crystal heart was more about gratitude and respect than FAITH (i kind of dislike blind faith on principle) (the heart really deserves respect though, especially if it has/develops a will/sapience/sentience), but I can live with that, and negative consequences are relatively unlikely.
3) Yak's shamanism. Mostly about venerating the ancestors (reasonable as long as it doesn't get too far) and nature. We don't know exactly how much of it is true (shamans' ability to see the future might very well be an ability of the yaks themselves completely independant from outside factors/spirits, but It's not harmful. Shamans are usually wise people, and I'll note that they were the one who pushed for good relationships with us, as after fighting Sombra our soldiers became, by their own laws and traditions, blood-brothers of theirs.
I don't expect them to become a problem, except in the fact that they might be hesitant to accept some of our innovation, and change in general.
4)Neighpon's spiritualism. Specifically mentioned as being usually paired with other beliefs by the believers, we have at least partial proof of them being right about there being spirits that might be either good or evil. The Windigos are a good example of the evil ones, while the Tree of Harmony and the Crystal Heart themselves might very well count as example of good ones, even if they're somewhat artificial.
Also described as separated by any moral system or judgement, this is literally neutral in respect to everything else. I can't see any problem coming from this one.
5)Church of the Lady: While i like this one, and we already have some proofs of her existance (the visions, the blessings on her knights...), there's one big problem with it.
The leader of the religion is also the leader of another country, even if an allied one.
While I don't expect problems from them, they're maybe the most likely to become one at some point, unless the Lady herself chooses to show herself to either the queen or us and declare us good people and allies worthy of respect.
We should be carefull about how much we favour them, though that's no good reason to be hostile to them. Not yet, and hopefully not ever.
Who knows, if we go far enough their action chain we might get a vision and blessing ourself. Wouldn't that be interesting?
6)The Imperial Cult: We're not gods, and I'm not really comfortable about any faith proclaming a person to be one. I won't act explicitely against them because they have a right to believe whatever they want (as long as they don't harm anyone else), but I'm wary of favouring them too much.
Heck, numerically the Yaks and Neighponese are equally friendly towards us...the only thing of any real difference is the fact that we got a defense treaty with Neighpon only...something worth rectifying (after all, our three nations stood side-by-side against Sombra already...Gryphus, Neighpon and YakYakistan making their partnership legally binding would be only fitting)
As for us having invested a lot in the Crystal Religion, I actually see it more as a boon than a danger - especially regarding a possible full integration of the Protectorate into Gryphus proper that people have been thinking about at times.
eh, it's only a matter of time and a few actions before we solidify our relationships with the Yaks. They ARE a really young nation after all, they need some time to figure things out.
Our trade deals with the Orichalcum and cannons, our shared history with Sombra, and our past gifts were a wonderfull start. A show of respect with the yak stone and some more actions devoted to them (maybe even the rails' proposal) and we'll be golden
Bringing them up to speed does help ourselves. I said you rushed it, however. It is not the first thing that should have been done. As a result, we now have to begin closer integration immediately rather than having time to wait before they begin looking into ways for self-sufficiency. Their king seems of a bold and proud nature from what we've seen of him. I highly doubt he would willingly let his new kingdom be dependent for too long.
YAKS NO WANT CHARITY!
(we are fine with gifts of appreciation though!)
The Imperial Cult and Ancient Empire are the least important of the religious actions. The Imperial Cult is good for assuring loyalty to the royal family (at the cost of probably growing a fascist movement centuries from now if it gets too powerful), but both the loyalty to the current emperor and to his son is assured for the moment. It can be put off for a good many turns. Likewise, there really isn't a big call for reviving the old faith. It'd be...cute...to do so for lack of a better word, but our people have been just as willing to adopt other cultures's religions as opposed to requiring a species religious center. The highest priorities should have been and should still be doing the first actions for the Yak stone and the Neighpon shrine. The Yak stone for diplomatic good will and for further cultural integration between the newly-unified Yak tribes and our imperial colonies near their kingdom, and the Neighpon shrine because it has been explicitly stated to be good at adapting to fit in with any other religion. That would be a good trait to syncretize culturally into our own empire, given that we're playing Pokemon with the species of the world.
I do agree with Yak stone being the best choice for next turn, ESPECIALLY if we consider the yak rail option (or more yak options in general).
Neighpon shrine is probably the second one, though depending on what the second yak option turns out to be (or what happens between us and Canterbury) either yak shamanism or Lady of the Lake might become my priority the second turn.
As I said above, I don't really care that much about our Pantheon or the Emperor's cult.
I´d be fine with the other ones getting boosted, although I disagree on Imperial Pantheism not being that important - a nation without their own beliefs and identity to fall back to tends to get twitchy, you know?
It can work though. See the Romans, they basically assimilated the gods of all the people they conquered, and it worked more or less fine.
Also most of those gods/spiritual being are kind of proven to exist IC, but not the griphon patheon (
yet). And we KNOW we're not gods (and we're reasonably certain we're not "touched by the divine")
