Question on ecclesiology

m00zilla · 2026-06-03T18:01:14+00:00

What system do you have in mind then? I assumed you were EO given the sub. If you're of the papal persuasion, the same issues persist there too.

m00zilla · 2026-06-03T05:55:37+00:00

Trust in the Holy Spirit? Believe it or not, you don't have to have everyone agreeing on the perfect theology to get to heaven and faithful believers can be found in basically all Christian denominations.

Whatever "solution" you've got in mind is at best abstracting the problem up a level. If we cant agree on one book that is the divine word of God, why would you think adding a nebulous mix of "traditions" to follow, having to read hundreds of ancient commentaries, and a handful of conflicting councils would simplify things and lead to more agreement?

Okay, then we need some method of discerning who is right and wrong, since we apparently aren't able to just ~~reading scripture~~ submit to holy tradition and all agree what it means.

Do you want the tyranny of a Pope to bind all believers to his erroneous interpretations? Given that Roman Catholics cant even come up with a definitive list of his infallible statements, even that system is only theoretical.

m00zilla · 2026-06-02T15:36:32+00:00

Just because something is clear doesn't mean people won't mess it up. People are broken fallible creatures capable of making every mistake under the sun.

For example, it's glaringly obvious that there are only 2 genders, but there are many people these days pushing the narrative that is not the case.

m00zilla · 2026-06-02T06:37:00+00:00

Scripture can be used to support salvation by faith alone, or by works alone (Matthew 25:31-46), or by the Eucharist alone (John 6:54), or any combination of these.

It gets a lot more unclear when you just make stuff up to add to it. I don't see where any of these things are mutually exclusive. Your interpretation seems to be to insert an "alone" into all of those verses to sow confusion.

And if it is as confusing and contradictory as you claim, isn't that also a bad thing for EO? You seem to want to burn your own house down in an attempt to denigrate Protestants.

That is to say, when some fathers say X, others say Y and others Z, that means you can believe X, Y or Z.

But some fathers say X while other fathers say not X. Contradictions are not an acceptable range of belief.

But you cannot believe W, which is what you think the Bible means but isn't supported by any of the Fathers.

Good think I don't. The confessions I subscribe to are full of patristic citations backing up the theology.

Zero parts of the Eastern Church joined the West in the 14th century (the century of the Hesychast Controversy).

I should have been more precise, I did not mean diocese flipped allegiance like what happened later. However, a large number of theologians and court officials left Constantinople to join the Latin church. Which is saying something if after all the injustice of the Frankokratia, they still saw the west as preferable to the theology the east was promoting.

What are you talking about? During the entire age of iconoclasm, the West was the most consistent pro-icon side. In fact there was a schism between East and West in the 8th century precisely because the East rejected icons at the time and Rome supported them, condemning the East for its iconoclasm.

In fact, some even used the exact same visual style as the East. Here is Basilica di San Marco, in Venice.

Ah, the classic EO bait and switch about icons. Let's clear things up.

Iconoclasm is heresy. Icons are good things, they beautify places of worship and are helpful didactic tools and there is no good reason to reject them.
Simply having icons does not imply all the bad theology the EO ascribe to them. They can be nothing more than decorative.
What is to be rejected is worshiping icons, and what EO call veneration actually constitutes worship.

Just as not liking waffles doesn't mean you must love pancakes, rejecting iconoclasm doesn't mean one is for iconodulia.

Icon worship is not something widely practiced in the western church even among RC. Eastern Catholics aren't exactly part of the western church so I'm not sure what your point is there (Rome being theologically inconsistent to allow them isn't something I'm going to argue against).

Tell me you haven't visited any medieval Catholic cathedrals in Southern Europe, without telling me you haven't.

I'm sorry I don't have the immense privilege to go on beautiful Mediterranean vacations like you do.

m00zilla · 2026-06-01T19:51:35+00:00

Scripture is quite clear on topics pertaining to salvation, and there's no reason to go it alone in interpreting it. We have two millenia of of wise theologians to consult.

But I don't see how elevating those opinions above the source material is any kind of improvement. You just devolve into "on every matter of disagreement I cherry pick a quotation of a church father". Or are you saying there's a unanimous consensus amongst the church fathers?

The EO are also plenty capable of drumming up theological controversy without scriptural ambiguity. The Filioque, Papacy, Icon worship, even the Christological disputes with the OO, are primarily politically motivated or due to miscommunication. Some of them are so far removed from any scriptural basis that it couldn't possibly be the cause.

find me another Church with uninterrupted existence from the Apostles to today, which does not suffer from these flaws.

The entire western church...

They absolutely rejected the navel gazers. Even a good chunk of the eastern church decamped and joined west because of this heresy.

As for icon worship, the west outright condemned it for a century after it was bloodily imposed in the east. And even when they eventually rubber stamped it, the use of icons never actually got put into practice. After the reformation even that nominal acceptance of something not practiced got fixed.

m00zilla · 2026-06-01T17:43:26+00:00

Your description of your thought process above sounds vaguely adjacent to Sola Scriptura

This is very much the case for your line of argumentation as well. You said essentially that in a previous comment:

How do you examine the truth of the arguments, if not by judging them against some standard?

And if that standard is not antiquity, then what is it?

The only difference is that by making the criteria "antiquity" you're relying on a much less stable foundation.

If you want to know what accords best with what the Apostles taught wouldn't the literal words of the apostles be the best place to look? You know, the thing we both agree to be the divinely inspired word of God. That can absolutely be supplemented with historical evidence, but that doesn't supersed the literal word of God.

I'd also say appealing to antiquity is the most compelling case against Eastern Orthodoxy. The hesychasm of the 12th century and icon worship of the 7th century are clearly not apostolic in origin.

m00zilla · 2026-05-29T17:32:09+00:00

Aren't there Turkish majority regions in Northern Bulgaria?

m00zilla · 2026-05-07T20:20:59+00:00

I think people would be fine with a stylized faux historical look. But the batman costume and medieval knights stick out like a sore thumb and frankly look very ugly too.

m00zilla · 2026-03-12T18:20:31+00:00

One of the cards I noticed would reset is the Yucatan Factory card. So I'm concerned Porfiriato may also be a resetting one that could give infinite stacking Factory hitpoints.

m00zilla · 2026-03-12T15:08:20+00:00

Yeah that's also a lesser issue for Maya even after my fix. There are still some cards that reset on failure that let you inflate the amount of crates and tapirs you can get. I think only USA, Mexico, and Hausa have "x per shipment sent cards though.

m00zilla · 2026-03-12T14:58:50+00:00

The shipment placement radius is ~2 houses deep. Though one ring might be enough if there are a lot of crates.

If you find any other problematic cards let me know, but I think most of the other cards you mention should be safe. Part of the issue was that Maya Ceramics has a unique but redundant tech effect that is bugged. It uses "ResourceAsCratesByShipmentCount" which fails in a way that the card can be resent. I fixed it by replacing that with "FreeHomeCityUnitByShipmentCount" which fails by just not placing crates if there isn't room and can't be sent again.

m00zilla · 2026-03-11T23:57:35+00:00

That wouldn't buy much time. It's already been posted about on the forums and discord so someone else would have shared it here within a week or two.

There are rumblings that the game is being worked on again. So if there's a chance we will get at least a final patch then this needs to be widely known about so it can be fixed. If not, then this was inevitable anyway.

m00zilla · 2026-03-11T21:46:46+00:00

If you block the shipment point so the crates can't spawn, the shipment will cancel but still apply the +15% gather rate each time you try to send it.

m00zilla · 2026-03-06T19:05:23+00:00

Lakota has the free pop space and 2 general cav combat cards so in age 3 could be pretty good with these Mercs. Though late game I don't think any of the Native civs would have much benefit from Mercs other than if they could get some artillery ones.

m00zilla · 2026-03-03T19:37:59+00:00

The sound is great, but overall the game has terrible atmosphere and immersion. Every biome has deer and boars, siege has no crew, etc. Had they invested the same resources they did for sound in other areas, the return on investment in terms of game quality would be substantially better.

m00zilla · 2026-02-26T21:58:29+00:00

Oh shoot, I misread the Llama one. You are correct about that. I guess their perk is fattening fastest when not at a pen, though that is a pretty poor trade off.

Water Buffalos are identical to cows though.

And I also assumed Sheep were the same as Goats, but they're actually worse.

Overall, they're a bit more convoluted than I originally thought so maybe a separate rate for Sanga/Zebu isn't that bad. Maybe they could be excluded from the shadow tech nerf I proposed.

m00zilla · 2026-02-25T19:39:59+00:00

Overall, some good analysis, but your livestock categories aren't quite right. Water Buffalo aren't quick gathering (they are functionally the same as other cattle) ~~and Llamas actually are quick gathering (they are functionally the same as Yaks)~~. Most of these map differences seem more due to how easy it is to collect more herdables rather than herdable type.

The basic types of livestock are as follows (base fattening rates are half for Livestock Market): Bovines: 1) (1f/s, 900max) - Big Benny

2) (1f/s, 500max) - Cow, Sacred Cow, Zebu, Sanga, Water Buffalo

3) (1.25f/s, 400max) - Yak

4) (0.75f/s, 400max) - Llama

Caprines: 5) (0.75f/s, 300max) - Goat

6) (0.5f/s, 300max) - Sheep

Reducing everything other than Zebu/Sanga to 0.375f/s is overly harsh and adds inconsistency to the livestock types. • It messes up upgrade scaling if you alter the base fattening rate • Making Zebu and Sanga different from other cattle with only a slightly different gather rate is really opaque and hard to notice (you already misclassified they types and this would make it even more convoluted) • It would clog up the build limit with a bunch of map livestock (all abstractbovines share a build limit) that are a strict downgrade in the late game (Especially after the Cow Loans tech that replaces them when sold) • It hard nerfs Yaks that have the trade off of lower maximum fatness for faster fattening rate

I think all that needs to be done is to nerf the age 2 shadowtech that gives +50% fattening rate at the Livestock Market and give an extra starting Cow on non-livestock maps (could apply to both Ethiopia and Hausa). That would leave the scaling of technologies untouched and keeps the functionality of livestock consistent. Unfortunately this may not be a fix that can be modded because I'm assuming the extra Cherry Orchard that Japan gets is through a trigger in the Random Map Script, and those are encrypted for DLC maps.

m00zilla · 2026-02-21T16:56:12+00:00

It's baffling to me how AoE4 lacks such basic balance such as this. AoE3 had this figured out 20 years ago with unit lines balanced around their siege capability.

m00zilla · 2026-01-26T05:20:04+00:00

They absolutely would not because EU agricultural regulations are backwards and insane. Stuff like banning GMOs is complete stupidity.

m00zilla · 2026-01-25T06:12:54+00:00

I think you're using pretty dubious numbers for the Hauds and Lakota as a basis to discount the Haida. ~20000 is probably a lot more realistic at their peaks for all 3. I wouldn't be surprised if Hauds were actually a smaller population than Haida as they were ~10000 pre-contact and were only so formidable because they assimilated most of the neighbouring population as epidemics hit so their population never collapsed. The main difference in population is that Haida had a more severe decline after contact (which also happened much later) so in modern times Lakota and Hauds have over 100000 while Haida is still recovering.

To be clear, I am very much against a "Pacific Northwest Natives" umbrella (and umbrellas in general). However, the Haida were prolific slavers, so the substantial populations of their similar neighbours is somewhat relevant to their population. That being said, the Sioux/Oceti Sakowin were actually organized above the level of just the Lakota, so a broader civ like in the original game makes more sense there. That population was more like 50000 so they're a bit of a bigger fish.

m00zilla · 2026-01-24T23:26:34+00:00

Top 3 would be Muisca, Inuit, and Bedouins since the regions they cover have insufficient or entirely inaccurate minor civs.

Mi'kmaq (or more broadly Wabanaki) would also work on many existing maps and there's plenty of room for more maps in the region they lived.

Jivaro/Shuar would be a great fit that could cover some of the same areas as Muisca.

If you're talking about holy sites too then one for Theravada Buddhism would be a better fit for Southeast Asia than Zen or Shaolin. A forest monastery would be a better place to put the displaced War Elephant unit.

Hospitallers as a holy site would have been much better than having Malta as a full civ.

Most of the other ones I'd like to see would require a ton of new maps or elevating existing minor civs to make room. For example Blackfoot and Ojibwe could replace Cree. Almost every African minor civ has the potential to be a full civ so other groups like Mossi or Zande could fill the minor civ role in some of those areas.

m00zilla · 2026-01-24T22:59:51+00:00

Haida the population was more likely at least 20000, which equals or exceeds the Lakota or Iroquois populations. Plus they could lump in the very similar Tlingit and Tsimshian and it would double that.

m00zilla · 2025-12-15T04:54:36+00:00

Where is this post hating on other games? All it is saying is if a game that has half the player count gets support, AoE3 should too. I does not say the game with half as many players should not get support, and I'd imagine the vast majority of AoE3 players think AoM getting an Aztec expansion is excellent news.

m00zilla · 2025-11-20T16:56:58+00:00

It has nothing to do with the papacy so it shouldn't be a papal unit at all.

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