Theorycrafting - Temple Wars

The idea of manipulating independant heroes and towns has been swimming in my head lately, and playing AoM and Fable II (and watching Majesty) has formed this little gem


Temples

The player's temples are their "avatars" which allow them to affect the world

the player's temple will have certain powers available, support a certain number of "priests" or "cultists" who do religious work, and generally do anything a temple would do

the player's main resources are gold and favour.

gold is obtained through donations and offerings (from heroes and believers) and favour through the number of believers/monuments/etc;

Believers are gathered by preaching. Cultists channel a "preach" ability, which attracts villagers. After a villager has seen a preacher for long enough, he will be marked as a believer (through Chaos or a buff or something)

players will steal eachothers listeners and fight "wars" over eachothers cultists by preaching at eachother (in the beginning, mostly)

believers will worship and make donations, increasing your gold an favour

players can "ordain" believers, turning them into cultists (not to many, of course... high cost...)

your temple and powers will improve as you gather believers

Independant Heroes:

Heroes will do things according to a "Location/Action priority system"

A list of random locations will guide the hero, and certain locations and location types will gather more "priority" as they become more important (low items and high gold, a hero would visit a town)

The locations on a heroes list will be completely randomized, but as players do things, certain areas will have a high "priority" and will be more likely to be on the list

heroes will do things for players depending on their "faith", which is manipulated by offering gifts, preaching, setting "bounties" (like protection and bounties in Majesty) and "excommunicating" (setting them as enemies to the temple, so they will be attacked by temple mobs) them.

Heroes will be more likely to attack certain types of enemies and protect certain villages as they gain faith, as well as "reclass" and donate to the temple

Heroes will only perform tasks appropriate to the amount of faith they have. As they gain faith, they will perform more advanced tasks

Winning:

A player wins by destroying the other teams temples.

this is done indirectly, by inciting towns to hate other temples (converting ALL of their members) and setting a high faith hero to "attack" them (like a quest)

the entire game would be indirect beyond the use of Cultists and the use of powers (helping a fighting hero would also increase his faith in you, or the god he is closest too)

Heroes wouldnt be necessary, but they would be damn hard to code... id think whole towns would be easier... or gathering massive armies of townspeople...