Never is pretty absolute. The “anecdotal” 6.87% pretty much invalidate your argument. So I stand by what I said, that you might want to revisit your argument.
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OK, let’s say you’re right, otherwise your insults will rain down.
Wow, that’s some pretty aggressive, general religion bashing you got going on right there. Seems self-righteous atheism isn’t so great either… 
What the popular demand for churches shows, is saying “but it’s a fictional setting, not historical” doesn’t make much of a difference.
Our idea of what this setting - fictional or not - should incude and look like is shaped by what we know. The devs drew major inspiration from the northern european medieval “era”, and it shows - beautifully I think. But expectations are shaped by this inspiration, too, because of course it’s very recognizable. And because of this, to many players it feels like there’s something missing if there’s no church (and I mean church, not temple/ mosque/ whatever), because church and its religion shaped our world at that time in a major way - for better or worse (I’d argue: both).
People like to build a medieval city, why not let them do just that? Just for immersion and making the game feel more well rounded and complete.
The more I think about it, the more my conclusion is, there doesn’t have to be a new inventive game mechanic behind religion, no deep system. The “fill a religious need by building a church” gameplay element may be simplistic, but if devs can’t come up with something BETTER, I prefer simple and mediocre (gameplay wise) over more complex and still mediocre. I’ll happily see more pagan shrines as well, because I think it would fit the setting, too.
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I find a “religious war” against religion emblematic … 
But I think it’s best to stop this. It is becoming a circular issue without the slightest construct. 
I was wondering the same thing. The Catholic church was absolutely central in the lives of medieval Europeans. There were no towns without churches.
After having read a few threads on the matter, I now understand why the developers didn’t put it in the game. It’s simply a result of the woke movement. The reality is just too much for some people to handle and they get offended by it. It’s sad to see and I don’t suspect the numerous people questioning the decision will change anybody’s mind or even make them reevaluate their decision.
My guess is that none of the developers at Crate are over 35 years old or got very high grades in history, and have probably never visited Europe. They might as well have made the settlers vegan, it would make about the same amount of sense.
Sorry to disappoint you, but having met some of them I’m pretty sure they’re well past their teen years. And some were even born in Europe.
Anyway, I think the way this thread is going shows why it’s suggested you never talk about the weather, politics or religion at dinner parties.
The devs have said while the game uses medieval/colonial themes it’s not set in that time period. They’re leaving it up to players to imagine what world/period/etc the game is set in. It has nothing to do with woke or anything else. They’ve already said they may add some more spiritual buildings.
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I disagree with the notion that “having” “religion” in a game is problematic. But the devs are asking for feedback during EA so why not just provide it in a civilized manner instead of attacking? I don’t think unfair generalizations are helping anyone here.
The devs have said they were exploring different directions to take this in, but obviously didn’t have the idea. I get wanting to give religion more of a function than it just basically being there, and if they can come up with something good, all the better.
I personally think it could be interesting to couple religion and education - not just historically this would make sense, because studies at university included theology (there wasn’t this separation of disciplines we have today). But gameplay wise it might prove an interesting concept, too.
Chapels and curches need candles and they satisfy religious needs, workers in chapels need school education, workers in churches need education from university – there’s missing something here to make it a clever concept but this would probably be my starting point if I was to develop something.
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I see, so it’s a fantasy game then? In that case never mind what I said. It’s all good.
A monastery could grow medicinal roots in its monastic garden.
Build it together with an apothecary, a hospital, some farming, a school, a brewary and some storage, put a little wall around it and make the monks live in the building itself, et voilá, you’ve got a proper little monastery built! Until it gets slowly absorbed by the ever growing town next to it.
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My plan was to be polite at first, but some of the developer’s answers really pissed me off
Should’ve stuck with the plan, though.
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Yeah I was thinking that direction. The challenge I see is how do you make this a distinct mechanic that still fits into the overall game organically.
But yeah maybe some buildings could be locked behind monastery upgrades instead of the town center, like the brewery. This would make satisfying a religious need more meaningful than if it was just another stat, because it would be tied to monastery progress. That’s a direction I’d far more like than a religious building giving a flat bonus.
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Well, yes.
I can promise you this though:
The controversy they wanted to avoid by leaving religion out never would have happened. Instead the very same decision actually caused one.
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Crate devs : We will avoid religion entirely! That way we can’t upset anyone!
Forum : 
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Also…
Just say it’s loosely based on 5th century Britain!
“In reality, the spiritual practices of Britons varied hugely from place to place. No-one knows exactly what the Britons believed before the Romans introduced them to Christianity, but they seem to have revered the power of nature and to have worshipped ancestors.”
“There is some evidence for the existence of timber temples, although other cultic spaces might have been open-air, and would have included cultic trees and megaliths.”
No churches 
and they said they’ll be adding more buildings etc so timber “temples” or similar may come at some point.
Also before the cries of “but stone roads! Romans! Christianity!”
“Archaeologists uncovered the remains of a well-maintained and well-built British road beneath an ancient Roman road in 2011. This evidence contrasts what modern texts teach about primitive-pagan peoples inhabiting the land before Caesar conquered it and even draws into question the long ages of human development suggested by evolution.”
Sources : 5 minutes of top google links.
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We’ve already established this game was fantasy. I don’t think that’s the point/ issue.
If you show people what obviously resembles a medieval town in northern europe they expect to see a church, simple as that. No political explanation/ creative problem solving (“It just hasn’t been built yet.”) will make people feel differently about their idea of what a medieval town should look like.
Think of it this way: Players want bridges for rivers. Of course, because this is fiction devs could just implement portals instead - might be easier to code. But I doubt most players would be satisfied with that solution. 
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You’re over-thinking this. I’m 45, literally have a degree in ancient history and have traveled to Europe several times. Zantai is actually from Europe and went to church in an old medieval fortress-cathedral. I grew in small-town New England, the quintessential colonial frontier, surrounded by historic wooden churches.
The #1 reason there’s no religion yet is that by the time I started thinking about how to add it in, we had a lot of older systems in the game that needed to be refactored and or fixed. It’s what we call “development debt” where you’ve build a lot of stuff that is sort-of-working but in order to actually get into a release-ready state, it requires a lot of additional work. About a year ago we switched from adding features to just trying to get all our existing features and content into release-ready condition because I was growing increasingly concerned that we’d maybe worked on the game too long without having any idea of how well it might sell. I thought we’d get through everything and be able to hit up some more features but just fixing and polishing to get the game to the state its in now took almost a year.
Now that we’re in EA and the game is doing well, justifying the time we’ve invested in it, we are able to look at making some more feature and content additions. Depending on how in depth we wanted to go with religion and how many options we wanted to give people, we could make it a DLC or keep things simpler and add it in a free update.
When we do add religion, I don’t know if we’ll include a classic looking church or not. I’m not sure if I want to add them, not because I’m woke and afraid of offending people (I mean, we’re clearly going to offend someone whatever we do), it is that I am just personally not that interested in churches and the game was never meant to be a real-world history simulator. Despite coming from a more Catholic family and being fairly conservative themselves, my parents were never very religious and I grew up with no personal attachment to churches. I’m sorry if that offends you but that’s where I’m coming from. I find many older European religious just as, if not more interesting and would probably rather just do my own thing here that is a blend of historical sources. The goal of this game was to create a detailed and authentic feeling pioneer-survival experience but not to accurately simulate real-world history. If you’re after more historical accuracy, there’s already games that strive for that.
Its kind of ironic that you think we’re leaving out churches because we’re woke and afraid of offending people and yet here you are, being all offended, like the cancel-culture mob you think we’re worried about.
What I can tell you is, if you decide to make your own game and put churches or whatever else you want in it, I guarantee I won’t show up on your forums being all publicly offended about it, because I think you have a right to design your game however you see fit.
You’re welcome to express your desire to see churches in the game but lets not get all offended, make assumptions about people’s motives and make this a personal attack.
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We actually left out bridges, despite them serving a critical functional purpose, for fear we might offend anti-bridge people. 
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First of all, I don’t think the rude comments above are representative for how most players think about this. It’s just people on the internet being people on the internet - which is sad, but that’s how it is.
Maybe Zentais comments pushed the discussion more in the direction of what place religion should or should not have in a video game. Which wasn’t really where the “where is the church?” question was coming from, I think. So there it was him overthinking, probably.
I don’t think any religious person (or anyone else for that matter) could be offended by the lack (or existence) of churches in a game. I mean it’s not like everyone was such a devout christian in the first place! 
(We’re talking about players placing a church building and the faith need meter goes to green - from what I hear that’s not a super accurate representation of christianity anyway lol.)
Like I said, you’re giving us a specific setting that evokes certain expectations (no matter your intentions) - that’s why for many there’s churches simply missing.
Your bridges comment is funny nonetheless, but looking at this like it was a debate about religion probably doesn’t help, because I don’t think that’s what this is. It’s about player expectations and individual associations with the medieval era.
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Haha, well yeah, I think that may be the majority but we’ve also gotten some pretty hate-filled, profanity-laced emails. We’ve literally been called “gay” for not including churches… even though we have never actually said we didn’t plan on adding religion or definitely weren’t adding churches.
It’s honestly been up in the air and we’re fairly surprised people are flipping out about it, considering the game is in early-access and obviously not finished.
BUT, that said, the game evolved from my originally thinking it might take place during the dark / early middle ages - original buildings were concepted with a distinctly Norse theme but then we felt like maybe that was over-done after some other releases / announcements. I also shifted the time period later / made it very ambiguous so that we could include later technology / economy to make the game more interesting. So again, it is not really supposed to be set in a specific time or place. It could even take place in the world of Grim Dawn, before the Aetherials… we talked about potentially adding a GD monster enemy DLC later.
So, I don’t know, some form of religion is coming. I don’t think it has to include churches and that’s not really where I was leaning but maybe we’ll include an option since so many people have expressed interest. 
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