Dear Pharaoh fans,
I just started replaying the game and I have a problem with the religion: The gods are mostly displeased. When I look at the religion overlay it seems that only the temples are counting. If I build a shrine, it will always say: "This house has no entries to any temples or shrines." Only temples will be counted (as far as the overlay tells me).

So if I have my main village with the nice houses and the temples of the local gods it will be fine for those people. But as I mostly build some small huts offside the city (for workers on the fields / hunters) I will only build them a well, a fire department, architect and the shrines. But as the shrines don't seem to "work" as the overlay tells I also see the gods becoming displeased over time, even if I make some festivals now and then.

Does anyone have the same problem?
Thanks a lot for any help!
SeriousToni

I quickly checked the manual. It says that the only purpose of a shrine is to please the particular god, and do not provide citizens access to religion. Strange then that the shrines are mentioned in the religion overlay. Perhaps an oversight?

It's even more strange that the overlay explicitly says "This house has no entries to any temples or shrines." Also it seems that shrines won't take effect at all, neither to the gods nor the people. I build a small village with about 200 people and gave them three shrines of every of the three gods. The gods were getting angry over time until I built a temple for each.

In my head this seemed all to work fine in my original Pharaoh CD version. Could it be that this is a GOG only bug? Or a Cleopatra Addon Bug?

@SeriousToni: I have to admit, I have played Pharaoh for a long time, even the GOG.com version and I have never noticed the error of "Shrines" being mentioned in the overlay. I have no doubt that this is probably a bug and is unintended. I don't have the CD at hand to confirm if this happens in the original CD copies, if someone could do a check on that one, it would be very appreciated. :)

You are required to provide access to temples. Shrines on their own aren't enough: they can provide access to religion, but the amount of people served is too small to have any difference on a god's mood if shrines are the only things used: temples cover more people and are the main factor that controls god mood in the game code.

A god would probably be apathetic just based on temples, but excessive use of shrines can boost it a bit to Congenial or a low level "positive" mood, but you can't ever get to the top level positive moods with just Temples and Shrines on their own.

Religion does nothing below a certain population threshold, which I believe is 500 people. It might be less if you are playing on Very Hard. What difficulty (and mission) are you playing on?

@Matewis: It's not an oversight. Shrines are religious buildings as they directly affect a god's mood and are listed in the Overseer of Religion, so it makes sense for it to be placed there. It wouldn't make much sense for them to be listed anywhere else on the game.

They make total sense in the Overseer of Religion screen. I'm referring to the oversight of shrines being included in the overlay with the phrase "no access to temples or shrines". Perhaps at one point shrines were meant to count as religious access to houses within a certain radius.

Oh right. Unless I'm wrong, Shrines do provide religious access, but not the kind that allows houses to be evolved above a Meager Shanty, which requires a temple.

If someone could check an original CD copy of Pharaoh (patched) and Pharaoh+Cleopatra (patched) and see if the wording is present there, it would help. If it's present there, then it's a long since ignored oversight: if not, it's just a bug in the GOG.com version.

At least with gog's version of Pharaoh it doesn't seem to be the case that they provide any religious access: I quickly checked and built two small neighbourhoods, one surrounded with shrines and the other without any shrines. In both neighbourhoods, with food and water access houses only go up to meager shanty level and then complain about a lack of religious facilities.

That's what he said!

I'm simply checking what Shukaku doesn't sound sure about: that shrines provide any religious access whatever (to houses). It doesn't appear to be the case, because houses go up to meager shanty level regardless of whether or not there are shrines around, and in either case they complain about a lack of access to religious facilities.

It could be that, as I said, the game only registers a "facility" as being the temple/Temple Complex and not shrines, since these older games require that a "service walker" passes by to give that service and shrines don't have workers to send out, but they do provide religious coverage in the sense that, if the gods are upset, shrines can be built to pacify them.