Explain temples?

I tend to see this sort of thing with temples. Lets say you have 5 of the things you can build. One will ultimately give you, say 20%/20% happiness/law. I get that. One might give you like 20% happiness/increase in tradeable good. Okay, I get that. Then you get one that says 20% happiness/increase in tradeable goods AND +2 morale (this is just an example, don't nitpick if I get some detail wrong).

The last one is the one I don't understand, because it means based on this information alone, you'd never pick the one that just gives 20% happiness/tradeable, because the other gives that and +2 morale also.

So, I suspect there are some hidden stats with some of these temples that provide things I don't know about? Can someone explain?

Thanks.

There are no hidden stats. In fact, it gets worse: some of the bonuses don't work. Loyalty (as opposed to happiness and law) seems to do nothing. Morale may or may not affect units stationed in the city/province, but I understand it doesn't stick to them like armour upgrades do. +1 tax will increase tax-income with a barely noticeable 1%.

Partly, this is due to bugs in the R:TW engine, but the temple system is also an old bit of the mod that never has been redesigned or rebalanced. The temples do have a noticeable effect on your characters' traits & ancillaries. The trait-system is very complex though, so I cannot tell exactly what all temples do. That will depend on your faction and character's primary personality traits. I think it's best just to let role-playing guide you in your choice of temple.

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Originally Posted by Ludens

There are no hidden stats. In fact, it gets worse: some of the bonuses don't work. Loyalty (as opposed to happiness and law) seems to do nothing. Morale may or may not affect units stationed in the city/province, but I understand it doesn't stick to them like armour upgrades do. +1 tax will increase tax-income with a barely noticeable 1%.

Partly, this is due to bugs in the R:TW engine, but the temple system is also an old bit of the mod that never has been redesigned or rebalanced. The temples do have a noticeable effect on your characters' traits & ancillaries. The trait-system is very complex though, so I cannot tell exactly what all temples do. That will depend on your faction and character's primary personality traits. I think it's best just to let role-playing guide you in your choice of temple.

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The tax thing seems absurd. But I know they do something similar in Empire and shogun and it works. Simply because they use province income and you get a percentage of that. So plus 1 or 2% is a boost of about 5% or more. Still, its pretty weak there and in this game it is even weaker. I don't understand the temples generally. All I know is, Law is good.