Temples in general and KH in particular

I'm back to playing EB (on Alex with Jirisys' Mega Mod pack) and having fun. I have a fairly good grasp of TW games in general and EB in particular, but there are some details that I wonder about.

I've read the Guide to Temples in EB thread and I understand many bonuses just don't work, moral and loyalty in particular, and others are too trivial in action, eg. tax. Law is the most important, health is great, with trade having some value, and happiness being good.

I understand about role-playing what to do, but I'm also interested in doing what's likely to be best for my empire.

So in my new KH campaign I'm wondering what to do about temples in all my provinces. I understand about needing to upgrade or demolish and replace when there's a cultural difference. And that it takes a long time to get a big city and have that final tier 5 temple, so I should look at the values for tier 2 and 3.

Also, I wonder about the effects of temples on my Family Members. I've looked at some of the scripts involved but they are rather complex and it's hard to glean their overall effect (no wonder there are vanilla and mod bugs). Do all factions' temple lines have roughly the same effects here? Eg. the battle temples will improve a FM's fighting traits but will eventually turn him into a bloodthirsty loose cannon, right? What other effects do the other lines have that's not in the listed bonuses?

For KH, the good temples appear to be battle (Poseidonos) and governors (Dios-Olympiou). Forge (Athenas) appears to be significantly second-rate and the others even worse. I also know that left long enough in a city with one temple line a FM will follow that deity and work best in cities with the same. How significant is that factor?

So should I convert all to one or two, battle or governors?

It's not necessary to demolish temples to get rid of the cultural penalty - upgrading them works just as well. Most cultural resistance comes from the governor's residence, not the temple, so I don't think it's worth bothering anyway.

The EB trait system is immensely complex; I am afraid that only the team knows how it works. I am pretty sure that temples have different effects depending on the faction and the primary personality traits of your characters. The one thing that doesn't matter is the "culture" of the temple. The trait-engine only looks at the building-line, so it can't discern between your temples of Zeus and those you conquered from other factions.

Most traits have small effects anyway: the idea is to create realistic "personalities", rather than characters dominated by a single trait. I would like to know what the "worshipper of" trait does, though. The description implies that there is a positive effect of being near the correct temple, but I am wondering if it's just a flag for other traits - to prevent the character from acquiring traits of other temple-lines.

Personally, I simply let role-playing decide the choice of temple. It's nearly impossible to predict the effect a temple will have on your characters; but it is likely to be small, and it will rarely be uniformly good or bad. The building bonuses are important, but won't win you the game. So role-playing the choice is more satisfying.

Thanks for the quick reply, Ludens!

Insomuch as most of these questions are hard to answer--and as you've said won't win you the game--is the trade bonus significant? Besides any other effect (again, very uncertain), for KH the trade bonus increase between the battle (Poseidonos) and the governors (Dios, AKA Zeus) temple line, but that's for the tier 5 temple. Law does help and comes earlier with the governors temple line (complete at tier 3), so only the trade bonus increase or another effect would give similar or greater value to the battle temple line.

regarding the temples that give you tax bonus. I'm not sure if they really work or not but I've usually found that my economy increases overall quite significantly when I build them across my entire empire.

As for the trade temples, I haven't noticed a difference :(

In my recollection, the trade bonuses are fairly small: it takes while before a temple earns its construction-cost back. However, it's better than nothing, so if there are no problems with happiness/corruption it can be a good choice.

I'd like to add that temples have effects on aquiring retinue aswell. The forge-temples is the only one that seems to provide mining retinue, such as inventor and mining engineer, while the temples of fun gives retinue to spies and assassins.