Heretic

Purpose
Heretics are a type of human who spread faith which is not your own, and preach to a False God. Heretics are one of the main "antagonists" of this game, and their purpose is to try and convert the whole world to the belief of the False God. Heretics commonly go to villages and preach their beliefs to the townsfolk, eventually resulting in the Town's name turning red, and the Town becoming a Heretic Town. Heretic Towns can only be converted back by killing the Heretic Priest, and preforming miracles to try and convert the Town from Red to Blue. This goal can also be achieved by placing a Priest, which can defend the religion of the town against a Heretic who tries to convert it to the False God.

Description
Heretic Priests wear red robes with hoods that cover their entire body except their hands and face, and commonly carry a staff too. Their red clothing commonly has black accents on it to distinguish them from Heretic townsfolk, which just wear red clothes after converting to the religion of the False God. These Heretic Priests have 100 HP, as much as a regular human, and can be spotted near the town center, or travelling between towns to spread their faith. They usually are seen praying to their god, preaching in the city center, or walking between towns.

Effects of Heretics
If a Heretic Priest manages to convert a town, this town becomes a Heretic Town. Heretic towns drain the faith power you have, and can conduct holy wars against your people who have not aligned with the False God, and they either take other towns over by force, or eradicate them entirely. Heretic towns can also create more Heretics too, which can in turn spread the word of their False God with much more efficiency.

Stopping Heretics
Stopping Heretic Priests is easy at first when early in the game. Usually it is easiest to just kill heretics when starting out by crushing them or throwing them off the edge. Later in the game, if you choose to have a large world, killing them is not easy without scaring the populous and lowering your karma. Another option apart from squishing them, throwing them off the world or eating them is putting them in a volcano, which is fast and relatively simple, and then returning faith to your city via miracles, which can be both good or evil, but evil miracles lower your karma. However, one problem with using volcanoes is that they may not be readily available. A third option is to convert a heretic to a priest. You can do this by showering the city they are in with miracles until they convert, and this can either happen in 1-2 miracles or take many more. Having priests in your city is useful because it keeps later heretics from taking the city as fast, or can keep them in a stalemate so they cant convert a city at all. Converting heretics to priests is cheaper than placing a new priest because a totally new priest costs 200 faith, while converting one may only cost 50 faith or so (if 5 miracles are used).

In summary, to stop heretics, there are 4 methods:


 * 1) Squish them/eat them, however this may also result in lower karma.
 * 2) Toss them off the edge, simple but harder to do with a larger world.
 * 3) Throw them in a volcano, effective but they take a while to die and volcanoes may be far.
 * 4) Convert the heretic to a priest, somewhat expensive  and annoying to do but cheaper in the long run.