What sort of attitude did ordinary gods generally have toward mortals?
The answer was simple.
Nothing more than indifference, attention, friendliness, loathing...
Due to the rules established by AO, a portion of a god's power came from the Power of Faith fed back by believers.
Although gods could continue to exist even without believers, it was like a machine lacking energy—their abilities would be cut by more than half, leaving them little more than empty shells.
Therefore.
Believers and the Power of Faith were absolutely resources that gods could not afford to ignore.
And under such circumstances.
By all normal reasoning, gods should have sought every possible way to increase their number of believers, while the foundation of believers came from the most basic thing: population.
Thus, the basic formula was roughly: number of believers ≈ a certain percentage of the total population.
Therefore.
To have many believers.
One first needed a large population!
But what happened when the population grew?
First, food supply became a problem. However, with the aid of gods and magic, it was not much of a problem.
Second, communication and transportation became problems. After all, when people had enough to eat and wear, kingdoms and specific regions would start clamoring for independence if they were too far apart. Yet with the aid of gods and magic, this still was not a major problem.
Third, once there were too many people, they could sometimes become difficult to manage, and many would begin researching things they should not. Take the Netheril Empire. In its early days, it had clearly revered the gods, but after researching certain things, it began casting aside old traditions and grew arrogant and conceited. Frankly speaking, that still was not a major problem either. At the height of the Netheril Empire, what of