by Horologiom
As some of you discussed the cult tracks and Paulo asked Jens about it,I will give some background information about the cult tracks.
In an early version of the game players got oracle cards for building temples. This was fun, but pure luck, so I changed the way they were affecting the game: You needed to meet certain conditions (alchimistic knowledge of earth, water, fire, air), before you could activate an oracle card. This was quite complicated, so I split the oracle cards into two piles, one with cards with permanent effects, the other with cards with a one time reward. Only the later were still called oracle cards, but they were no longer available through building temples, they became an every round event, revealed at the beginning of a round and affecting those players, who met the conditions. The other cards with the permanent effects became artefacts. You could buy artefacts, if you met the conditions, so first af all you had to build temples, then get priests to upgrade your alchemistic knowledge, then you bought artefacts... still too complicated.
The artefacts finally became the favor tiles, so you are directly rewarded with a permanent improvement for building a temple. The oracle cards were integrated into the round scoring tiles, so there is the possibility for a one time reward each round. Still, there were no cult tracks, but there were the orders of the elements, where you could place priests to improve your knowledge of the elements. This was combined with the knowledge you gained when getting a favor tile. As it was easier to keep track of the elements, I implemented the cult tracks. At this part of the designing process there already were some factions, who were specialised on the rewards via cultbonus. And in the testplays it became obvious, that the cult tracks offered another tough decision: one time reward or long time advancement when using priests.
So the cult tracks evolved out of the whole aspect of religious buildings and their possible impact on the game. Yes, the cult tracks add complexity, it is their purpose to offer another way to get ressources and VP's so you have to keep multiple tasks balanced.