How to play Pagan - A Mini Guide

[Pallen]

So Ive seen an increase in frustration because people want to play pagan or muslim and can't. The truth is you do not need mods or cheats in order to play as pagans or muslim, but I have to warn you, it is not easy being pagan in a Christian world. The process of becoming pagan is not as hard either but might require some paitence, and converting your populace to paganism and staying on the throne is the hardest part. Ive decided to write a mini guide on how to play pagan;

1) Pick something to play.
It is much easier playing and staying pagan If you play in eastern europe, where you have more potential pagan allies and less Christian neighbours, although the Russian dukes will provide you a challenge for survival. Now there are different types of pagans;

Romuva - generally found in Eastern Europe. As far as I understand its a somewhat classic Druidic polytheistic (more than one god) religion. I'd pick one of the Russian Dukes for this one. I personally did it with the Duke of Polotsk.
Norse - Found in northeren Sweden and a few parts of Finland. Polytheistic religion, Thor, Odin ect. Again it is easier if you pick a Christian nation close to your pagan friends, although there are not many to choose from.
Tengri - Found in far eastern euro-asia. No idea what its about, and I never really tried turning to this religion considering it is difficult.
Sumoini..... - Finnish paganism.

2) Marry a courtier with the pagan religion into your court - yes they will actully do this. I found it easist to marry a pagan woman into my court, but make sure its an unimportant courtier, otherwise the High Chief (Duke) or who ever you try to take the courtier from, wont allow it.

3) Now that the courtier is in your court, he/she -WILL- educate your heir. Make sure the heir is educated at around age 6 because that is the time where they have a high chance to adopt the guardians religion.

4) Once your heir has been converted, then once your heir takes the throne you become pagan. And yes, it is dev confirmed you can play save games with them.

I have made a savegame with an example and provided screenshots of how I could become pagan. For this purpose I have taken the Russian Duke of Polotsk. He has a son that is 6 years old which is perfect. However he has a few sons who need assassinated. So I saved/reloaded until i managed to kill off the remaining heirs because they are too old to adopt the religion of a guardian.



The Duke has quite a few sons. I believe i murdred two because they were too old to adopt the religion of a guardian. I was lucky to kill the first son at the beginning of the game. So while I wait for money to replenish I need to get a guardian for my soon-to-be pagan heir. First we find a pagan court, in this case I looked at the High Chief of Lithuania and found an unimportant female character which I married into my court to another of my courtiers.






Next step I find the pagan courtier i just married in to my court, to educate my coming heir. She accepts because she is in my court. If she was in another court she would not accept, which is why it is important they are in your court.



Now I start the time again piling up gold for the assasination of my second son while the pagan is educating and converting my other son. At some point i murder him.



This makes my new heir, the pagan son. Give it a few years before he converts though. But at this point save the game because it is not always that they will convert. For me he did not convert in the first try so i reloaded and this time he converted.



Now to speed things even quicker up I got to get my current ruler killed. Sadly we cant do seppuku in this game, but what we can do is to try to assassinate some pagans. Keep assassinating and pray that they get discovered, because if you spam assassinations then they will attempt to asssassinate you likewise. And at some point this will succede like here. Now I die.



Now I am a pagan. My church is pagan.




And to prove to you, you can still play them in a savegame then you can and I got a screenie. The game will remember you started out as a Christian, so you can continue your pagan game.



WARNING:

Playing Pagan is not intended though, and you can be at risk of facing huge Christian hordes. However it serves as a nice challenge, and a pagan Europe could be cool. Hope this guide provided help on how you can become pagan

[Regno]

Interessting!

[KingMaker100]

Awesome, thank you!

[Peuri]

Or simply start a game and save the game before unpausing. Then enter the save game file with Notepad for example, then look for the line player=yes inside the file. Remove it and add it to the character id (you can find out the ID you want to play as within history/characters folder) you want to play as and save the file. Then load up the game again, and you can start as the character you added the player=yes tag to regardles of what religion that person is.

[lastverb]

Better guide I posted somewhere else (you dont need to marry anyone, so you can play from day 1), but requires some searching in text file:

1. Start game.
2. Save and quit.
3. Edit your save:
- find your character
- delete ' player=yes ' line
- find character you want to play and remember his/her number ('NUMBER={' line)
- add ' player=yes ' line
- go to beggining of a file and change ' player=NUMBER ' to whatever your new character number is.
4. Save changes.
5. Start game, load save file, DO NOT click on map (changing character) and press play.
6. Conquer catholic world.

Not easy enough? Can't help You anymore.

[Tanzhang (譚張)]

Pallen, you really should turn this into an AAR...

[metaliturtle]

This opens up a lot of possibilities! Thank you!

[fcmsaab]

I am playing Muslim using the same strategy. It is a lot of fun

[Pallen]

Pallen, you really should turn this into an AAR...

Mabye some day ^^

[Tanzhang (譚張)]

Mabye some day ^^

I wait in hope.

[Raventhefuhrer]

As Sweden I believe that there is a pagan Duke who is related to you, and since you're an elective monarchy you can just ensure that he succeeds you.

Edit: I just checked and I guess he's only your brother in law so you can't play as him... =(

[zezeb]

Tengri - Found in far eastern euro-asia. No idea what its about, and I never really tried turning to this religion considering it is difficult.

Tengri is the mongolian religion that incorporates elements of shamanism, animism, totemism. They worship "the sky god" Tengri.

[MasterofMagic]

Or simply start a game and save the game before unpausing. Then enter the save game file with Notepad for example, then look for the line player=yes inside the file. Remove it and add it to the character id (you can find out the ID you want to play as within history/characters folder) you want to play as and save the file. Then load up the game again, and you can start as the character you added the player=yes tag to regardles of what religion that person is.

BRAVO BRAVO such a much easier way to do it. lol Thread Winner!

[Aubrielle]

Thanks everyone for all the info (and thanks to the OP for taking the time to make a detailed guide for everyone's use). This should be fun!

[Zere]

Weird that Finnish paganism is called "Suomenusko" (Finnish faith), because it's a neopagan movement. Also Finnish dynasty names used in game are modern surnames (17th-18th century)

[BAMman100]

I'm playing a Lithuania game now and I've ended up in several wars with Poland.

[Tanzhang (譚張)]

I think an even easier way to convert is to play a Christian vassal to a non-Christian liege. I just started a game as Issac of the Cumans and within three months of gametime my liege forcibly converted me to Tengriism.

[Taiisatai64]

Pallen, you really should turn this into an AAR...

I'll do it later on in mine

By the way, seeing you murder Gleb and Roman, my two most developed characters, made me cry a bit, Pallen