Reformed vs Protestantism?

[Serzis]

Limitless money might be a bit of an exaggeration, nik, but I agree that conversions, even in a big colonial empire, shouldn't be much of a problem. In the case of german, scandivanvian or brittish culture nations, the conversion process tends to be quick with lots of natural spread. Iberian and Italian tends to be a little more tricky. Still, Colonial rebels -- particularists, heretics or peasants -- are often small and easy t put down. One should, of course, have forts in all but the most recent colonies to reach city size. The cost of a fort is only the cost of 2.2 colonist in most cases.

Added:
In any case, I believe that the choice between catholic/protestant/reformed has to do with the individual benefits, rather on how to deal with the reformation itself. Five or even ten years of slight inconvenience is a almost nothing on a 400 year time-frame.

[stnikolauswagne]

"Limitless" might indeed be an exaggeration, but only slightly so. Incomes over 4000 are not all that unrealistic by the time the refomration hits:
http://www.europa3.ru/cgi-bin/mpstat...12-3&choicet=3
Great Britain in this game is a good example for what you can achieve. I did not overly colonize (which is not lucrative unless you are portugal i guess) and converted right when the reformation hit. I still need only around 4 months to recover stab (while in religious turbulence with lots of wrong religion provinces) and my Income barely took a hit, i still gain 30 or so gold a month without increasing inflation and while keeping a big army and navy. If I really wanted to I could crank out nearly infinite money 1k or so per year while only having a slight (.3 or so) raise in inflation every year.

[lukew]

Although it is generally accepted that Catholic is better than either of them.

That's not my experience atall. In the mp community, you usually end up with literally all 20 or so players converting and leaving no catholic humans left. I genuinely can't see any reason to stay catholic, other than being too lazy to take the stab hit and convert everything.

[UniversalWolf]

Stay Orthodox, reestablish the Pentarchy, and be rid of that noisome Pope for good!

[apsycobear]

That's not my experience atall. In the mp community, you usually end up with literally all 20 or so players converting and leaving no catholic humans left. I genuinely can't see any reason to stay catholic, other than being too lazy to take the stab hit and convert everything.

The smart thing to do would be one player to remain catholic, he could then gain all curia spots and easily expand with very little care for infamy with his -1.2 infamy per year.

[stnikolauswagne]

The smart thing to do would be one player to remain catholic, he could then gain all curia spots and easily expand with very little care for infamy with his -1.2 infamy per year.

Expand where? Into other player nations that are all 10-30% richer than him and thus pack far more of a punch than he could ever hope for? I guess staying catholic can be beneficial but only in very extreme situations.

[President_Eden]

Limitless money by 1500 is only an exaggeration when discussing manufactory spam. Either conquer your way to sky-high census taxes or trade your way to sky-high trade income. Either way you're good, and there's a denomination for you in either case. If you can't shell out 50 ducats for a fort the instant a colony is self-sustaining, you're either trying to colonize entirely too much at once or you're mismanaging your economy (and I suppose that's two sides of the same coin when the subject is colonization).

ETA: If the Catholic player held the Imperial crown, then he could still feasibly expand just fine. 10-30% more wealth won't help when you're taking on significantly more than that from extra maintenance for breaking force limits. Of course, there's a serious question as to why the other players would allow that.

[Serzis]

The smart thing to do would be one player to remain catholic, he could then gain all curia spots and easily expand with very little care for infamy with his -1.2 infamy per year.

I was once in an MP game like that, Austria remaining as the only human Catholic among 12 or so players, harassing my smaller reformed Prussia. Still, the infamy reduction level mattered little when it was better to split out and PU the remaining German enclaves while the wars with Asia-spanning Russia took longer to finish than infamy to lower. In fact, infamy reduction in MP loses some of it's value when it's better to have 1 well-upgraded province than five ones in which the buildings have been razed -- blobing is over-rated. Meanwhile, he couldn't compete with the majority reformed world. However, that was not a very well-played game for a lot of players, so it lacks representative qualities.

As lukew aluded to, the factors are quite different in MP compared to SP, but perhaps apsycobear can bring new perspectives to slightly formulaic approach in a future game.

[stnikolauswagne]

When discussing forts there is one constraint which does occasionally happen: Magistrates. When you get your free magistrate from the colonial good i tend to instantly build a military building or a workshop, so sometimes i have to force myself to build forts for 3-4 years.

[President_Eden]

Well yeah, definitely, I don't think anyone saves those magistrates for actual fort use. It's more efficient to convert that magistrate into an economically productive building earlier rather than later. You just have to be mindful of your colonies' progress and ensure you have a magistrate to put down when a colony becomes self-sustaining. Not hard, just requires a few months' foresight. In a game where one player has 400 years of control, that's not asking much.

[apsycobear]

Expand where? Into other player nations that are all 10-30% richer than him and thus pack far more of a punch than he could ever hope for? I guess staying catholic can be beneficial but only in very extreme situations.

Expand into wherever the other players haven't already, and unless there are a rather large number of non european players, it is unlikely that all of the world has already been conquered.

I was once in an MP game like that, Austria remaining as the only human Catholic among 12 or so players, harassing my smaller reformed Prussia. Still, the infamy reduction level mattered little when it was better to split out and PU the remaining German enclaves while the wars with Asia-spanning Russia took longer to finish than infamy to lower. In fact, infamy reduction in MP loses some of it's value when it's better to have 1 well-upgraded province than five ones in which the buildings have been razed -- blobing is over-rated. Meanwhile, he couldn't compete with the majority reformed world. However, that was not a very well-played game for a lot of players, so it lacks representative qualities.

As lukew aluded to, the factors are quite different in MP compared to SP, but perhaps apsycobear can bring new perspectives to slightly formulaic approach in a future game.

But what's to keep a different Austria from remaining catholic, using being the only catholic to his advantage to expand like mad, and then once his empire was large enough switching over to protestant for the production benefit? This way he has created a large country very quickly because of the rate he can burn infamy as a catholic, and he has then strengthened his country with the benefit of now being protestant and thus having a bonus to production.

I would very much enjoy to play a multi player game, but I've been a little busy as of late, although I should be able to set some time aside to play one very soon .

[stnikolauswagne]

Expand into wherever the other players haven't already, and unless there are a rather large number of non european players, it is unlikely that all of the world has already been conquered.

Yeah, but the regions that are probably free are: Central Asia (not reachable), Sub Saharan Africa (not proftiable) South East Asia (likewise), so its not worth to fight them at all.

[simon chatfield]

The problem lies in the fact that converting a province increases revolt risk, and having revolts popping up in far away colonies isn't an ideal situation, especially when some of your colonies won't have forts and if they get occupied they will be forced to change religion. Converting an empire you control in europe is no problem, but converting a colonial empire can be a real pain, especially if you're still in the process of colonizing more lands, making it difficult to afford a powerful enough army to handle more than a few revolts.

if you cant defend it, dont bother to conquer it......

[apsycobear]

But you can defend it, no one can reach it without getting past your navy, which as a colonizing nation should be large. In this situation you are basically causing yourself to have revolts, revolts you could avoid if you just didn't switch religions.

[President_Eden]

Revolts which can still effortlessly be crushed. I'm honestly surprised if you're telling me you don't put down Fort 1s in all your provinces ASAP. That seems like a pretty universally good course of action. With a single Fort 1 down you've got a few months at the absolute minimum and (assuming of course that you didn't go full Offensive) likely several more. Unless you just decided to convert on a whim without making any preparations and basically just waited for big revolts to show up before trying to begin to prepare for them, they really are easily manageable.

[glen55]

In my current game (as England), I had a core in Bali-Lombok by 1482 (got lucky and got Border Friction on Brunei), cores in Mutapa by 1505, cores in Aztec by 1510, and cores in Creek by 1520. Those cores allowed me to commence colonizing pretty much wherever I chose by the early 16th century, and I had already conquered over 50 colonial provinces and converted the majority of them before the reformation hit around 1512.

I did this without even rushing to QFTNW as soon as I got Trade 7, but instead just waiting for the 2nd NI. And I don't think you have to be big, burly England to get the colonization ball rolling way way sooner by conquest than by waiting for your east Atlantic islands to core so you can colonize the Caribbean and/or N. America (although if you're not a superpower already, you wouldn't capture so many colonial provinces in which you'd have to respond to revolts, but would just take one port in each area you want your cores to spread from). If you're jump-starting your colonization with a little conquest, having to change religions later can be highly inconvenient, but again maybe less so if you only took a very small number of provinces.

Re the forts discussion: the only way I ever fail to build a level 1 fort immediately once a colony grows up is if I have one of those too-many-popups-so-I-missed-an-important-one moments. Unless you're going to block a coast or something, there's never any reason to have so many colonies at once that they create a financial problem for you. Just enough to make sure you always have somewhere to place your colonies. I'm not anxious to see a cheapo 10 years of nationalism in an overseas province.

[brifbates]

Re the forts discussion: the only way I ever fail to build a level 1 fort immediately once a colony grows up is if I have one of those too-many-popups-so-I-missed-an-important-one moments. Unless you're going to block a coast or something, there's never any reason to have so many colonies at once that they create a financial problem for you. Just enough to make sure you always have somewhere to place your colonies. I'm not anxious to see a cheapo 10 years of nationalism in an overseas province.

Pretty much this. In addition, since you know the colony is about to finish building and liable to have high RR you park your local rebel stompers there until the fort is built. Another thing is just sending another colonist to "under construction" colonies after you change religion and voila, crisis averted because they are now right religion. Handling the reformation era in the current version is pretty much a joke as long as you go in with a plan to either change or stay catholic. If you don't have proper planning then you have no one to blame if things don't work out so well.

[Ramidel]

Catholicism

Benefits of Catholicism:

*Diplomats. If you're really blobbing into space, you need every diplomat you can get your hands on.
*Infamy reduction from the Curia. -.1 Infamy per year per cardinal, and big honkin' Catholics get a lot of cardinals, especially after they vassalize the Papacy.
*Colonists. Catholicism is exceptional for planting the flag on heathen soil.
*Excommunication and Crusade. Expand in Europe on the cheap (so long as your targets are disobedient towards the Pope) and get bonuses for fighting against the heathen.
*Guild of St. Luke. Magistrate bonus ahoy.
*Iberia and Italy can more or less skip the Reformation's ills entirely if they want.

Drawbacks of Catholicism:
*Intolerance. Conversion is a very high priority for heretical provinces.
*Narrowmindedness. Papal Influence is affected by your Narrowminded/Innovative slider, and the Catholic decisions that give missionaries require narrowmindedness.
*Must keep the Pope friendly or risk excommunication. Excommunication is bad. (This is easy to do, of course.)
*No Missionary bonus for Rome, and the Counter-Reformation missionary bonus is smaller than the bonus for being a Protestant and just taking the City.

Who should stay Catholic:
*Someone with a balanced approach to Europe, colonization, and crusade (holy wars in Asia and North Africa). Catholicism has a little something for everyone, and a balanced approach allows you to make use of all of Catholicism's strengths.
*Iberian or Italian colonization-focused powers (Portugal and Castille, or a cleverly-used Venice, Genoa or similar power). These will often be somewhat narrowminded anyway, the Iberians get the Societas Jesu (every little bit helps when converting the natives), and being Iberian or Italian keeps them safe from having to put up with the Reformation. Even more true for Castille, since they're probably taking a balanced approach, both colonizing and crusading (and probably meddling in Italy to boot, if not actually trying to make Spain the Emperor).
*A case could be made for a crusade-focused Italy or Italian state (such as Naples) remaining Catholic and using the Pope (an OPM vassal in Romagna, of course) to declare crusades and excommunicate European rivals, while remaining impervious to Protestant meddling. (Note that I do prefer Protestantism for Italy.)
*The Pope. Duh.

Protestantism

Benefits of Protestantism:
*Tax. Higher census taxes, higher tax income.
*Production. This can and will be a huge source of income for conquerors, especially outside Europe.
*More missionaries(!?). At least, if you control Rome, or if you're going Innovative all the way and still take the decisions.
*Innovative/Narrowminded. Protestants can go full innovative without having to care about the Curia, and their missionary decisions do not depend on being narrowminded.
*Tolerance. It's less vital for you to convert Catholic provinces right away if you have a lot of stuff to do.
*Don't need to play nice with the Pope.

Drawbacks of Protestantism:
*Stability cost. 30 a province does add up, even though you should be making enough to make up for it.
*Colonists are cut by half, meaning that your colonial projects can expect slowness.
*You don't get the Curia's benefits.
*You do eventually need to convert your provinces, which can be a pain if you have a lot of them when the Reformation fires.

Who should go Protestant
*When you're looking at forming the HRE. You can use the Reformation to generate IA, and you don't want to be doing too much conquering internally to the Empire anyway. (Of course, you will have to vassalize and force a lot of religion, but that shouldn't be a problem, right?)
*When you're forming Germany. Census tax helps, as does a devil-may-care attitude towards diplomacy, and German provinces like the Reformation a lot. Your starting provinces will probably convert on autopilot.
*Crusader powers, who have little use for colonists anyway but do have a lot of use for production income, who will usually pop all the missionary bonuses as a matter of course, and who have a lot of coastal CoTs on the way for when they do need to colonize.
*Russia. This one's a bit gamey, but Russia gets all the colonists it'll ever need from the steppes anyway, and they're the ultimate in crusading power when it comes to production income.
*Italy. If you don't want to leave the Pope alive in Romagna as a puppet, you don't need him anyway, especially if you've already formed Italy before the Reformation hit and you're on your way to Asia. You will have Rome, and you're almost certain to have Mecca and Jerusalem too.

Reformed

Benefits of Reformed
*Trade. This is the big one. Reformed nations get a big bonus to their trade efficiency; it's like another National Trade Policy jacking up their income and compete chance.
*Colonists. They colonize fast and well.
*More missionaries(!?). At least, if you control Rome, or if you're going Innovative all the way and take the decisions. (Note that fewer Reformed powers will be messing with the Holy Cities, so this is less beneficial to them.)
*Innovative/Narrowminded. Protestants can go full innovative without having to care about the Curia, and their missionary decisions do not depend on being narrowminded.
*Tolerance. It's less vital for you to convert Catholic provinces right away if you have a lot of stuff to do.
*Don't need to play nice with the Pope.

Drawbacks of Reformed
*Taxes. -10% to tax income and census tax. Best be making this up with trade.
*Stability cost. 30 a province does add up, even though you should be making enough to make up for it.
*You don't get the Curia's benefits.
*You do eventually need to convert your provinces, which can be a pain if you have a lot of them when the Reformation fires. Also, you may have some Protestant provinces already, complete with Religious Zeal.
*Slightly weaker missionaries take longer to convert provinces.

Who should go Reformed
*Colonizing free-traders. The optimal strategy with Reformed is to cover the Americas, South Africa and Indonesia with your colonies, and cover every center of trade in the world with your merchants. If you're conquering heavily in Europe, or Asia after 1650, then another religion might be better; you need to keep your infamy low to free-trade across the world.
*Merchant Republics. If you want to stay as a Merchant Republic for the whole game, Reformed is a good choice; I've never done this so I can't really comment.

[afb]

As far as I read the event files, being Iberian or Latin only prevents spread of protestantism if your nation is catholic. So once you switch to protestantism/reformed, it shouldn't make a difference. From events 2002/2012:

		modifier = {
			factor = 6.0
			owner = { 
				religion = catholic
			}
			OR = {
				culture_group = latin
				culture_group = iberian
			}
		}

[Ramidel]

I'm aware. That's why I said "can" more or less skip the Reformation.

Portugal, Spain and Italy only have to deal with the Reformation if they choose to. I recommend that most united Italies go Protestant, Spain should stay Catholic unless they're doing something unusual, and Portugal can do Catholic or Reformed.