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What is the right time to abandon your Old Gods pagan religion?

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Hey there,

been playing with Poland for a short while, it seems that finding the right window for converting to Christianity is quite short. Your troops suffer high attrition and huge slavic hordes once you switch, but there's always the impending sword of God falling on your head when the western kingdoms are ready to take you on. As for the moment I think it's better to delay the conversion until around 950, when the kingdom (empire?) is well established and running. Gavelkind doesn't help for sure.

What is your opinion on this?
 
If you have no intention of remaining pagan from the start, then you should probably switch as soon as you need a better succession law than gavelkind, ie, as soon as you have an empire title (because losing at least an entire kingdom on succession is pretty balls, even if the king becomes your vassal).

I'd only bother switching before then if I was the target of a holy war or crusade and didn't rate my chances of winning.
 
Either as soon as possible or never and aim for reforming the faith instead. If Crusades are what you're worried about, the realms that go on Crusades tend to attack piecemeal, so with money for mercs and your own Holy Order, they're not as hard to beat as they look.
 
Phoenix VII said:
Either as soon as possible or never and aim for reforming the faith instead. If Crusades are what you're worried about, the realms that go on Crusades tend to attack piecemeal, so with money for mercs and your own Holy Order, they're not as hard to beat as they look.
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He's pretty much got it right. The bonuses of reformation/conversion far outweigh any local pagan horde threat.
 
Just make sure before converting that your original religion will not be hugely succesful in this particular game.

I converted to Catholicism very early as Nantes->Brittany once (during Haesteinn's lifetime), and then within the next two generations Scandinavia proceeded to become unified and reform the faith, and Norses conquered all England, and the Slavics made advances against East Germany, and the Umayyads crushed Asturias, and the Abbasids crushed the ERE, and France became Fraticelli.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop praising Odin.
 
CyaN said:
Just make sure before converting that your original religion will not be hugely succesful in this particular game.

I converted to Catholicism very early as Nantes->Brittany once (during Haesteinn's lifetime), and then within the next two generations Scandinavia proceeded to become unified and reform the faith, and Norses conquered all England, and the Slavics made advances against East Germany, and the Umayyads crushed Asturias, and the Abbasids crushed the ERE, and France became Fraticelli.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop praising Odin.
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That kind of seems like just bad luck, though. You can't predict exactly how well any particular religion will do at the start of the game. Catholicism is usually pretty powerful.
 
saint242 said:
That kind of seems like just bad luck, though. You can't predict exactly how well any particular religion will do at the start of the game. Catholicism is usually pretty powerful.
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Well, Slavic is perhaps in worst place all things considered, already bordering large catholic realms to begin with and three of the holy sites being in somewhat difficult places at the start plus moral authority usually tanking as rulers seem eager to convert.

Plus when crusades start and holy orders become available, you will be looking at crusaders throwing tens of thousands of people at your way. Though as far as I know, defensive pagans retain their defense bonus even after reforming so this gives them an opportunity to keep the nailed god away. Plus you can always be gamey and in event of crusade, sail your retinues to Rome and blitz it down as it should enable white peace in most cases
 
Phoenix VII said:
Either as soon as possible or never and aim for reforming the faith instead. If Crusades are what you're worried about, the realms that go on Crusades tend to attack piecemeal, so with money for mercs and your own Holy Order, they're not as hard to beat as they look.
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This pretty much.

saint242 said:
That kind of seems like just bad luck, though. You can't predict exactly how well any particular religion will do at the start of the game. Catholicism is usually pretty powerful.
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Pagans actually tend to do well in any game I play, even when not playing as a Pagan. I rarely see the lands of the Old Gods get too roflstomped by Christendom...though they do occasionally come crashing down due to Muslims (usually the Seljucs)

As for Gavelkind, its good for tiny realms and playthrus where you don't plan on building a big sprawling Empire. It encourages one to focus on the internal and not try to go on conquering spree's.
 
JosunUrashima said:
This pretty much.



Pagans actually tend to do well in any game I play, even when not playing as a Pagan. I rarely see the lands of the Old Gods get too roflstomped by Christendom...though they do occasionally come crashing down due to Muslims (usually the Seljucs)

As for Gavelkind, its good for tiny realms and playthrus where you don't plan on building a big sprawling Empire. It encourages one to focus on the internal and not try to go on conquering spree's.
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Pagans rarely get conquered from what I see. They just convert at some stage, even if it makes little sense for them to do so. For example, I once saw Cumania which consisted Cumania and majority of Taurica/Wallachia/Hungary. Yet ruler turned Catholic, rather than just waiting for moral authority or piety to creep up for reform.

Suomenusko are by far the most resistant in my opinion, probably because relatively large area they hold, multiple realms helping each other and being in most remote arse-end of the map :D
 
I find the most irritating thing about converting from Romuva, Suomensko, or Slavic paganism is the fact that you get big rebellions that get that massive pagan defensive bonus inside your lands and if anyone of your former religion tries to invade you, then they get that defensive bonus inside your lands. It's made me completely quit and scrap a game before.
 
SovereignGrave said:
I find the most irritating thing about converting from Romuva, Suomensko, or Slavic paganism is the fact that you get big rebellions that get that massive pagan defensive bonus inside your lands and if anyone of your former religion tries to invade you, then they get that defensive bonus inside your lands. It's made me completely quit and scrap a game before.
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That's why after reforming you go through your realm and hunt down EVERYONE who is of the old version of the faith and force them to convert. As far as I can tell, all the rebellions in this game involve a character in your realm deciding to up and revolt.
 
JosunUrashima said:
That's why after reforming you go through your realm and hunt down EVERYONE who is of the old version of the faith and force them to convert. As far as I can tell, all the rebellions in this game involve a character in your realm deciding to up and revolt.
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No they don't, I mean the random peasant and heretic revolts. I'm pretty sure they just spawn a random character.
 
lemonade said:
Hey there,

been playing with Poland for a short while, it seems that finding the right window for converting to Christianity is quite short. Your troops suffer high attrition and huge slavic hordes once you switch, but there's always the impending sword of God falling on your head when the western kingdoms are ready to take you on. As for the moment I think it's better to delay the conversion until around 950, when the kingdom (empire?) is well established and running. Gavelkind doesn't help for sure.

What is your opinion on this?
Click to expand...

When the holy orders are created.
Free troops to stomp the heathens that don't like the new direction the kingdom is heading. :D
 
The Pagans I usually see getting taken out are usually Norse in the British isles, usually by the scots and Irish and any pagan near the HRE or east francia and ERE that don't convert when attacked.
 
lemonade said:
Hey there,

been playing with Poland for a short while, it seems that finding the right window for converting to Christianity is quite short. Your troops suffer high attrition and huge slavic hordes once you switch, but there's always the impending sword of God falling on your head when the western kingdoms are ready to take you on. As for the moment I think it's better to delay the conversion until around 950, when the kingdom (empire?) is well established and running. Gavelkind doesn't help for sure.

What is your opinion on this?
Click to expand...

As a Polish ruler you have the massive advantage of Hussars with +60% defence, so my advice would be to convert once you've formed Poland and then try and eat your neighbours (using your Hussars to crush even defensive pagans in battle); once you beat them the first few times it gets progressively easier, and eventually the greater stability of your realm relative to all your neighbours allows full-scale ROFLstomping to begin. The most important thing is to convert before a succession, because otherwise you'll lose almost all of your demesne to gavelkind and become weak whichever path you choose.
 
Master of Obliv said:
But what of the Gods of your fathers?
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You can spice it up by court-chaplain-converting to a Catholic heresy. :p

In that game I mentioned above, the year is 918 and Cathar Poland controls practically everything between the Elbe and Livonia. I think I'm eventually going to take Braunschweig to see how the Catholics react.

OP: You could try reforming Slavic; even the Catholics might think twice about attacking you if you've got a pet 9,000-man Holy Order.
 
If non-Byzantine Orthodoxy was made more interesting I would convert in a heartbeat.
 
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