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Jia Xu

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Feb 27, 2010
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How would you guys like conversion to be handled in Crusader Kings II? Should lords have the option to convert to other religions? Should lords be able to force convert their enemies in a peace deal? What about captured fiefs which belong to a different religion? What should be the process in converting non-believers to your lord's faith?

I'd like to be able to have some ahistorical fun with this. Maybe play as the Byzantines and accept the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and play a Catholic Byzantium. It might also be nice to be able to convert some of the more fickle Muslim Emirs to Christianity (but there should be a zealous trait which makes it so some lords will never convert and would rather die for their faith instead). Converting the people of fiefs should be handled differently than in EU3 if possible. I was never very fond of the EU3 conversion system where you just planted a missionary and waited for the conversion event to randomly fire. It's been a while but I think the original CK had fiefs changing religion solely based on a conversion event randomly firing as well but without even the missionary mechanic to give you some influence. I'm not sure what the practical alternative to random event based conversion would be though. Maybe there could be different methods of converting fiefs like force converting a province through coercion which would convert provinces faster but with a nasty super penalty to growth and income until conversion is complete? Maybe you could get a really charismatic Bishop who could speed up conversion and peacefully at that. I don't know. I'd just like a system that gets the player more involved than simply pushing a button and waiting for an event to fire, you know?
 
I think it should be allowed, but it should be extremely troublesome for the King (and Kingdom) who is doing the converting to another religion. Possible religious civil wars, zealous followers of the old religion trying to assassinate the King, etc.
 
Conversion would be fun, and I would like to see an event chain for Orthodox Rulers to gradually begin "reconciliation" with the Western Church, but like it was said, converting from your religion to another should be one very difficult process.
 
Well you could make it work sort of like in CK1, where power to certain power groups affect a MTTH of a conversion event. But you could also have a provincial decision to force-convert the province. This would probably be a pretty extreme case that courses much unrest in that and nearby provinces.

I do believe that a better system for religious and cultural conversions is needed, and the effects of difference in culture and religion should be greater than in CK1
 
It'd be cool if instead of your character's religion being defined by the father's religion it was set by a combination of factors like the religion of the courtiers your character has spent time with. Maybe if your character gets a Muslim pal he could become a Muslim. Obviously if you've been raised by monks, religious conversion should be difficult or impossible.
I liked the original Crusader Kings system regarding the conversion of provinces though.
 
Maybe if your character gets a Muslim pal he could become a Muslim.

Interesting, being a 'friend' of someone of another religion may prove disasterous. I could see interesting events coming from this. It would really make you juggle friendships around, keeping away from potentially good people, just for the sake keeping with people of the same religion as your character. Stray from that path and your character may be influenced religiously.
 
Just as long as the whole "The Pope thinks you wife is evil because she is Orthodox" event should have a choice around the lines of, "Well, I think you are evil; screw off."

With that said, and slightly off topic, playing as an Orthodox ruler is so much less annoying than playing as a Catholic one.
 
I think changing the religion of a country should be possible.
I am not sure, but I think it was Bosnia who offered to convert to catholic in exchange of a king's crown supplied by the pope. Also similar with lithuania.
And there is Eastern Rome, which offered to convert for help against the ottomans.


However, a religious conversion of the ruler/royal family/royal court shouldn't mean that the populace also converts willingly and swiftly.


edit:
also it would be good that border regions would have a bit of influence from abroad. Like in the northeastern part of Hungary, there was always an orthodox minority because of Galicia.
 
I think a ruler should be able to convert, but it shouldn't be like EU3 where one day your ruler says, "I feel like converting to an Orthodox today. Now all my court and advisors shall magically accept this change with no repurcusions(boo for bad spelling)."

There needs to be an event chain that allows this to happen. So rather than getting one event that is either, Lose 1000 gold, lose 500 gold 30% Heretic 5% Excommunicated, 75% Excommunicated, you get an event, Lose 1000 gold, gain 200 piety, Papal relations +50, Lose 500 gold, gain 100 piety, Papal relation +25, Lose 200 piety, -100 papal relations.

Option three reduces papal relations which triggers the MTTH for another event which allows for atonement or even further breakdowns. Then another event, a last chance for reconciliation, go heretic + Excom, change religion + crusade target. Each side has its ups and downs. Reconcilation will cost you but will regain some stability, going heretic and Excom will cause major upheaval, but leaves the door open for rentry to Catholicism, and relation hits but less likely to be a crusade target and changing religion altogether just pisses off the Pope and your land becomes potential crusade target, upside is you may gain some friends in your new religion.

As for province change, I think border provinces need to be factored in this time. I'm not sure how much of a role missionaries played in this time frame, so somebody else needs to comment on that. Missionaries vs Sword Conversion/inquisitons.

Also zealots and high piety rulers should not be allowed to convert under any circumstances. Event triggers would prevent it and force conversion would be disallowed (if an option).

OK so I rambled a lot and changed my mind multiple times in this post so if its inconherent I apologize.
 
In regards to CK1 acceleration of conversion, I found that a province being looted helped a province convert faster, or at least I modded it to be so. Thus I had a standing army looting whatever province I intended to force conversion on, which I personally felt represented attempts at conversion well enough. I figure CK2 will be pretty similarly moddable in this regards, though I'd love to see options of people converting.
I'd also like to see how heretics are treated, too, as I've tried to create a heretic country a few times in CK1 with moderate success.
 
It would be nice if, instead of simply having a "Heretic" trait, there was a larger number of religions:
Christian
-Catholic
-Orthodox
-Monophysite (Oriental Orthodox)
-Gnostic (Cathars, Bogumils)
-Lollard/Hussite
Muslim
-Sunni
-Shiite
-Ibadi
Polytheist
-Asatru (Nordic)
-Tengriist
-Romuva (Baltic)
Miscellaneous
-Mahayana Buddhist
-Jewish
-Zorastrian
This would make heresies more realistic, as you'd have a larger number of potential conversions.
 
It would be nice if, instead of simply having a "Heretic" trait, there was a larger number of religions:
Christian
-Catholic
-Orthodox
-Monophysite (Oriental Orthodox)
-Gnostic (Cathars, Bogumils)
-Lollard/Hussite
Muslim
-Sunni
-Shiite
-Ibadi
Polytheist
-Asatru (Nordic)
-Tengriist
-Romuva (Baltic)
Miscellaneous
-Mahayana Buddhist
-Jewish
-Zorastrian
This would make heresies more realistic, as you'd have a larger number of potential conversions.

Don't forget Samaritans, who were indeed surprisingly sizable in Middle Eastern cities.

Monophysite is needed as you say, it was one of the gravest omissions of CK1, as Armenian, Egyptian, Ethiopian and Syrian Christianities are separate from the imperial tradition of Orthodox/Catholic Christianity as well as one of the most widespread religions of the map [there are scholars who believe the majority of the Egyptian population was Monophysite Christian even in the 1200s!].
Nestorianism, even more distinct, is popular further east in the Persian and Persian-influenced lands (more popular than Zoroastrianism)
Catholicism and Orthodox are both imperial Christianities separated by hierarchy politics. Georgian Orthodox is the same, and has the same claim to being a separate imperial Christianity as Catholicism.

A lot of distinctions are about hierarchy and rite, rather than theology. My personal opinion is that it would be best to have Imperial, Monophysite and Nestorian, and break them down further only through separate mechanics on liturgy and hierarchy. This would make the game more realistic, accurate and flexible, as well as less deterministic ...

Definitely do not support separate paganisms. Paganisms should be ethnic ... i.e. 'Asartu' is covered by being Norse and pagan, 'Romuva' by being Lithuanian and pagan, and so on.

I think if ou are gonna have Ibadi, you open the gates to lots of Arabian microsects, as well as possibly the break up of Shi'ism (which is essentially a disparate collection of non-Sunni elitist and regionalist cults unified by not being Sunni).
 
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Instead of having a province just have one religion, I'd rather like to see a system where people gradually convert. So each province can have a pie chart of sorts showing religion. Various modifiers (and missionaries?), crusades to convert heathens etc can add one time bonuses and over time modifiers.

With that in mind, the same could be done for cultures. Gradual assimilation/conversion ftw.
 
Instead of having a province just have one religion, I'd rather like to see a system where people gradually convert. So each province can have a pie chart of sorts showing religion. Various modifiers (and missionaries?), crusades to convert heathens etc can add one time bonuses and over time modifiers.

With that in mind, the same could be done for cultures. Gradual assimilation/conversion ftw.

I think that only will be needed if the religion/culture of a province has an effect on things in a province, like f.e. its income. Since if religion/culture has no such effect, having it gradually convert will be a useless calculation.
 
It would be nice if, instead of simply having a "Heretic" trait, there was a larger number of religions:
Christian
-Catholic
-Orthodox
-Monophysite (Oriental Orthodox)
-Gnostic (Cathars, Bogumils)
-Lollard/Hussite

Hussites are after the time and lollards arent really that important.
But the Cathars are incredibly important. So they need to be included in any list, and definetly not amalgamated into any others.

And the heresies each need individual attention, to make them all just not he same but with different names, but how they spread and effect on Europe and the Unity of Europe should be quite different from another and quite disastrous to everyone else.

What theyre shouldn't be is the possibility of what if the albergesians won, or an early reformation. As it simply wasnt possible, any inclusion of that would be an awkwardly fitted anarchism and would detract from the whole. The game is crusader kings, not catharite nobles. And dealing with the Heresy, particually the Albergesians, should be a really important part of the game.
As big as the reformation in EU3 or probably bigger. For a century and a half it was the only topic on every court table and concern over it drove policy.
And the lack of it was one of the greatest faults of CK the first. It shook europe to the core in a way which is now almost impossible to understand.

And i hope there will be more options than the sword. Having the Dominicians represented would be brilliant! and getting the choice between backing them or just sending the troops in would be great. Maybe even attempting to hold a compromise with the Catharites if in that game they prove too strong or something.

But i dont see any room for playing heretics. So many of the games mechanics are dependant on European Unity. All diplomacy and the laws and even the marriage mechanics all rely on being part of that. And Hereics arent. The Eastern Orthodox were, but the heretics, the Albergesians were not, and could never be.

Although i suspect paradox will pretend they didnt exist as in the last game. As its the easiest liberal position to take. but the game is called crusader kings, and it was the most important crusade and the one with the greatest consequences thoughout europe. So really it must it.
 
I think that only will be needed if the religion/culture of a province has an effect on things in a province, like f.e. its income. Since if religion/culture has no such effect, having it gradually convert will be a useless calculation.

Well religion certainly had an effect in CK, you had all kinds of province events popping up. There should be a more gradual process rather than a sudden 100% conversion. Same with culture, IMO. I doubt such a calculation would have too much of an impact, since most provinces by default would have 100% of a single religion/culture. Basically, I don't like the random element, it feels artificial.
 
I like the idea of being to able to convert provinces, and even possibly force-convert in a peace deal (although it should take a lot of warscore to do so), but I think one of the things that you would need to make something like this work is a "religious strength" score for each province measuring how committed and dedicated the people (and rulers?) are to their current faith.

Say it is a 1-10 score, with 10 being totally fanatical, and 1 being pretty much "blah". Any force conversion, or even voluntary, would start the new faith at a 1 and then work its way back up to the province's "natural" strength. For gameplay reasons I could see the distribution of scores pretty much as a basic bell curve, although if you wanted to get tricky and complicated you could also factor in the ruler's piety, relations with the Pope (for Catholics), etc...
 
I like the idea of being to able to convert provinces, and even possibly force-convert in a peace deal (although it should take a lot of warscore to do so), but I think one of the things that you would need to make something like this work is a "religious strength" score for each province measuring how committed and dedicated the people (and rulers?) are to their current faith.

Say it is a 1-10 score, with 10 being totally fanatical, and 1 being pretty much "blah". Any force conversion, or even voluntary, would start the new faith at a 1 and then work its way back up to the province's "natural" strength. For gameplay reasons I could see the distribution of scores pretty much as a basic bell curve, although if you wanted to get tricky and complicated you could also factor in the ruler's piety, relations with the Pope (for Catholics), etc...

I am for anything that removes the utter randomness of CK. In EU2 you at least knew that the missionaries would succeed at one point, but most importantly; by sending a missionary to a province you had an active say in what provinces you wanted to convert. In CK, you just conquered a lot of pagan lands and after that you hoped for the best.

If a gradual conversion isn't realistic, then as you say, give the player a choice. Send in your marshal and have him force convert those bastards, torch their huts etc. Or perhaps a more subtle, soft approach, where you send in a few priest that point out that Archagel Gabriel ain't that different from Thor, and hey, Balder.. he is sort of like Jesus! In fact, they are pretty much the same!
 
I think changing the religion of a country should be possible.
I am not sure, but I think it was Bosnia who offered to convert to catholic in exchange of a king's crown supplied by the pope. Also similar with lithuania.
And there is Eastern Rome, which offered to convert for help against the ottomans.


However, a religious conversion of the ruler/royal family/royal court shouldn't mean that the populace also converts willingly and swiftly.


edit:
also it would be good that border regions would have a bit of influence from abroad. Like in the northeastern part of Hungary, there was always an orthodox minority because of Galicia.

Not Bosnia.It was catholic since the croats settled there in the 6-7 century.