CK2 Dev Diary #89 - Mass Conversion, or how I learned to stop my Pagan ways and love God

[rageair]

Greetings!

Note that this is the last DevDiary before vacations start. Until they are over we will not post any diaries, or post them very sporadically. We will resume the normal schedule on the 10th of August.

Today we’d like to talk about Mass Conversion, the flip side of what we talked about in the last DD (Dynamic Pagan Reformation). While Reforming a Pagan faith is a very epic feat, it’s also a fairly hard one to pull off in many cases. Historically, pagan rulers often turned to their neighbours religions in order to solidify their rule - and now so can you!

It used to be quite a suicidal affair to convert to a non-Pagan religion as a Pagan ruler, your provinces would stay pagan and your vassals would often be upset with you and immediately start a faction to install a pagan claimant. With Holy Fury it’s much more reliable, and carries great benefits to both you and your people. Depending on your strength as a leader, and the respect you have from your subjects, you can now convince your realm to join you in a Mass Conversion. A Mass Conversion will see you, your subjects and your lands adopt a new religion - except for particularly rebellious subjects, of course. Note that only Tribal Pagans will have access to this mechanic.

To Mass Convert your realm you first need to find a so called ‘Sponsor’. You can either look for a sponsor manually, by looking at the interactions menu with landed independent characters, or you can access a list of anyone who would be willing to go through the trouble by clicking a new button in the religious interface:

As said before, this list contains a list of everyone who will accept to convert your realm, and in the bottom right corner you can see that the AI reasoning is now exposed! The acceptance will not just be a bunch of pluses and minuses, instead you’ll be able to see exactly how they reason. If you, for example, want Byzantium to be your sponsor, you can enter the character sheet of the Basileus and check the interaction tooltip to see his reasoning if he says no, which will give you actual hints on what you could do to improve the chances of him accepting.

After you’ve found a sponsor that accepted your offer, the Mass Conversion events will begin!

Note that the event image is a placeholder.

If you’re a tribe with low organization, you will actually gain a level of organization upon performing a Mass Conversion, in addition to you and your land switching to the new religion. The downside to doing one when you have low organization is, as mentioned earlier, that fewer subjects are likely to go along with it.

It doesn’t end here though, you and your sponsor will continue to keep in touch - and your sponsor will keep on helping your realm by providing you with money, building churches in your realm and many other things. Examples:

In addition, the priest that your sponsor will send you will also help you out. He will attempt to modernize your realm and ensure that you act in accordance to your new faith. For example:

So, as you can clearly see, this system stands in stark contrast to the Dynamic Reformation we talked about in a previous Dev Diary - by reforming you gain absolute control of your future, but it’s a difficult path to walk that also require you to conquer vast territories. A Mass Conversion, on the other hand, is a fairly easy thing to accomplish that also comes with temporal benefits - but you’ll have to submit to a faith that might not represent you or the people you rule...

 

[Silfae]

Sounds good.

- Have there been any changes to the regular Protelytize logic, particularly the acceptance of the missionaries early on, compared to what we currently have?

- Under what circumstances will the AI ask for a Mass Conversion?

- With the AI reasoning being exposed, is there any chance that we might get some capability to modify it, e.g. the ability to script an opinion modifier with a "ARRANGE_MARRIAGE_ACCEPTANCE_BONUS = 10" component?

Edit:

- Is there a chance for the Mass Conversion target (or their vassals) to slightly misinterpret the new faith and go heretic instead (or pick up a different Eastern religion, if the sponsor follows one of those)?

There have been some behavioral tweakings in AI logic. As for regular proselytization, if you receive a visit from a missionary while also fulfilling the conditions for a Mass Conversion and accept the missionary's request, the event chain will now result in a Mass Conversion, rather than just the ruler's and his family's conversion.

The AI acceptance score is being unlocked only for certain choices, not all diplomatic actions. Those places where it is exposed (such as Mass Conversion) can be modded and tweaked, yes.

I notice that Mass Conversion doesn't seem to specify that the conversion has to be to Catholicism.

So can Pagans mass convert to all 'standardized' faiths like Islam, Hinduism, and other Reformed Pagan faiths?

Yes, all reformed faiths can be the sponsor of a non-reformed tribal realm. Naturally, some faiths are more successful and likely to attempt a conversion than others.

 

[Silfae]

1. Can I as Charlemagne or someone request to sponsor a pagan nations mass conversion?
2. Can the conversion process go awry, for example if the pagan ruler or the sponsor die? How would the process change?
3. Is the succession law change event something that pops up every time or is it random?
4. If my pagan liege requests the conversion, upon converting do I also gain access to the succession law change event?
5. Is it possible to seal the conversion by marriage?
6. Do you get canonised for sponsoring a mass conversion? Do you get canonised for requesting and successfully converting a country?
7. Can any rank ruler request it? Is there a realm size requirement?
8. Does the pagan faith need to be below a certain MA for you to request it?
9. Thanks

Rulers of organized religions can proselytize the same as they always did; as said before, the event chain can now lead into a Mass Conversion if the proper conditions are met.
The death of a sponsor or of a Chieftain can indeed stop a Mass Conversion from coming to fruition. Events following a Mass Conversion will mainly involve the sponsor and the formely Pagan ruler, there are several of them, which might happen at any given time after the conversion itself.
MA is influenced by a Mass Conversion, and can influence the AI behavior when considering a Mass Conversion, but it is not a hard requirement.

Is there a bad side like a religious unrest modifier for the incredibly convenient immediate conversion of your demesne?

There is something... Especially if a ruler rushes through before reaching max Tribal Authority.

 

[Silfae]

Do I read it incorrectly, or Mass Conversion would convert *all* provinces in the realm?

It doesn't sound very good.

I'd rather see more potential complications with it. E.g. baptism of Rus was not as smooth - some people were converted under threat or by force. Large Pagan centres such as Novgorod and Finno-Ugric natives also resisted, with Pagan priests leading the unrest.

Would be nice to have "chance to convert":
- the capital and your domain convert always;
- provinces of disloyal vassals have very small chance to convert;
- provinces more distant from capital have lesser chance to convert;
- unconverted provinces get an increased uprisings chance.

Or something like this, maybe with a couple event chains that would go either to aggressive baptism by force or some sort of reconciliation.

Vassals can indeed decide not to join their liege in a Mass Conversion, in which case their provinces will not convert either.

If the Pagan ruler prepares his realm properly before asking for the Mass Conversion and everything goes well, he will be able to achieve a total conversion. The mechanic is meant to offer a viable alternative for Pagans aside from Reformation. Currently the game is not very forgiving in that regard: accepting a missionary's visit as a tribal pagan has many more downsides than it does upsides.

 

[Silfae]

This is really cool.

My slight worry would be that the AI could potentially overuse the mechanic, and the larger pagan realms that form in 769 and 867 starts die off more quickly.

I wonder what the modifiers are that would make an AI choose this. Maybe comparative strength of organised religion neighbours, or the date the past 1000 (later for some), realm size, or maybe even Fort level of neighbours or something. Oh, and no Zealous trait.

AI behavior takes in consideration those as well as several other factors. Different religions and different rulers of different realms will convert at different rates, depending on existing sponsors, current date, character, realm size, etc.

Does this include reformed pagan? So we could have pagans of one unreformed religion getting sponsored to mass-convert into another (reformed) pagan religion? Because one of the big problems with reforming your religion right now is that it feels like you quickly come to own basically all the lands which follow it.

Yes, Reformed Pagans can indeed be sponsors of Mass Conversions.

 

[Snow Crystal]

I think you misread what I said. I said overuse, not use appropriately. I'm talking about starting in 769 and most rulers having converted by 800.

In my recent Austria game (starting in 867), people were still converting into 12-13th century, so I think it's all right.

 

[Silfae]

A couple of questions:
1. So will Reformed Pagans be able to send missionaries to other unreformed Pagans?
2. Will the AI rulers choose Reformed Pagans as sponsors to their Mass Conversions?
3. Can a vassal of a Pagan ruler convert to a foreign faith, thus starting some kind of a War of Religion within that realm?

Thank you for the Dev Diary, the Expansion looks quite great.

1. That depends on how the religion is reformed.
2. Yes, it can definitely happen.
3. Mass Conversion is a realm-based mechanic, so it can only start between two independent rulers, then trickle down to the Pagan's vassals.