AI Never Reforms Pagans

[JustAddH2O]

I've never seen the AI reform a pagan religion. My first few games were in Vanilla, but lately I've played with all the DLC except WoL, HL or Conclave. I've also played a few games from each start date. Does anyone have any idea why? Do some DLC's make reformations more or less common?

I found old posts complaining AI reformation is too common. My games always end up with Catholic, Sunni (and to a lesser extent) Hindu dominating the map, with everything else pretty much gone or well on the way out. It's boring and predictable and I'd enjoy the variety or challenge that reformation would bring. It would be great if minor religions or heresies would occasionally do well, too.

Thanks

 

[Arsonik]

They do reform.. It certainly is rare. I for one like it that way. Reformed AI isn't really any bigger threat anyways. For example, they no longer have the pagan homeland attrition bonus for defense, that is the biggest factor.

 

[Jaang]

It's rare, but I've seen Germanic reform.

 

[hagagaga]

They reform when they get the chance, but AI pagans typically can't keep a kingdom/empire together for long enough. I've seen Tengri reform. Once.

 

[Thrake]

I've never seen the AI reform a pagan religion. My first few games were in Vanilla, but lately I've played with all the DLC except WoL, HL or Conclave. I've also played a few games from each start date. Does anyone have any idea why? Do some DLC's make reformations more or less common?

I found old posts complaining AI reformation is too common. My games always end up with Catholic, Sunni (and to a lesser extent) Hindu dominating the map, with everything else pretty much gone or well on the way out. It's boring and predictable and I'd enjoy the variety or challenge that reformation would bring. It would be great if minor religions or heresies would occasionally do well, too.

Thanks

There are two main reasons. Old complaint towards reformation is not valid anymore because the situation has changed (mostly map expansion with farther away holy sites for tengri which was the most common offender).

- moral authority: it's hard to pull off enough moral authority with just 3 holy sites and overall the AI doesn't look enclined to actually go after holy sites to reform (it just conquer them randomly and press the button when starts align). Also unlike Germanic, other pagans barely raid (looting churches increase MA if memory serves right), and unlike the player the AI won't actively press county conquests, or build churches to get enough MA to reform when all other criteria are met. 750 piety is quite tough too if you're not pushing for it.

- passivity: defensive pagans are coded to be less aggressive and to not fabricate claims, so they conquer less and barely ever form unified realms required to reform. Also the AI mostly goes after de jure kingdoms with wants to be king ambition and then doesn't expand much besides subjugation which is restricted once per ruler. Think of slavic for exemple, if they only have slavic neighbours, they can only subjugate once per lifetime and since they don't fabricate, they will never get other CB to press.

I personnaly moded down moral authority and piety requirements, removed the aggressiveness penalty and regularly see Germanic reform. I'm yet to see other pagans reform but at least I've come up to see united West Africans pushing out of Ghana or Carpathia strong enough to stand its ground for a while. Playing higher difficulty helps too as the AI gets more money (thus is more likely to create titles to keep unified realms).

 

[Woifee]

I once saw AI germanic in ToG start date, AI slavic once in CM start date and tengri dozens of time in ToG start date.

Since HL I don't play that much anymore tough.

 

[Rationalsanity]

Right after the TOG patch Tengri was reformed every other game. Norse wasn't uncommon either.

Frankly I think that reformations should be very rare. If anything they should be harder to pull. Taking some temples and raiding shouldn't be enough to instantly turn a decentralized tribal faith into a Catholicesque hierarchy.

 

[Kapitalisti]

I think it's very much intended that the AI reforming a pagan faith is a very, very, very rare occurrence.

 

[Silversweeeper]

I think that the reformation frequency went down a bit after 2.2/CM due to most pagans becoming tribal with elective gavelkind, which makes it much more likely that the successor of someone with enough holy sites but low piety is unlikely to keep the holy sites (and the AI doesn't really focus on getting them in the first place). HL probably also reduced the Tengri reformation chance a bit more as nomadic realms tend to change their faiths quite a bit and thus might decide that being Tengri with enough holy sites to reform still isn't a good enough reason to stay Tengri (and the lack of temples in the steppes also reduces MA, making reformation harder). If I remember correctly, the CM start is somewhat worse for pagans than the tOG start due to the pagans being about as likely to listen to a missionary in 769 as they are in 867, meaning that they are likely to convert before reforming even when the pagan faiths are doing rather well (especially as part of the conversion logic makes pagans more willing to convert when they have a large realm due to that allowing them to feudalize).

I think that Zealous pagans could be made more prone to grabbing holy sites, but I don't think that pagans should be helped to reform as the common outcomes (based on history) should be "Convert", "Die", and "Stay relatively weak and unreformed".

 

[Secret Master]

It does reform, just not very often.

For a long time, Tengri was the most common offender. But under current rules, the Tengri usually don't pull it off, because either an heir or crucial clan changes religion, or they disintegrate.

 

[Mnemnosyne]

It seems to happen when they have an opportunity to. For instance, a recent 769 start I was playing the Duke of Flanders. Sigurdr Ring eventually called an invasion of Frisia and won, and the moment he had the holy site in his control, he reformed and made himself Fylkir.

I sadly lost that game (as in, got an actual game over) sometime later when a series of events wound up with me having land only in de jure Frisia, then a dutch independence revolt took that from me. Til then I was having fun playing a converted catholic under Norse rule.

 

[JustAddH2O]

Thanks for the answers, now I understand why I'm not seeing it happen.

I guess this is a minority preference, but in my games I'd still like to see pagans reforming occasionally, say 1 pagan reforming ~50% of the time.

Thrake mentioned modding to lower the MA and piety requirements for reformations. Does anyone know how to do that? I've checked all the files in common but I don't say anything that would change those reqs. I was also stumped looking for how to mod Holy sites.

 

[Gunnarr]

It would be infuriating to see 1 pagan religion reforming 50% of the time.

Maybe easy reforming pagans should be a mod. I don't ever want to see AI reform

 

[hagagaga]

It would be infuriating to see 1 pagan religion reforming 50% of the time.

Maybe easy reforming pagans should be a mod. I don't ever want to see AI reform

Whynot?

 

[Silversweeeper]

Thrake mentioned modding to lower the MA and piety requirements for reformations. Does anyone know how to do that? I've checked all the files in common but I don't say anything that would change those reqs. I was also stumped looking for how to mod Holy sites.

In defines.lua you have REFORM_RELIGION_MIN_AUTHORITY (any value between 0 and 1 should work, default is 0.5), REFORM_RELIGION_MIN_HOLY_SITES (any value between 1 and 5 should work, though keep in mind that having a value less than 3 will make it a race to get enough piety if there are two (or more) rulers with enough holy sites, which could cause some frustration if you wanted to reform and the AI presses the button before you), and REFORM_RELIGION_PIETY_COST (any value should be fine, but I would suggest not lowering (or increasing) it too much as the AI probably won't get much more piety for a single ruler while having a reformer with very little piety would be odd), which control the reformation requirements. As for holy sites, in landed_titles.txt you have stuff like

c_zeeland = {
         color={ 200 100 30 }
         color2={ 255 255 255 }
        
         holy_site = norse_pagan
         holy_site = norse_pagan_reformed
      
         b_middelburg = {
         }
         b_tholen = {
         }
         b_veere = {
         }
         b_cadzand = {
         }
         b_vlissingen = {
         }
         b_renesse = {
         }
         b_borsele = {
         }
         b_zierikzee = {
         }
       }

which you change by simply moving the line(s) containing the holy site to another county. Keep in mind that having more than five per religion will break the interface.

 

[Knotz]

I've seen Tengri, Romuvan and Slavic AI reforms.

 

[abauer2]

I once started a game where I wanted to set up a nice Scottish kingdom and eventually remove the English from the map (CM start). Then I looked up at some point to see Charlie had lost a Germanic revolt, and the Saxons then somehow acquired Denmark, then invaded Frisia and reformed, and by 850 Catholicism was basically limited to Aquitaine/Italy/Scotland and the Zunists in the east also reformed. All Karlings and Abbasids were dead by 900, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was the best game ever.

It was also fun to be basically reversed roles as a Catholic ruler with the pagans.

 

[Dakilla TM]

At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter too much to the player. AI pagans will still be stuck tribal with gavelkind for the most part, and they'll stay dirt poor in their tribal holdings.

I've only seen the AI ONCE prosper as a reformed Romuva. Lithuania became feudal, and holy warred for Germany and won. I was the ERE so I didn't really care until they came to my doorstep

 

[JustAddH2O]

Made a few small changes (lowered MA and piety reqs to 40% and 500) and saw Tengri reform almost immediately. Thanks to everyone, especially Thrake and Silversweeper, for tips on how to make it happen.

Even if reformed pagans are weak, it does matter to me as a player. I enjoy seeing what happens on the other side of the map almost as much as I enjoy what happens in my own realm. And I really enjoy seeing ahistorical and unlikely things happen. Not every time, but at least occasionally. If the 1400 map in my game looked just like the real map of Europe in 1400 I would be pretty disappointed.

Also, a multi-polar world is a lot more interesting to me than the Catholic vs Sunni (with an Indian sideshow) match up I've seen in every other game. So I'm rooting for the Tengrists to do well over there (I'm a Basque-centered dynasty in Spain)

 

[Woifee]

Recorming should instantly also change the succession laws for the highest ranking titles of the ruler who did it.

Not for human players but for the AI. Humans always handle any law, The AI doesn't.

So germanic to feudal electiv or primo, slaves to oldst member of dynasty, tengri to youngest...

Just that bigger realms could come to existence.