Beef about religion.

[King Dave]

The situation is this - I'm Duke of Normandy, Norman culture and Catholic. My liege The King of The Middle Francs is Flemish and Fraticelli. Most of his vassals have converted to Fraticelli, despite Catholic being the majority religion in western Europe, Italy and the Byzantine empire.
Now I'm facing constant demands for title revokation. twice I've said no and frustrated him by dragging the war on until he's been forced into agreeing to a white peace. Now just weeks after him agreeing to a truce he's demanding again. If I say no I'm considered the agressor, which I think is totally wrong and he gets a put down major revolt bonus and I suffer a prestige hit each time we settle on a white peace, again totally wrong. He's demanding revokation during an agreed truce, so he should be considered the agressor not I.
Yes I could change to Flemish and Fraticelli to get him off my case, but I feel that's a little unrealistic and exploitative. My dynasty has worked hard to save and re-establish Norman culture at a point where it looked like it was going to become extinct. And surely as a Catholic taking a stand against this heretic I should be getting help from the so called defender of the faith but no, the Pope seems happy to just sit in Rome and wait for the heretics to come knocking to tell him it's time he left, completly unrealistic. Shouldn't the Pope be calling for a crusade against this heretic? Shouldn't my heretic liege be facing some serious unrest amongst both nobles and people?
I've had a really interesting campaign going, a good few months I've been playing and it's going to be really disappointing if unrealistic, repetitive ai behaviour kills it, but I don't really see an alternative as I'm not willing to play in an unrealstic way just in order to work around flawed ai.
I know we're getting a new DLC which judging by the Dev Diary seems to be centered around diplomacy, but to be honest I think the cart is being put before the horse here as religion was one of the major drivers of diplomacy during the time period and without a functioning religious model the diplomacy isn't going to work properly.

 

[DiscpleOfAkbaa]

I get that you're mad about the constant revocation requests, but if the realm is at medium crown authority or higher, the king has every right to demand your titles if your faith doesn't match, and you ARE the aggressor if you refuse to follow the law. Although I do agree that he shouldn't be getting the "put down a major revolt" modifier if it ended in a white peace.

The real problem here is not your liege's behavior, but that the pope is way too passive when it comes to calling crusades. When a major Western European nation embraces a heresy and catholic moral authority isn't completely shattered, a crusade should be called immediately. Right now, it is typically left to the surrounding nations to fix things piece by piece, one holy war at a time, which doesn't happen when the heretic is more powerful than his neighbors.
Oh, and Paradox should finally fix religious uprising being hostile towards outside attackers of their own faith in a holy war, so the population actually gets a chance to support a liberating crusade, rather than sabotaging it while fighting for the same goal.

 

[nauticalweasel]

The real problem here is not your liege's behavior, but that the pope is way too passive when it comes to calling crusades

He said that his liege was the King of Middle Francia so the Pope having that much power might be unrealistic because the Schism hasn't accrued yet. Also every time I have been heretic I've had to deal with non-stop crusades and pope-funded holy wars. It's probably just too early for crusades to be activated(which is still silly, but at least it explains things.)

 

[Rikissa]

This sounds like a time to go independent and then take his lands for himself through the Holy War CB. See how he likes that.

 

[mrinku]

Yep. Independence (or claiming the crown yourself if possible) soulds like the best plan to me.

From your liege's point of view YOU'RE the heretic. He has legal and temporal power over you; it's up to you to force the religious issue. You ever force converted an AI ruler? This is the flip side; be thankful that as a human player you always have a choice.

 

[Bernard95]

Can understand your frustration for sure. If it was me I'd probably stay Norman (but then again Dutch Goedendag is a good retinue when mixed with generic Defense) and flip to Fraticelli. I'd probably role play it as "I'm only converting for show" and "I'll get back at the King one day and restore the One True Faith". You could take advantage of the holy wars and build yourself a power base, then revolt and convert back when the time is right. Better yet stay Fraticelli and create the Fraticelli Pope. Then you'll get crusades and a vassalized religious head.

 

[King Dave]

Ok you guys have convinced me on some points. It still seems very unfair to be considered the agressor in a war forced upon me and the penalties and bonuses for white peace also seem unfair, but then again life was very unfair back then.

So I now find myself forced into a holy struggle I didn't want. I'm unwilling to abandon my faith and culture or even compromise it for a while, and as I'm not strong enough to defeat him in open war, I plan to wear the bastard down with a war of attrition, and eventually destroy him when the opportunity presents. He can have his constant war, no more white peace, just constant and unrelenting war. I know I can keep this going because my realm is spread out and hard for him to conquer. I have 3 provinces in Brittany, 4 in Normandy, 3 in Gelre, 1 in Holland, 2 In Wessex and a barony in Guines. My new ruler can only raise 5-6k but I'm rich and getting richer, Whilst the detested King Ragambald is barely keeping his head above water as he struggles to maintain his 13k army. At some point he will be forced to contend with strong enemies from outside his realm and when he does wham! it's curtains for him and his despicable heretics.

 

[Cliges]

I thought that this thread was going to have to do with Hindu mechanics, based on the title and whatnot.

 

[Secret Master]

I think one of the issues here is that if your liege ends up in a white peace, he really should be put on a truce timer for revoking timers.

I agree that you are, legally, the aggressor. You are the heretic under medium authority, after all. And normally, aggressors have the truce timer put on them. But in this case, a liege who fails at revoking titles should not be repeating the cycle again in a few weeks.

Question: Can you fight to win and force him to abdicate/reduce crown authority? I can't remember the consequences for defeating your liege in a revocation war right off the top of my head.

If you can force him off the throne or cause crown authority to go to autonomous vassals, it might be worth calling in the Holy Orders and fighting your liege to the pain.

 

[King Dave]

Thank you Secret Master, you've just pointed out something very interesting which I hadn't noticed. If I defeat him then he's forced to implement autonomous vassals and he has to abdicate in favour of his heir.
It's going to take a lot of patience and some luck to get myself into a position to beat him, but the rewards are worth the trouble. I can currently only raise around 6000 (4000 demense, 2000 vassals) men, whilst King Ragambald can raise around 15000 (1500 demense, 13500 vassals) I currently have around 2000 gold and gaining 15pm, whilst he's got 300 gold and losing 8pm. So there are a few things in my favour. He is sieging my holdings and I'm refusing to fight him, but the last two times I used this tactic both wars dragged on for over 3 years and in both instances he was forced into accepting a white peace with a warscore hovering around zero.
I'll probabably need to wait for outside influences to hurt him before I pick my time to attack but there is hope there too as he has a reasonably sized Burgundian Kingdom to the West with smaller realms of France and Aquitane, all Catholic. To the south is an Italian Kingdom which occupies most of modern day Italy but that's Fraticelli. His Middle Francian Kingdom stretches from modern day mid France to modern Day mid Germany, To the East is a bit of a mess but Ragambald has had trouble from that direction in recent times too. Seems to suffer regular peasant uprisings too.

 

[Nirmara]

I agree with the OP about how problematic being the aggressor is in this scenario. Refusing to obey and rebelling are two different things. If a vassal refuse a demand from his liege, said liege should have to choose between enforcing his authority or backing down at the cost of some prestige and possibly reducing the crown level authority.

 

[DC123456789]

The main problem is really that the other vassals agreed to convert so easily. In reality there probably would have been some sort of civil war at the very least before the heresy could be cemented.

 

[Atlantians]

Wait, this wasn't a joke about Hinduism?

 

[onodera]

If you have 2k gold, why not hire some mercs to even out the odds?

 

[vukica]

are holy orders hireable in these kind of situations?

 

[King Dave]

If you have 2k gold, why not hire some mercs to even out the odds?

I'd burn through that in no time at all if I hire the 2 mercenary armies I'd need to defeat him now. I would be taking a chance on bringing the mercs up to full moral and then defeating him before my money ran out. Much better to wait it out for a while, see if a more favourable situation arises.

 

[King Dave]

are holy orders hireable in these kind of situations?

It's too early for me, it's only 1063.

 

[King Dave]

The way things are going in my game, it's looking like I'm going to have to convert to Fraticelli in order to get this guy off my back.
Now I'm not religious and my knowledge of religion is basic. So I take a look on Wiki to find out a little more about the Fraticelli. First recognized sect of Fraticelli c1278, evolved out of the Franciscan Order which was founded c1210, by Francis of Assisi who was born c1181.

My game has reached the year 1065 and the Fratecelli now have more moral authority than Catholism. I have to say that it's little wonder that the Fraticelli heresy is so powerful, when people know about it before the guy that inspired it has even been born!

Should be a start date on heresies.

 

[Talq]

The heresies were given historical names so that you weren't fighting 'heretic rebets'. They are not, and never have been intended to represent the historical heresies, not least because you cant expecti them to crop up at their historical times and places

 

[King Dave]

The heresies were given historical names so that you weren't fighting 'heretic rebets'. They are not, and never have been intended to represent the historical heresies, not least because you cant expecti them to crop up at their historical times and places

I don't buy it, they are part of the parent religion and the parent religion exists in it's historical context. It wouldn't have been too difficult to put a start date on them. I'm not expecting them to appear as they did in history, but it would be nice if they at least didn't appear before it was possible for them to appear in history. I don't think that is asking too much.
The game is good because it lets us carve out a believable alternate history within the loose confines of real history. If the confines are too loose we end up with fantasy. In this case I would say that we are leaning more towards fantasy than believable alternate history.