Convertion of provinces: Why and How

[unmerged(20844)]

ok, here come some big questions...
1. Are conversions worth the money, time and effort?
2. How do you ever accomplish a conversion?
Usually when i look at the percentage for success it's between 25 and 40. Furthermore, i send several missionaries to the same province and none of them succeeds. And it's not veary cheap either.
3.Am i missing something? Maybe there's a way to increase that chance? Anyway, i cant think of a reason why it's always so low in the beginning and then when i try it towards the 1700s it's usually just above 50%, sometimes even above 60!

 

[joak]

Nice summary here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20957

As for 1, there was an excellent old analysis about how much money you save on the stability costs alone. The short version is it's very definitely worth the money for poor provinces, and more questionable for populous ones (although I personally get kick out of seeing a Moslem Venice or Catholic north Germany regardless). In addition, completely removing one faith from your realms gives you such a bonus to revolt risk it's almost always worth the effort to convert that last province--unless you're willing to lose it in a war or let it revolt away.

 

[unmerged(9404)]

1) Yes
2) Be persistent. Someday it will work
3) To decrease the cost and increase the success change wait for a good administrative monarch and connect the provine to your capital. (BTW pagan province have a much higher success change I think you encoutered this)

 

[Neroon]

1. Yes you pay less stab and get more income (which makes COT provinces with high population worth it as well) and eventually can set the tolarance for the religion you are converting from to zero. Its especially worth it for pagan since it also changes culture for them and has a higher success rate.

2. Takes about 2 - 4 tries for non - stateculture non - pagan provinces. Alternatively open your save file with a text editor search for "action 27" and set success to yes. Yes thats cheating but after the 5th unsuccessful try i do it anyway since its either that or taking an axe to my monitor :rofl:

3. Chances are substantially higher for papan and stateculture provinces and also affected by your monarchs diplomacy rating.

 

[unmerged(20844)]

how much money does it usually take? i mean... looks like it'll surely exceed 5000 for a bigger country and that's a lot of money in the beginning.

and that's for regular-sized powers, i have 3-4 games running right now, and i own all of western europe in most of them (france, spain, england, sometimes italy too). now this is a big problem when it comes to protestants and reformistsspringing up in some of my richest provinces

 

[unmerged(20844)]

by Neroon: Alternatively open your save file with a text editor search for "action 27" and set success to yes

it's the first time i've opened the save files...what a messy thing
in which part should i look for it?

 

[joak]

Originally posted by Neroon
. . . and get more income (which makes COT provinces with high population worth it as well)

I don't think that's generally true. You can easily spend 10,000 ducats trying to convert a CoT province, and you only get the income bonus on the taxes, not on the 60 ducats a year in trade tarriffs that makes the province so rich in the first place.

I like doing it anyway, but strictly for role-playing reasons. From a game perspective bulding multiple manufacturies or well-planned war is usually a much better use of the money.

 

[joak]

Originally posted by von Loch Ness
it's the first time i've opened the save files...what a messy thing
in which part should i look for it?

Don't do it!!! If you've overexpanded, deal with it within the game. It builds character.

(Actually, I don't care how you play of course, but I've never found a need to use a cheat to tweak religions in many, many, hours a play. Careful expansion, releasing "bad" religions as vassals and wasting money on missionaires is a lot of the fun, IMHO )

 

[unmerged(20844)]

releasing someone as a vassal is sometimes a really good thing. I only use it when the final tax percentage is lower than 50 and in some special cases... like provinces that revolt and revolt and revolt or because of bad events that infinitely increase RR.
The problem in one of my games now is that my own culture provinces change their religion- as France i built refineries in all the wine provinces (mostly in the south, around today's border with spain). Then they switched to protestant (i cant remember how ) After all the refineries i built, the cost for the next one was above 1700-1800. And then i get a -30% in my richest provinces That's a case when vassals wouldnt work satisfactorily

 

[unmerged(9146)]

Originally posted by Neroon
but after the 5th unsuccessful try i do it anyway since its either that or taking an axe to my monitor

With 25% conversion chance, there's 5.6% probability that you will be unsuccessful 10 or more times in a row.
With 20% conversion chance, there's 10.7% probability that you will be unsuccessful 10 or more times in a row.
5 or 10 per cent may not look like much, but that means that if you do a lot of converting, it's something that most likely will happen to you in a normal game. Several times probably. I'd learn to deal with it (actually, I did and it doesn't even frustrate me anymore).

3. Chances are substantially higher for papan and stateculture provinces and also affected by your monarchs diplomacy rating.

I think that's administrative, not diplomatic, rating.

 

[unmerged(9563)]

Promoting fortresses also gives a small (2%) increase to conversion chances. If you have a bunch of money and you're fixated on it by the end of the game.... its a 10% increase in chances when you're all the way up. It does take $$$ and time though.

 

[ForzaA]

Originally posted by KwangTiger
Promoting fortresses also gives a small (2%) increase to conversion chances. If you have a bunch of money and you're fixated on it by the end of the game.... its a 10% increase in chances when you're all the way up. It does take $$$ and time though.

if the chance is say 18% without, 20% with new fort.. you on average spend 15.10 times to get the conversion done (95% actually, with chances you never get 100% ) without a fort.. 13.42 times with a fort.. then it might be worth it.. but chances are SELDOM that low..
at 40% (42% with) its 5.86 vs 5.49 times..
at 70% (72% with) its 2.49 vs 2.35 times.

etc. so it basically depends on missionary cost vs. fort cost, and on the chance without the fort.

best formula I can come up with :

a: "risk factor" ie. how close do you want your success to 100% (0-1, 1 is farthest from) -- the more risk.. less chance you'll want to build the fort for it --
b: missionary chance w/o the extra fort level

if

    ln(a)*ln(0.98-b/1-b)
   ------------------------- *missionary cost < fort cost
   ln(1-b)*ln(0.98-b)

don't build the fort for conversion bonus
that is IF the increase is indeed 2 percent (if its not replace 0.98 with (1-fortbonus) ) and ofcourse, forts also have other benefits

 

[Zander]

Originally posted by KwangTiger
Promoting fortresses also gives a small (2%) increase to conversion chances.

1% in different culture, 2% in same culture.

 

[unmerged(17979)]

Make sure you convert when you have monarchs with a high admin rating. When you get the excellent minister event, this makes the chances a good lot more favourable. In my current game as Russia, I have had unprecedented success with Missionaries, only failing once in Kexholm and once in Weilikia. I had expanded heavily into Lithuania, Crimea, Georgia and had reached the Siberian Corridor by 1510. Converted 6 muslim provinces (Sibir, Nogai provinces first shot, 3 of them at 21-27 %!!!) The secret is to convert early when the populations are low, and leave the costly, populous provinces for random conversion event. I got Astrakahan this way.