Do you? Or do you just click the convert button and roll along. I remember as Brandenburg it was not really problematic but what with France and Paris? Or London in England?
Do you wait for your capital province to switch religion before converting?
- Thread starter gaius valerius
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If you're going to convert it makes sense to do it as soon as possible for two reasons:
-converting within the first 10-15 years speeds up the random spread within your own provinces;
-converting speeds up the spread to your neighbors, making them too busy to attack you and creating more potential targets for catholic countries
-converting within the first 10-15 years speeds up the random spread within your own provinces;
-converting speeds up the spread to your neighbors, making them too busy to attack you and creating more potential targets for catholic countries
Why should i?
What lemonade said
+ the uneducated peasant rabble believes what I, Duke Heinrich, Elector Brandenburgiae, tell the them to. By the Power of God! Ohh, and because the 17.000 man of the army do as i tell them.
You're free to discuss the finer points of theology with my specialised advisor staff. Just send me a letter of concern and ill send them right over...
What lemonade said
+ the uneducated peasant rabble believes what I, Duke Heinrich, Elector Brandenburgiae, tell the them to. By the Power of God! Ohh, and because the 17.000 man of the army do as i tell them.
You're free to discuss the finer points of theology with my specialised advisor staff. Just send me a letter of concern and ill send them right over...
Why should i?
What lemonade said
+ the uneducated peasant rabble believes what I, Duke Heinrich, Elector Brandenburgiae, tell the them to. By the Power of God! Ohh, and because the 17.000 man of the army do as i tell them.
You're free to discuss the finer points of theology with my specialised advisor staff. Just send me a letter of concern and ill send them right over...
I just converted as Teutonic Order comprising all of T.O. land + Pomerania + Brandenburg + portions of Poland with L.O., Silesia & Bohemia as vassals.
I converted to protestant to become Prussian and was too impatient to wait for it to spread.
Essentially ruined my multiplayer game. 70+ years of rebellions that almost immediately ruined my crack 45k man army (all the nationalists and religious mobs have your same tech and get amazing generals and spawn unceasingly).
I really wish I would have waited for Prot to spread more or gone religious tree because that game is a complete waste now.
In my MP session as France, a continental block that had annexed the Netherlands, the left Rhine bank and northern Italy, I only converted to Protestant in the 1590's, cause hell, Huguenot all the way I wanted to go and my buddies remained staunch catholic heretics. The effort - mixed with the Wars of Religion Event firing - kept my France tied to it's domestic affairs for 30 years straight. I didn't enter the international scene again untill the 1630's and even in Europe my glorious armies were stuck on domestic rebel supression duty most of the time so when an unavoidable war came to pass, I couldn't budge to far from the borders. Didn't ruin my game though, just slowed me down, as it should've. But damnable catholic Paris and her gruesome basetax...
If you'd taken lemonade's advice, things would've gone a lot smoother.
Protestantism never showed up in my lands. The only reason I wasn't 100% catholic was because I annexed Brandenburg that was protestant. We had a couple messages about it but nothing ever happened Austria did go Prot and was forcing other people but they never tried it with me probably because I had all the major powers as ally.
I literally never had a single event to convert to protestantism. Considering that it takes away 3 stab and that I then got penalties like 90% for religious unity it was pretty much doomed to fail. I probably should have just gone reformed.
I literally never had a single event to convert to protestantism. Considering that it takes away 3 stab and that I then got penalties like 90% for religious unity it was pretty much doomed to fail. I probably should have just gone reformed.
If you don't have religious ideas, or have taken a lot of decisions to speed up conversion, then it's a terrible decision to convert later than about 15 years into the reformation if you have a large country.
What you SHOULD have done is make the decision to convert to protestant before the reformation hits, and the moment it does you convert. You'll have free conversions on most of your provinces within 10 years. In addition, your missionaries should be working on provinces that have as many bordering provinces as possible and that don't already border protestant provinces. Protestantism spreads by contact.
If you knew about this and still didn't act accordingly, then there's not much pity to be had, friend.
I didn't know there was a magical free period. All I knew was that I saw a couple isolated "protestant" messaegs but nothing ever happened and it never actually spread.
In all my previous games I universally had at least 3-5 provinces go protestant and they were unconvertible. In this game a couple of countries had the "Decide to make peace or decide to exterminate) announcements but it was never anyone by me.
I took all the +1 conversion actions and I took a +convert advisor but my provinces are all so high base tax that the best I could get them down to was like 18 months and when you have like 40 provinces and 37 of them are catholic that's a lot of penalties and revolt risk.
In all my previous games I universally had at least 3-5 provinces go protestant and they were unconvertible. In this game a couple of countries had the "Decide to make peace or decide to exterminate) announcements but it was never anyone by me.
I took all the +1 conversion actions and I took a +convert advisor but my provinces are all so high base tax that the best I could get them down to was like 18 months and when you have like 40 provinces and 37 of them are catholic that's a lot of penalties and revolt risk.
Knowing is half the battle.
The first 5 years is the magical period.
Here's how you do it:
1. Decide that you want to go protestant.
2. Keep a watch on reform desire so you'll be able to at least in some fashion predict when the reformation hits.
3. The moment it hits, you either convert within the first 5 years, or not at all.
#3 is flexible. You may convert after 10 or even 15 years but the longer you wait, the worse your chances are of getting free conversions, and the harder you'll have to work at it.
As Slargos said, watch the reform desire once it gets to about 80% stop investing in cardinals except to try to influence who powers vote for and be very cautious with that. In my opinion the trick is making sure you have no cardinals when the reformation begins. This makes it more likely that one of your provinces will flip early which is when I tend to convert to protestant. The 1 province that flips right away along with your freebie for conversion will help out the MTTH for more free flips substantially. It can still be rough for an even moderately sized country, but you should be able to keep it in hand. Though with a TO+Brandenburg+Pommerania sized state without a lot of shared province borders don't be surprised when your manpower pool doesn't get close to full in the next 20 years...
I feel your pain, the reformation is one of those events that can destroy an empire.
Once I went protestant as a Dutch colonial empire, 30 after the protestant reformation, only after the second reformation hit. Mexico never converted a single strip of land, but every single island of the caribbean became a safe haven for every persecuted minority of Europe, and flipped over to... reformed zealots. If fighting rebels is annoying as it is, imagine fighting rebels spread all across a foreign continent, with a -2 sea landing bonus (instakill for the loser).
What you should do once the reformation hits is
-decide whether you want to be protestant or not
-deal with the consequences no matter how ugly it gets
If you flipped early you would have seen a bunch of "the reformation is spreading across the continent! X province has converted". Dozens of them, the large majority of the conversion job comes from those events, representing the wildfire of the reformation as it actually happened in real life.
Under the game's point of view, the reformation was already over after the Thirty Years' War, it's natural that it dies off in the game too.
http://www.eu4wiki.com/Reformation#The_Protestant_Reformation
Once I went protestant as a Dutch colonial empire, 30 after the protestant reformation, only after the second reformation hit. Mexico never converted a single strip of land, but every single island of the caribbean became a safe haven for every persecuted minority of Europe, and flipped over to... reformed zealots. If fighting rebels is annoying as it is, imagine fighting rebels spread all across a foreign continent, with a -2 sea landing bonus (instakill for the loser).
What you should do once the reformation hits is
-decide whether you want to be protestant or not
-deal with the consequences no matter how ugly it gets
If you flipped early you would have seen a bunch of "the reformation is spreading across the continent! X province has converted". Dozens of them, the large majority of the conversion job comes from those events, representing the wildfire of the reformation as it actually happened in real life.
Under the game's point of view, the reformation was already over after the Thirty Years' War, it's natural that it dies off in the game too.
http://www.eu4wiki.com/Reformation#The_Protestant_Reformation
I convert easy provinces first in a pattern that the most catholic provinces borders a protestant province. This should increase the odds to get a event to convert the catholic provinces.
Ahh that probably partially explains my problem. I had 2 cardinals in office and had only recently lost control of the curia (which I had almost continually since about 1450)
Didn't know about watching the reform desire. Will have to pay more attention to that. We may load an earlier save and play it as my friend was doing really well as Venice and he feels bad about abandoning our France/Austria game due to me essentially crushing the world as Austria lol.
So basically as soon as you see that first message about protestant you have ~5 years to convert to make it easy on yourself?
I probably should have just converted to Reformed. Supposedly I can still form prussia and I would have gotten +2 missionaries with a bunch of bonus'
Didn't know about watching the reform desire. Will have to pay more attention to that. We may load an earlier save and play it as my friend was doing really well as Venice and he feels bad about abandoning our France/Austria game due to me essentially crushing the world as Austria lol.
So basically as soon as you see that first message about protestant you have ~5 years to convert to make it easy on yourself?
I probably should have just converted to Reformed. Supposedly I can still form prussia and I would have gotten +2 missionaries with a bunch of bonus'
As soon as the very first Protestant reform happens in the world you get a pop-up. when you get that pop-up, you pause, open the religious screen and convert. You then spend your saved admin points to raise stab back up, because you did save up points for it because your not dumb right? Unless this is your very first game, it's not like it's a suprise, it happens right about the same time 1505-1510.
Being the first protestant nation, you get a big cash bonus, and rampant free spread. I've often had the spread happen so quickly, my own missionaries could not ever actually finish a conversion before it flipped on it's own. If you stayed small enough, or are playing an archbisopric with Divine Ideas, you shouldnt even have religious turmoil fire.
Being the first protestant nation, you get a big cash bonus, and rampant free spread. I've often had the spread happen so quickly, my own missionaries could not ever actually finish a conversion before it flipped on it's own. If you stayed small enough, or are playing an archbisopric with Divine Ideas, you shouldnt even have religious turmoil fire.
I waited until I felt strong enough to stand against Austrias wrath. I wasn't and they wooped me And then Protestant Sweden decided to pick on me too, even though I was also Protestant and I had to give up a LOT.
And then Protestant Sweden decided to pick on me too, even though I was also Protestant and I had to give up a LOT.
I just convert depending on how my neighbors do. In my Tuscany game, Bohemia, Austria(!), Switzerland and France(!) went protestant, as well as a lot of northern Germany and Denmark. So did I, even though I only had 2-3 Protestant provinces in the entire Italy.
This sounds like an excellent start to a loyal Catholic game. (When staying Catholic, it's a good idea to take precautions like this, as any provinces that flip usually can't be reconverted for a few decades afterwards.)
Note that you can convert even if none of your provinces have flipped yet. If you do, you get a random province immediately converting (w/o pop-up), to start you off. So that's another reason to convert immediately.
You always get a random province converting when you voluntarily switch religion, not just if you had no provinces of that religion.