Ethiopia Humanism or Religious?

[Zardnaar]

I am currently playing an Ethiopian game with the religious idea. the holy war CB is great but conversion is still slow and I am wondering if I should have taken humanism instead. I will likely take defensive and/or quantity so with the later there is he +2.5% discipline +10% morale policy to consider I suppose.

 

[Straigthtsilver]

Religious 100%. The added missionary strength, reduced stability cost, and incredibly useful CB will repay themselves several times over.

Humanism might make your empire easier to manage, but it lacks the offensive utility of Religious, not to mention its policies are also of much less use to you than the Religious ones.

 

[Zwirbaum]

Unless you flip to Sunni, go for Religious. Ethiopia does not have in-built +tolerance modifiers so you would be sitting at not so great tolerance of heathens, and conversion without Religious will be practically impossible. And as you said - holy war.

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

Humanism is extremely strong even without being in a religiously difficult area. Any excuse I have to take Humanism I'd jump on.

 

[Nirmara]

Religious is mandatory for Ethiopia. You are basically the only Coptic nation so you get a free CB against everyone.

 

[neondt]

Humanism is usually a great choice, but in this case it's not quite good enough imo. The extra 20% religious unity won't keep you above 100% forever, and the extra heathen tolerance (which comes far too late for your purposes) isn't good enough. That said, it might be a good pick later in the game after you've maxed out religious. Why pick one when you can have both?

 

[TyrannisUmbra]

Why pick one when you can have both?

I'd like to agree

 

[zerosius]

Religious is a must have. The CB with 0 DIP-Costs for anything is just too good. Also you will find it very difficult, if not impossible to convert any sunni provinces with a little more basetax until much too late into the game. This leaves you with a terrible Religious Unity, Revoltrisk, and higher Stab-Costs.

 

[lolada]

Yup, agree with people here, you are practically alone in the world, religious will be awesome choice. Great CB for conquering lots of cheap territory and after that with +3 missionary strength you can convert everything no prob.

Decent alternative is to take Humanism and later one more +20-25% religious unity policy - you will not have many revolt problems - but conquering will be a lot slower since you will need to use vassals CBs or claim fabrication.

 

[raikaria]

Humanism may reduce revolt risk but if you plan to actually significantly expand it's not going to be enough. Your Religious Unity will be far too low, and you're still eating income and manpower maluses from wrong religion and/or culture. If you plan to go Sunni it's the better choice, however. But if you stay Coptic; Ethiopia is possibly the single best country to go Religious on.

 

[Zwirbaum]

Humanism may reduce revolt risk but if you plan to actually significantly expand it's not going to be enough. Your Religious Unity will be far too low, and you're still eating income and manpower maluses from wrong religion and/or culture. If you plan to go Sunni it's the better choice, however. But if you stay Coptic; Ethiopia is possibly the single best country to go Religious on.

If you flip to sunni, there is even less incentive to go for humanism. It's better to go Religious (+TTF, Cheaper +Stab, +Mis Strength) if you blob into Asia/Europe, or take some other idea group, such as Admin for example (to core faster and cheaper newly acquired land).

 

[smeggy]

Humanism. I'm on the end of an Ethiopia campaign, never needed the religious missionary bonusses. Just Mecca is still sunni, but thats ok to me. You need a lot of time anyway to build up you power before you can handle the Otto's. When you're ready for them, the one missionary has made every prov coptic, and you should have imperialism CBs.

Oh and imo, do not switch to sunni. Stay coptic, allie powerful european christians.

 

[LeSingeAffame]

If you have to wait for Imperialism CB's to attack the Ottoman, you made something wrong

 

[BFTeixeira]

Religious was the second idea i took when i got the Prester John achievement. Took Quantity first, as you really need the numbers to conquer your neighbors, Mamluks, and Kilwa and Mutapa (so much gold!!!) early on. I can't recall if later i picked Humanism, but Religious is a must for Ethiopia.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Humanism. I'm on the end of an Ethiopia campaign, never needed the religious missionary bonusses. Just Mecca is still sunni, but thats ok to me. You need a lot of time anyway to build up you power before you can handle the Otto's. When you're ready for them, the one missionary has made every prov coptic, and you should have imperialism CBs.

Oh and imo, do not switch to sunni. Stay coptic, allie powerful european christians.

Super important advice!!! In my Ethiopia run i stayed coptic, and that enabled me to ally PLC and France to destroy the Ottomans (even allowed me in one of the later wars win versus Ottomans AND Russia).

 

[Zelius]

For Ethiopia, Religious.

Stacks with one of your NIs, stacks with Coptic +TTF.

Or, you know, just choose one or neither or both and have fun with it.

 

[Daddl]

Waiting for Imperialism? I got the achievement in 1580 and wouldn't wanted to wait longer.

I would definetely go with religious. 3 missionaries (base, religious, defender of the faith) are more than enough. Why do you want to stuck with 0 tolerance if you can have 10? (3 base, 2 coptic, 2 religious, and I frequently had an event which gave another 3)

I wasn't able to expand in my run after 20 years because of a blobbed Adal/Mamluks alliance which blocked me entirely. Jumped on them when they were in a war against Hedschas and was able to break Adal before the Mamluks came. After that, I had insane luck with the event that gives you a 100 tradition general. Without that, I wouldn't be able to peace out the Ottomans and Tunisia when they jumped on me with just giving them Sinai and 3 other provinces. Allying Spain and Austria prevented further wars, but they were not strong enough to really help. Then I just sat there and waited, conquered South India and Malacca (trade to Alexandria improves your income hugely) and when the Ottomans were in the 30 years war, got hit by internal trouble and Syria and Epirus getting all greek culture provinces broke free, it was easy.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Waiting for Imperialism? I got the achievement in 1580 and wouldn't wanted to wait longer.

I would definetely go with religious. 3 missionaries (base, religious, defender of the faith) are more than enough. Why do you want to stuck with 0 tolerance if you can have 10? (3 base, 2 coptic, 2 religious, and I frequently had an event which gave another 3)

I wasn't able to expand in my run after 20 years because of a blobbed Adal/Mamluks alliance which blocked me entirely. Jumped on them when they were in a war against Hedschas and was able to break Adal before the Mamluks came. After that, I had insane luck with the event that gives you a 100 tradition general. Without that, I wouldn't be able to peace out the Ottomans when they jumped on me with just giving them Sinai and 3 other provinces. Allying Spain and Austria prevented further wars, but they were not strong enough to really help. Then I just sat there and waited, conquered South India and Malacca, and when the Ottomans were in the 30 years war, got hit by internal trouble and Syria and Epirus getting all greek culture provinces broke free, it was easy.

Yeah, i also got that god-like general early game. Got a 4-5 general in the 1460's that made me smash everything around me for the next 20/30 years. But i had no such luck with Ottomans imploding... I really had to eat slowly all their land from Damascus all the way to Constantinople. I still have about 100 years left to play in the game, but i stopped after getting the achievement. Maybe i'll return there before 1.12 just to see if i managed to annex the Ottomans and conquer what's left of Africa.

 

[Nikolaj-11]

I'm on the "both" wagon as well. Religious is a must for Ethiopia, but getting Humanism is usually only a question about "when" for me with any nation I play as. Accepted culture and nationalism decrease are worth it in themselves regardless of all the religious increases and the unrest bonus.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Humanism is usually a great choice, but in this case it's not quite good enough imo. The extra 20% religious unity won't keep you above 100% forever, and the extra heathen tolerance (which comes far too late for your purposes) isn't good enough. That said, it might be a good pick later in the game after you've maxed out religious. Why pick one when you can have both?

Because administrative, influence, diplomatic, religious, quantity or defensive are all better picks. This puts humanist as 5th IG at earliest.

Conversions are only slow at first. Once you have Mecca + Jerusalem + Religious + DotF and are in the mid game you'll have 5 missionaries with a base conversion power of over 8% (and Najd can convert Mecca for you). Keeping conversion pace up with conquest rate should be really easy until you have tier 3 admin efficiency in the mid-late 1700's...not to mention you can add a 6th missionary with Rome and thanks to it being a heresy, you can convert it with Cathedral and your extra +2% strength.

Religious all the way.