Get rid of Missionaries

[WSnova]

Posts like these are a point in favor of "people read last page of posts, not the full thread". It has been mentioned over and over again that religious conversion does currently cost points.

Most countries have 1 Missionary. Unless you're sitting purely in the parts of Europe that start catholic (so no conversion malus from Orthodox/Muslim), 1 missionary isn't really going to keep up with rate of conquest.

More missionaries can be acquired by taking religious ideas (ADM points), DotF if Christian/Muslim or Counter-reformation if Catholic (+tech costs = all MPs), or conquering various religious centers (ADM/DIP points)

Missionary Strength can be acquired by decisions or by taking religious ideas (ADM points).

Catholic/Protestant/Reformed are handheld with +missionary strength decisions that have no cost direct or opportunity. If anything, remove or re-balance those, for everyone else there is already a cost to effectively convert territory.

That stil doesn´t change the fact that converting is just something you just do without thinking too much.
And you are wrong, missionaries cost points conversions don´t.

Even then, lets go with the idea that religious conversion is spending monarch points over the monarch points that you have already invested in Religious to get more missionaries + strength.

Then, its working like Influence in that you spend Diplo Points to save Diplo points, or with admin where you spend Admin points in saving admin points.So its perfectly consistent with Coring, Culture conversion and Diplo Annexing. So its not really an out there concept.

so yeah as it is, Religious conversion is a no Brainer most of the time. Now compare Small religions vs small cultures. One tends to disappear much more than the other.

 

[SweetHalcyHS]

And now, allow me to point you to my previous post (forgive me for going from gameplay to historical, but hey, everyone's doing it):

If there is supposed to be any real nerf to religious conversion, then it would be in increased RR. In history, once the rebels could be militarily put down, converting a province was not very difficult. Whether through actual conversion, or through the exile of those who refused to do so.

Like seriously, I hope you people aren't trying to argue that the Netherlands didn't turn Catholic because the Spanish didn't try- because that's exactly what the proposed changes the OP has made will result in.

The failure of religious conversions usually accounted to two things: Rebels, and the unwillingness to do so. The latter can also be divided into the fear of rebels, and a tolerance policy. Tolerance already has an entire idea group for that, but the real problem here are the rebels: Just how many religious rebels did you face while converting the entirety of Southeast Asia? Hell, just how many religious rebels did you face converting Northern Europe as the Hansa (if at all)?

I'm restating myself, but if you look in history, religious conversion tend to be surprisingly fast when equipped with the ability to smash the opposition into oblivion (the most obvious example is Islam)- if you're taking a page out of history as to why the game should tend towards certain results, then this should also definitely be noted. Your examples such as the Spanish Netherlands or the Mughals both validate this point, since both tried and both failed because they got their ass handed to them and gave up.

You're trying to tackle this issue in the completely opposite direction- the opportunity cost with religious conversion should be those damn pesky rebels, of which, I will completely agree to being sorely underrepresented in game. But otherwise, smooth sailing.

 

[YouMust99]

This just brings up something I've always found annoying. When I take over some holy city of another religion in a holy war, what is stopping me from completely and utterly sacking it? A ruler of a zealot resurgent magically somehow alive byzantine empire probably would have some reason to force his religion on Mecca, whether through peaceful or violent means.

 

[Outrider]

That stil doesn´t change the fact that converting is just something you just do without thinking too much.
And you are wrong, missionaries cost points conversions don´t.

This is a silly argument.

Armies don't cost monarch points, manpower does. Improving Relations/Fabricating claims don't cost monarch points, diplomats do. Doing one directly depends on the other.

You can't convert nearly as many provinces with fewer missionaries (acquirable by use of monarch points, time, and other resources), so each converting more provinces than 1 missionary allows incurs cost.

The game has a number of resources, not just MPs. Even if something has no/low monarch point cost, it's not "free".

Then, its working like Influence in that you spend Diplo Points to save Diplo points, or with admin where you spend Admin points in saving admin points.So its perfectly consistent with Coring, Culture conversion and Diplo Annexing. So its not really an out there concept.
so yeah as it is, Religious conversion is a no Brainer most of the time.

As TMIT pointed out earlier, almost every aspect of the game could be reduced to just a Monarch Point cost. Diplomats could be removed entirely and diplomatic actions just used DIP points. Armies and Warfare could be reduced to two sides slinging MIL points back and forth. Something being consistent with other aspects of the game doesn't make changing them to that mold will improve the game.

 

[Mad King James]

I would actually be in favor of more things you could spend military points on during wars, like if you could convert points into manpower

 

[Quanfinigon]

On that note, let's get rid of all the diplomats and colonists and everything else in the game while we're at it! Diplomatic actions now cost 25 DIP, while colonies cost 200 ADM! Oh and merchants now cost 5 DIP and 5 ADM per month, but hey, you can spam wherever you like... if you can afford* it that is.

And because waiting's retarded, everything happens at once! No diplomatic cooldowns or stuff like that- converting religions, coring, changing culture and all those shenanigans now happen instantly as long as you can pay*!

*Monarch points only. Take that shitty gold off to somewhere else, scrubs.

Can't afford to culture shift? Click here to buy 800 dip for only $2.99

 

[ChildeR]

That's absurd. There is lots of opportunity costs associated with conversion. Unless your sitting around in western europe converting between catholic/protestant/reformed (and even then base + free decisions don't go that far), you will need to spend time/resources acquiring additional missionaries and conversion strength.

Not true, I have played humanism campaigns with +3 (current level, not bonus) tolerance. I don't care what converts to what then.

Sure, there are decisions and ideas that matter, and those are largely fine. However, I'm talking about the mechanic of sending missionaries to convert countries. That's almost on the level of the curia in how mechanical an action it is. It might as well be automatic if it's to be like that. Would prefer there being more of a choice, though.

(As an aside, yes, I play 90% of my games in Europe. The only real strategic choice with regard to conversion is whether I want Religious or Humanism and if so, when. If conversion is uninteresting in Europe, then there's something wrong with it.)

 

[salmanbabri]

But historically there were cases in which countries failed to convert their people for decades or centuries. The Mughals in India. The Timurids in Persia. The French (at least for a long time) in northern France. The Spanish in the Netherlands.

Historically not all countries went the Spainish way of 'burn the heretics & infidels' style. Mughals were highly tolerant to non-mulsims during their reign, that is why they get the 'tolerate the idol worhshippers' idea in EUIV. And AFAIK under Timur & before Safavid dynasty most of the Persia was still Sunni. It was later converted Shia by zealist Shahs of Safavid dynasty.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I think you all are missing the meaning of in-game conversion. It's not 51% of the population flipping religion overnight, it's spreading the national faith to some key individuals, bureaucrats, nobles and major cities, just to make sure no notable will get the fancy idea to lead a religious uprising. The religion of the countryside is abstracted, and meaningless at a level of simulation that not even track population. Let's say they are pacified, doing their things in secret and very slowly converting to the more prestigious state religion, just like happened in real life. Same for culture: changing language and customs of a province is a monumental undertaking, not so much is assimilating the upper classes.

 

[victimizer]

I think Missionaries should have a "catastrophic failure" chance in converting a province. Meaning, if the failure occurs, the missionary work will collapse and militant religiousness in the province would make further efforts futile for a certain period of time. Additionally, a big rebel army will spawn, requiring you to put it down. Catastrophic failure chance would be affected by at least the following factors:

1. Geography. Deserts, mountains and other such harsh terrain types would make the province more resistant to conversion as the infidels have more places to hide and live differently from your imposed religious norms.
2. Provinces that are "core" to the religion would be more resistant as well. Hinduism would be harder to stamp out in India than in Persia. Islam would be harder to stamp out in Arabia, while converting Andalusia would be easier.
3. Culture. Certain cultures would be much more attached to one type of religion than another. Greeks would be harder to turn away from Orthodoxy. Arabs would be harder to turn away from Islam. Punjabis would be harder to turn away from Hinduism. etc

Also, the amount of missionaries should be reduced.

 

[clockworkBabbag]

Since EUIV and the change to the power point system, there is only one holdover from the old "wait x months" style from previous games, and that's missionaries. I believe that currently there is no downside (other than possible revolts) from sending missionaries to convert provinces, so everyone does and everyone tries to convert all their provinces to their religion, and you can usually do this in a few decades...

The fact that the vast majority of people in this thread are saying that this is a bad idea is not a sign that you're right and that people just don't want the game to be more difficult, it's a sign that you need to take a step back and think about why your proposal might not be the best solution.

Most of the time if you want to do some really heavy conversion - especially if you're not Christian and don't have access to all those decisions - you get the Religious idea group. That's at least 1200 ADM points and an idea group slot invested already. An inquisitor advisor costs gold (which can range from a pittance to expensive), and most of the decisions to increase missionary strength do have some kind of cost (revolt risk, stability modifier, or something else). These investments are more or less required in order to convert effectively, and are plenty of a cost by themselves.

If you really feel that religious conversion is too fast, the solution is not to add a disincentive to convert that's so strong that everybody will just get Humanist instead (which is both dumb and blatantly ahistorical), but rather it's just to make it harder to convert provinces. Get rid of the Christian decisions to increase missionary strength. Make it take longer to convert, and increase the RR in provinces undergoing conversion. Something like that.

But the game mechanics simply do not allow for a workable system of MP cost for conversion, because at that point Humanist and tolerance bonuses is always a better choice over any kind of substantial converting. Your proposal takes us from "send missionaries without thinking" to "take Humanist without thinking," which is obviously not any kind of improvement.

 

[Fishman786]

Go back to the EUIII patch 1 system where the missionaries took between 500-1000 days to work and then had a small chance of success.

 

[NLmarnix]

I actually like this way described by OP, makes the game more interesting in a gameplay kinda way.

 

[uishax]

A simple, actual mechanic would be linking tolerance to missionary strength, simple, less repression for heretics/heathens means less incentive to convert. At +3 tolerance lets say all positive modifers for missionary strength gets reduced by 80%, making conversion all but impossible.
This presents an actual choice between temporally placating other religions, or eradicating them to prevent future issues but at great cost

 

[ahyangyi]

A simple, actual mechanic would be linking tolerance to missionary strength, simple, less repression for heretics/heathens means less incentive to convert. At +3 tolerance lets say all positive modifers for missionary strength gets reduced by 80%, making conversion all but impossible.
This presents an actual choice between temporally placating other religions, or eradicating them to prevent future issues but at great cost

They just removed the heretics-spawning-when-tolerance-is-positive event, for a good reason. I'm afraid what you describe is similar.
It also needs some reworking for National Ideas. Some countries have +tolerance (for example hungary), they are kind of locked in and you can't arbitrarily nerf them.

 

[FrosT37]

If you really feel that religious conversion is too fast, the solution is not to add a disincentive to convert that's so strong that everybody will just get Humanist instead (which is both dumb and blatantly ahistorical), but rather it's just to make it harder to convert provinces. Get rid of the Christian decisions to increase missionary strength. Make it take longer to convert, and increase the RR in provinces undergoing conversion. Something like that.

But the game mechanics simply do not allow for a workable system of MP cost for conversion, because at that point Humanist and tolerance bonuses is always a better choice over any kind of substantial converting. Your proposal takes us from "send missionaries without thinking" to "take Humanist without thinking," which is obviously not any kind of improvement.

If a change to religious conversion occured, you realize that Humanism would inevitably get nerfed? The bonus to tolerance would probably be lowered to +2 or even +1.

The argument that humanism would become overpowered is meaningless.

 

[in heaven]

I have idea but this one is too heavy for eu4 engine so no no for that.. But i have another idea: i think religious convertion should not "be x days till its converted", but instead more event based. Missionary trying to convert province would only make event (which converts province) more likely to trigger.. So for example, you convert to reformed, you can send your misionary to convert province, but instead of having this "x days till province is converted", it would be "that chance per year to convert province".. There would be events increasing or decreasing chance and there would be events that show that people in this province resists conversion and you would have choices to either spend more money or dont bother doing anything which would make chance lower..

 

[Fishman786]

I have idea but this one is too heavy for eu4 engine so no no for that.. But i have another idea: i think religious convertion should not "be x days till its converted", but instead more event based. Missionary trying to convert province would only make event (which converts province) more likely to trigger.. So for example, you convert to reformed, you can send your misionary to convert province, but instead of having this "x days till province is converted", it would be "that chance per year to convert province".. There would be events increasing or decreasing chance and there would be events that show that people in this province resists conversion and you would have choices to either spend more money or dont bother doing anything which would make chance lower..

This was exactly the system that was used in EUIII (introduced after a few patches to replace the system I mentioned earlier) in fact. A missionary would sit in a province and would have a yearly chance at converting it. In theory the missionary could sit there until the end of the game. But it usually took somewhere between five and twenty years to do.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This was exactly the system that was used in EUIII (introduced after a few patches to replace the system I mentioned earlier) in fact. A missionary would sit in a province and would have a yearly chance at converting it. In theory the missionary could sit there until the end of the game. But it usually took somewhere between five and twenty years to do.

We already regressed to an extent due to monarch points. Why regress changes that were actually good? Right now you need solid investment for conversion to keep up with expansion pace, depending on where you are the amount of investment varies. Enough of the game is overly dependent on chance already. Adding noise to the importance of player decisions by making those decisions randomly matter more or less is no an inherently superior abstraction to a more deterministic model.

 

[Fishman786]

We already regressed to an extent due to monarch points. Why regress changes that were actually good? Right now you need solid investment for conversion to keep up with expansion pace, depending on where you are the amount of investment varies. Enough of the game is overly dependent on chance already. Adding noise to the importance of player decisions by making those decisions randomly matter more or less is no an inherently superior abstraction to a more deterministic model.

I agree, it wasn't that great. It did make conversions a bit more realistic, having to wait for a long time for them to work and not being sure whether they would. EUIV could use longer conversion times but there's already too much randomness, as you said.