Highest possible missionary strength?

[SacredDatura]

Just curious:

What is and who has the highest possible missionary strength you can get in EU4 by stacking every possible +missionary strength bonus? And is maxing out missionary strength an efficient strategy or do diminishing returns kick in at some point?

 

[Clownie]

Diminishing returns kick in, obviously. Example:

1% effective missionary strength, 100 months to convert.
2%, 50 months.
3%, 33 months.
4%, 25 months.
5%, 20 months.

You get the idea.

I'm not sure what the highest achievable would be, but it'd involve gamey chain-conversion to pick up Save the Burning World, Christian +missionary strength, enforce heritage, etc. as Najd.

 

[Path]

Missionary strength is a flat modifier, so the more you have the better it is (well, if you get it high enough it becomes difficult to see any real improvemenets vs. provinces that are easily converted, so yes, you're looking at diminishing returns). To convert a province you need 100% progression, and the monthly progress is determined by your positive modifiers minus your negative modifiers, meaning no progress at all if the result is negative. If you have a strength of 6 and the province has a negative value of 5, it'll thus take 100 months to convert it--if you boost that to strength 8 (by adding an inquisitor for example), it'll take 34 months to convert.

 

[balmung60]

I don't think you can easily get much better than about three or four months per province (depending on base tax).

If you just want to stack missionary strength for kicks, start as Najd (best conversion NIs), take Religious Ideas and anything that gives missionary strength policies, Unify Islam (this doesn't go away if you convert), convert to Christianity and take all of their decisions for conversion strength (at least a few, including revoking the statute in restraint of appeals will follow you when you convert), convert to Buddhism and Confucianism for their decisions, then convert to Sikhism and take Saving the Burning World, and then to Hinduism and take its decisions (you want to stop here to get the personal deity bonuses).

This isn't efficient or a good idea, and you'd surely have to shed provinces to cross religious lines and rack up + base unrest from decisions for this, but at the end, you will probably be able to plow through most provinces under four months and Rome/Mecca in (probably) under six.

Once you have ~8% missionary strength (perhaps 10% if you're dealing with Muslim/Shinto/Coptic provinces), more missionaries is usually more helpful than stronger missionaries.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

To get highest possible strength you'd have to cycle through Dharmic, Christian, and Eastern religious groups to take the decisions as Najd before going back to Islamic and gouging piety + religious ideas + unifying Islam. Considering that Najd can convert any province without religious ideas or switching groups, and any outside of Rome pretty easily (even Rome is easy w/ cathedral), yes there is diminishing return from this. If you have enough strength to be converting tough provinces in the 20 month range an additional missionary is stronger than more +strength, though it's also possible to get so many that it's impractical.

For a normal playthrough, the strongest converters on the map are pious Najd and full PA Byzantium, both of which will tear through even difficult Islamic provinces in hostile culture in around a year, and both of which have easy access to additional missionaries to do it en masse' (they convert so quickly that I will often convert provinces before coring because their TTF trashes the unrest too).

However, any Christian nation that has religious and can take Jerusalem + Mecca can also cover a lot of conversion ground.

The worst religions for conversion are pagan by far. Next worst is the Eastern group and non-Sikh switch Hindu, because they only get 4% from decisions by default (2% for Hindu which needs a deity for more strength unless you go Sikh then back). These groups are considerably better now than in pre 1.7 days though, since tolerance of heretics/heathens is more useful due to affecting unity and they get more strength from decisions despite no access to DotF and only Rome giving them an extra missionary. Of course, even junk converters like Shinto can get 4% from decisions and snipe Rome for 3 missionaries with 9% base missionary strength (religious/decisions/base), and 9% strength can convert up to ~8 tax hostile culture Sunni, albeit slowly (you add more speed with inquisitor and stability). IMO unless you have a +strength NI and +TTF like Tibet or Lan Xang though eastern religions probably just want humanist where they easily get +3 heretic tolerance and +1 heathen tolerance with 25% unity NI. You'd need a LOT of heathen provinces before it would hurt your unity.

In most cases, IMO, it's not worth it to switch to a heathen faith unless you're pagan, though staying pagan can be fun.

 

[Clownie]

^

Tibet doesn't get TTF — they get tolerance of heathens and heretics. And missionary strength.

...And 2.5% discipline, and -10% idea cost as their last NI. Ugh, I hate that idea group.

 

[Denkt]

You also can get 4% missionary strength from policies:

Religious with Diplomacy/Trade/Espionage/Aristocratic.

Religious also give 2% heritic conversion strength and Religious-Offensive give you an extra 3% heritic conversion strength.

 

[Casus_Belli]

Well, I once had an event as the Byzantines that gave +30% missionary strength in Rome, (converted in 3 months ).

Adding that to all other bonuses, I'd say maybe 40% max.