Religious rebel herding help

[Plantagent]

They're driving me insane. First time I spawned them, I followed them around, deseiged provinces with a big stack, left one behind.

They decided they objected to the herding and suicided into Bengals army.

Second time I made sure the rebel stack was bigger and planned to ignore them for a bit. My tributary Mongol helpfully started desieging with a 10 stack, my rebels took exception, Mongol reinforced and wiped 33k rebels with 20k soldiers.

I rage quit.

Before I go back, how do I do this without the frustration? I've got one rebel stack, I want to get out of the Confucian trap and find Shivas light... preferably in less than a century.

Thanks!

 

[bly08]

Religious rebels are attracted to unrest. To speed up conversion you need to spawn as many stacks as possible. When they occupy a province with unrest, the rebel progress turns into zealot progress. After the first stack spawns, take some new provinces from a neighbor, preferably in a convenient location, and wait for the new provinces to get occupied. Don't unsiege until a new stack spawns. You will have to stay overextended in the meantime if you can't core fast enough.

When multiple stacks have spawned you can afford to lose 1 or 2 who choose to walk through your neighbor's land instead of your own provinces. They get confused when they don't have a direct path to their destination. If your capital gets occupied, unsiege it within two years or else they'll enforce demands. If you don't plan on converting again then it's probably worth it to wait until most/all of your provinces are occupied for higher religious unity. You don't have to unsiege every province, just the valuables ones and CoTs where occupation and the autonomy hit would matter. If you unsiege too quickly, they'll go back to resiege converted provinces instead of moving onto new ones.

And yes this is one of the most frustrating experiences of EU4. 10% CCR isn't easy to get.

Here's some more information:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/religious-rebel-rage.1045808/

I've not encountered the same thing since and have been able to convert within 10-20 years like normal, but I keep my fingers crossed.

 

[Plantagent]

That's some sympathy rage if I've ever seen it.

I have problems generating rebels. That 33k stack was an amazing labour of love. I have really high -unrest. -2 manchu ideas, -2.5 mandate, -2 humanist... so rebels are damn hard to come by.

I have thoughts and theories. First, I should have grabbed a hindu province much earlier. Can't get religious rebels without wait for separatism to go, fine, just get the province early. Second... I'm pretty sure if you park a stack near the rebels, tributaries leave them alone. It's not like Bengal hunted the first stack down, they just went wacky.

Maybe only one, to minimize the 'lose their minds and go to any province' effect TheMeInTeam was talking about. But I think that does work.

Once they get AWAY FROM MY BORDERS I'll try the desiege with full, leave one herding thing again. But I'm going to have to do a whole new game. Bothersome. Maybe I won't need to worry about devastation tanking mandate, though, without the Russia finger touching me.

Holding on to OE is filthy heresy. And a good idea.

The thing about multiple stacks though... is that the rebels killed themselves both times after sieging five provinces. FIVE. And then Mongolia helpfully desieged them.

If there was any other way to convert, Paradox, that'd be great. International missionaries? That'd be neat, to get an emissary from Najd wanting to convert your people and hand out food(production bonus?) if you let them. Or doing it secretly. It'd add fun to one faith runs too. Spanish inquisition... in Ethiopia!

 

[bly08]

If you're trying to convert to Hindu as Manchu/Qing, this might help but was done on 1.22:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hindu-manchu-wc.1043386/

I made a straight path of provinces (not for this purpose) from the capital to Assam, which allowed the rebels to actually siege one province after the next without doing too much stupid stuff like walking through Ming. You need to set all subjects to sleep mode and make tributaries disloyal. If the tributary still wants to help then you'll have to cancel tributary, can re establish after with no cooldown.

You do need a lot of unrest to spawn the first stack quickly especially with so few missionaries.

I don't like to shepherd rebels anymore. Although they won't actively run into you if your stack is big enough (if they do, retreat asap), it's not guaranteed and you tie up your army in the meantime. As soon as you leave they'll go back to resieging unoccupied provinces that are, again, already converted. This makes me angry just typing about it.

A small trick I use now is to leave a one stack behind and spam shift right click between two provinces that are occupied but uncored. The rebels won't engage the 1k stack because it's not actually unsieging. After rebels move away far enough you can unsiege the uncored provinces and hopefully core them before rebels run back. This saves some time and ties up less resources.

 

[bbqftw]

There is a rather hilarious bug this patch that allows you to convert via interface from Sunni -> Sikh, and then after 10 years from Sikh -> Hindu. Strongly suggest having humanist operational before doing this though

I feel your pain, playing with low tier religions is such a drag