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CK2 Dev Diary #89 - Mass Conversion, or how I learned to stop my Pagan ways and love God

Greetings!

Note that this is the last DevDiary before vacations start. Until they are over we will not post any diaries, or post them very sporadically. We will resume the normal schedule on the 10th of August.

Today we’d like to talk about Mass Conversion, the flip side of what we talked about in the last DD (Dynamic Pagan Reformation). While Reforming a Pagan faith is a very epic feat, it’s also a fairly hard one to pull off in many cases. Historically, pagan rulers often turned to their neighbours religions in order to solidify their rule - and now so can you!

It used to be quite a suicidal affair to convert to a non-Pagan religion as a Pagan ruler, your provinces would stay pagan and your vassals would often be upset with you and immediately start a faction to install a pagan claimant. With Holy Fury it’s much more reliable, and carries great benefits to both you and your people. Depending on your strength as a leader, and the respect you have from your subjects, you can now convince your realm to join you in a Mass Conversion. A Mass Conversion will see you, your subjects and your lands adopt a new religion - except for particularly rebellious subjects, of course. Note that only Tribal Pagans will have access to this mechanic.

To Mass Convert your realm you first need to find a so called ‘Sponsor’. You can either look for a sponsor manually, by looking at the interactions menu with landed independent characters, or you can access a list of anyone who would be willing to go through the trouble by clicking a new button in the religious interface:
MassConversionDD_InterfaceValues.png


As said before, this list contains a list of everyone who will accept to convert your realm, and in the bottom right corner you can see that the AI reasoning is now exposed! The acceptance will not just be a bunch of pluses and minuses, instead you’ll be able to see exactly how they reason. If you, for example, want Byzantium to be your sponsor, you can enter the character sheet of the Basileus and check the interaction tooltip to see his reasoning if he says no, which will give you actual hints on what you could do to improve the chances of him accepting.
MassConversionDD_Accepted.png


After you’ve found a sponsor that accepted your offer, the Mass Conversion events will begin!
MassConversionDD_mainEvent.png

Note that the event image is a placeholder.

If you’re a tribe with low organization, you will actually gain a level of organization upon performing a Mass Conversion, in addition to you and your land switching to the new religion. The downside to doing one when you have low organization is, as mentioned earlier, that fewer subjects are likely to go along with it.

It doesn’t end here though, you and your sponsor will continue to keep in touch - and your sponsor will keep on helping your realm by providing you with money, building churches in your realm and many other things. Examples:
MassConversionDD_SponsorEvent.png
MassConversionDD_SponsorEvent2.png


In addition, the priest that your sponsor will send you will also help you out. He will attempt to modernize your realm and ensure that you act in accordance to your new faith. For example:
MassConversionDD_PriestEvent.png


So, as you can clearly see, this system stands in stark contrast to the Dynamic Reformation we talked about in a previous Dev Diary - by reforming you gain absolute control of your future, but it’s a difficult path to walk that also require you to conquer vast territories. A Mass Conversion, on the other hand, is a fairly easy thing to accomplish that also comes with temporal benefits - but you’ll have to submit to a faith that might not represent you or the people you rule...
 
I assume this means "political concerns" are going away?
 
I do wonder if in a later dev diary will could see some more expansion news on the mending of the schism (making it worthwhile to try to do), even an alternative history mending where orthodox becomes a heresy?
 
Really like and appreciate the fact that this kind of weighty interaction doesn't come to a dead stop immediately after conversion, the ongoing support and exchange is a nice touch and the kind of thing I've wanted to see more of for awhile.
 
I hope Mass Conversion is extended to all religions, with flavor for each. I'd like to see the potential for tribesmen to go Hindu or, even more fun, a heresy! However, I don't want a baptism theme in places where it makes no sense.

Only Jews and Christians baptized new converts. May Jewish clergy baptized Gentiles during their conversion to Judaism (though I'm not sure if it's before or after their circumcision). Christians are commanded to baptize converts.

I also have an idea for the Jewish one, as a flavor reference. At the end of the Event text, the Jewish rabbi working with the conversion should hold up a circumcision tool and say "Now your men shall be one with the Covenant of Abraham.".

The Option tooltip says "We have to cut our WHAT?!".

I'm pretty sure that if you told Jews that their practice was baptism, they would be incredibly offended.

And I am all for that tool-tip. It even has biblical precedent: when some rich hot-shot abducted Jacob's daughter, her brothers promised to join forces with the abductor's people if they consented to be circumcised. Then, "while they were yet tender" the brothers came in and slew all the men of the city.
 
This is so cool! Holy Fury's looking to be very robust and multi-faceted. I'm just wondering: if a heresy replaces the main religion (i.e. Messalianism overtaking Nestorianism, Iconoclasm replacing Orthodoxy, etc.), will they get to sponsor mass conversions as well? I would think the answer is "yes," but I wasn't certain.
 
This is so cool! Holy Fury's looking to be very robust and multi-faceted. I'm just wondering: if a heresy replaces the main religion (i.e. Messalianism overtaking Nestorianism, Iconoclasm replacing Orthodoxy, etc.), will they get to sponsor mass conversions as well? I would think the answer is "yes," but I wasn't certain.
I thought they said that any proselytizing religion will be able to sponsor. I think that means that if an independent ruler is of the heretic faith he can attempt to sponsor mass conversions.
 
I'm pretty sure that if you told Jews that their practice was baptism, they would be incredibly offended.

Yeah, immersion in a mikveh is pretty distinct from christian baptism. It seems pretty likely that christian baptism has its origins in 1st century jewish ritual purity immersions (moreso those of the rural populace than those of the urban populace, the latter of which developed into the modern mikveh) though but obviously it's not entirely clear how different they were in the early medieval period although certainly in the later medieval period they were different enough to not be recognised as deriving from the same practice
 
I don't know if I could handle a five-week vacation.
I do best on routine. So those first two weeks would be tough. But four or five weeks gives me just enough time for "not working" to become my new routine; meaning I'd have to re-adjust to working. Right now in grad school, I'm taking a summer course that doesn't get me any closer to getting my degree because I had all of May off and ended up not being able to stand it.

But I'm aware that I'm an odd person. [And spreading those five weeks throughout the year would be great.]
 
6. Do you get canonised for sponsoring a mass conversion? Do you get canonised for requesting and successfully converting a country?

I would really like to hear something about this because it does really sound like a sure way to be regarded as a saint, historically, just as the christian wife of a pagan ruler who converted her husband through events would pretty much guarantee a canonization for her, wouldn't her?

Also also, could having a pagan friend, while playing as a Christian ruler, increase the chance that said pagan (if not zealous) would ask you personally for sponsorship in a Mass Conversion?
 
I only have one question, are begome memes against forum rules