• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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...
 
Agree (although not entirely on the demense part, at least directly connected to the capital - in a big realm it could be converted for gameplay reasons so you don't end like a hobo).

The thing is, there is already a mechanic for that: converting a province from a religion with low Moral Authority is pretty easy (unless it's Romuva). The Wiki gives a factor of x8 for MA between 0 and 20. And the chances are your old Pagan faith doesn't have much MA. So usually even when ending up "like a hobo" it takes you just 5-10 years to convert most of your demesne.

But yeah it stands to reason that your capital (and maybe adjacent provinces) should be converted as a result of the Mass Conversion. But it shouldn't be instaconversions, rather there should be an event chain where you'll have to spend some money buttering up the elders or maybe find some ambitious young Shaman who wouldn't mind becoming the new Bishop or something like that.
 
I'd actually appreciate this; as it stands in those start dates, the giant pagan realms tend to last forever unless conquered, sending raiders to harass people all over. Realistically, a Norse ruler of Britannia would have converted within a generation (indeed, basically all the Viking rulers in the Danelaw were Christian within a couple of decades of 867, with Denmark proper following a century later, and Norway and Sweden following not long after, instead of staying pagan forever like they do in-game). I'd really prefer, as a continental power, not having to decide between "conquer all of Great Britain one holy war at a time" and "sit and watch Viking raiders from every landed noble in the British Isles harass my coast."

I think you misread what I said. I said overuse, not use appropriately. I'm talking about starting in 769 and most rulers having converted by 800.
 
I think you misread what I said. I said overuse, not use appropriately. I'm talking about starting in 769 and most rulers having converted by 800.

In my recent Austria game (starting in 867), people were still converting into 12-13th century, so I think it's all right.
 
Indeed. And in order to make the baptismal name changing even more historical, it would be really terrific if there would be a possibility to emphasise the likelihood that the converting ruler adopts the (appropriately localized) form of his sponsor's name. There are many examples of this, and it befits the importance of god-parenthood in many medieval societies: very often, the converted ruler was interpreted as a god-child of the sponsoring Christian ruler or indeed the presiding bishop of the conversion.

Here's to hoping that a ruler who has conducted a Mass Conversion of his realm will have a better chance of gaining a sainthood. That, if anything, would be historical to the degree of normativity.

Yeah, that would be cool too. I would really like to have the ability to have multiple name lists for different religions inside a culture. It is strange to see pagan Hungarian rulers with western Christian names for example.

Huh? Isn't this Caeserion's point?

Yes. I just agreed with him and gave another example. Why is it a problem?

Yeah it being historical was my point. "Its not even ahistorical". I could've phrased that better, sorry for the confusion.

Nononono. I am the one who is sorry. I understood you correctly poin, and just wanted to confirm it. It came out in a bad way. Sorry.
 
Its a welcomed change...but i must ask, how many vacation days do you have in Sweden? Man, these are a lot of days! ;)

Now we need anything about pagan west africa, that part of the world its a paradox-forsaken place that needs some attention.
 
I'll have to dissent on this one. It's a nice feature I suppose, more complexity is always good, but it doesn't add much to gameplay, in fact it makes it even more easier. I converted my realms to heresies, to a reformed paganism, to an established religion. It was never particularly hard and it was quite entertaining: dealing with powerful vassals, with different rebellions, revoking titles. Kinda of a civil war.

This feature just makes it easier, and the fact that all your demesne is instaconverted looks ahistorical and illogical. So as Vladimir of Rus I convert to Chistianity in my capital in Kiev and suddenly my county of Bryansk follows suit without any compunction? I mean it's a bunch of tribal settlements surrounded by thick forests hundreds of kilometers from Kiev. What Christian sorcery is this?

And what about your temple vassals? Would they go along with casting away the ways of the ancestors? From the DD it figures that yes, they would (if you have Absolute Tribal Authority). Hopefully not, although the fact that the entirety of your demesne is converted means they wouldn't have any base to raise rebellions against you, and after their death they will be supplanted with nice Christian priests.

The biggest problem is that the feature makes the game easier than it is now, and the game already have plenty of ease: usually once a certain size is achieved you steamroll over everything be it your vassals or enemies. "Well, do a Mass Conversion with zero Tribal Authority then, Mr-The-Game-Is-Too-Easy" you might say. It's true I guess, but why would I do that as a ruler? It breaks immersion to purposefully make suboptimal (or even horrible) decisions just to have some challenge.

The better way to implement such a system, I think, is to have a similar mechanic of Mass Conversion, but for it to come with strings attached even when at maximum Tribal Authority (or to have more bonuses to it, if you do it with less TA). Your brother rejecting new ways and fleeing to a court of your powerful and unruly vassals to become a pretender, your neighbours supporting his claim (sorta like a defensive Holy War), your zealous daughter trying to kill you in your sleep, your shamans cursing you for destroying idols of the old gods, giving you health maluses and such (supernatural events enabled), your peasants burning the priests you send to convert them (this is already in the game, but doesn't really impact gameplay much). The idea is that when you convert your realm to Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, you will have much fun for the next 30 years.


Perhaps a game rule or something should be implemented? That said, it looks like it might well help the AI come to more historical-like outcomes, so perhaps the rule should be enabled/AI only/disabled?
 
I wonder how the event description will differ when converting to different proselytizing organized faiths. Islam or Zoroastrianism don't really baptize, do they? Or Indian faiths, that would be interesting as well.

I hope event localisation reflects the differences much better, and are more unique, than the "one size fits all" that the various "devil worshipers" societies have with Monks and Mystics or the shortage of wild boar to eat that Muslims also get with the seclusion events.

I'm also hoping that converting due to a holy war receives some attention and has unique challenges and benefits, some vassals should be resentful that their ruler decides to succumb to baptism rather than fight but the attacker would be very happy and could have the option to sponsor that newly converted ruler.
 
With each new dev diary I grow increasing impatient for Holy Fury to release. I can't wait to get my hands on it so I can begin spreading the word of Odin to the rest of Europe! And the Middle East... and India... and maybe China if there's time....
 
Are u kidding us. U go on a more then a long vacation before releasing a this dlc. Omg ...
You'd rather have them releasing it now and then not be working on post-launch support for more than a month? They've done that in the past and as everyone with half a brain cell would expect it was far from the optimal
Can a player be asked or offer to sponsor? What would the benefits for the sponsoring side be, except for bringing neighbours into the fold of your faith?
A crap ton of piety I guess
Its a welcomed change...but i must ask, how many vacation days do you have in Sweden? Man, these are a lot of days! ;)
It looks like 5 weeks in the summer, and one week from time to time, so about 7-8 weeks total?
 
Yes, Reformed Pagans can indeed be sponsors of Mass Conversions.
A couple of questions:
1. So will Reformed Pagans be able to send missionaries to other unreformed Pagans?
2. Will the AI rulers choose Reformed Pagans as sponsors to their Mass Conversions?
3. Can a vassal of a Pagan ruler convert to a foreign faith, thus starting some kind of a War of Religion within that realm?

Thank you for the Dev Diary, the Expansion looks quite great.
 
Are u kidding us. U go on a more then a long vacation before releasing a this dlc. Omg ...
Do not be that guy. Having lots lf vacations its amazing :D

You'd rather have them releasing it now and then not be working on post-launch support for more than a month? They've done that in the past and as everyone with half a brain cell would expect it was far from the optimal

A crap ton of piety I guess

It looks like 5 weeks in the summer, and one week from time to time, so about 7-8 weeks total?

Thats amazing, i have 4 weeks and i feel privileged because regular people have 3 weeks. 8 weeks! Woah :eek:

I want to migrate to Sweden now. :D
 
Last edited:
My big concern about mass conversions is pagans mass converting very early in the game. I can see starting as a Norse pagan, for example, and then seeing my pagan neighbors starting to mass convert very quickly.
 
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.

YES! PRAISE THE LORD!
As the DLC is still in its beginnings, could you guys change every instance of '+' and '-' into numbers? PLEEEASE?
 
Seconded. It would be weird to see a king of sweden, the pious christian who converted his people, named after Thor. Its not even ahistorical. Pope John II was born Mercury but believing it was inappropriate for a Pope to be named after a pagan god, rechristened himself to John II

Why would that be weird. Thorsten is a common name. Even Archbishops can have that name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurstan
 
My big concern about mass conversions is pagans mass converting very early in the game. I can see starting as a Norse pagan, for example, and then seeing my pagan neighbors starting to mass convert very quickly.
In my recent Austria game (starting in 867), people were still converting into 12-13th century, so I think it's all right.
 
A couple of questions:
1. So will Reformed Pagans be able to send missionaries to other unreformed Pagans?
2. Will the AI rulers choose Reformed Pagans as sponsors to their Mass Conversions?
3. Can a vassal of a Pagan ruler convert to a foreign faith, thus starting some kind of a War of Religion within that realm?

Thank you for the Dev Diary, the Expansion looks quite great.
1. That depends on how the religion is reformed.
2. Yes, it can definitely happen.
3. Mass Conversion is a realm-based mechanic, so it can only start between two independent rulers, then trickle down to the Pagan's vassals.
 
This seems too easy. Please tell me there's some heavy downsides to this if you're not a strong and/or popular ruler?
Well, a massive revolt for a start