Convertions will be implemeted somehow, remember that turkey starts orthodox and ends sunni, and cultural assimilation will be implemented for sure.
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I'd rather like to see the presence of actual Schisms, which were a big deal in the period but completely absent in CK1.
Not to start a pointless argument, but as a small point, in the 7th century there were no Croats OR Catholics, since the former kingdom didn't exist and there was no schism between Rome and Constantinople.
Catholic lord, with a Muslim land and Muslim courtiers, should have a high chance to be assassinated by event. Because I just can't imagine such a situation lasting long.
The division pre-dates the formal schism, the definition was there from pretty much day one, and by the 4th century was pretty much concrete. The great schism was the announcement that they were finally, after centuries of failing, going to stop trying to fix it.
Rome always said that the church should be independent, and the new rome submitted to the Emperor. Rome always said that what is true is universally true and as such true in all times and in all places, the east constantly adopted one heresy or another depending on popular support. Rome puts St-Peter at the head, the east put the emperor and the various patriarchs on equal footing, and well the list grows and grows.
By the time St-Gregory came to the papacy there were more differences than similarities between the two branches of the Church. The breech was permanent by then, and that was centuries before the official schism.
It was political event, not a theological one, Catholicism definitely existed in the 7th century, as it always will. And the East/West divide was in place and taken as granted long before the easy to quote date from the history books.
Dont let the simple time lines carry you away. The Schism happened because of the irrevocable differences, it didnt cause them.
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For one, the term catholic predates the schism by centuries, and secondly a kingdom not existing does not mean that its people didn't exist. Croatians didn't exist as Croatia didn't exist, but Croats existed.
Does it though? Anatolia retained large Christian communities until long after CK's timeframe. Where the religious composition of the region changed was with the demographic shifts that accompanied mass migrations (such as that of the Turks), and not conversion per se. The same, I believe, was true of the rest of the Near East. A country's nobility could change religion (such as the fall of the Fatimids) but the vast majority of the population continued to toil in ignorance. Most obviously, there was no mass conversion programmes following either the Latin conquest or Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land
So I would suggest that if conversion is in the game at all it should be very rare and, pagans aside, almost entirely out of the hands of the player
Well if we use some kind of population models (whether its pops or something else) then it can be handled on the population level and completely bypass the province (except for official/tolerated religions)
Not at all. If anything the church division didn't happen until some time after the former schism of 1054, when the two patriarchs started appointing parallel hierarchies. 4th century is absurd for a variety of reasons, one of which is that the emperor was still appointing his own popes in the 8th.
Yeah, I wouldn't get too hung up on words. Orthodox/Catholic is our distinction. Both words were used by both churches to describe themselves and often each other!
And yeah, while it's true that the existence of Croatians is not discounted by the lack of existence of the kingdom, they didn't; and the guys referred to earlier aren't the guys you're thinking of. Again ... don't get too hung up on words!
Then there is the little thing about those pagans in Scandinavia, Finland, The Baltic Coast and Russia.....
With a gradual conversion system, with modifiers, it could be far more difficult to convert large populations of muslims, but considerably easier to convert some Sun worshiping hillbillies.
Regarding the pagans in question you may want to consult "The Vikings" by Else Roesdahl to get a better handle on the effectiveness of those conversions in the timeframe.
Often the "converted" were either giving lip-service, practicing their old religions either in secret or side-by-side...other times they were melding their pagan beliefs with Christian...what they were doing would only superficially be recognisable to someone visiting from Rome.
I don't see how an early reformation was impossible (although it would require the printing press, a late game development). Luther was successful because a) he was writing in German, a widely used language due to the influence of the Empire and the Hanseatic League (and which can be readily translated into other Germanic languages) and b) he seperated his theological position from movements for social reform, so he was able to garner support from the German princes. Jan Hus' push for church reform wasn't as successful because a) Czech wasn't used widely outside Bohemia proper and Moravia and b) Hussitism became embroiled in pushes for social reform (e.g. the Taborites). It should be pointed out, however, that Hus would have had to have read John Wycliff's texts, which were originally written in English.
Some nobles in Languedoc did convert to Catharism (e.g. Raymond VI and VII of Toulouse) so the option should be available.
May I direct your attention to post #19 in this thread
That IE Prussians brought in many pagan practices into their newfound Christian belief is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that the pagans in western Europe did convert within the time-frame of the game.
May I direct your attention to post #19 in this thread
The point is - there is conversion, and then there is Conversion. The degree of such would determine how quickly a population would revert to pagan-norm, as did occur in the early stages of the expansion of Christianity into the Norse culture.
If you are taking the (mostly) peaceful route of converting a population, there should be some back-and-forth in the process...by degrees, not binary (yes/no) that they are at once this religion on the 14th of May and that religion on the 15th. While I hate to point to the TW game series because in most respects they are but shallow impressions of Paradoxian work -- I would say that their approach with the conversion and multiple religious make up of a population would be far more preferable than the binary approach...if those who have played recall, the % of such-and-such religion could be up or down.
I would go further to say that religious conversions (once again, done mostly through "peaceful" means) should also encompass a certain amount of fixed resistance plateaus before you hit a tipping point. I would suggest that this would follow a bell curve, as most populations are comprised of a "norm" within the 2 standard deviations and the outlayers. Assume that you are progressing from left to right, the first group (the left hand 3%) are very open to new religion, then you hit the next 15% to the right and they are somewhat more resistant to change, and then the next group of 34%, etc, etc. you get the idea. However at a certain level (I suggest 50%) you hit the "tipping point" where up and down progress in your task becomes at once easier but with equal chance of setback...you have a solid minority base at worse case - and you might progress like wildfire from that point to the real die-hards at 84%, or you might hit something of a brick wall before then.
If you follow this the "resistance" groupings would be: 1%/15%/34%/34%/15%/1%
Assuming you have some "trigger" that shows you are actively working to convert a province (missionary work, setting up churches, etc.)...as soon as you start actively doing this you'll get that first percent right off the bat (+%/-% suggested overall per annum of missionary work/events "in action")
Per Annum Change in Religion for your Missionary Work [Annual Rate : percentage of religion : (daily rate)]
+2/-1 2% to 16% (+0.006/-0.003)
+1/-1 17% to 49% (+0.003/-0.003)
+2/-2 50% to 83% (+0.006/-0.006)
+1/-1 84% to 97% (+0.003/-0.003)
+1/-2 98% to 100% (+0.003/-0.006)
As you progress through the year the daily conversion rate could be influenced by not only your own active actions, but random events (not just events that are outright conversion related (i.e., "your bishop performs miracle - many converts flock" etc. -- but Plagues, economic downturns, etc.) , outside invasions, well, basically almost everything...including *counter* conversion actions by the established religious order.
Also keep in mind that I am positing numbers for a mostly *active* but peaceful conversion process...if you were being more passive the progress would likely be slower and more prone to setback.
Now keep in mind that this is all an attempt to quantify (for game mechanics) an exceedingly complex sociological process, which means that there are no empirical "rules" to follow.
Having said that
There are some trends we should note for the two major CK religions -> The muslim religion comprises some powerful mercantile inducements for a trade minded population - and this influenced the spread of that religion throughout the Indian Ocean, special enclaves in China, etc. (see "A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World" by William Bernstein) - so where the sword could not spread the word, trade would be the "peaceful" inducement. Otherwise the muslim relied on his own perceived religious superiority to take root in his neighbor, biding the time before the neighbor saw the economic sense or was eventually compelled when the muslim achieved enough majority to impose their law (at that point you are already living by that law you may as well convert...unless of course you were a die-hard hold out) The main reason they made allowances for "lessers" to reside in relative peace within their lands is because they took this "long vision" of conversion.On the Christian side, conversion was of course also done with the sword...but in peace the religion had no requirements specifying rates of trade within or outside of the religion. Their "peaceful" inducement was more of a relentless nagging by lemming missionaries
Missionary work, and when that guy was eaten by the natives he was sainted and a new saint-to-be sent in his place. When backed up by a secular ruler, the progress was often better, but not guaranteed. There was a similar arrogant superiority in the certainty of conversion in the long term, but there was less patience for that change to come from within - likely because of the lack of the economic inducement and law changes that the muslim could rely on and look forward too in helping outsiders see "the light" as it were.
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I think this is because the ottomans were fine with christians until they payed their taxes.
A roughly same situation (christianity/islam) in Iberia led to different outcome.
It is hard to judge which religion is 'prone' to conversion and which is not.
I think pagans did not actually believed 'less' in their old gods, but they were forced to convert. For example Lithuania or Hungary. If they didn't convert, they would have received continous invasions, which might have proved to tough for them.
I think that mass conversion should be really rare, but should be doable. But it should be painful. Like spain lost lots of merchants, shopkeepers with the 'alhambra decree' or 'expulsion of moriscos'
It should be a difficult decision to convert or not.
I noted the pagans as an exception above. While Christian missionary efforts around the Baltic were not necessarily as successful as typically portrayed, the effort was at least made. This is in stark contrast to Christian dealings with Muslim populations
Th Ottomans were of course famously tolerant but then most of the states in this era were surprisingly so. Neither the Crusader States or the triumphant Islamic states insisted on religious orthodoxy amongst their populations. Where the loyalty of the population was a concern, at the height of the Crusades, it typically resulted in mass expulsions rather than concerted conversion programmesgaluska said:
Didn't Iberia's Muslim population live in relative peace under Christian rule until the beginning of the 16th C?
I think its safe to say that whenever Christianity encountered organised monolithic religions (read: Islam and Judaism) there was little potential for conversion
Excellent post. I am all for a more gradual process, as I argued earlier. Your suggestion about resistance and plateaus seem sound and feasible, and would certainly help prevent the muslim/christian borders from switching religion every decade. With such a long time span in the game, I think the game would be served with a more complex approach to this. CK1 was too random, and too drastic.
You are not seriously proposing pie charts for a medieval game???
Minorities should be represented as small icons, but to calculate percentages would be IMHO ridiculous. Either you have a catholic minority or you don't. The game should make you see the world through the eyes of a medieval ruler, not the eyes of a 21st century Microsoft Excel Consultant.
You are not seriously proposing pie charts for a medieval game???
Minorities should be represented as small icons, but to calculate percentages would be IMHO ridiculous. Either you have a catholic minority or you don't. The game should make you see the world through the eyes of a medieval ruler, not the eyes of a 21st century Microsoft Excel Consultant.
A Pie chart, a percentage number, whatever. You know, to show the religious layout of a province. It isn't that hard to grasp, even if you flunked math
And I assure you, the rules at the time were QUITE interested in knowing if they had pagans in their realm. I even hear some of them went on Crusades and stuff to kill 'em!
What I know is that some taifa's introduced some laws where the new converts (to christianity) had to wear specific types of clothes, couldn't be involved in trade, and could only marry amongst themselves.
True, that this most likely was a minority compared to the ones who didn't convert, but actually fled to realms of their faith.