Need help: Missionaries *after* the patch

Please note that I only want information from games played after the latest patch. This is very important. :bow:

I want to hear from people who have played a Christian game after the last patch. Specifically, I want to hear about your missionaries and how successful they were in two specific areas:

1) Are you having decent success causing rebellions or are you finding FAIL is the word of the day? Please describe missionary level and skill direction along with the results if possible.

2) Is the Buddhist AI managing to cope with the unrest caused by having its provinces converted, or is it frequently maintaining control? Please state campaign difficulty if possible.

Before the patch I heard a lot of people say that missionaries are pretty much an ultimate weapon against the AI, to the point where the game becomes very easy. I heard a lot about how they can cause revolts easily and how those revolts created large rebel armies which took control of the province so the player could waltz in, enabling the player to expand without declaring war on other clans. I also heard a lot about how they cause high unrest in AI provinces by converting the populace to Christianity, and how the AI often struggles to cope. I did not try a Christian clan at that point.

After the patch I started a Christian Shimazu/hard/short game. My missionaries are virtually worthless in the two areas where I expected them to excel, and I want to know if this is an anomaly or if they have been tweaked. When I convert enemy provinces the AI dramatically increases the garrison and remains in control, thus making it harder for me to conquer the province. When I try to cause rebellions I fail, fail, fail, fail even with high level agents skilled towards that one task. On those incredibly rare occasions where I do get a revolt the rebel army is typically tiny and easily crushed.

While I'm rather glad that the missionaries are not such a game breaker as they sounded, I can't finish my guide section on missionaries until I know if my experience is unusual or if the accepted wisdom no longer applies. I cannot recommend the popular strategies when they diverge from my own experience, nor can I place my own experience first when it is seems unusual.

Thanks.

I started a Christian Shimazu/hard/long campaign and I'm pretty much about to end it, but I used the missionaries to convert populance and keep happy provinces...
But must say I'm managing to "convert" neighbouring small factions, guess they can't keep order in their homeland with few troops, this is making territorial expansion a lot easier...

I have a mori/hard/mediumlength game going at the moment, started after the patch. Havent managed to find time to play with it yet, have only recently converted and so far have been using my missionaries to speed up conversions of my own provinces, to reduce unrest and thereby my own garrison requirements. I have used them on incoming enemy armies, to demoralise and convert armies and characters with success - however i havent yet taken them into enemy territory. Will try to find time to have a play tonight and will report back.

As far as the conversion of enemy provinces, and the AI boosting its garrisons - surely this is exactly what a competent AI *should* be doing, rather than letting its provinces rebel? Maybe you should try converting provinces behind the front lines - which would force the AI to use troops (and thus money) heavily garrisioning its heartlands pulling its defences away from its borders.

W.r.t. rebellions, it sounds like they might have been over-nerfed. Possibly this is difficulty level dependent, or maybe the provinces youre coverting have high happiness levels? Might be worth checking for metsukes/priests garissoning the provinces, or maybe try increasing unrest in those provinces first, via conversion or ninja actions...

Thanks. The more data I have to work with the better.

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Originally Posted by Daveybaby

As far as the conversion of enemy provinces, and the AI boosting its garrisons - surely this is exactly what a competent AI *should* be doing, rather than letting its provinces rebel?

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As a player I'm delighted; the tales of super powered missionaries flattening the AI made me cringe. I love the balanced, sane, capable AI and the fair challenge presented by the game. As a writer I'm cursing! Currently it looks like I will need to scrap and re-do 2 large sections of the guide.

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W.r.t. rebellions, it sounds like they might have been over-nerfed. Possibly this is difficulty level dependent, or maybe the provinces youre coverting have high happiness levels? Might be worth checking for metsukes/priests garissoning the provinces, or maybe try increasing unrest in those provinces first, via conversion or ninja actions...

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As far as I can tell there are no agents present in the AI castles, unless my scouting is also FAIL. We know that scouting agents are no longer infallible (yay!) and my ninja is pretty low level so that's possible.

I shall have to try sending one deep into enemy territory as you suggest, see what happens. My chaps have been trying to score successes for so long the provinces they are working in are entirely or mostly Christian by now and I just discovered the religious actions section of the encyclopaedia states revolts are "extremely difficult to do in a province where a high percentage of the population follow the same religion as the agent." Counter-intuitive but worth testing.

I have one high level revolt-skilled priest who only gets a 73% chance of success on a certain city due to the full stack garrison present. Unfortunately 73% works more like 1/7 in the attempts I've logged with him, and that sole success was useless as the army it created was tiny. When I tried agent missions pre-patch I succeed most of the time with similar odds. It's puzzling.

I wonder how the Buddhist version of the mission compares in the current version of the game? If the encyclopaedia is correct then by default they have much lower chances when it comes to the rebellion game since most of Japan is Buddhist.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

I wonder how the Buddhist version of the mission compares in the current version of the game? If the encyclopaedia is correct then by default they have much lower chances when it comes to the rebellion game since most of Japan is Buddhist.

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My Shimazu campaign was actually a Buddhist affair and I can confirm that as I delved deeper into central Japan my Monks were finding it increasingly hard to spark rebellions as opposed to the early game wrangling on Kyushu with all those Christians.

There was one province another faction beat me to near Kyoto and I tried to spark a revolt there. Regularly the uprising box was blanked out (too small chance for success) even with my "Inciter" built monks attempting it and I was unable to make it rebel even though the province had NO Garrison.

I still have yet to test with missionaries and I am tempted to start over a Christian campaign to play with Nanban Ships, Cannons and Guns. :)

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Originally Posted by The_Emperor

My Shimazu campaign was actually a Buddhist affair and I can confirm that as I delved deeper into central Japan my Monks were finding it increasingly hard to spark rebellions as opposed to the early game wrangling on Kyushu with all those Christians.

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Based on this, the testing I did this afternoon, and the encyclopaedia, I think we can reasonably say that incite revolt is only useful in provinces which have a very low % of your religion. As soon as I sent my missionaries several provinces past the frontier they started to do better, working in lands with 0% Christianity. They were still very hit and miss, and very unreliable. It's like the game reports the chance of success as being 20% higher than it really is. Meanwhile all of my other agents, including missionaries gaining XP by working the demoralise army mission, all gave results which felt acceptable based on the predicted success %.

So it looks like the patch changed something. I can't remember seeing anyone else mention this.

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I still have yet to test with missionaries and I am tempted to start over a Christian campaign to play with Nanban Ships, Cannons and Guns. :)

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The Nanban ships live up to the hype - they can and do kill entire fleets single-handedly provided you play the battles yourself. The rest is either as average as advertised or, in the case of the missionary, disappointing.

I've managed to get a few rebellions in what are pretty much 0% christian lands, dont have any enemy lands around with high % christian populations at the moment, so havent been able to test the opposite, but so far it bears what youve said.

Whether this has changed massively from pre-patch i cant say - i know i was getting rebellions easily from monks in my first couple of games, but these tended to only be in christian provinces - the initial reason they were there was to convert population prior to conquering (an old M2TW tactic to reduce garrison requirements allowing you to continue to steamrolller onwards) and i mainly had them inciting rebellions while they were there in order to keep them busy to level them up - as the game progressed (after wiping out all christian factions) i tended to keep the monks in provinces to boost happiness.

I am not sure if this will help but I think that damage to the province may very well be a good way of increasing the success.

Just had a bunch of ninjas running around with my inciter guy and had a little sabotage spree on province infrastructure, lets just say I think the unhappiness from all that damage in the province might well help their chances of success.

Can anyone verify this? I want to be sure I am not just getting lucky here.

Ended my campaign and decided to have a go for the top rank Missionary achievement...
Started with three of them with 3 stars each, and must say they are very powerful, turned half of the country in rebel land, even managed to incite at first try Kai...
The whole process generated such a vacuum that old small clans reappered, because mainly Takeda (my nearest opponent to the east) couldn't keep order even after regaining lost provinces...

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

The rest is either as average as advertised or, in the case of the missionary, disappointing.

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You know I'm going to have to sig that...

Daveybaby, thanks. Every bit of evidence helps.

The Emperor, if I get chance I will try that out. My Christian test game has become very lively, I'm now having to fight for my life on multiple fronts which makes testing hard.

Arjos, can you go into more detail as to how you managed that, please? Did you work in provinces with low percentages of Christianity? Did you use any other agents along with the missionaries? Did you have a lot of failed attempts? What sort of rebel armies (large, small, mostly samurai or ashigaru, etc) did you see? Slow process or quite quick?

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Originally Posted by Papewaio

You know I'm going to have to sig that...

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I thought someone might find that amusing.

One thing I've found with missionaries is that the rebellions they cause are pretty small. They look like about 5-6 units. As such, they get easily squashed by a full stack army and are really only useful in undefended provinces. However, they can be very useful in the right circumstances. At one point before Realm Divide, I accepted a peace deal on my main frontline area, where I had two stacks positioned in border provinces. The peace was useful to secure some of my recent conquests and replenish my armies, but I was ready to go again after about 5 turns. However, I was able to continue advancing without breaking the peace with the help of missionaries. I managed to spark rebellions in two undefended provinces adjacent to my own. Both cities fell to the rebels. Since the player is always at war with rebels, I was then able to move in and take the provinces myself without breaking the peace with their original owners.

Tincow, do you remember whether those provinces were mostly Buddhist?

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Tincow, do you remember whether those provinces were mostly Buddhist?

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I don't remember the religions percentages at the times I got the rebellions, but I'm pretty sure Christianity was the majority (70% maybe) in one and the minority (30% maybe) in the other. IIRC, both rebel armies spawned as Christian armies.

Hmm, curious. That means the tentatively established rule of "Target provinces which don't have your religion" doesn't fully apply to your successes. Did it take you a lot of attempts? Were the priests very high level?

I know that you get a Christian rebel army even if there is 0% of the population following that religion. The label is sourced from the instigator.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

Hmm, curious. That means the tentatively established rule of "Target provinces which don't have your religion" doesn't fully apply to your successes. Did it take you a lot of attempts? Were the priests very high level?

I know that you get a Christian rebel army even if there is 0% of the population following that religion. The label is sourced from the instigator.

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I could be wrong about the %s, but I remember that my listed success rate on the province that I thought was majority Christian was about 55%. Maybe I'm wrong about the Christian population %, perhaps it wasn't a Christian majority, but the odds were definitely above 50%. It was an ungarrisoned level 1 or 2 town. I don't remember the level of the missionaries, but I've never gotten one over 4 stars and my 4 star guys are rare. It was probably done by a 2 or 3 star. Probably a 3 star, as I think the one that did it had at least 1 point in a skill that boosted town unrest.

Here's data:

Two were my old provinces converters and had skills for that, must say they had the easiest times: the provinces they incited were a bit christianized by their presence, the rebel armies were bigger and even with command star with larger cities, everytime they had 75% and mostly took one try...

The third one was my special trained missionary from the Cathedral, very young, but already skilled and I chose the "revolter" set-up. He spent lot of time in Mikawa, mostly because either he was failing or because the rebel army was being defeated...

In the end was the youngest who got top rank though, don't know if specific skills increase the points gained from the according actions...

Thank you, all.

I think there is enough here to suggest a pattern and thus a strategy. Time to re-write the chapter.

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Originally Posted by frogbeastegg

I shall have to try sending one deep into enemy territory as you suggest, see what happens. My chaps have been trying to score successes for so long the provinces they are working in are entirely or mostly Christian by now and I just discovered the religious actions section of the encyclopaedia states revolts are "extremely difficult to do in a province where a high percentage of the population follow the same religion as the agent." Counter-intuitive but worth testing.

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It's not really counter-intuitive though. What does the christian missionary do? He goes in and convinces the population that follows his belief (christians) that their lives are miserable because those evil buddhists are oppressing them so they rise up and rebel against the buddhists. In a region with, say, 80% Christians you'd have a hard time convincing them that their rights as a minority are being disregarded ;)

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Originally Posted by TheLastDays

It's not really counter-intuitive though. What does the christian missionary do? He goes in and convinces the population that follows his belief (christians) that their lives are miserable because those evil buddhists are oppressing them so they rise up and rebel against the buddhists. In a region with, say, 80% Christians you'd have a hard time convincing them that their rights as a minority are being disregarded ;)

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I think about the matter too deeply, that's my problem. When a province has 0% Christians who is rebelling? It's a bit Monty Python. Then I apply the historical religious attitudes, and it makes sense that peasants will rebel when they convert in large enough numbers they feel they can take on their Buddhist lords. The two religions hated each other, very incompatible.

Well I think that's portrayed in two different aspects of the game.
What you are referring to is, imo, represented by religious unrest, which grows, the more people of "non-clan-religion" you have in your province.

The other one is a guy coming in, inciting a rebellion among a minority of a country... usually addressing the poor and oppressed I'd say and that's easier the stronger/more overpowering the enemy is... I mean, you could go both directions but at least that's how I reason it...

About the 0%, for the little I know about japanese history, most of the people followed the daimyo regarding conversions, so in a way an incited revolt is more like a deperate mob...
They are outcasts and it turns to a matter of "do or die", after they can concentrate on religion...