Neoncats Guide to handle priests/imams
Contents:
1. Some words first
2. Something about priest/imam units
2.1. Catholics
2.2. Orthodox
2.3. Islamic
3. Retinue
4. Traits, conversion and denounce
5. Priests/imams strategy in game
6. Last words
1. Some words first
Hi I am Neoncat and this guide will tell you something about priests and imams. I don't include heretics and pagans as they aren't playable in vanilla.
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2. Something about priest/imam units
2.1. Catholics
Catholics have three different kind of priests. They are:
As you have cardinals your cardinals can be elected to became pope. When your cardinal gets elected you will lose your cardinal. However your reputation with pope will get nice boost.
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2.2. Orthodox
Orthodox have only priests. They should have bishops like catholics, but theres a bug which prevents you from getting bishops. After orthodox priest get more than 5 piety, they cannot fall into heresy.
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2.3. Islamic
Islamic factions don't have second special unit for imams. So they get only imams. After imams get more than 5 piety, they cannot fall into heresy.
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3. Retinue
First of all theres some ancillaries(retinue) that priest can get. Lets see what they can get, when you should get them and why to get them.
As you can see unfortunately most ancillaries in this list apply only for orthodox and catholic factions. We can see also that...
You should stay stationary for 4 turns after your get your priest/imam, if you are on region with 70% or more your own religion to get a monk. As you can see from the list above you won't get monk if your priest have royal seminarian. However even imams get monks.
If your priests get killed all the time, it should be good to get knight crusader by going into region with crusading target city. Unfortunately you can't do this with orthodox and islamic factions.
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4. Traits, conversion and denounce
(Notice that I am not listing all traits you can get with your priests/imams. I didn't see any reason to list all of em.)
Starting traits:
So your have now your priest/imam. What you can do with it?
With priests/imams you can do 2 things. They are:
1. Convert people to your religion
2. Denounce('Kill') heretics
For conversion you shouldn't send only one priest/imam to fight other religions. If you do your priest/imam can get minuses for piety and will be easier to turn in heretic. Right way to convert people is use small groups of priests/imams. Their strong faith trait will rise when you can convert more than 10% of people per turn. However you will get first strong faith trait only for 3 first turns on region, which you are turning. After first strong faith trait it will be 5 first turns. After that you can get missionary trait, if you can get your own religion in the region 95% or over. You will also get nice bonuses if you convert regions with heresy. Trait you can get is purifier trait. Note that more there is another religion than yours religion shift will be more if you send your priest to convert people there.
Traits to gain:
Then the denounce. You can denounce heretics by clicking them with your priest/imam selected. After that pop-up will tell you percentage to success and let you denounce them. More you have piety more easier it would be to denounce heretics. However theres always chance to fail. Failing can mean 2 things. Lose of piety with bad denouncer trait or even lose of your priest/imam. When you lose your priest/imam it will convert to heretic. So watch out those low percentages. On the contrary when you success denouncement you will get piety bonus with good denounce trait. There were somewhere that more orthodoxy your priest/imam have less it have chance to fall into heresy.
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5. Priests/imams strategy in game
Number of priest you can have is limited to number of churches you have. Cities with church lower than abbey/minaret masjid will support only one priest and cities with abbey/minaret masjid or higher will support 2 priests.
You should leave few priest/imams on your land to defend your regions from heretics and all other priests should go and start converting other religions lands. Of course if you only leave your newbie priest to defend your land you can get nothing but troubles when heretics invade your lands. You should get few of your more experienced priests/imams to protect your land after they have done some conversion job.
If you have to defend your own land for another religion, don't just sit and try to fight back with your own priests/imams. Way to get rid of them is to go spread your religion in their region so they have to defend it. Its really hard to win conversion battle because more your religion is there less you will convert people and otherway around. Of course one way is to use assassins to take out that priest/imam which is corrupting your soil.
For the theologians guild you should concentrate your priest/imam training into one city at the beginning of game. After you get head quarters you can start training priest in other cities/castles as you will lose only one piety, if you don't train them in city where head quarters are located. Unless of course you build first level theologians guild in city where you want to build your priests/imams.
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6. Last words
I tried to write only few things about priests/imams. However my nature didn't let me finish after I got some more ideas about to write. So this guide got bigger... bigger... bigger... Yes, and I know my english skills aren't that good and many of you may find lots of typos and language errors in my text. I just hate how they make games with manuals that are good only for lightening up fireplace. Theres so much in this game unexplained. I hope I did lightened even some of that shroud of darkness. Yah, its me Neoncat. I am out for now, but remember the Neonbits... (I just had to) ;D
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And yes, you may put this on "M2TW Guides" part on these forums, if you see that this guide is good enough to be there. This will guide will be at least on my site too. No I am not going to tell you where it is. :)
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