Questions about Religion and excommunication

[Lord Nap]

I'm a bit of a noob with MTW, having only had the game a few days and still on my first campaign (English). I have been excommunicated several times, lol, but fail to see what impact that has on my lands other than the fact that periodically another Catholic faction wages a crusade against me (damn French).

I also don't see the relevance of the religious zeal percentage of my people. What difference does it make if they have a higher zeal rating? Maybe this is in the book, but I haven't come across it.

Overall, if any of you could explain how and why religion is so important, please share with me, because I feel like I'm missing out on a crucial aspect of the game.

[Nial Black Knee]

1) when your excomed the happiness goes down in all provinces. they are more prone to revolts.
2) Zeal affects how many people join a crusade moving through a province.

Theres more info on this in other threads look back aways. Hope that helps a little.

[Redllama]

Zeal can also change the outcome of inquisitions. The lower the zeal the less likely they'll get to flambe anyone. However, if you want to toast some marshmellows, take the trial to a high zeal territory. I havent really experimented with this extensively, but I've tried it a few times and it seems to work.

[KukriKhan]

As Nial pointed out, your provinces are more likely to revolt when you're ex-comm'd.

You also touched on another aspect: other catholic factions will eagerly attack you,alliance or not, because it's open season on your heretic butt...you'd notice this more immediately if you were on the continent, say as the Germans, surrounded by French, Poles, Danes, Hungarians, etc.

Several times (as the Spanish) I've had to fight my way to the pope and kill him (which cancel's ex-comm's) just to settle folks down.

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[el_slapper]

One last thing : zeal modifies happiness following the piety od the duke.

If the duke has 5 piety, it doesn't change anything.

If he has less, the more zeal the more unhappiness

If he has moren the more zeal the more happiness!

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War is not about who is right, only about who is left