Franks (BI faction)

[Trithemius]

Hi

it is much easier to convert to christianity when not so many pagan provinces are adjacent to yours. Therefore it´s probably best to start this in a small peaceful coast province --> Campus Frisii or Vicus Saxones are quite good for this purpose, islands are even better.

And of course it enhances conversion very much if you convert other neighbouring provinces at the same time. Therefore it isn´t always a successful way if you take a town, burn down the temple, build a church and abandon it to leave it for the rebels. Because the small chruch can not compensate the pagan effects of more than one pagan neighbour province.

I started exterminating everyone (partly to keep their revolts lower in intensity and partly for the cash to fund my church-building spree) and coverting them fairly quickly. I found it was critical to convert only after you have built up some numerous but cheap garrison forces (I used peasants just for the numbers and the cheap maintenance in addition to some real troops) and only after your offensive field-force is out of the province. All those nutcase pagan sons with their handy paladin cavalry are very useful in battle, but they just slow down the conversion rate.

Once you've wiped out and converted some of the neighbouring provinces you'll get the neighbouring province conversion bonus (it's a problem while their pagan, but its a real boon while their Christian). My biggest problem is hordes, even peaceful ones, with their pagan family members, or local pagan tribes having a "diplomatic summit" around one of my newly converted settlements.

[TinCow]

I am currently playing a Frank campaign and am about to try an experiment with conversion. I have conquered all of Gaul and have several strong armies able to hold all of my borders. However, before I move on Spain and Britain I want to convert to Christianity. This poses a challenge since all of my cities are 100% pagan. I recently adopted a Christian family member through marriage. He is the only Christian in my family. I made him heir and my current Faction Leader is old. If he does not die on his own soon I may kill him off with a suicide charge. The same turn that my Christian family member becomes King, I will destroy all pagan buildings in ALL of my cities and replace them with churches. There will of course be incredible unrest due to this. However, it is my hope that the cumulative effect of so many provinces flipping at once will provide massive conversion bonuses via the adjacent provinces. I am hoping that if I can keep the cities from rebelling for two to three turns that I will soon have a stable and mostly converted empire.

[Haudegen]

TinCow,
thats exactly the way I did it. I want to add that you haven´t only to get rid of your king. At the time I started the great conversion I had also seven or eight other pagan family members which are exremely disturbing when parked in your homelands. It´s best to send them westward to keep the WRE busy. Hopefully they can deflect Roman invasions since you will have very little money during those turns. This is because you´ll have to lower the taxes while maintaining large garrisons for public order.

[teja]

@TinCow:
Please report about your experiences when you are able to.
However I would never want to convert my whole empire to one religion. I still want to get the benefits of all of them: Priests & Experience points