Playing as certain factions, I don't see how you can get away *without* exterminating.

I'm currently playing BI on H/H as the Sassanids. That makes me the only Zoroastrian kid on the block, which means that it's virtually impossible to take & hold a city in the initial phase of conquering without losing it at least once -- even with exterminating.

The first ERE city I took was Sinope, up on the Black Sea coast in northern Turkey. Exterminated when I saw the city had a red face, and it still had a red face after that. I think public order was around 50%, so I took a chance and tried to hold it for another turn. My only Night Fighter paid the ultimate price for that one, and I pulled out after smashing the church and putting up a shrine for my eventual return.

I'm not being a dunce about this; at least I think not. As I took Antioch, Sidon, and Tarsus (exterminating every city) I really paid attention to how I could convert the populace. I knew that, when the "Breakdown of Belief" bar is almost fully Christian it would be suicide to tear down the cathedral. I knew I needed to first try to convert by using a general with good conversion traits, and spies/diplomats with the same. The problem is, once I started to get up to 5-10% Zoroastrianism I would start to get unrest DUE to Zoroastrianism. Meanwhile I"d be building in the city like mad, trying to get rid of the culture penalty and get any quick happiness/law buildings in place. But inevitably I would be kicked out by an ERE army, and have to take the city AGAIN, which would still have a red face, forcing me to exterminate a *second* time. Usually this was enough to let me replace the church with a shrine.

I guess we can discuss the subtleties of religious conversion in BI in a different thread; my point here is just that I don't see how you could get away without exterminating in a Sassanid BI campaign. Even with exterminating, you have to resign yourself to the fact that you'll need to conquer several cities twice in order to hold them. After a while, sieges get a little old for me, so I can't imagine getting kicked out of Antioch a third or fourth time and having that be much fun.... But I guess we all like different challenges.

CountMRVHS