Priest/Bishop question

**Omisan** · 03-05-2007, 01:29

Do you get advantages from leaving a priest in a city/fortress or with an army? I noticed that the AI sometimes has 3 or 4 priest in one city.

Do you convert a territory faster with more priests on it?

**Agent Smith** · 03-05-2007, 01:34

Originally Posted by Omisan

Do you get advantages from leaving a priest in a city/fortress or with an army? I noticed that the AI sometimes has 3 or 4 priest in one city.

Do you convert a territory faster with more priests on it?

Yes and yes. A priest helps convert any territory he is in, whether he is in a fortress/city or not.

If a priest moves with an army, the general can gain ancillaries that effect piety. Also, I believe priests can gain ancillaries by staying in cities with religious buildings.

**Whacker** · 03-05-2007, 02:23

Originally Posted by Agent Smith

Yes and yes. A priest helps convert any territory he is in, whether he is in a fortress/city or not.

Errmmm... That's still being debated hotly on how exactly priest conversions work. I've kept them in cities and not noticed any increase in my faction's religion, but when I move them out into the countryside I've seen increases. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence provided for both possible outcomes, there's a thread over on TWCenter that's got some interesting info on this, sorry don't have the link handy. It'd be nice to have CA tell us exactly how this works...

**HoreTore** · 03-05-2007, 02:27

Well, 3-4 priests really is a minimum when you're converting someone. If you're taking over a province with a different religion, you should have almost every priest you can get in that province to convert. It won't take long, and then you can move them to the next province in need of some indoctrination...

**Agent Smith** · 03-05-2007, 03:01

Originally Posted by Whacker

Errmmm... That's still being debated hotly on how exactly priest conversions work. I've kept them in cities and not noticed any increase in my faction's religion, but when I move them out into the countryside I've seen increases. There's a lot of anecdotal evidence provided for both possible outcomes, there's a thread over on TWCenter that's got some interesting info on this, sorry don't have the link handy. It'd be nice to have CA tell us exactly how this works...

Thanks for the info. I was unaware of that. I guess I should stop answering questions

I guess it is hard to tell when you have a religious structure already in the settlement as to what effect a garrisoned (sp) priest has.

I'll try to look the thread up over at TWCenter and take a look. Perhaps placing a priest in a city helps them gain ancillaries, but putting them in the countryside helps conversion?

Still, Russia has a good starting situation for testing. Riga and Vilnius are both not very orthodox to start, and if you take the settlement quickly and place your starting bishop in the city, you should be able to see quickly whether or not there is any change.

Or maybe there is a conversion cap based upon the priests location. You just made my brain hurt. It seems like a lot of things don't come easy with this game!

**vonsch** · 03-05-2007, 03:18

Conversion seems to scale inversely to existing converts. But more priests means more conversion power. You can convert a large percentage in one turn with 10 priests (or better, cardinals, though it's their rating, not their title, that matters) if there are very few converts in the region. Once you hit 90% you see it's slowed way down even with those same 10.

Also, there's a good line of priest-enhancing traits for converting a large percentage of a region in one turn (I think the magic number is 8% off the top of my head). So it pays to have "god squads." They self-reinforce.

But there is also a line of good traits that comes from preaching to the converted.

And, yes, there are good ancilliaries in the cities with the right buildings. You can usually get them fairly fast.

My impression (not measured) is priests in the cities do not convert population. They also don't seem to become heretics.

**Hollerbach** · 03-05-2007, 03:29

Purely anecdotal, but I'm pretty sure I had a priest in a city decide to go heretic and marched himself out of the city into the countryside. I remember because he turned two priest's I sent after him heretic as well and I had to bring in my best cardinal to purify the 3 of them!

So the no going heretic in a city thing I don't think is right. But maybe the chances are reduced?