Managing religion - the best method

**socks** · 07-03-2007, 16:46

I have got the game into a good state, with money, religion, town management and military expansion all under control and very tidy.

Their is only aspect which I feel is now letting my game down, and that is the mundane management of religion.

I am not referring to keeping the pope happy, or religious buildings, but having to keep a priest in every city in order to ensure the region remains at 100%. I now have the best relisgious buildings so this is a great help, but still find myself, labouriously checking each city or town each turn to make sure the priest/other hasnt expired - if so I build another in my religious 'capital ' and despatch it.

This is fine - but with an increasingly large empire, its a hassle. Is there a way of avoiding this?

Thanks in advance

**mrpants** · 07-03-2007, 17:02

Having a region at 100% is not always a good thing. I did this with a Venice Campaign and it caused my diplomats to have nasty traits about dealing with the foriegn types.

I have not experimented but I feel that 80% is probably a good number.

**John_Longarrow** · 07-03-2007, 17:08

I've taken a hint from the Pope and started using "Wandering Preachers". I simply have them start at location A and they walk towards location B each turn. That way they keep moving about so I don't have to have an assigned preacher in each city. I just use every 5th turn as an "Assign a mission" turn so that they keep moving.

**Grog** · 07-03-2007, 18:09

I tend to 'carousel' my priests around my territories borderlines, as my empire expands, I just widen the circle. I find priests tend to gain xp faster if moved every turn, even if you are running circles in 95%+ territory (though I have no proof of this statistically).

Early in the Game, when still producing 1-3* priests, I tend to keep these in safe religous territory until they are 5* or better to prevent them becoming heretic, though this is less important when you have a theologians guild/decent church.

When I plan to take a neighbours land, I will usually send a few good priests in first to begin conversion, and also use a priest to carry reinforcements/retrainers back and forth to prevent troops rebelling. ie: when I was fighting my war vs the mongols, I would have a priest staging point roughly halfway between sofia and bucharest/bran as the distance is too far for cavalry to make it in one hop.

**Askthepizzaguy** · 07-03-2007, 18:43

As I have found myself in the position a number of times of owning all the old world provinces, I know what you mean. Religion is awful to manage.

Here's tips:

Early in the game, you don't need priests in your cities, just churches. Build them up and send your priests out to do the heavy conversions in packs of 4 or more. This gets you cardinals faster.

Conquer into these newly converted territories and build churches there. It helps if you brutally sack or exterminate the cities, too.

your empire will stay at about 80% overall religious purity this way. The only trouble is heresy at this point.

For every region (spain, france, UK, germany) have a group of 3 or more priests that make rounds into the areas with heresy. Leave them in a region until the heresy is gone, and move on. They wont have to go very far to keep the whole area pure.

At the end game, when you have almost all provinces, you will be able to easily manage large tracts of the map by simply having more clusters of priests and smaller regions for them to patrol, because you will have fewer cardinals and priests out converting unconquered territories, as they die off.

You will also have the budget to build cathedrals and therefore can field more clergymen. At that point you will likely be able to have 3 priests per city.

Every 20 turns or so, hit the > button next to the city name and go through all of your cities with the agent tab selected, so you can VERY quickly take a census of ALL your provinces and recruit priests quickly as they die off.

No trouble at all.

**TeutonicKnight** · 07-03-2007, 18:52

I just build a priest and leave them in the city or town. They wander out to whack a heretic or witch occasionally, but otherwise spend their time tending to the church grounds. This makes it very easy to flip through my towns and make sure each one capable of producing a priest has one.

If I'm going to invade an area with a different religion, I try to convert them a good bit ahead of time. Sending Cardinals is the best way, since they don't seem to go rogue on me.

**Askthepizzaguy** · 07-03-2007, 19:03

Originally Posted by TeutonicKnight

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Generally an ok strategy, TeutonicKnight. If I may offer my opinion...

A lone priest in each town might not be a perfect strategy, management-wise. A heretic can convert your populace a lot faster than your lone priest will re-convert them. And sometimes the heretic is much more powerful than your priest. Also, heresy tends to make your lone priests go heretic, further compounding the problem.

It might work if you're really good at micromanaging, but I feel there's that flaw in the plan.

I think that once you get to the end of your campaign, heresy would become a severe problem for certain settlements unless you were very hawkish about checking all provinces every couple turns, thus we arrive at the same problem we started with.

I hope this constructive criticism is valid in your view. If you have found a way to counter the heresy problem, please post it here. I'd like to know, myself! The only solution I have is gangs of patrolling priests for every screen-sized area of the campaign map.