Priest conversion rates?

[Mornai]

I've been noticing that my priests seem to be quite ineffective at converting regions that have 70+% of my religion in them, even the ones with high piety. They convert the religion fast at first(when my % is low) but when they reach `80% they drop to 1% every 2 or so turns, and it continues to slow until seemingly stopping completely at around 85%. They're not low piety priests either,(all of my low piety ones are sent to far off lands), these priests have about 5-8 piety.

I make sure there are no other priests/imams/heretics/witches in my lands, the only unit there is my priest, but the conversion rate is really slow. Is this normal? Is there a certain amount of free population that can be converted by any religion, then when that amount is used up you can't convert anymore?

I watched for 4 straight turns as my 9 piety priest failed to raise my religion in one of my regions higher than 85%, and the last 2 turns it actually decreased to 81%! I have the entire region viewable, and i saw no other agents of any kind entering, unless it was a spy or assassin that was invisible to me. Do they lower your religion? I'm not necessarily aiming for 100%, just about 90 will do, but none of my priests can reach that. Should i just pile all of them onto one region? I only use one priest per region(that's under my control), maybe that's the problem? Thanks.

[sbroadbent]

Conversion does slow down the higher up you go. Priests convert a percentage of the population, so as you get fewer people not of your religion, your priest converts less each turn.

Multiple priests can speed things up. Only other priests will impact the religion rating. I don't know what it could be with the artificial 'ceiling' to the amount you can convert, but does this occur in every region? I remember in my Templar game in the early game, I had a rather difficult time getting anything above 60 in Antioch until for whatever reason I had upgraded the walls (or the church). That was the only time that occurred, and haven't had any other conversion issues, so I don't think it's an intentional thing. Upgrading the church will boost the conversion rate as well.

[newt]

If you border other religions, conversion is harder. If you play a western European faction, it's quite easy to get 100%

[Mornai]

Sorry for the late reply(been really busy lately). Using multiple priests speeds things up quite a bit, and upgrading the church to the highest level seems to have fixed the stalled conversion process. Thanks for the info!

[For England Men]

ye i conquered egypt as england and found building cathedrals was more effective than priests although having priests in low catholic regions increases chance of them ecoming cardinals which in turn increases conversion try sending your priests to "train" in low catolic regions and then bring them back to get 100 percent in your 70 percentish regions. If you have already built huge cathedral in a city spam priests and get theologians guild in it and they will come out as super priests straight off.

[Neptune7]

Should i just pile all of them onto one region? I only use one priest per region(that's under my control), maybe that's the problem? Thanks.

No I don't think that's the problem. I have 18 priests in the Cordoba region, levels 8-10, and they have been unable to convert the population higher than 92%, and in fact it's been decreasing to 51%. I am playing the HRE and it's a Moor settlement. The current SS 6.3 formula is completely inaccurate and needs to be changed. It seems to give great weight to the religious makeup of neighboring settlements, at the EXPENSE of number and level of priests, i.e. it doesn't matter how many priests you have in the region.

In fact these posts have given me an idea to try out. Instead of concentrating all of my priests in one region, I should spread them out into neighboring settlements and convert their populations to see if I get a boost in the converts in the Cordoba region.

[barcamartin]

The current SS 6.3 formula is completely inaccurate and needs to be changed. It seems to give great weight to the religious makeup of neighboring settlements, at the EXPENSE of number and level of priests, i.e. it doesn't matter how many priests you have in the region.

It does make some sense though. Naturally a populace would be influenced by neighbouring cultures and religions, and if nearby regions are of the same religion it would tend to be quite deeply rooted in the area. But I agree though, game-wise it might be slightly off.

[Fakir]

It's harder for Catholic nations cause the bible is just so damn boring.

[Gorrrrrn]

you can adjust the priest conversion rates with the descr_campaign_db.xml file

these are some of the lines you can adjust:

 <!-- PRIEST CONTROLLER -->
      <priest_religion_min float="0.6"/>         <!-- if religion < religion_min then region needs a priest -->
      <priest_religion_max float="0.7"/>         <!-- if religion >= religion_max then a priest can be taken from this region for other missions -->
      <priest_heresey_min float="0.05"/>         <!-- if heresey >= heresey_min then region needs a priest -->
      <priest_heresey_max float="0.3"/>          <!-- if heresey >= heresey_max then region needs a priest with highest priority -->
      <priest_religion_export float="0.5"/>      <!-- if my religion in foreign region < religion_export then then we will export our religion in this region -->
      <priest_max_prod_turns float="4.0"/>       <!-- max distance from a production center to a target region in turns -->

(the values are from current RozMod - whether they are better or worse than any others I couldn't possibly comment.)

[philipjd]

There always used to be an effect for the buildings in each settlement - 'cultural' - so if, say, you controlled Cairo, and all the buildings except the church were still fatamid types (drift the cursor over each in the settlement building screen) then that may also have an effect on the % values?

[Aemilius Paulus]

If you border other religions, conversion is harder.

I didn't know M2TW engine used this factor. I know BI did, but that was BI... I do not believe one can see the detailed breakdown of religious conversion rates in Medieval, the way you could in BI.

[k/t]

There always used to be an effect for the buildings in each settlement - 'cultural' - so if, say, you controlled Cairo, and all the buildings except the church were still fatamid types (drift the cursor over each in the settlement building screen) then that may also have an effect on the % values?

I really don't think so. The different types of a common building are just for looks. Where did this effect use to be?

[newt]

I didn't know M2TW engine used this factor. I know BI did, but that was BI... I do not believe one can see the detailed breakdown of religious conversion rates in Medieval, the way you could in BI.

it's in the files. vanilla didn't use it, but gracul added it to 6.4

<neighbour_normalise_weight float="0.02"/>

i first noticed it when as Sicily i captured a Moorish settlement and when i move a priest out, catholicism went down. i had to keep a lot of priests there to keep it stable