Is there any way to conciliate 'evil' faiths?

[ApathicAlpaca]

TL;DR: Can I get on the good side of 'evil' faiths (like allying with Catholism as muslim)?


So I get that faith is supposed to be a natural barrier to force you into wars even if you are a perfect diplomat and have huge cultural understanding everywhere.

In my example, I have just founded the empire of Iberia (in 1 lifetime, it's insane what muslims can do with diplomatic focus) but eventhough the 'French' people in the north are positive towards me, their faith is not. Catholism bad. So they are hesistant about, well, everything. True, their king offered a truce but that's as far as it goes. Alliance is not to be had for love nor money.

So... my big plans of uniting Africa are endangered because I have to expect a French attack (most likely holy war) at any time. A truce of 10 years might not be enough to get a real foothold in Africa, it's insanely underdeveloped (what a surprise) so I can only go there with lots of tiny armies, it will take quite some time.

[Twelvefield]

Originally posted by ApathicAlpaca:

TL;DR: Can I get on the good side of 'evil' faiths (like allying with Catholism as muslim)?

If you can do that, you get to be the eternal spiritual leader of the planet: EarthMage I. Look around, you can't even get people agree to wear a mask or take a shot in the arm let alone do all of that. But I very much do appreciate your chutzpah for asking such questions, maybe there is hope for humans yet.

As far as the game is concerned, I think the most you can do is to convert to Catholicism. Me being Catholic in real life and mentioning this, I believe I've just knocked off an hour of my sentence in Purgatory. Fifty trillion years left to go.

[♠ FallenSoul [O.S.S]]

One way I believe is you need to get a strong hook on a leader that has a child who isnt married, and force their hand into you marrying them and hopefully getting an alliance. But yeah interfaith marriages are basically forbidden especially between muslims and christians which is true for irl. So it will be hard, especially if you play as Ethiopian Jews, all the pagens in the area, muslims, and christians hate you to the extreme and refuse marriage or alliance. Your only chance is finding a distant pagen ally or muslim ally to assist you.

[♠ FallenSoul [O.S.S]]

To elaborate what I mean by distant pagen faith is one in the east asia region, this comes from experience in my Ethiopian Jew run. Otherwise do a "fake conversion" make allaince and convert back to your faith if you have enough.

[bulbatrs]

There is a perk in diplomacy tree that lets you make 1 alliance without marriage, use that. pope can still declare holy war on you through.

[ApathicAlpaca]

Originally posted by bulbatrs:

There is a perk in diplomacy tree that lets you make 1 alliance without marriage, use that. pope can still declare holy war on you through.

Woah what? I did not notice that one so far. Thanks.

[dwarfpcfan]

reform your religion, add a syncretic tenet to whatever neighbor faith you want off your back,

Syncretism makes that faith consider you hostile instead of evil and it gives a flat +30 bonus to opinion from members of that faith and they are more likely to accept marriages and alliances.

It doesn't stop holy wars but it significantly reduces them and if you play your cards right, you can snag alliances, thruces etc that will stop your closest strongest neighbors from joining said holy wars.

[RedLabel]

Genocide seems to do the trick.