Nestorianism

[nvlutz]

I was considering playing as a Nestorian ruler in my next playthrough but was wondering if it was an interesting religion that would make for a fun playthrough or whether it would just feel like a poorly fleshed out version of catholics or orthodox?

Also if they are worth playing is there any culture that goes well with them? For example only Greek cultured orthodox characters could blind/castrate. Would a Mongol Nestorian have options a Turkish Nestorian wouldn't?

Finally, if I use the Coverter and bring my game over to Europa IV, what happens to Nestorian countries?

[TM]

Game mechanics-wise, Nestorianism is identical to Orthodox. It has some different holy sites that are further east (such as Rayy and Baghdad). But otherwise it will be familiar to you. You have a head Patriarch, you can try and reunite the five pentarchs under Nestorianism, you have auto-cephaly. Certainly offers a challenge to make Nestorianism the dominant branch of Eastern Orthodoxy though!

The blind/castrate options are based on culture alone as far as I'm aware. They only appear for members of the Byzantine culture group which are Alan, Armenian, Georgian and Greek.

I recently converted a game with some Nestorian realms in it and as far as I can tell they become Orthodox, which is a shame. Meanwhile Orthodox heresies such as Paulician become noreligion. Hopefully the converter will be improved in the future, but it doesn't handle all the various heresies and minor religions very well at the moment.

[nvlutz]

All right thank you very much for that insight. Although something tells me I might be disappointed with how Cathar translates to EU IV now.

[Surimi]

Nestorian is kind of interesting. I played a Nestorian Pecheneg game and it was one of my favourite playthoughs yet (although I ended up losing hard).

Basically, it is a lot like Orthodox. However, Nestorians have the advantage of having a holy order from day 1 (the order of Saint Addai). It's pretty small as holy orders go with only a few thousand troops, but very much a life saver in the early game.

The real difficulty, which they share with Judaism, is that all their holy sites are in the middle east which means having to brave the terrifying Muslim solidarity blob. It makes for a nice, tense early game though, as you're basically struggling to survive and fighting off the Messalians (who are themselves really cool, I should add - basically a cross between Cathars and Zoroastrians) while building up enough strength to take on the Muslims in their own lands.

Strictly speaking, the best cultures are probably Greek or Persian. The order of Saint Addai is always Persian, and the Patriarch of the East starts out as Greek (although his culture can change). Ultimately, you will probably want to vassalize one or both. I like playing turkic cultures though and had fun as the Pechenegs.

One weird thing I've noticed is that the NPC Nestorians hanging around in the holy land will marry anyone, which makes conversion from Tengri or Slavic to Nestorian quite easy.