Colonial Nation religions

[swilhelm73]

I'm playing as Japan in 1510. I just started on my fourth colonial province in Alaska so I'll get a colonial nation in a little while if I then go on to create and finish a fifth.

My goal in this campaign is to convert to Christianity and I believe those events will start firing once I find some Europe Christians in the Americas.

So when I convert to Christianity will any colonial nations I control also convert? Or will they stay Shinto? If the latter I just won't create any colonial nation until i convert - it will take a while to create a colonial nation in California and Mexico anyway, but if they convert with me I'd rather finish creating colonial nations so I have fewer provinces to worry about converting.

[grotaclas]

Their state religion won't change, but you can force religion on them with a subject interaction if you have the DLC for that. And they won't usually convert their provinces unless they are a crown colony and you used the modify subject relationship option "Increase Religious Control"(actually the AI doesn't send missionaries with that either, but it enables an event which randomly sends a missionary if they are not converting anything)

[swilhelm73]

So I waited to get the 5th province to form a colonial nation until after I changed to Catholic and...Japanese California still got Shinto as its religion. I assume the issue is that even though I colonized Ukomnom as the 5th province which spawned the CN and the religion in that province is Catholic, the highest development province/capital is Ohlone which is Shinto.

This seems a bug.

I don't have the Leviathan DLC so I assume I am stuck here?

[Camerons101]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

So I waited to get the 5th province to form a colonial nation until after I changed to Catholic and...Japanese California still got Shinto as its religion. I assume the issue is that even though I colonized Ukomnom as the 5th province which spawned the CN and the religion in that province is Catholic, the highest development province/capital is Ohlone which is Shinto.

This seems a bug.

I don't have the Leviathan DLC so I assume I am stuck here?

That's not a bug. The colonial capital should be the first province you colonized and since it's Shinto that dictates the national religion. If you don't have the DLC to enforce religion then you would have to use a missionary on the future colonial capital province prior to taking the 5th so they have the religion you're looking for.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

So I waited to get the 5th province to form a colonial nation until after I changed to Catholic and...Japanese California still got Shinto as its religion. I assume the issue is that even though I colonized Ukomnom as the 5th province which spawned the CN and the religion in that province is Catholic, the highest development province/capital is Ohlone which is Shinto.

This seems a bug.

No, it is not a bug.
The religion depends on their provinces. I don't think it is the religion of the capital, but instead the religion of the majority of their dev, but some religions are not eligible if they are not your state religion(at least nahuatl, mayan an inti). So you hav to convert the provinces before you form the CN if you want them to start with a christian state religion. Or you force religion on them as I said before. You can convert their provinces if you have the Cradle of Civilization DLC. Also my information that CNs never convert if you don't use the leviathan interaction might be outdated. I have seen a case where a CN converted without using that interaction. But I didn't investigate the details, so it might have been special circumstances

[swilhelm73]

Hmm so if its most development both Alaska and California will be Shinto on creation but *perhaps* they'd convert if I gave them more Catholic provinces? I guess I'll have to try that. The relation penalty is -5 which isn't the worst thing in the world I suppose.

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

Hmm so if its most development both Alaska and California will be Shinto on creation but *perhaps* they'd convert if I gave them more Catholic provinces?/quote]
No. What I wrote in my last comment is about the religion which they get when they form. The only way how they could voluntariely convert to catholic would go through the shinto incident themselves get the christian outcome and then take the decision to become catholic, but I think the AI does not do that if there is already a christian country in Japan.
They could get force converted by rebels, but that's rather unlikely, because CNs don't get penalties for wrong religion. So you would have to force religion on them if you want their state religion to change

[swilhelm73]

So the -5 relations penalty isn't a big deal, but I see the CNs get "Heathen in power" +5 rebellion risk penalty in each province which means they will just have endless revolts, and Shinto revolts so I can't somehow use Catholic rebels.

Ah this is all so stupid. The CN should be the religion of the country it belongs to when it is formed.

So I either have to find a save from way before I went Catholic and not colonize more then half the initial development cost of the first 5 provinces in each region.

Or let one of Alaska/California go independent, colonize another 5 provinces, then conquer them again. Which just stupid.

So I guess its go back to the earlier save and the boring wait of Japanese conversion events as this game is now unplayable as I'll just get endless CN revolts with no way to resolve it.

If there are any more EU4 patches coming this should be a priority. Perhaps give a relation hit or something when forming the CN if it has too many wrong religion provinces but...the current mechanic is broken.

[Marquoz]

Why not force religion on your colonial nations and convert their provinces yourself? That's what I always do. And as a Catholic nation, you'll get boatloads of extremely valuable papal influence points as a reward.

[grotaclas]

I don't really understand the problems which you are having. Besides force converting the CN which was already mentioned, you could just convert the provinces to catholic with your missionaries before you form the CN. Then it forms as catholic.

The heathen in power modifier only lasts between 5 and 10 years. It happens if their state religion is different than their ruler's religion. But AFAIK the ruler's religion of CNs is the state religion of their overlord, so this won't happen if you force convert the CN to your religion.

[swilhelm73]

I don't have whichever DLC allows you to force religion on your CNs. The only interactions I have with them are Decrease/Increase Tariffs or pay off debts.

Since i haven't taken religious ideas yet (was looking at 4th idea group) I can't easily convert provinces so it would take a while. Its about 2 years per province so...4 years of missionaries which I guess would be better then going way back to an earlier save.

[Camerons101]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

So the -5 relations penalty isn't a big deal, but I see the CNs get "Heathen in power" +5 rebellion risk penalty in each province which means they will just have endless revolts, and Shinto revolts so I can't somehow use Catholic rebels.

Ah this is all so stupid. The CN should be the religion of the country it belongs to when it is formed.

So I either have to find a save from way before I went Catholic and not colonize more then half the initial development cost of the first 5 provinces in each region.

Or let one of Alaska/California go independent, colonize another 5 provinces, then conquer them again. Which just stupid.

So I guess its go back to the earlier save and the boring wait of Japanese conversion events as this game is now unplayable as I'll just get endless CN revolts with no way to resolve it.

If there are any more EU4 patches coming this should be a priority. Perhaps give a relation hit or something when forming the CN if it has too many wrong religion provinces but...the current mechanic is broken.

No, it's not broken because you didn't understand how it worked and didn't play around the mechanic correctly... As I previously wrote ALL you had to do prior to taking the 5th province is open your missionary panel and convert your other colonial holdings in that region prior to taking that last province.

I get you don't want to reload so here's a workable solution for this campaign. Just use your missionaries next time (the game goes on for about 400 years, don't sweat a few years of missionary work).

Here's the code for changing a provinces religion: "change_religion [Province ID] [Religion ID]". I didn't see a cheat that directly changes national religion but if you activate debug mode, change the religion of your CNs provinces, use the console to swap tags, hit the switch religion button, and then swap back to Japan and enjoy your game.

[swilhelm73]

No its broken because the mechanic makes no sense. The religious rebels that just purged Shinto as the religion of the nation will then turn around and hand power to a Shinto Viceroy because...they are now religiously tolerant and don't mind this means those CNs will ALWAYS by Shinto?

Stupid implementation. The religion of a CN should always, always, always be the religion of the mother nation. Obviously the game allows you to vary from real history but this is honestly the most foolish decision I've seen the game devs make in 20 years of playing EU games, yes dumber than allowing WC with Ryuku or secret bear invasion.

I've learned to make saves when you go for achievements because there will often be stupid implementations. But this? This should be fixed.

So I reloaded the save and will convert exactly 2 of the existing 4 colonies in Alaska and California so the 5th province will give the majority development to Catholic. Stupid Stupid Stupid. But I shouldn't have to.

[Narrowmind]

I think you're really over thinking this. It's not that bad.

[cayenne_spicy]

Originally posted by swilhelm73:

No its broken because the mechanic makes no sense. The religious rebels that just purged Shinto as the religion of the nation will then turn around and hand power to a Shinto Viceroy because...they are now religiously tolerant and don't mind this means those CNs will ALWAYS by Shinto?

Stupid implementation. The religion of a CN should always, always, always be the religion of the mother nation. Obviously the game allows you to vary from real history but this is honestly the most foolish decision I've seen the game devs make in 20 years of playing EU games, yes dumber than allowing WC with Ryuku or secret bear invasion.

I've learned to make saves when you go for achievements because there will often be stupid implementations. But this? This should be fixed.

So I reloaded the save and will convert exactly 2 of the existing 4 colonies in Alaska and California so the 5th province will give the majority development to Catholic. Stupid Stupid Stupid. But I shouldn't have to.

I don't mean for this to sound rude, but, have you considered playing the complete and full-featured version of the game before saying aspects of it are stupid or need to be fixed? Because, like... dude, a lot of what you're saying has been fixed... by features in DLC. The subscription is really inexpensive. You can't buy a fast food meal for the cost of one month of the subscription. My advice? Give that a try for just one month. See what the game is like with all of its features enabled.

[swilhelm73]

So this gets even dumber. I went back to an earlier save and converted two of the provinces in Alaska to Catholic Skwuxu (5) and Heiltsk (5) leaving two provinces as Shinto Nuu-cha (3) and Unanagan (3). I took two provinces from the natives Tsilquot (4) and
Shayusht (6) which were both totemist. And...when I finished coring one of the animist provinces the CN formed as Shinto again with the capital in Shayusht which is totemist

So yes this area of the code is spaghetti.