Do you convert religion or culture first ?

[Varainger]

Say you conquered a province with different culture and religion or several provinces already and face the question to use the priests culture bolstering or religious conversion options, which do you choose and why ?

Is there any difference ?
Is it better to have the same religion or culture before doing the other ?
I don't know.

Any experiences and impressions or does anyone actullay know about it ?

[stun]

Culture doesn't matter at all. The priest ability doesn't really impact it, either.
Religion only matters if it's a religious province.
It's not worth taking your priest off charity to worry about it until you've got a long list or a many-shrine location you want producing piety. In that case, you convert religion. Keep in mind that converting religion takes the price once (and then just has gold upkeep) for the priest to cycle through and convert ALL unconverted provinces. Much cheaper in books and piety (and gold) to do multiple at once.

Originally posted by Varainger:

Is there any difference ?

Yes. Religious tension stability penalty is predefined based on religion. Culture penalty is based on relations. You can easily have only -1 culture penalty if e.g. the rest of italy loves you and you picked on a hated minor nation, or if you vassilize the loser of a war and establish good relations with them afterwards.

[Chompers]

When you conquer a province you use the one-time options, the culture boost is a passive increase to your kingdom culture. First you want to "Adopt population" to eliminate the province disorder then you do the convert religion action. The culture of the province will convert over time based on the influence level it's getting from your culture relative to the opposing adjacent cultures.

[Iskar]

Different culture gives a malus to the success chance of the conversion action. It also confers much higher public order penalties than religious differences. Hence I would always concentrate on culture first and do the religious conversion afterwards.

[Judeo-communism]

I convert religion ASAP, as if you're playing Catholic, having a province with the wrong religion gives you an extremely high chance of being excommunicated. It happened to me once when I conquered some Muslim provinces down near Castille as England, and literally within minutes before I could even convert them I was excommunicated despite having high Papal Relations, and that war was declared on me.

[hellfusion]

Religion first usually, if you want to change conquered provinces culture/loyalty. When changing religion you do 2 things: increase your culture pressure and decrease enemy’s pressure from nearby provinces.

Bolster culture is useful when you conquer provinces of the same religion as yours and its previous owner has strong culture. It’s also useful when you have very little (or none at all) provinces with your own culture to exert pressure. That way cleric acts as additional source of pressure and his influence is more noticeable.

[ShadowFox]

Originally posted by Varainger:

Say you conquered a province iwth different culture and religion or severalalready and face the question to use the priests culture bosting or religious conversion options, which do you choose and why ?

Is there any difference ?
Is it better to have the same religion or culture before doiung the other ?
I don't know.

Any experiences and impressions or does anyone actullay know about it ?

I do religion first cause its easier, culture takes time faith takes a good cleric and some money

[Varainger]

Thanks for the responses :)

If religion conversion chance is only at between 50 and 70 i currently prefer to culture convert first, if only to prevent potential splits on inheritance, but also the negative stability effect including loyalty is bigger than the one for religion so....depends as one prefers i supppose.

[hellfusion]

Originally posted by Varainger:

Thanks for the responses :)

If religion conversion chance is only at between 50 and 70 i currently prefer to culture convert first, if only to prevent potential splits on inheritance, but also the negative stability effect including loyalty is bigger than the one for religion so....depends as one prefers i supppose.

Unlike adopting population, chance for religion convertion doesn’t matter much as your cleric will just continue trying to convert province (and others around it) until he succeeds. You do have to pay upkeep, but bolster culture costs upkeep too.

What helps is having high level cleric doing it. Level 15 is not necessary, but at least level 7-8 does job a lot faster than level 0-1. So he wastes much less gold doing it.

I’m 100% sure that converting first is more effective. I’ve had situations when gaining loyalty of province with another religion took a very very long time.

On a side note there a very small chance your cleric will be killed when converting your provinces. That happened to me, but only once I think.

Also try to sign peace with enemy you took provinces from. Before you do that (or before you kill them) spending upkeep on Bolster Culture is basically a waste.