So what you're saying is this game has pray to win mechanics?

"When you think 'Heresy,' think Catholicism." Orthodox Church: "That's what we've been saying!"

A note on Communion: When you are the head of faith, you always get 100 gold per request. That is important to note, because asking a spiritual HoF for indulgences makes the price depend on many different factors that quickly make it scale up to 500 or even 600 gold. Additionally: Creating an Islamic faith with Communion and Temporal HoF is a good strategy. Islamic Vassals become Clan vassals and thus their taxes and levies depend on their opnion of you. Communion's Indulgences increases their opinion with you and thus they pay you money upfront just to increase the taxes they pay you afterwards.

You have THE BEST clear, concise, and relevant guides. Thank you so much for these. As much I play, I always learn so much from you.

My favourite run was a reformed Asatru religion with no bastards, polygamy allowed, kinslaying allowed, witch coven, incest allowed. My family tree was a family bush. All of my kids were also my grandkids, brothers, sisters, cousins, and not a single one had a bad trait. My family had over 200 members by like 900 or something.

Who would have guessed that Jerusalem is a hotly contested holy site

I like this feature to be able to change and make your own faith it gives much more role-playing options of which I really enjoy doing

To clarify the Human Sacrifice tenet, when you use the raid for captives casus belli, the 3-5 prisoners you get as part of enforcing demands are marked for execution. If you release or ransom these prisoners, you lose piety, due to not executing them. This casus belli is great for generating piety, especially when used against a kingdom tier enemy.

Quick note: after the last patch, you can no longer kill yourself whenever u want (as you said), you have to be over 60 years old or be in a realy bad health condition. sort of useless now.

Thank you for producing such clear and concise videos. I enjoy watching your interaction with people online.

You always make such good guides. I always watch them multiple times because there is so much good info

Something to add to Fevour- it also affects the acceptance of the Demand Conversion interaction with characters. The difference between the fevour of the requestors faith and the recipients increases or decreases the likelyhood of acceptance, as well as learning difference. This obviously makes it a nightmare to demand conversion in Iberia with the Muwalladism characters, because they often have very high fevour and adaptive, whether catholisim has quite a low fevour :(

I was really waiting for that. Thanks alot! :)

Thank you so much for all of your videos!! They have been invaluable in understanding the game better and learning how to play. Its quickly become my fav game.

Awesome dude! I was so waiting for this! I think after this topic you got everything ck3 covered with tutorials.

I subbed for all things ck3 I check out your videos first ... so detailed and beautifully laid out ... thank you

Finally, show me how to bring back Hellenism. I expanded Asatru from England to Italy, but it be fun to bring back Jupiter.

I have yet to see this talked about online, but there is a trick to including other faiths in your own domain so hopefully this makes sense. If you were to say take control of the lands of Babylon, and be a duelist faith around Baghdad, there are many other faith holy sites around you. If one is in your domain, say like the Mosque of Samarra, you can move the capital of the County to a separate temple (if Lay Clergy) or castle if there's a spare slot. What this does is move the Holy Site "location" to this new capital but let the slot for the special temple remain on the old holding. You can then install a vassal that is of that particular faith into that castle. They will not unlock the control over the holy site but the building can be built and non-disabled. If you set them up with a nice family, and it's a feudal vassal, they can keep that chain of faith going within their family and the title so you'll have a permanent Baron that activates the abilities of said Special Building. The only downside is that the "for holder" bonuses of actually being that faith go to the baron instead BUT the county buff remains, whatever its individual bonus is. In my opinion, it's way better than having a dead building or an inaccessible slot weighing on your notifications. It has some exceptions like if the county only has two holdings, a castle and a city. You can do this with cities as capitals but they wont be feudal so the title may fall into someone of a faith that can't activate the building.

I I just had the most awesome time playing as the pagan asaru religion. My character had three virtues very high learning skill and my wife had high learning skill. Spent my life going on raids racking up tons of gold and sacrificing all of the cactus. By the time it was done and my character is 50 years old I had about 12,000 piety-hello new reformed religion!

This has been a superb religion guide for all of us brother , thanks loads !!

My goal in my current game is to convert the world to Adamism. So... much... nudity...

26:00 sadly temporal also has a 10-year swap cooldown and you do get random ones when one dies, also you got to have it in your court to appoint a good one, spiritual tends to be a member of a house and high learning, but the sins can be an issue, there is a low chance you get a good lowborn as temporal, or a recently widowed and unlanded person on learning base. there are two tricks tho: you can send your bishops to be guardians of vassals with underage heir, and since they move out of your court, they are no longer a bishop. the other trick is marrying away female bishops or matrimonially marry male bishops, so the real important choice is to allow them to marry (it's a bit quicker than sending them as guardian). The guardian trick can help you fill your court with lowborn guys or girls, which then can bring in educators, knights or other traits. Also you can micromanage marriages of priests in your realm, fervour can go up or down based on sins and virtues, so marrying away bad priests from your and your king vassals court can get rid of sinful ones. But in my experience, I can get more lowborn guys to take away girls than lowborn girls (prisoners are already sinful and exposed) so female bishops are the way to go (plus you can seduce them for endorsement) and generally, they are better on virtuous traits. As for holy sites, you got most power when holding your own holy sites, 1 is needed for a religious head and 3 for reforming, 5 is for all bonuses. One really good faith branch for christianity is Krstjani, as it's 2 sites in Croatia, then Rome and one in west Hungary (Visegrad), also has witchcraft accepted, shunned sins (if you don't want to bother too much with criminals). One downside is that you might lose ecumenism if you fail an event. But otherwise is so much better for central Europe or even Italy. Not participating in crusades can be a good or bad thing. I don't know all the faiths but sometimes it's surprising when a heresy comes and you realize you hold it's sites. You can't realistically hold 3 catholic sites but if it's a requirement to be catholic or it defends you from orthodox or catholic, makes sense you go into a weird branch and not the mainstream religion. The number of counties also affects the price, also the number of rulers of that faith, it's almost dead when nobody has a land on that faith. However there is a trick to get dead religions arise with no huge piety cost. City majors live in a bubble when it comes to religion and culture, you can appoint any faith or culture guy into a city and when he dies, the next auto-generated character will be that faith and culture. Also you can marry a guy like that (or girl matrimonially) to a daughter or a high rank courtier and all kids will be that faith. The next step is weird, you got to seduce a daughter of hers and have a kid, while having a wife. First, you keep secret that is your kid and he has the mothers faith and culture, also don't do it with a married girl, as the game will consider her husband the father, then you can divorcé and marry that lady. Make the kid your heir and he starts with that faith, so he can use the bishop to convert the realm. If you can't find a girl of that faith, you breed a guy with a random lady in a city and wait 16 to 20 years to do so. So it's complex but not impossible. in paganic, there is Human sacrifice which is hands down best option to get lots of piety just by killing prisoners. I brought back Táltosism via a decision and swapped in Human sacrifice, I was too late to reform my faith, but my next ruler paid 8000 piety in full cost just by killing random Byzantine armies, camping on Constantinople, even killing Opsicolons rebel armies. Communal identity is strong when you get the special research from east germany for increased development and culture conversions, then culture can affect religion and religion the culture. I also tried out the one giving guests a bonus, well it's just 20 opinions and they don't even move into court, but you can use it yearly on someone on top of gifts and befriend schemes, so you can get fast opinion swings. The others I tried were 250 cost one that might make kids a mystic, there is a 500 cost one that makes all 3 stages a virtue and they can get the trait for learning well. It gives you 300 learning xp which is not the worst, combined with study efforts with befriending and bing friend with your bishops, I had a steward ruler with 30+ learning just from those events. The religions are not easy to see trough, but my main insight is now: religions can limit your marriages inside your realm which can be good on not losing lands and claims from house members. Demanding conversions is a powerful tool on high crown authority, anyone refusing can be imprisoned, stripped of his lands and forced to convert. But the real power of religions is shaking up the water. You house members as vassals will likely follow you to a new faith, so you convert to new ones each 50-100 years, and this is an excuse to revoke titles from different culture rulers and imprison city majors for ransom money. Then you give out titles to your house members and you get rid of cultures and religions that way. It's risky and taunting others to attack you, but if you win, you will be way more stable and powerful.

I definitely should have watched this before reforming my religion

It took me over 100 years to figure out that I could upgrade the Dome of the Rock to the Third Temple as a Jewish ruler. Pretty sure the game should make that minus penalty to Muslim opinion.

Yes Sparty, Yes! Was waiting patiently for this

Love your video brother!

Guide Playlist: kzfaq.info/sun/PLDLBnN-W_m2lcnvAQ1e6hvu7GnHJnRQF4 Thank you so much for watching guys! Next up is Hooks & Intrigue! If there's any subjects you'd like me to cover, feel free to suggest them below! :) If you haven't picked up the game, you can grab it through my link here: www.nexus.gg/italianspartacus . This helps me out a TON as it gives a direct commission to the channel, and depending on what time you see this, a discount to you as well.

Thanks for the guide, I swear lol this felt exactly like a Khan Academy math tutorial except with CK3 haha

Making a cannibal Witch Coven society was the most fun that I had in a while!

I think my favorite run I've done where all these mechanics came into play in a really big way was my Jewish matriarch run. She was a Malabarist to start with, since it 1) had the most tenets in common with the faith I wanted to found, and 2) gave her something to do (specifically, consolidate Bene-Israel) while building the piety necessary to found said new faith. Eventually she succeeded in founding Estherism, based on the biblical story of Queen Esther, with tenets exalting female leadership, polyandry, court intrigue, and the retaliatory extermination of those who attempted to genocide the Chosen People. It was quite fun!

Ty. This video really did help me understand the different mechanisms for changing or upgrading your religion. Just started playing 2 weeks ago as Prussia.lol

I'd love to see a guide to the best way to get the amount of piety needed to convert to Hellenism. Last time I looked it cost over 40k piety to convert to it, which is a crazy amount! I was playing as Asatru and could only get halfway by doing raiding for captives and human sacrifices.

If you are Head of Faith go for Communion ! Its super OP but also kind of realistic . People pay you 100g for 100 faith. The good part is that you dont pay ANY faith yourself. So its basically cryptocurency scam, but instead of going to jail , you will be praised head of faith, who gets 100g+ , makes 100 faith from thin air and send it to your customer. Best faith trait ever!

Comment about fervour: higher your fervour less the probability of heresy to spawn. It was a bit unfair to play Catholics because vassals always wanted to convert to the heresy. Thus sometimes is disadvantageous to follow "big" religions.

I started a faith in Ireland, a few hundred years later it took over the byzantine empire and the Orthodox faith, idk how but I found that cool

MUCH LOVEEE

top notch content

Such great videos, thanks a lot! I've been binge watching them as I just got the game. I was wondering for religion: why would one create a new religion? I understand that you can then choose how you want to play but the price to change is high and it probably creates some issues with conversion within the realm (not sure as I haven't tried yet)

Great guide, thank you for explaining these obscure concepts! How does one successfully focus on a religion playthrough without being invaded and overtaken easily? I tried a few times and not only I couldn't expand my territory by a single county, but I was invaded and wiped out within only one generation every time. Any tips on how to play the long game on religious mode?

One thing I miss as a catholic is that kings when they by own choice could leave the throne to their heir and enter into a monestary. And it was also a way to force defeated king queens princes or princesses into a monestary to solve a succession crise. Some entered by there own will.

In my current playthrough i have reformed Insular Christianity to Ultra Insular Christianity which encourages incest and allows 3 spouses. Because of this, making alliances is extremely easy if every conquered title is given to a dynasty member :D As of the year 1000 i have conquered empire of Brittania, empire of Francia, empire of Hispania, empire of Italy and most of Byzantine Empire.

Thanks for this. I was reforming blind until you saved me

The way other religions regard oneanother through the fundamentalist,righteous etc makes so much sense, thnx. Now I know why converting to quranism in a non Islamic area is dumb, I have to ease the populace into Islam with another faith first.

I got a question I haven't been able to solve even on the CK3 discord. When declaring a directed great Holy War, while being the Temporal head of faith of your religion, are only independent rulers able to join your "crusade" or are your vassals able to join as well?

Actually, I believe that they nerfed communion in 1.1, so that indulgences only are sent if the head of faith is spiritual

That was very helpful. I think i will try to create a reformed kushite faith with nubian cultural background. Started in Kordofan so i will have to conquer holy sites, but i will try.

51:01 - Perfect

What's your opinion on: - Unrelenting Faith combined with the recruiting doctrine (+8 prowess clergy knights), worth it? - Alexandrian Catechism, is it worth having to be a fundamentalist? - Esotericism (getting wiseman-miracle worker trait, counting as virtue) good for getting piety? That and other tenets like sacred lies and hedonism make it easier to get the right virtues. But will this still be useful after you make the new faith? Will you still need piety that much after (holy wars?) or are these piety bonuses only nice for creating a new religion a second time? Maybe to spread the cost of changes among two characters. I could see one create one faith first to make a "virtuous" piety gaining monster heir so you can afford making a faith with a crazy +200% or +500% cost penalty. Or to first convert many christians with an eastern christian syncretism faith, then much later switch to an eastern faith with another syncretism and convert the rest of the world after christianity is no longer relevant. Or just to remove the tenet for one with a nice bonus.

I'm so blind, I've played almost 90 hours and I had no idea that I could just click a button to convert faith. :p I was going the long route, finding a character with a religion I wanted, marrying them, then converting to their religion. -_-

i found a great tactic that helped me win wars against same religion rulers, what u have to do is declare war on the Pope for example, and since you're both Catholic, you can't hire a holy order, what you can do however is declare war on some random 1 - 3 province Muslim that has around 1000 troops (look for the ones with weak or no allies) with any wargoal, most preferably holy war since you don't need any claims, then just raise the holy order (its safer to hire your own holy order since they can be hired even if someone else is using them), and you can send the holy order to attack their own head of faith, they usually have 5000 troops and with the Pope having the means to hire mercenaries out the wazoo, you'll need any help you can get, then just call your allies and play the long game if you want... his troops will get attrition, therefore dropping his forces from 10k, to 5k, then you can just wipe him out and repeat until he's unlanded... thats what i did as an Italian count, i grew my land and became a duke, didn't help my liege with a dissolution war, his kingdom broke, i created it, then i vassalized all my de jure rulers, and from that point i just conquered the rest of Sicily and Italy, also i took Rome, created my own religion and became the new Pope, now i have over 4000 gold and its only my 4th ruler that game, with 20 monthly income and 3 people asking for indulgence each month

I'm doing a randomized religion playthrough. It makes things interesting añd crazy

@ItalianSpartacus - How do you get this screen, is this observation mode?

Love your content. I just bought this game and it's great... now I'm just annoyed with the 1 billion pop-ups that happen in 5 minute increments and my kingdom shattering like dropped glass everytime I die.

I always play Prussia but still not sure should I keep being Vidilism or convert to Catholic

What useful things can you spend Piety on other than reforming / creating religions and declaring holy wars? I usually find that after I have reformed my religion to the way I like, subsequent rulers have nothing to spend their piety on.

Is there any way I can change my custom christian religion and keep my holy order?

If you are pluralist but tax non-members, would that decrease faction outbreaks but increase conversion rate?

I am a little confused I am playing as a catholic nation and my Archbishop say I hold a church holding. I don't see that I hold such a holding. Any Ideas of how I can solve it.

Some afterthoughts after watching. Every faith can have heresies, not just catholics. The main difference is what faiths heresiarchs can get. If you are ex-pagan, all heretics will be of your old faith - and astray - which is mild in comparison, when i was on a learner toon i was often able to convert all of them back as pop-ups keep appearing. The only tenet that kinda breaks the game is warmongers. You can have a hw for a kingdom, an invasion and then ghw for 3 kingdoms in 3 wars, per lifetime. No need to ever fabricate a claim - this alone is worth it. Also public opinion doesnt exist - any war resets it to 0, defensive, of allies, against a random nobody on the other side of the map... Monasticism is okay if you can afford to waste some years in intrigue, it doesnt work without strong hooks most of the time. Money should not be an issue like 2 generations in the game, so i am not sure its worth a tenet (Communion). Communal Identity is terrible. If you play small, you wont need much converting anyway, if you are map painting, most of the time it will be flat -50% convertion speed. P.S. Natural Primtivism makes all believers naked, and it can be found in Adamism or manually selected :P

As the head of faith, how do you start Holy Great Wars?

Xbox needs to endorsed this guy

Guys be careful this Italian Spartacus reads minds from millions miles away...

Does anyone know if base stats of parents matter when it comes to their children? (i read in bloodline legacies that base stats are not congenital). is it only education then? seems kinda stupid. ive tried to select the best stats for every courtier without really knowing if it mattered.

It's funny how anachronistic some coats of arms are in CK3. E.g., pagan Livonia long before the Northern Crusades already has the black Teutonic cross on its shield. In CK2 they used some random non-Christian symbols, so what happened in CK3?

I can't find anything on how to change over to another faith. Is there anyway for someone who is Astrau to change to Suomenusko, for example? Or are faiths pretty fixed once a character as grown up and adopted one?

There is a way how to shorten cooldown on temporal head of religion in case, you have doctrine they can be married. Simply - marry him/her out of your domain to foreign spouse :) - and then you have space for another one. No need to wait 10 years.

My doctrines have randomly gone up in piety price and i dont know why anyone know?

hmm, i see the amount of piety needed to reform the faith is impossible to achieve until you reach paragon, highest level of piety so you can actually add up the piety to 3000 plus piety etc.. otherwise you just skip automatically to higher lever etc.. so you need to be highest level and still wait for some time to reach that kind of amount..

I created a new faith against another original faith within empire. Suddenly My character return to the old faith without warning. Anyone know why did I do wrong?

One thing you maybe should have pointed out is that faiths that rule Holy Sites that they don't consider holy (for example, a Catholic controlling Constantinople) don't get ANY benefits from it. Even if it has one of the most famous Wonders of the world. Also connected with that, if you have a special building slot that is unusable, it actually might be a buildable holy site for a different religion. Insular Christianity in Ireland has that problem. A good follow up to this video might be an analysis on tenants. Go in depth on each one and how they might interact with others.

all I know once I saw nude girl in an event (Go on a Pilgrimage) as a Roman Emperor , you can convert to Adamitism by option which is never seen naturally occured.

I'm guessing you would have covered it if so, but is there any way to create a completely new religion? Like with Abrahamic, could you create one that wasn't Christianity, Judaism, or Islam, but outside of those three? Sorry if the questions confusing.

I hope a DLC comes down with the ability to form a new religion and not just a new faith. I think the religious families are fine, just a new religion period. Sikhism is a real example of a religion that popped up near this time period.

This is the part that is killing me in this game. I can never get 4500 🌳 ever....what do I need to do....

I want create a fun faith but not pay crazy amounts of piety, especially not +200% and +500% cost penalties. Isn't it always cheaper to convert to something that's similar to your envisioned faith? Suppose I'm catholic or coptic and want to change it for both getting lots of kids and spreading this new faith easily. I probably want to allow concubines and have one of the syncretism tenets. Without ecumenism all christian faiths will be hostile anyway, so I might as well pick an islamic, eastern or pagan faith with christian syncretism. This means I need to convert to another faith first, either an unreformed one and reform that to my chosen faith (needing 3 holy sites) or another organised religion and create a new faith. What's the best way to handle this? Btw, I want to rule just a small nation, but marry into a huge amount of courts (females matrilineal) and have independent dynasty members everywhere with my faith spread it further. So as little micromanaging as possible.

I am wondering which mechanic/doctrine/tenet decides whether it is a crime to refuse order to convert faith. I did not find it while looking at Catholic faith. I created a faith which is lacking this mechanic and I wonder what is lacking.

Damn 54 minutes. Religion got serious 🙂

I was playing as Island as Astaru and took over all of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and empire of Britannia. I ended up basically bricking the game by somehow causing repeated Catholic Uprisings in England that were happening every year or more with huge peasant armies of 40-50k! It was crazy. I put them down 3x before I just couldn’t do it anymore and lost all my Britannia Empire land I had acquired

how can i convert to Asatru, i must pay 40k piety

If you reform a pagan faith, can you become its temporal head or do you have to CREATE a faith to become its head?

Is there any way to choose your holy sites

Is there a way to spread religion organically within your realm without converting

Bruh, why did I think you put a Nazgul in the thumbnail next to the religious icon representing Islam.

Can you create a new faith without ending up as Hostile or Evil?

Time to make the cult of cthulhu

what if im the head of the religion

Started a siberian playthrough and meant to take it to high medieval, going feudal and reforming religion. All that. Then I realized all my holy sites are one continent away in the baltic........ Yeah, I think I ain't finishing that one

Some day I have to form the religion "De Jure". Can't get more righteous than that.

If i am a muwallist Muslim, and I do a Jihad, can asharis and others also be able to join my grand holy war

"this site is shared by slovakians" Im straight up gonna just waterboard you with vodka for this

You sound like mike winger

Strange that Monasticism and Hedonism are mutually excluding, while Asceticism and Hedonism are not. Should be vice versa.

this is why i dont get this game, nor guides like this, ran into the same type of issues with CK2. you and others say the FAITH has to control a holy sites, yet no matter where I start with an unreformed religion my game always says my REALM has to hold the holy sites. i must be missing something somewhere but nothing online ever helps with this game and it just seems broken to me :/

The amount of study they had to do to create this game amazes me! Unless they just pulled sh#t out of thin air, which I hope they did not.

despite being the head of my faith, i can't even reform it, only option is to create a new faith

ok

Irl paganism literally mean a non/pre Christian religion, example they called romans pagans

pluralist is easier to convert lands, because it is more stable. You don't get three different religious rebellions interrupting your work. fundamentalist cannot covert faster than these revolts pop off!

i hate that its virtually impossible to become asatru, pagan or hellenic with a catholic ruler...

Me mates playing the danes and norse raids me and confinds me to kent in 924 Me in 1024:my turn numero 2 time for christians to raid u