native conversion

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a good thread(s) on native conversions, namely how long it takes (in order to determine if it's worth it). So I did a little play testing, and this is what I discovered.

Playing pre-patch vanilla:
Conquistador level:
Evidently, you generate conversion points. Without any special abilities (better conversion rates, etc.) you get one point per year.
1st Conversion: 40 pts.
2nd Conversion: 50 pts.
3rd Conversion: 63 pts.
4th Conversion: 78 pts.

Now, the 4th Conversion is a guess since I wasn't able to play long enough with enough stability to determine. However, it looked like there was a pattern going on of increasing by the next odd number (e.g. 13 extra between 2 and 3, then 15 extra between 3 and 4).

For Governor level (using double special abilities = 200% conversion), the values were 14, 16, 22, 26 ... though I will admit there were problems in calculations due to opposing colonies setting up missions (later values when I was able to smooth things out were 312, 396, 496, 612).

Anyway, one thing I have determined is that you add up the conversion points for all missions you have with the same tribe. Where the converted native pops up seems to be random from where you have missions for that tribe. Also, converting natives is independent between tribes (i.e. converting from one tribe does not increase the time necessary to convert from another tribe).

Another thing is that I've read people indicate is that you have to return to a town and clear the specialty in order to train the native. Perhaps people are talking mods because in vanilla, you can immediately train the native.

Anybody want to confirm this, or add anything? Can someone like Dale perhaps tell us where/if there is an value we can read to determine the incremental pattern?

radmod said:

Another thing is that I've read people indicate is that you have to return to a town and clear the specialty in order to train the native. Perhaps people are talking mods because in vanilla, you can immediately train the native.

Click to expand...

Both in the patch and Dale and Snoopy's mod a native convert cannot train in an indian village.

I disagree with that. Not with what you said but the idea of not allowing natives to train in villages. Some people have made remarks in this forum asking why aren't these natives, who have lived all their lives in the village, automatically expert this or master that when converted. I also disagree with that.

When we send a colonist to "live among the natives" it is with the idea that the colonist is supposed to learn the specialty of the village. Yet, a converted native is just a regular Joe, someone who may never have been involved in the specialty of the village but is still better than the stupid Europeans. After all, he's spent his life learning how to be better at everything natural than specializing in one thing. So he converts; why can't we then send him back to learn the specialty? What about the Apache learning the Aztec specialty? Not all natives were Joseph Brant jerks.

When we get immigrants from Europe they may or may not have a specialty but they can learn can't they? IMO, Natives should be allowed to learn from the villages AND in the school system. There's already a flag indicating if the unit is a CN or not so, depending on how it's written, it would be relatively no extra coding to allow them to generate lesser or more points village education points and/or regular education points. That is, they should be able to learn a native skill more quickly than a European, but they should be treated as Indentured Servants or Criminals when learning in a European school.

Another thing is the concept of not allowing converts to be armed in vanilla. Especially in the West, converts often served either directly in or with colonial/U.S. forces. (Ya think Washington could have even found Fort Detroit on his own?)

I realize that the trump card in all this is game playability in insuring that players don't totally screw up the game by converting 50 million natives in order to beat the powers that be, but if we want at least a little realism, allowing natives not to be trained is way off.