Heathen conversion OP?

[tlaurila]

It's somewhat situational, and I'm using Raging Barbarians, but:

I tried going for religion and heathen conversion early on. I thought it would give my missionaries the chance to convert barbarians by using Spread Religions. I was blown away when I noticed just bringing the missionary next to the barbarian unit was enough: One missionary can do infinite conversions!

My location is relatively heavy on islands, but Communitas maps tend to be. I have about 10 barbarian ships in the seas around me, based from on camps on islands around me. It looks like I'm about to get a Classical age invasion navy/army of ~20 units with just a missionary or two! And I can keep farming camps for units!

Really it seems to me that converting heathens should spend Spread Religion uses. It would still be a good option, converting 450 faith (a missionary) to 2-5 units (if missionary converted all adjacent barbs when spread was used, and each missionary had 2 spreads). Seems on par with buying units with faith.

 

[Tomice]

Good catch! Sounds a bit abusive I have to agree.

I can't remember that one of my priests was ever caught by barbs, but they usually get destroyed, right? What if we give the conversion mechanic a small chance to fail (10 percent maybe?)? This would limit the conversions per missionary.

It would be an easier solution than 2 kinds of charges.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I have never tried that belief. I think I will now.

What an interesting way to form an army.

Since this is a vanilla belief has there been any discussions about this being OP in the main forum?

 

[jwerano]

It seems like a decent situationally useful ability, but maybe that's offset by unit maintenance costs and several other factors. It could be OP in the ancient/classical because the barbs unique terrain promos but you wont have a religion that early. Plus these inferior units have the same maintenance costs as your own units and will be expensive to upgrade so they can be competitive on the battlefield. I typcally wouldn't want to capture 6 low XP spearmen at a randomly located barb camp far from roads in the middle ages and have to pay their wages or worry about upgrading them to pikemen.

 

[mitsho]

The thing is in vanilla it's an enhancer belief which means you have to race through the tree to make it worth it soon enough. I did post quite soon after release on that "problem" so it's not a new invention old: told you so ).

When I used this ability, I mostly gifted these units to city states, too costly to keep and takes too long to bring down upon an enemy "zerging" them (usually).

It's a very flavourful and active belief so it should stay, but I agree there needs to be some kind of cap on the ability...

 

[ExpiredReign]

I thought I would give it a go, just to see what the fuss is about.

Wow, too easy. The only problem I faced was, all the units I ended up with were on islands or landmasses separate from my empire and since they didn't have Embarkation they were stuck where they were converted.

Nice idea that may need a bit (or a lot) of tweaking to find it's correct place in the selection tree.

 

[ChandlerB]

Adding this as a reformation belief allows war to continue regardless of unhappiness. In fact had three riflemen pop up in revolt around the city I had my missionary parked in and they all converted the turn they appeared.

 

[Mrdarklight]

One thing to note: Maybe this is obvious to others, but I had to try it out.

My religion doesn't have Heathen Conversion, but I have a couple of distant cities following the religion that did, so I decided to create a missionary in one (thus carrying the other religion, with HR) and see if he would convert barbs. Nope. Doesn't work. I guess since my religion doesn't have that belief, it doesn't work, even if the missionary does have that belief.