koteko said:
After having finished the game as pagan siding with norse as well as christian siding with anglo-saxon, I'm wondering about what happens with "weird" combinations, in particular pagan siding with anglo-saxons (Uthred for the win).
I know that raiding monasteries would pretty much make it impossible to keep most companions and to have good relationship with anglo-saxon lords. So it would have to be a peaceful pagan, I guess?
I also noticed (but am not 100% sure about it) that fiefs of opposing religion would hate me. Would this make it hard to progress as a lord of West Seax?
Has anyone tried this, or maybe even succeeded in converting England to paganism, if at all possible?
I think the issue is more about befriending lords/factions with an opposing religion. I think lords randomly (and really slowly) lose relations over time with lords of the opposite religion, so that makes it slightly harder (i.e. more maintenance) to keep on good terms with them. From my experience this is very slight, so I doubt it's insurmountable - it's probably just annoying enough that converting to Christianity seems like a good idea if you have lots of Christian friends (or potential future friends).
In my experience, the morale drop due to "issues" that companions have with things such as raiding monasteries tend to pale in comparison to the morale drop due to personality conflicts - at least according to the game they appear to get over such issues pretty quickly.
Naturally, as you've stated, raiding monasteries tends to annoy nearby fiefs, factions of those fiefs, and lords of those fiefs/factions. More worryingly, your relationship with christians will suffer - once it gets below -50, you'll start to see regular (and random) drops in relation with any christian factions.
My current playthrough is pagan, but even though I've pretty much set out to crush all the christian kingdoms, I stopped raiding monasteries pretty early during the run due to those relations drops (I converted to Christianity temporarily to solve it). I did raid a ton of villages though - this still annoys even neighboring fiefs, but the relation hit is less widespread, and the relations with Christians aren't affected (so no slow random rel drops due to -50 with Christians). Of course if you convert to Christianity, you can simply visit a monastery to donate yourself back into God's grace...
I wouldn't worry too much about relations with villages/forts/towns unless the town has the culture (and therefore troops) that you like to use, and/or if you're the lord. If you are the lord, then there are buildings and events such as Symbel which can help you to increase relations. If you are not the lord, and you don't like people not liking you, if you then visit that lord while he's in his fief (if it's a town or fort), you should have an option to get the lord to help you increase relations for 500-1000. Currently about half of the fiefs in my territory hate me due to the nasty things I did to their villages, in addition to the stuff I did during sieges - it's not really a problem since I have subordinate lords to deal with them.
As for converting England to paganism - it's slowly getting there, though I didn't start building pagan temples until recently (so only about 3 fiefs have them, and I can't build in another lord's fief even if I'm his king). And by slowly I mean sloooooowly - the difference in religions compared to the start of the game is currently probably tiny at best.
It's probably easier to convert to Christianity instead (assuming I cared what Christian lords think of me), plus I could potentially get more/better troops more often from certain fiefs - the only problem is that if you're using Norse faction troops, then they will be pagan, even though you recruited them from a Christian town...
TL;DR:
Being pagan will make it more challenging to succeed in a Christian realm, and will likely require more "maintenance" for relations - but is definitely doable. Definitely makes sense to convert to Christianity - except faction troops have a pre-set religion so it kind of makes things a bit weird.
