What I eventually started doing was banishing the duke's as they rebelled, then revoking their vassals titles, creating holy men, and then giving all the titles to them. It still took me a few generations before everything calmed down and I was able to turn my attention towards England.
Yeah, but banishing REALLY pisses people off. That's probably why. If they revolt, you basically can just throw them in prison, revoke ONE lousy title, and that's basically it: They stay there to rot forever. Or you could let them go and abuse them some more until they revolt again. Still, it's not quite as bad as the CK1 revolt spiral, where the first revolt would essentially doom your entire kingdom, as you'd defeat that rebel, incurring badboy for doing it, which would trigger yet another one, triggering another, and another, and another. The way to shed that was really bizarre: Assassinate your own courtiers.
The event code for wandering preachers is 39010 (found in events/religious_events.txt); it looks like being a caliph (ruler of a theocracy) actually protects against it ever happening to you.
Ah, well. Guess I'll ever end up becoming a Shiite that way, then. Can such a thing happen to a non-ruler, or a vassal ruler, such as my successor?
That said, if you did the impossible and converted, the main factors would be how rich and pluralistic the Holy Norfleet Empire was at the time, and how popular the Emperor was.
Rich? Fairly. Pluralistic....not so much. It's a pretty monolithic entity. I haven't acquired much in the way of foreign courtiers that happen to have different religions, and it's too easy to talk them into converting with my huge diplomacy score. Meanwhile, no one else wants to join because of my "False Religion", so I don't acquire many different religions at all. Since Ethiopian Culture doesn't have any related cultures, the entire thing is pretty much totally monolithic Ethiopian Monophysite.
If you're rich enough, you can smooth over your infidelity with bribes; if you're a multikult, the delta to relations by any given conversion is lessened.
I'm fairly rich, and could probably afford to bribe each of the 80+ dukes with the $20 a piece, but honestly, I hesitate to give them more money: Instead of using the money to do something constructive, they tend to blow it on pointlessly trying to murder each other, and most of my internal affairs is occupied with trying to stop that. Every $$50 I give someone translates into one more murder attempt on someone I'd rather not have murdered. It's massively annoying: WHY DO THEY DO THAT? It's not even ME they're
l Maniac" trait or something? I have never seen them actually ACCOMPLISH anything that would match any kind of purposeful objective, they just like trying to murder random people. What the hell, man?
And of course if you have all seven virtues + brave + just, you can murder a guy's parents in front of him and not really upset him too much.
I don't think I quite have THAT many, but I HAVE murdered an awful lot of peoples' parents. Their parents had it coming, though, for being real assholes like that.
Oh, and here's an interesting and new discovery: It seems the succession laws of Titular (and probably non-landless) titles (Caliphates, in my case) that are not your primary title are ignored. This means if you own multiple top-ranking titles of this sort (whatever your best is, Emperor/King/Duke/etc), you can pretty much flip between succession laws at whim without cost or upsetting anyone once you've assigned each one a different setup. Whichever hat you happen to be wearing at the time will decide your inheritance style. As some particular inheritance types are particularly pleasing to vassals or grant you other benefits (Elective, Gavelkind, Turkish/Open), while others are particularly useful to you at various times but not quite so pleasing or prone not to behaving as you wish, you can flip between them by switching your hat. Another use is Legal Hats: Have one title with crown laws set to one particular setup that is helpful to you in a flash, such as High Levies, while another contains a more relaxed, pleasing set of laws for smoothing over successions and peacetime. Then just flip your hat when you want to raise some troops.
The only actual way to ruin it would be if some powergaming mofo like me or Norfleet were to make our dude emperor in the 12th century, thereby eliminating all challenge for the rest of the game
Haha, so I was bored and rereading this thread, and noticed you called me that. You have no idea. I take powergaming things to the level where some would say it defeats the point of the game, except in my book, administering defeat *IS* the point of the game. Let's just say I have a long and glorious reign of getting banned from MMOs for this...and often this isn't even enough to stop my ghost from continuing to rule from the shadows. I have left permanent scars on games the Codex knows. Ever wonder why certain things in Dominions 3 suck balls and aren't worth the whatevers you pay for them at ALL? It's because I left SCARS on that sucker.
