Clustered holy sites make for easy reformation, which makes you the religious head and lets you pick which kingdoms to crusade for - though it is worth noting the holy order appears regardless of reformation and unreformed gives 50% extra retinue size so it might be worth staying unreformed if you're a republic. Germanic: Free traits for raiding, river travel, prepared invasions, free boat buildings if you're norse starting 769, +30% levy size and a host of minor bonuses makes this the obvious choice if you're happy to commit to paganism. Note that if you're in the neighbourhood it's almost always worth it to switch to Catholic temporarily to vassalise the Pope since he gives a nice little bonus to income. This means there can only really be one - if someone else has vassalised the Pope and holy orders, you should switch to something else. They're just worse cities, get a barony instead.Ĭatholic: Underwhelming in most respects since it gives no bonuses and makes it difficult to expand if you're surrounded by other catholics, but fantastic once the crusades start since you get land for free and five holy orders compared to every other religion's one, if you vassalise them you have a massive, ever replenishing army for a very low cost. A note on temples: Just because you can hold them, doesn't mean you should. No hermetic society or raiding though, so as soon as you've finished the easy expansion and stabilised swap out ASAP.īön: Functionally useless later in the game, it can be worth sticking with for a while if you're monastic feudal and want to hold onto your monasteries for a while as you subjugate other pagans or you want to chew your way through India as a pagan, since Dharmic characters like you more than they would a random pagan. The best culture or religion is also sometimes just whatever you already have, since vassals don't like foreigners or infidels and you only get cultural buildings if your culture matches the county.īuddhist: +4 learning, +1 health and heir designation on top of the ability to get rid of bad traits means this is the best of the Dharmic religions if you're trying to subjugate other Indian rulers to amass territory quickly, plus the minor holy war CB is a great way to constantly expand since once you revoke the county there's no occupation penalty. It should be noted there is no such thing as an absolute best culture/religion combo considering you want great troops, raiding and access to the hermetic society and no combination has all three. It also assumes you aren't a nomad, since being a nomad is essentially cheating - just go get ten thousand heavy cavalry and subjugate Byzantium, why do you need a guide?

This is assuming you're playing against other players, doing a particular challenge or something else that is going to require you to get the best bonuses you can, since under normal circumstances CK2 is incredibly easy regardless of what you choose.

Crusader kings 2 best religion