Convert a county with the realm priest
The long-standing way to change a county's faith is the council. Your realm priest converts a county from that job. Assign the task, leave the priest in place, and check the county faith later. The council view shows which task is running.
Conversion is slow work you do beside everything else. You can marry, fight, and scheme while the priest works. If you move the priest to another job, you have taken them off conversion. Put them back when you still want the county changed.
A county that already shares your faith does not need the task. Point the priest at a county that differs. If your realm is religiously uniform, the priest can sit on another council job you understand.
The 1 Sep 2020 launch note says you can start your own religion.
Found a faith when you mean to
Founding a faith spends piety. The button shows the cost. Read it in your game before you confirm.
A new faith is a large choice. Vassals, counties, and holy wars all feel it. Convert a few counties with the priest first if you only want your own land to match you. Found a faith when you want different doctrines, and when the piety cost on the button is a price you can pay.
Holy orders and crusades are in the 2020 feature line. They show up through the faith you actually have. Open the faith screen and use the tools it offers.
A founded faith has no line in the CK3 to EU5 religion mapping. CK3 to EU5 converter explains why a vanilla faith is the safer handover.
The launch feature line includes holy orders and crusades along with the chance to start your own religion.
Holy wars follow the faith screen
Hostile faiths can open a holy-war casus belli when the faith screen allows it. Open that screen and read the relationship to the neighbor's faith. If the screen calls the faith hostile and offers the war, the declare-war screen is where you take it.
If the faith screen does not allow the war, you do not have that cause. Use a claim or a de jure cause if you have one, or stay at peace. Guessing from the religion's real-world name is a good way to declare a war the game will refuse.
The warfare page covers armies, supply, and the peace screen once the war exists. A holy war is still a war. It needs troops, and it ends on enforce demands, white peace, or surrender.
By God Alone can name a crusade phase on the Christian situation. The declare-war screen is where that war starts. Take it when the screen lists the cause.
Peasant revolts are on the 1 Sep 2020 feature list.
By God Alone, 30 Sep 2026
By God Alone released on 30 Sep 2026. Steam calls it a core expansion about faith and heresies. County conversion stays on the realm priest. A new faith still spends the piety printed on the button. A holy war still starts when the faith screen and the declare-war screen both allow it.
The expansion is the Christian church on top of that loop. You can play a landed archbishop, or the Pope. The Papacy has its own resources of power and wealth. The screen you open lists them.
In the 867 start the Christian church can reach a crossroads. That crossroads can separate Western Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy. The store bookmark Fathers of the Faithful is dated 1 January 867. Its panel asks whether you guide Christianity toward unity or lead the Great Schism. The rulers on that map include Prince-Archbishop Rimbert of Hamburg, Prince-Archbishop Adalwin of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Lupus of Aquileia, King Rostislav of Great Moravia, and King Boris of Bulgaria.
By God Alone is half of the Chapter V pass. Chapter V compares buying it alone with buying the pass.
For the release timeline, the free and paid split, playing the Pope, and the Great Schism step by step, read By God Alone.
Steam dates By God Alone to 30 Sep 2026. The store page is a core expansion about faith and heresies, with playable theocracies and a Great Schism that can separate Western Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy in the 867 start.
Tenets, doctrines, and a council
Open the faith screen before you found a faith. It lists the tenets and the doctrines of the faith you hold. The create window is where you pick new ones. The piety cost is on that button.
By God Alone revises tenets around the character's relationship to the faith, and around what that faith treats as acceptable behavior. A personal preference can be pressed through church politics until the church adopts it. A rite that moves too far from the faith can be declared heretical. The store page says that split takes power and wealth from the church. You then conform, or you rebel.
Spiritual fulfillment ties traits, actions, and tenets into the character's religious life. Sin and virtue are part of the relationship with God and of the afterlife, as well as stress. The character screen is where that life is printed.
An ecumenical council is where a tenet is debated. One store council, dated 16 July 869, is titled Our Stance on Ora et Labora. The debate topic moves Ora et Labora from Permitted to Core, and the host, Patriarch Lupo, proposes it as a replacement for Successio Apostolica. Archbishop Ado sets the stage. Your intent on that screen is Spiritual Contemplation. The two votes are for change, or against it. Innovators and Conservatives are listed beside the debate. Your own council prints its own topic.
The By God Alone store page revises tenets around a character's relationship to the faith and around acceptable behavior. Heretical rites can be declared heretical. Spiritual fulfillment ties traits, actions, and tenets to the character's religious life, including the afterlife.
The Christian situation
By God Alone adds a persistent situation for Christian realms. You take part in ecumenical councils, and you can push the church toward a chapter. The situation panel names the chapter you are in and the effects of that chapter.
On the 1 January 867 store view the current chapter is Fragile Unity, marked Instability. The faith map on that view shows the Roman Rite and the Greek Rite. Two later chapters are offered: Saeculum Obscurum and Investiture Controversy, both marked Crisis. Open View Catalysts on the chapter you are watching.
The decision Guide the Christian Church pushes the situation. The four pushes on the store window are Fragile Unity, Conversion Phase, Reform Phase, and Crusade Phase. The window prints the piety. The warning on that window says the decision will be unavailable for 10 years. Read the cost before you confirm.
During Fragile Unity, the Main Power (Secular) panel on the clerical-regions image lists three effects: secular rulers are more easily swayed to another rite, they can use the Humiliation War casus belli for free, the head of faith is more likely to accept a claim request, and the participant can take the Levy the Tithes decision. That panel is one chapter. The next chapter prints its own effects.
Archdioceses are clerical titles. Their authority covers a region, and that region is separate from the secular ruler's land. The same store image sets the map to Clerical Regions and labels archdioceses across Europe, including Tours, Bourges, Mainz, Cologne, and Salzburg, plus the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
The Pope appoints cardinals across Christendom. A secular ruler can influence the College of Cardinals and the direction of the church. Holy sites can change as a faith grows. A cathedral can become the focus of the faith and can strive to become a holy site. The situation panel and the decision list are where those tools appear.
The By God Alone store page adds a Christian situation, ecumenical councils, archdioceses independent of secular lands, a College of Cardinals the Pope appoints, dynamic holy sites, and cathedrals that can strive to become holy sites.
Military orders and monastic orders
Holy orders and crusades are in the 1 Sep 2020 launch line. By God Alone's store page treats monastic holy orders as centers of research and theological power. Hosting a headquarters is where those bonuses sit. The store page names spiritual fulfillment from their prayers, which protect a secular ruler from damnation.
The decision list on the Guide the Christian Church image includes Found Military Order and Found Monastic Order, next to Establish a Head of Faith. Open the decision. It prints the requirements and the cost. The same list includes Select a Patron Saint, Reform Monastic Endowment, and Restore Temporal Rule.
The holy-orders map filter is how you see the houses. On the 21 December 872 store image the filter is on, over the Byzantine Empire. The labels include the Studites, the Athonite Hermits, the Bithynians, the Latros Hesychasts. More houses are marked on the same filter, including houses outside the empire.
The 1 Sep 2020 feature line includes holy orders and crusades, and the chance to start your own religion.
The By God Alone store page describes monastic holy orders as centers of research and theological power. Hosting a headquarters offers bonuses, including spiritual fulfillment from their prayers.
Puppets and excommunication
By God Alone lets a secular ruler puppet a cleric, and lets a clerical ruler puppet a secular ruler. The intrigue menu has a Puppets tab. That tab is the list.
Three rows are on the 24 July 872 store image. A Clerical Ruler Puppet is a prince-bishop outside your realm. The row covers archbishops, cardinals, or the head of faith, and it says they can excommunicate. A Realm Priest Puppet is your voice inside the church. The row says that voice can vote at ecumenical councils and found rites. A Secular Ruler Puppet is a ruler held by love, fear, or obligation.
The character menu on the same image includes Request Excommunication under Hostile. Intrigue and hooks is the scheme menu beside that tab. Read the puppet row before you spend the interaction. The row prints what that puppet can do.
The By God Alone store page says secular rulers can puppet clerical characters, and clerical rulers can puppet secular rulers, so each side can act in the other's sphere.
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