Town capture details

I am finally in the testing stage for this so am getting an idea for the mechanics of it. Have sent priests to a town who visited, sustained damage and returned home. I understand that there are many requirements for a conversion to be successful but it is difficult to tell what requirements have been satisfied or not when sending priests or in the battle report.

For example, when settling a new town, the interface physically does not allow you to send settlers to settle a new town unless you have met the required number of settler units to do so. Could this be incorporated for priests?

Eg - You select a town to attack and select conversion, the interface then advises of the number of priests needed. Or if this cannot be calculated, then the battle report says something like "Unable to convert town due to.....number of priests/culture difference/too much population...?"

If I have a town that is abandoned and is at 0 10, can I convert that town with Priests?

If I have a town that is abandoned and is at 0 10, can I convert that town with Priests?

0-10, is that the destroyed dwelling of a collectivism player?

"Main town cannot be captured" is this description for collectivism players' main towns not enough?

I've been trying to convert a small town for a couple of days. What I've noticed is that the loyalty points drop after conversion attempt (per each priest attacking) but then go up again. So to keep them going down I had to use a large number of priest and attack often. But from yesterday afternoon this behaviour changed - in 2 consecutive attacks (one send just after the priests returned home) the loyalty points jumped up to the previous value. What could have caused that? I have tried destroying some buildings after that, but reduced more population than culture so it got even worse... Here is the whole (almost) story:

The town started around pop 31 (?) cult 64 (I'm not sure here). It is a second town of a collectivism player, but its an abandoned kingdom so it doesn't get improved in any way. At the very first conversion attack (not posted here) the loyalty started from above 19900

Step 1, conversion attempt, 2 days ago at 21:07

Step 2 - conversion attempt, yesterday at 01:10, each priest drops loyalty by 20 percent points, in between attacks (4 hours) the loyalty increased by 437 points

Step 3, yesterday 12:01, the loyalty jumped back to the 19641 in those 11 hours between attacks (that is, by 620 points)

Step 4, yesterday 13:40, a consecutive attack, the loyalty grew by 444 points in 1h40min (that's much compared to 620 points in 11h)

Step 5, yesterday 21:40, the loyalty grew by 790 points in 8h (much slower rate than the previous one, but faster than the one even before)

Step 6, yesterday at 23:07 - again a consecutive attack. but here the loyalty jumped back by 760 points in just 1h30min! And no, these are not the same report, they are just identical.

Step 7: attack at 00:12 (brought the town to 29 pop 59 cult)

Step 8: conversion attempt (that supposedly crashed the server) at 1:27, the loyalty is much higher than before, it grew by 1517 points

As you can see, the loyalty points behave without much logic - the priests attacks always reduce them by a fixed number per unit but then growth happens at variuos rates that are hard to explain.
Converting would be a very long process anyway, but if loyalty can jump back to what it was before attack in just 1.5h, then it becomes impossible without a whole legion of priests (or maybe inquisitors are absolutely necessary and if you don't have them you can't convert?)

Anyway, I have reduced the town now to 25 pop 55 cult (a bit more favorable pop/cult ratio) and I will see what happens. Hope the server will endure it ;)

Ubique we know conversion works as it has been done. Town cannot have any significant buildings in it. Like chief hut. Also must have higher population then culture. It can be done with priests only. Yes you are trying to convert one that is futile.

Hi. When i converted my inactive neibour Moira (or Maira), I was experimenting based on the priest description. Haven't found this thread at the time, I didn't right down any actual statistics. Using my memory: 1. She was about 100 person / 200 culture (based on duelling size as i remember it) I am pretty sure she was collectivist. 2. I had 4 cities at the time and  hight culture (at least 3500) 3. I started with 5 priests ( first attempt). Moira's loyalty was around 800. 4. I continued to raise the priest number by 5. I was sending  till they were 30 of then. Then the convertion happened. 6. I had no idea what buildings Moira had at the time. Probably someone else had taken care of her chieftain hut before me. 7. I am sure that the town i capture was her duelling ( she had no other cities). I haven't kept any of the Reports of the Prosses.

I think that major part in the prosses plays the ratio between your duelling pop/cult and the target's.

I hope I added a little in this thread. Sorry for my poor English.

Thanks for the explanation - that was definitely needed, hard to guess all of that from the reports.

I got those priests to open 2 chests and was reluctant to dismiss them as they cost so much resources and training time... I hoped I could still put them to some use. Guess they will stay for chest opening only.

Btw, is it possible to convert a town that does not touch on your borders?

 1. She was about 100 person / 200 culture (based on duelling size as i remember it) I am pretty sure she was collectivist. 2. I had 4 cities at the time and  hight culture (at least 3500)

That is very similar to what I have, only my neighbour loyalty was 20k :D

 1. She was about 100 person / 200 culture (based on duelling size as i remember it) I am pretty sure she was collectivist. 2. I had 4 cities at the time and  hight culture (at least 3500)

That is very similar to what I have, only my neighbour loyalty was 20k :D

In my second attempt i try to convert a city with 30/15 pop/cul with over than 70 priest (chest victim!) and gave me loyalty 20000 aprox, which was not dropping  after the repeated attempts. So i don't really know what is happening there.

points_required = target_town_loyalty + extra_cells*CELL_PENALTY * (average_attacker_loyalty / average_defender_loyalty) * (1 + TOWN_MULTIPLIER*(attacker_town_count - defender_town_count))

Where:
TOWN_MULTIPLIER = 0.2  # 20% per town difference
UNIT_POWER = 20
CELL_PENALTY = UNIT_POWER*2

Everything else is clear, but what is extra_cells? total cells of defender's town, or whole country cells?

What I would like to know for town conversion is mainly how many Priests do I need to convert a town. And it is not clear for me where does the number of priests fit in this formula, if it can be used for this purpose. Another question about the formula is what will be the value of TOWN MULTIPLIER if the Attacker has only 2 towns? And is UNIT_POWER a constant in the formula?

Thanks! And what about town multiplier? I suppose if the attacker has only 2 towns it should be equal to 1.

And in this case Cell_Penalty is a constant too - equals 40?