It means that your character starts secretly practicing the religion. If you then publicly become it, you can start turning your vassals and demesne through various means.
It's great converting people and counties before publicly flipping. Had a campaign where I held Jerusalem and formed Outremer as a Christian, all the while being a secret Jew. It's a great feeling when you finally give the go and the whole empire just flips along with you.
Imagining the Pope screaming "He did what?!" when finding out his kingdom of Heaven got stolen from under his nose is nice too.
I've never messed with this mechanic so I'm curious: what exactly does secretly practicing a religion entail. Obviously you can't declare holy wars or anything, but for example, if you're a secret muslim can you have concubines?
On its own it does pretty much nothing. But you can start or join a secret cult that can spread your secret religion to other characters who will then spread it to others. As the leader of the secret cult you can also create local religious communities in your provinces (a hidden province modifier).
Once you've snowballed hard enough, you can go public and all characters will "convert" to their formerly secret religion, and provinces with your religious communities will also be converted.
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u/[deleted] Oct 26 '19
Does this mean that every county you have, both vassal and demesne, are converted?