With the Financial support of the Roman Government and the more structured pagan church, Christianity began declining in the Empire without the need for violent persecution, forcing Christians to migrate to the eastern world where it was more accepting turning it to a more eastern religion. Julian would finally separate the Collegium Pontificum from the secular government of Rome allowing it to form its own hierarchal structure not only to emulate the success of the Christian church but to also prevent a Christian emperor from subverting the old gods ever again. He would center the faith around the sun god Sol who was the sole (get it a Pun!) most important deity however this did not mean the rejection of the older pagan faiths of the Roman world but simply meant their acknowledgement as sub gods to Sol and eventually becoming Sol’s children in the Cosmology of his faith. Simply reforming Paganism was not enough so he used the growing cult which had challenged Christianity previously (Mithraism/Sol Invictus), the faith which his Uncle Constantine had once followed, along with his own Neo-Platonic Philosophy to make a faith to challenge the growing Christian Church. With this victory, Julian II returns to Rome with the popularity of both the army and the Roman people allowing him to pursue his ambitions to rebuild the pagan glory of Rome. Julian II defies death and achieves his goal to conquer Persia, taking Mesopotamia and establishing a Pro-Roman King on the Persian throne. In our Timeline Julian II died in his campaign against Persia, however here that is not so.

Due to a lack of time and experience with modding, this particular version is somewhat basic however I would love to one day make it a full conversion mod with heresies, mission trees, and other features while I would not be opposed if anyone else would want to work on this scenario as well, either with me or solo. I also modified the Hellenic Pagan Faith to become the new Sol Invictus faith which utilizes the deity system from Norse paganism and Hinduism. This mod uses a CK2 conversion as the base for the mod, while I added national ideas for some nations and utilized the lost cultures that are not seen in the base EU4.

I tried to make this alternate history scenario as realistic as possible but I also added things which I wanted to see or were necessary for the scenario to play out, so this scenario may not be the most realistic one to answer the former question. This mod is set in 2197 AUC (aka 1444 AD) which attempts to answer the question of “What if Julian II of Rome reformed paganism and challenged the spread of Christianity in the late 4th century”.

Empire of the sun ck2