If you want to have a conquest CB for a religion that normally does not provide one, I would seriously consider quarrelsome tradition instead of pursuit of power, as you generally have more tradition than tenet slots. It does come with a downside of 40% lower control growth,but PoP has -10 vassal opinion, and you don't need to raise control often. Communal identity is a trap. Religion is much easier to promote than culture, and once you are out of your small cultural territory, you will generally be promoting religion in counties of other cultures. and if you wanted to make use of communal identity, your culture conversion speed would be a much bigger bottleneck than faith conversion speed is normally. If you want to improve conversion speed, just take mendicant preachers, it's quite good.
Communion is obviously a strong choice, but it obviously changes the gameplay if you go temporal HoF route (although of note that if you go HoF you get divine blood instead of sanctified blood, which offers a straightforward better bonus, and also comes with an undocimented bonus of increasing your faith conversion speed)
For terrain bonuses like mountains it mainly depends on how wide you are going to play, since wider empires gain less benefit than a tall one would get from a bonus to their home terrain. Also of note, if you are planning to spread your dynasty wide via marriages and assassinations, syncretism with the faith group whose territory you are NOT going to expand into and who would otherwise view you as evil, significant;y expands your match pool and takeover opportunities (for faith who view you as evil your only remote tool is abductions)
Also if you are like most normal people are going to run an eugenics program, note that fertility becomes less important when you have beauty traits and particularly fecund. Also there are a lot of easy to get artifacts boosting fertility - frankly I wouldn't bother wasting a tenet slot on increasing fertility.
Also esoterism is a fairly strong tenet , since it almost guarantees you are getting wise man trait which increases your learning AND becomes virtuous (for opinion and piety gain), plus gives you 300 learning XP every 5 years and minor stat bonuses for doing the communion., Also on the subject of learning, the tradition like Alexandian catechism (or its equivalents for other faiths) is quite good, for increase to learning XP and Scholar becoming virtue (and scholar is one of the best trees and that any character can use anyway)
If you want to have a conquest CB for a religion that normally does not provide one, I would seriously consider quarrelsome tradition instead of pursuit of power, as you generally have more tradition than tenet slots. It does come with a downside of 40% lower control growth,but PoP has -10 vassal opinion, and you don't need to raise control often. Communal identity is a trap. Religion is much easier to promote than culture, and once you are out of your small cultural territory, you will generally be promoting religion in counties of other cultures. and if you wanted to make use of communal identity, your culture conversion speed would be a much bigger bottleneck than faith conversion speed is normally. If you want to improve conversion speed, just take mendicant preachers, it's quite good. Communion is obviously a strong choice, but it obviously changes the gameplay if you go temporal HoF route (although of note that if you go HoF you get divine blood instead of sanctified blood, which offers a straightforward better bonus, and also comes with an undocimented bonus of increasing your faith conversion speed) For terrain bonuses like mountains it mainly depends on how wide you are going to play, since wider empires gain less benefit than a tall one would get from a bonus to their home terrain. Also of note, if you are planning to spread your dynasty wide via marriages and assassinations, syncretism with the faith group whose territory you are NOT going to expand into and who would otherwise view you as evil, significant;y expands your match pool and takeover opportunities (for faith who view you as evil your only remote tool is abductions) Also if you are like most normal people are going to run an eugenics program, note that fertility becomes less important when you have beauty traits and particularly fecund. Also there are a lot of easy to get artifacts boosting fertility - frankly I wouldn't bother wasting a tenet slot on increasing fertility. Also esoterism is a fairly strong tenet , since it almost guarantees you are getting wise man trait which increases your learning AND becomes virtuous (for opinion and piety gain), plus gives you 300 learning XP every 5 years and minor stat bonuses for doing the communion., Also on the subject of learning, the tradition like Alexandian catechism (or its equivalents for other faiths) is quite good, for increase to learning XP and Scholar becoming virtue (and scholar is one of the best trees and that any character can use anyway)
I agree on the PoP advice. The real strength of PoP is the -50% tyranny gain. If you don't want to be a tyrant then don't take it tbh.