Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll go into details about mechanics for some religions, that will become available with the next expansion.


Protestanstism
Each protestant church will have their own name in the interface, like Church of England and so on. You can then customise the benefits of your church, and also change it over time whenever you need. To change the aspect of your church, you have to spend Church Power.

Church Power is accumulated each month, depending on your current religious unity, and your monarchs abilities.

Adding an aspect to your church costs 100 church power, but you can remove an aspect at any time, but that will lower your stability by 1.

A Church can have up to 3 different aspects, and there are 12 different ones to pick from. Some of these include.

• Holy Sacraments: +2.5% Discipline
• Individual Creeds: -5% Idea Costs
• Adult Baptism: +1% Missionary Strength.

Buddhism
The Buddhist Faith gained the concept of Karma. Karma needs to be balanced, because if it goes too positive or negative, you end up with penalties. If you go too positive you end up with penalties to your diplomatic abilities, and if you go too negative, you end up with penalties to your military abilities.

However, If you keep a balanced karma, you gain bonuses to both diplomatic and military abilities.

Some examples on how you gain Karma include: Starting wars decrease Karma, while honoring defensive alliances increase Karma.

While adding the Karma mechanic and its related events it also became clear that the game setup could benefit from splitting the existing religion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada. These three religions will all use the same Karma mechanic but don't all share the same events related to it and can in some cases have different event options in the events they do share. Events related to Lamas are for instance reserved for the Vajrayana faith while only Theravada countries can turn to Ceylon for spiritual inspiration. The three religions also differ in what bonuses they provide.

Next week we will talk about about subjects and how to interact with them...

 

[Dorevai]

Right now that does exist to a degree(tolerated is -5 only) though I can't recall the details I think it requires humanist in both countries.

I think you're just noticing the hardcoded orthodox faith opinion. They get a smaller heretic opinion penalty than catholic/protestant/reformed do amongst themselves. I'd rather the whole thing be dynamic and scalable.

 

[chrnno]

I think you're just noticing the hardcoded orthodox faith opinion. They get a smaller heretic opinion penalty than catholic/protestant/reformed do amongst themselves. I'd rather the whole thing be dynamic and scalable.

Nope, went to check to confirm and playing as Hindu, both the Ottomans(Sunni) and Oirat(Buddhist) have only -5 penalty with me and each other.

And yeah I agree, I am just saying it has to take account to both sides view's of the other. Tolerance is how you view another country and so while it can affect their view of you their tolerance of you should have, at the very least, equal impact.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

In international affairs the solidarity against the pope and the catholics monarchies is more than a reason to be friend even with the difference of protestantism.

 

[Katsue]

As I said previously, in Buddhism you do not accumulate karma - rather, your karma is a balance of the moral weight of your actions, which can affect the conditions of your rebirth, and according to much popular belief, your fortune in your current life. Having good karma sets you up for a better reincarnation, and is the result of not being a dick, generally speaking. Crap karma arises from harming other beings, primarily.

I know I remember reading in an entirely non-scholarly work that the popular Japanese opinion of karma is that karma is bad full stop, whether you get that karma from good intentions or bad intentions.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

Apologies if this already has an answer somewhere, but is there any news of a release date for this update?

 

[oblio-]

Apologies if this already has an answer somewhere, but is there any news of a release date for this update?

They haven't said anything as far as I noticed, but we can guesstimate based on dev diaries. This is the sixth one and they usually have 8-9-10 for large DLCs. So it's probably about 1 month away.

 

[Garak]

I do think that forming the USA should abolish state church, thus giving an entirely other "religion" that is highly tolerant of all other religions (or makes all religions "accepted"), and events should move provinces not christian within the US to become random christian with short MTTH, but this is only for the US which is hardly something many would play in this game so it's not a huge deal but would be nice to see

Except the US wasn't really that tolerant. It was compared to some European countries at the time, yes. But it was still tolerant within a very narrow window. I would say its tolerance would extend to both Protestant and Reformed religions, but that's it. The US has a long history of being quite anti-Catholic, let alone attitudes towards other religions. How you model this in a game where the US could spawn as any religion, though, is hard to figure out.

I wonder where is Taoism. There may be rather cool mechanics to introduce Wu-wei, Emperors that follow Tao, naturalness, events for country leader in seeking for immortality, etc.
And, of course, correct symbol that should be withdrawn from current Confucianism in EU4.
By the way, no info on Confucianism and Shinto…

Not to mention Confucianism using a common Taoist symbol, which I've always found odd. I just assume the in-game Confucianism is meant to represent aspects of both.

 

[Garak]

It's about your people's perception, not about a literal interaction between the mundane world and the supernatural. Like when the Aztecs get to too much Doom, the universe doesn't literally end, but the people think it's going to, so they panic and national disaster ensues.

For the karma meter, think of it as things like your soldiers losing confidence in you, and so not fighting as well. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy; it doesn't have to be literally true for the people to believe in it and be affected accordingly.

Exactly. Seems perfectly sensible to me. Not sure why some people assume it must be supernatural.

 

[Demetrios]

Except the US wasn't really that tolerant. It was compared to some European countries at the time, yes. But it was still tolerant within a very narrow window. I would say its tolerance would extend to both Protestant and Reformed religions, but that's it. The US has a long history of being quite anti-Catholic, let alone attitudes towards other religions. How you model this in a game where the US could spawn as any religion, though, is hard to figure out.

In regards to Catholicism, socially, yes, institutionally, much less so. For example, Charles Carroll both signed the Declaration of Independence and served in the 1st Congress.

 

[TheDungen]

This wouldn't work at all.

You have 12 possible focuses and you pick 3 for yourself, this means there are 220 possible combinations of focuses. Even if you aim at having only 2 of 3 bonuses the same as another protestant nation, there are 66 possible variations of that. Meanwhile there are only a few Protestant nations after Christianity splitting on Catholic-Reformed-Protestant (I don't think there are often more than 20 Protestant nations in the entire world). It would end with you having not only relation penalty with Catholic and Reformed but also with majority of Protestant nations due to how low the probability of similar focuses is.

Essentially this would screw Protestantism.

First of you could group them, for an example having military, dip and adm bonuses count the same, so any nation pushing adm bonuses would get along better with each other than they would with one who used it to justify war.

He implied it when he said they should "get along better".

And I meant not getting the full same religion bonus for protestant state churches that are too diffrent from their own.

Like this if we have the same number of adm dip and mil bonuses we get the full same religion bonus, if we for each that is diffrent you lose 1/3 of it. Yes a nation that goes full mil wouldn't have any with a nation that went full adm. But honestly that's a good think it keeps people from throwing everything in one cathegory, same as the increased cost in the nation designer.

I think you're just noticing the hardcoded orthodox faith opinion. They get a smaller heretic opinion penalty than catholic/protestant/reformed do amongst themselves. I'd rather the whole thing be dynamic and scalable.

Well at least I wish reforrmed and protestant liked each other better. Maybee a thing where the old churches get tolerated heretics and the new ones get telerated heretics, while the old ones get the big penatly with the new ones and vice versa.

 

[blackchoas]

Except the US wasn't really that tolerant. It was compared to some European countries at the time, yes. But it was still tolerant within a very narrow window. I would say its tolerance would extend to both Protestant and Reformed religions, but that's it. The US has a long history of being quite anti-Catholic, let alone attitudes towards other religions. How you model this in a game where the US could spawn as any religion, though, is hard to figure out.

Not to mention Confucianism using a common Taoist symbol, which I've always found odd. I just assume the in-game Confucianism is meant to represent aspects of both.

The US government was never anti any religion, although they were always christian so naturally they were not terribly pro non christian, as for Catholics, most of the nation was anti Catholic this likely comes from distrust of Catholics from the Reformation as many of the churches popular in America were there partly to escape the Catholics or like the Anglican Church very much remembered the English Civil War. However there were still majority catholic places in America where being Catholic was not just fine but common or expected, mainly Maryland which was started as a colony for English Catholics to flee England more or less, it was also semi feudal and was ruled by a Baron until the last one died in 1771 but thats another story. There is later anti Catholic sentiment in the nation but that is often not really anti Catholic but more anti Irish or anti Mexican or whatever foreigners we disliked that happened to be catholic

As for Confucianism using a Taoist symbol I assume this is because people in China don't really follow a single religion but more often than not a blend of Confucianist, Taoist and Buddhist beliefs and to be fair those first two could be called philosophies on how to live ones life or structure society rather than religions anyway

 

[Thure]

However there were still majority catholic places in America where being Catholic was not just fine but common or expected, mainly Maryland which was started as a colony for English Catholics to flee England more or less, it was also semi feudal and was ruled by a Baron until the last one died in 1771 but thats another story. There is later anti Catholic sentiment in the nation but that is often not really anti Catholic but more anti Irish or anti Mexican or whatever foreigners we disliked that happened to be catholic

Maryland wasn't allways that nice after the Protestants take the power.

I just read aboput Carroll:

"Like his father, Carroll was a Roman Catholic, and as a consequence was barred by Maryland statute from entering politics, practicing law and voting."
"Carroll was not initially interested in politics and in any event Catholics had been barred from holding office in Maryland since the 1704 Act seeking "to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province"."
"he became a prominent spokesman against the governor's proclamation increasing legal fees to state officers and Protestant clergy."

 

[SignedName]

Anabaptists, Baptists and Unitarians are all Reformed Protestant and not mainstream Protestant, hence the reason they are not state religions. Also, Methodism began as a branch of the state church of England, and only became independent after the founder died.

No, they are not Calvinists. Reformed refers to a specific branch of Protestantism that follow Calvinist theology, one of the main doctrines being that of Predestination. There is no such thing as "mainstream Protestant" as Protestantism is just a label used to describe churches born from the Reformation movement, in opposition to Catholicism. Lutheranism is not "mainstream Protestant", it's just the largest branch, and that which is not Lutheran isn't automatically Reformed (Calvinist). To say that Protestant Christianity was split between Lutheran state churches and Reformed (Calvinist) churches is a massive oversimplification- Lutheranism and Calvinism were just the two most popular and influential branches of Protestantism, of which there are dozens if not hundreds.

 

[Thure]

No, they are not Calvinists. Reformed refers to a specific branch of Protestantism that follow Calvinist theology, one of the main doctrines being that of Predestination. There is no such thing as "mainstream Protestant" as Protestantism is just a label used to describe churches born from the Reformation movement, in opposition to Catholicism. Lutheranism is not "mainstream Protestant", it's just the largest branch, and that which is not Lutheran isn't automatically Reformed (Calvinist). To say that Protestant Christianity was split between Lutheran state churches and Reformed (Calvinist) churches is a massive oversimplification- Lutheranism and Calvinism were just the two most popular and influential branches of Protestantism, of which there are dozens if not hundreds.

There is the trm mainline Protestant for America...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant

 

[SignedName]

There is the trm mainline Protestant for America...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainline_Protestant

This has nothing to do with a supposed Protestant mainstream. It's only a descriptor of the historically most powerful branches of Protestantism in America (which I should note includes both Lutheran and Calvinist denominations). The term has only come into use as a response to the rise of Christian fundamentalism, which post-dates the EUIV timeframe.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

Protestantism looks fantastic. In the past I had thought about suggesting Anglicanism as a religion to represent churches like the one that England had, but this is fine enough, since it allows for the different sects to have different effects. How will colonies be handled? I think it would be great if the colonies had their own Churches, so that you could see, for example, the rise of Puritanism in America.

Buddhism, however, disappoints me a bit. What's good about the other religion's unique mechanics is that they reflect the effects of a particular religion on a government. Catholicism simulates how nations with influence over the Papacy could wield that to their advantage. Protestantism simulates how all these different churches were unique while still being friendly when it came to diplomacy. Eastern Orthodox simulates the struggle between church and state. With Islam, you can either embrace the warlike character of the religion and be strong, or be more of a reformist and remain advanced.

Now, I've no deep knowledge of Buddhism or the history of Buddhist nations, but is the Karma slider even based on Buddhist history? I was kind of hoping for something that more reflected the way Buddhist states functioned.

Plus, there are so many sliders and faction systems now that it's begun to feel a bit trite.

I think one little way Karma could be changed to make it more unique is to have a reincarnation system in which your modifiers are assigned on the coronation of your new ruler; that is, when you make a decision that will impact your Karma, you are not immediately rewarded or punished for it, but are making a decision that will affect you at a latter (unknown, given the nature of the RNG) date.

As for differences between the three great denominations, I don't know ANYTHING about their theology, but I thought it would make sense if Theravada emphasized war, Mahayan emphasized state stability (and replaced both Confucianism and Shintoism), and Vajrayana emphasized... I don't know, but something tied into the clergy.

 

[toroltao]

Buddhism, however, disappoints me a bit. What's good about the other religion's unique mechanics is that they reflect the effects of a particular religion on a government. Catholicism simulates how nations with influence over the Papacy could wield that to their advantage. Protestantism simulates how all these different churches were unique while still being friendly when it came to diplomacy. Eastern Orthodox simulates the struggle between church and state. With Islam, you can either embrace the warlike character of the religion and be strong, or be more of a reformist and remain advanced.

Now, I've no deep knowledge of Buddhism or the history of Buddhist nations, but is the Karma slider even based on Buddhist history? I was kind of hoping for something that more reflected the way Buddhist states functioned.

Buddhism never really had the state sponsored nature of monotheistic religions so the behavior of the patron never tied into the actual dogmas they preached. Mongol uluses fought with each other all the time, slaughtered, raped, pillaged, etc. but they were still ostensibly Buddhists. To say that Buddhists were less warlike than Muslims or Christians is wrong. The Karma mechanic is fine imo. It may be based off a stereotype, but that's what EU4 has always been like. Religion always seemed more like a facade for natural human aggression than the reason itself, it's just easier to see that with Buddhism because the behaviors of the ruler so directly contradict the core dogmas that it's impossible to ignore. As long as the mechanics in the game are interesting, which I think they are, then it's fine to me.

 

[Searry]

Catholics will really need some sort of boost. They're becoming more and more useless.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

Catholics seem to be useless because you're either big and can occasionally get a bonus or you're small and don't get anything. I'm inclined to say that Catholics should have large bonuses to stability and maybe be able to call on the Pope more frequently. Being Papal Controller should also have "offensive" moves associated with it, wherein you can ask the Pope to harm a Rival in various ways.

 

[Guthuk Gaming]

Catholics will really need some sort of boost. They're becoming more and more useless.

There is still no reason for SMALL countries to be catholic, which is odd considering the HRE has many catholic theocracies.

LARGE countries can get 4+ cardinals, improve relations with the pope, and get large amounts of papal influence to stack stability, mercantilism, or in a pinch money and manpower.

Additionally I'd like to see the Curia stop being RNG. The RNG of the Curia is frustrating beyond belief.