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Tinto Talks #67 - 11th of June 2025 - Shinto and Shogunate

Hello, and welcome to another issue of happy Wednesdays Tinto Talks. Today, we will be taking a look at the mechanics for Shintō and the Shogunate.

Let’s start with the religion. In EUV, it is part of the Buddhist religious group:
Shinto Tooltip.png

Shinto Panel.png

As you can see, Shintō has two currencies: Honor and Purity. Besides being modified through events and the actions we’ll talk about in a bit, one thing to note is that fighting in battles will decrease your purity (due to the fact that blood is considered impure). Having high purity will allow the accumulation of honor, which will be able to be used for other actions, while having low purity would make people perceive you as an Oni on Earth, which may also have its benefits.
Purity.png

The different actions in the panel are ways of regaining purity, from the more simple ones of spending prestige or money for a cleansing ritual or a pilgrimage respectively, to the more expensive ones of offering a work of art or even the life of the ruler.

Besides these actions, the religion also features an International Organization, where countries can interact with the different factions present there. At start, there are three factions present: the Imperial Court, the Shogunate Court, and the Religious Sects, although more factions can appear in the future related to some other religious followers…

Each faction has some actions available, at the cost of honor, although not all the factions will be available to all countries. For example, if you are at war with the current Shōgun, you will not be able to access the actions of the shogunate court, for obvious reasons.
Shinto IO.png

Expansion Action.png

Demand Extra Payment.png

Appease Temples.png

Some of the actions of the Religious Sects will allow the country to interact with the mechanics of other Buddhist religions, but you will have to wait for future Tinto Talks for an explanation on those.

Shintō also gives access to some unique advances, like for example:
Matsuri.png

Nanto Rokushu.png

Shinbutsu.png

Kagura.png

Hachiman Worship.png

Let’s now move to talk about the Shogunate, which is present in the game as an International Organization:
Shogunate Tooltip.png

Shogunate.png

There is currently a bug with the ruler’s name not appearing in the proper order, it will be fixed.

There’s two types of special statues in the Shogunate International Organization: the Sugo and the Emperor (or Emperors in this case, more on that on Friday). The Emperor is the one that is “technically” the ruler of Japan (although the one actually in charge is the shōgun), while the Shugo are provincial governors, giving them some nice bonuses.
Shugo.png

There’s an action for the shōgun to either grant or revoke the governorship of a province, while the individual clans also have the option of basically becoming a de-facto shugo if they manage to establish enough presence in a particular province.
Shogunate Laws and Actions.png

However, these actions will only be available as long as the Shogunate itself has the appropriate law, and will be disabled once it centralizes control.
Residence Law.png

Becoming the leader of the Shogunate is something that is not granted, and instead it has to be earned. The first step to take is to obtain the backing of the imperial court, with the action Become Shōgun of the Imperial Court faction in the Sintō IO:
Become Shogun.png

This will grant a modifier directly to the ruler (not the country), and a casus belli to declare war on the current leader of the shogunate. If the war is declared and won while still having the same ruler, a special peace treaty can be enacted forcing the change of leadership.

And that is all for today. Tomorrow we have the ‘Behind the Music of Europa Universalis V - Composing the Grandest Score’ video, and on Friday we will be back with a further look at flavor content for Japan (and the Japanese clans), as well as the situations of the Nanbokucho and Sengoku Jidai. See you there.

And remember, Wishlist Europa Universalis V now!
 
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So you demand manpower, but when it dies, YOU as a player will lose pops, not the nation from whom you have demanded?? I think few pops should be transferred to your locations
Problem is that those pops will immediately demote to peasants since it's not likely you'll have open soldier jobs. Thinking about it this same issue exists for the HRE where the Emperor will loose pops even if half his manpower comes from the princes. I think the devs have just accepted that this will happen whenever manpower is being transferred.
 
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Problem is that those pops will immediately demote to peasants since it's not likely you'll have open soldier jobs. Thinking about it this same issue exists for the HRE where the Emperor will loose pops even if half his manpower comes from the princes. I think the devs have just accepted that this will happen whenever manpower is being transferred.
Well, iirc if there is not enough solder pops, the other types of pops will be used. So those demoted pops will be used last, when you wipe out your entire army. Practically balancing that case
 
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There's also a big stability hit.
I don't remember, can stability still go negative like in previous EU:s?

Because if that's the case, it seems feasible that committing seppuku could "always move stability towards zero" (alternately at least not give a hit if stability is already low enough), because if times are bad then it might be swung as "leader taking responsibility"?
 
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That's a Meiji thing. The idea of separating Shinto from Buddhism didn't exist until the late 15 century. Even far after that Shinbutsu-shugo was still the mainstream thought.
'An early example of haibutsu kishaku is the Mononobe clan's anti-Buddhist policies during the time of Buddhism's early introduction to Japan in the Kofun period.[1] The Mononobe were opposed to the spread of Buddhism not on religious grounds, but rather because of nationalism and xenophobia. The Nakatomi clan, ancestors of the Fujiwara, were allies of the Mononobe in their opposition to Buddhism.'
 
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Can you gain and lose honour through events?
 
'An early example of haibutsu kishaku is the Mononobe clan's anti-Buddhist policies during the time of Buddhism's early introduction to Japan in the Kofun period.[1] The Mononobe were opposed to the spread of Buddhism not on religious grounds, but rather because of nationalism and xenophobia. The Nakatomi clan, ancestors of the Fujiwara, were allies of the Mononobe in their opposition to Buddhism.'
That does not make any sense in our context. It's one thing to resist a religion when it's recently introduced and another thing to supress it when it's widespread and localized.
 
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What exactly is the relationship between the shogun and the clans? Are the clans just normal vassals, or do they have more/less autonomy?

Also, should there be a "Shogun authority" metric? After all, there're periods when the shogun can order a daimyo to commit seppuku like Asano Naganori in 47 ronin, and then there's also the Sengoku when nobody cares about the Ashikaga. With high authority, the clans are more likely to accept your deal/do your bidding, some IO laws like Appointed Post become available, you can order seppuku, and they can't request the "Become Shogun" from the Imperial Court, etc. Low authority means chaos.

Authority is gained from your relative strength and size compared with all other clans (clan with above 80 loyalty or something will add their strength to yours, while particular disloyal clans will have extra weight), your standing with Imperial court, your honor and prestige, recent victory, as well as events. Authority will be spent on some actions (like ordering sepukku or revoking domain) or events, and will decay if you are weak/dishonor, recently defeated, have ongoing rebellion, etc.
 
No, we don't reach that level of hierarchical granularity.
1.Maybe Cabinet member you sent to owned provinces can be representing Shugodai ?
2.And have player’s Cabinet member being able to go independent or rebel against you if they are too powerful and is not loyal.
If it is implement like this, the game doesn’t have to change that much to add so much depth .
3.Maybe can also implement local governors as cabinet members
 
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Hello, and welcome to another issue of happy Wednesdays Tinto Talks. Today, we will be taking a look at the mechanics for Shintō and the Shogunate.

Let’s start with the religion. In EUV, it is part of the Buddhist religious group:

As you can see, Shintō has two currencies: Honor and Purity. Besides being modified through events and the actions we’ll talk about in a bit, one thing to note is that fighting in battles will decrease your purity (due to the fact that blood is considered impure). Having high purity will allow the accumulation of honor, which will be able to be used for other actions, while having low purity would make people perceive you as an Oni on Earth, which may also have its benefits.

The different actions in the panel are ways of regaining purity, from the more simple ones of spending prestige or money for a cleansing ritual or a pilgrimage respectively, to the more expensive ones of offering a work of art or even the life of the ruler.

Besides these actions, the religion also features an International Organization, where countries can interact with the different factions present there. At start, there are three factions present: the Imperial Court, the Shogunate Court, and the Religious Sects, although more factions can appear in the future related to some other religious followers…

Each faction has some actions available, at the cost of honor, although not all the factions will be available to all countries. For example, if you are at war with the current Shōgun, you will not be able to access the actions of the shogunate court, for obvious reasons.
Some of the actions of the Religious Sects will allow the country to interact with the mechanics of other Buddhist religions, but you will have to wait for future Tinto Talks for an explanation on those.

Shintō also gives access to some unique advances, like for example:
Let’s now move to talk about the Shogunate, which is present in the game as an International Organization:
View attachment 1315148
View attachment 1315149
There is currently a bug with the ruler’s name not appearing in the proper order, it will be fixed.

There’s two types of special statues in the Shogunate International Organization: the Sugo and the Emperor (or Emperors in this case, more on that on Friday). The Emperor is the one that is “technically” the ruler of Japan (although the one actually in charge is the shōgun), while the Shugo are provincial governors, giving them some nice bonuses.
There’s an action for the shōgun to either grant or revoke the governorship of a province, while the individual clans also have the option of basically becoming a de-facto shugo if they manage to establish enough presence in a particular province.
However, these actions will only be available as long as the Shogunate itself has the appropriate law, and will be disabled once it centralizes control.
Becoming the leader of the Shogunate is something that is not granted, and instead it has to be earned. The first step to take is to obtain the backing of the imperial court, with the action Become Shōgun of the Imperial Court faction in the Sintō IO:
This will grant a modifier directly to the ruler (not the country), and a casus belli to declare war on the current leader of the shogunate. If the war is declared and won while still having the same ruler, a special peace treaty can be enacted forcing the change of leadership.

And that is all for today. Tomorrow we have the ‘Behind the Music of Europa Universalis V - Composing the Grandest Score’ video, and on Friday we will be back with a further look at flavor content for Japan (and the Japanese clans), as well as the situations of the Nanbokucho and Sengoku Jidai. See you there.

And remember, Wishlist Europa Universalis V now!
Historical inaccuracy: The real Prince of Novgorod-Seversky in 1337 was Rurikovich Dmitry Svyatoslavich, the son of Svyatoslav Davydovich
. Information verified by Chronicle. Please fix it.
 
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When I started the TT and saw that there would honor and purity mechanics, which seemed like they could be really interesting, I was thinking Shinto was going to have some of the best religious mechanics in EU5. But as I continued to read the TT and the dev responses, to my dismay I found that this mechanic was just another currency system that isn't tied to our actions in the world very much. The devs can correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope that I am), but it seems that purity is reduced by battles and then simply gained by taking one of these four actions, two of which are just converting another currency (prestige or money) into this purity currency. Having purity allows you to accumulate the second unique currency, honor. In addition, there will be events with choices that reduce/increase the two currencies. These events will probably mostly be random ones, with a few being historical, and based on every past Paradox game I assume both of these event types will have very few triggers and thus won't have anything to do with your actions or the situation in your country. Once you get enough honor, it is then used exclusively as a currency to purchase things, such as CBs, money and manpower, and modifiers.

This could be another one of those things I'm in the minority on, but I was really hoping EU5 would have more nuance and complexity than this. Why can't purity and honor be primarily based off your actions in the game? For example, you would gain honor from acting honorably, such as treating enemies with respect, being loyal and not acting treacherously, being just in the rule of your lands, and honoring calls to arms. The way you fight wars and interact with other daimyos would be the primary influencing factors for gaining honor, rather than your purity being the only factor you can influence outside of events, which is a value that is basically just based on how often you click one of four buttons and pay their costs. The only example of this type of interaction explained in the TT was purity being reduced by battles. While it's debatable whether this makes sense (I noticed in the comments some people don't like it), this is the type of reactivity to the player's actual actions I'd like to see more of.

Once you've accumulated honor due to your actions, this should change the way that other "countries" (daimyos, shogun, the emperor) treat you, making them more likely to ally with you or pledge their loyalty to you. It's fine to have high honor also unlock new actions in the IO, but the idea of "spending" honor to "purchase" these actions comes across as strange to me.

It's also unfortunate to see that prestige is becoming another currency, similar to how it's used in the CK series. It just seems like most of the game's abstract values, such as stability, prestige, and religious influence, are nothing more than currencies for buying instant bonuses and modifiers.
Agreed. While I like the increased complexity of having purity being tied to honor, it's hollowed out by the realization that the whole design seems to have only been considered in it's own little box of actions and spenders. Religions and culture SHOULD impact the way you play a country and have wide reaching implications for how you make your strategy. Right now, religions and other forms of flavor feels like it's simply switching one modifier for another and not really changing how you play your country outside of the generators and spenders gameplay loop. It's similar to how you in EU4 you engineer the perfect set of modifiers for your goal, regardless of country, instead of primarily adapting your strategy for the country/religion/culture. you're playing.
 
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In a surprise to basically no one, religion in Japan is once again depicted through a heavy lens of the Japanese Empire and modern tropes. Rule of Cool still takes precedence. But, at least Buddhism is presented as slightly less marginal this time around...

("Free Land" Buddhism of EU4 was funny though; was "Pure Land" too xenophobic sounding or something?)
 
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