Tinto Talks #68 - 18th of June 2025

[Pavía]

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Wednesdays where we talk about Europa Universalis V!

Today, we will discuss the mechanics of Buddhism. In EUV, it is considered another Religious Group, like some that we saw previously, such as Christianity or Islam:

We will focus on the three main branches of pure Buddhism: Theravāda, Eastern Buddhism, and Tibetan Buddhism, which share the same core mechanics.

One aspect that all of these share is the presence of Karma as a currency. Karma, same as it was in EU4, can be modified by different factors, and gives different effects depending on its value:

Another very important aspect of Buddhist religions is the presence of various Buddhist Sects. Each religion has a variety of different sects, represented as International Organizations, and countries will belong to the sects of their own religion. Eastern Buddhism countries can belong to a maximum of 3 sects, while the rest of the religions allow for a maximum of a single sect.

Each sect has a value of Favor, representing the influence and support that sect has, as well as locations in which that sect is present. The sects also define themselves through a set of laws establishing their philosophy and teachings.

As long as sects have a high value of favor (over 60%), they will be able to expand their influence by adding more of their neighboring locations to the IO. Conversely, if sects have a low value of favor (less than 40%), they will start losing their locations. Sects will also lose locations if the dominant religion of the location is not the appropriate one. Sects can only gain or lose a single location at a time, though, so they will not completely disappear or extremely increase in size overnight, but it will be a gradual process.

Sects gain or lose favor depending not only on how many countries are part of the IO, but also from countries actively promoting or disfavoring them. A country can choose to favor or disfavor a single sect to affect its favor value, although that will also impact the effects that the country gets from the sect(s) it belongs to.

A country can also choose to leave a sect or to join a new one, but with some caveats. For once, a country will not be able to leave a sect it is part of as long as that sect has over 50% favor. So, if they want to leave that to join a new one, they will have to first make that favor decrease. To join a sect, a country must not already be at its maximum number of sects allowed, and the sect to join needs to be present in their territory or in the territory of an ally or a subject.

Let me now give a brief overview of the available sects.

Theravada Sects:

Eastern Buddhism Sects:

You might notice here Confucianism and Daoism; we’ll talk more in-depth about them in the last block of the post, devoted to Sānjiào.​

Tibetan Buddhism Sects:

Some of these Sects may be better known by other names, but we used more generic terms for them due to the fact that they are present in multiple countries:

Some of these schools have other special sets of teachings on top of the main ones, like the ones including Vajrayāna Tantric practices, giving some extra actions to the countries that belong to them.

There are also two other Buddhist religions I want to talk about, which were pending from previous Tinto Talks. For starters, let’s talk once again about Shintō. As mentioned in its own Tinto Talks, Shintō countries have the ability to Favor Buddhist Schools, and mentioned that that action gives them access to interact with the general Buddhist mechanics. That means that when performing this action, they will gain the same abilities related to the sects, with some costs associated with that:

They will thus be able to join the sects of Eastern Buddhism, although they can only join one, with some extra specifically Japanese sects:

As an extra note related to the Japanese sects, Jōdo Shinshū will also be created as an additional one during the course of the game.

Another religion in the Buddhist group I want to mention (and that some of you have already noticed) is the new religion we have implemented in China, which we have named Sānjiào, something we did after careful consideration, from the feedback received in Tinto Maps. This is to represent the particular blend of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism (together with many other folk beliefs) that has formed and coexisted in China for centuries. As such, a country following Sānjiào will automatically belong to the Confucianism and Daoism Sects, and they will get both the Righteousness and Harmony currencies. On top of that, they will be able to join one extra sect of Eastern Buddhism:

As you can see, these enable two special currencies: Righteousness and Harmony respectively:

And that’s all for today! Tomorrow, there will be a post about the process behind the Audio and the OST of the game, while on Friday’s Tinto Flavour, we will take a look at Majapahit!

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!

 

[Pavía]

Yay, Tinto talks are back

They never were gone. And today has been a punctual day, I'm glad that y'all appreciate it.

 

[Pavía]

Will there be a Tinto flavour for China?

Yes! And there will also be a separate Tinto Talks just for the Middle Kingdom IO.

 

[Pavía]

Also, I see the communitys feedback on the name of Chinas religion was considered. Very nice.

Yes, we went all the way from Mahayana -> Eastern Buddhism -> Sanjiao, as that was what the community feedback was pointing us to.

 

[Pavía]

Shouldn't Yuan follow Tibetan buddhism under the mongols?

The country (state) religion of Yuán is Tibetan Buddhism, correct. The screenshots show the religion per location.

 

[Pavía]

I am probably just blind/dumb but

A: Is Shinto considered Eastern with Confucian/Shaijo? Is Buddhism entirely seperate from eastern? Can you blend them like how Tengri (and Inrhink others?) can accept a different religion?

B: Can Confucianism be its own thing? Or do you have to be Shaijo?


C: Probavly best to ask with Japan but isolationism mechanic isn’t in eu5?

A: Shinto is in the Buddhist religious group, as Sanjiao.
B: Confucianism is always a sect of Sanjiao, and can also be favored by Eastern Buddhism, and a Buddhism-favoring Shinto.

 

[Pavía]

Is there anything you can do to make a sects spread faster than 1 location at a time? Like a reformation era advance or a cabinet action?

I see harmony is back, but nothing about harmonizing other religions. Is that gone? I really enjoyed doing that

No, and no.

 

[Pavía]

How are laws of sect changed ? By a vote of all countries in the IO ? Anyone can start a debate on them ? Can the "main philosphy" of a sect change as well ?

You can't change the law of a sect, but favor or disfavor or adopt it.

 

[Pavía]

Why does Yuan not appear in the Tibetan buddhism screenshot then?

View attachment 1321095

That's because most of its pops doesn't follow Tibetan Buddhism, but Sanjiao (the countries there are ordered by the number of pops of that religion).

 

[Pavía]

While categorising Sanjiao as a religion of Buddhism religion group and treating Confucianism and Daoism as philosophies of Buddhism feels somewhat delicate to me, I do think it's a considerable improvement over the Mahayana version. Thank you very much for making the adjustment.

Thanks, appreciated.

 

[Pavía]

I realize this is unrelated to the TT.

But can I ask what the future of the schedule looks like?

Back to Monday, Wednesday Friday? Wednesday Friday?

Just curious what our expectations should be it is totally fine whatever you do.

This Friday, there will be a schedule for next week, as usual, as we will have our internal schedule already readjusted, as well.

 

[Pavía]

Appreciate all the hard work you guys put in and the changes, though I do find certain aspects of this a bit disappointing such as Daoism and Confucianism being treated as sects within Buddhism outside of the context of Sanjiao. I guess there is room for improvement and expansion later on.

We'll try to address concerns regarding the religous design based on the community feedback, as usual. Appreciated, as well.

Couple of questions:

- Does the Yuan dynasty start as Tibetan Buddhists?
- So in order to simulate the Joseon dynasty's dismantling of Buddhist monasteries and clergy, I need to disfavour every single available sect except Confucianism? What is the drawback of disfavouring this?
- Will the Joseon dynasty and the Nguyen dynast in Vietnam have the ability to convert to Sanjiao through any of their own content or mechanics?
- Does Confucianism have any involvement with the classes of scholar-officials / bureaucracy? Will they maybe pressure you to always favour that sect?

1. Yes.
2. There's some content related to this process, although we want to improve a bit how it's linked to the religion. What you can actually do is to favor Confucianism over the other sects.
3. Yes, as having a country religion that belongs to the same religious group. It's also the case for Yuán and Sanjiao.
4. Yes, there are some mechanics related to the scholar-officials that interact with Confucianism, but we'll talk about that in a later Tinto Talks.

 

[Pavía]

Do Bon and Sammitiya have unique sects ?

Do Bön or Sammitiya have any distinct mechanics?

Currently not.

 

[Roger Corominas]

Can Shinto gain access to the Righteousness and Karma by favoring their respective sects? Also why isn't Classical Chinese the liturgical language of Shinto like it is for Sanjiao and Eastern Buddhism? (The Nihon Shoki and the sacred texts of Japanese Buddhism are all written in it)

Images

Spoiler

View attachment 1321120
View attachment 1321122View attachment 1321121

For Righteousness yes, as that's tied to the Confucianism sect, for Karma no as that is not tied to any sect but to the religions themselves.
Regarding Classical Chinese for Sinto, that is something that could be debatable. It is true that Classical Chinese was used in Japan, but the way it was used (called Kanbun), includes many annotations and variations of word and grammatical order compared to what would be directly Classical Chinese, and when reading the texts aloud they would read it in a way that would be incomprehensible compared to Classical Chinese. That's why it was chosen to represent that as Japanese, although it would be different than regular Japanese. To be fair, Japanese people of the time would use up to four different types of writing including Kanbun, but would read all as Japanese.

 

[Pavía]

Is there anything you can do to make a sects spread faster than 1 location at a time? Like a reformation era advance or a cabinet action?

I see harmony is back, but nothing about harmonizing other religions. Is that gone? I really enjoyed doing that

No, and no.

@Roger Corominas has brought to my attention that my phrasing might have not been the best regarding Harmonization. What I wanted to say is "No, there isn't an Harmonizing mechanic as in EU4 in EU5." Sorry for any potential misunderstanding.

 

[Pavía]

I'll probably make another post/thread about it, but

EU4 Karma is a terrible implementation imo. Paradox implemented it as if it were "Aggressive vs Peaceful", when it's "Bad vs Good". And Bad is always bad, there's no upside to it.

IIRC it was also said Karma has an equilibrium, which is incorrect. If you have Karma, be it good or bad, it *will* bear fruit. You should always suffer (or enjoy) the consequences of Karma, be it in this life or in the next one. It would make more sense to add equilibrium to Self Control imo, if we were to add it to anything at all.

I am also not sure if the middle should be the way, even though the Buddha talked about the, huh, Middle Way. You follow the Middle Way to avoid suffering, which generates Karma, but that does not mean you are trying to "balance good deeds with bad deeds", you are trying to break free of samsara. Karma is correlated with that, but is not necessarily the path to it. Someone who became a Buddha would not be in the middle of the Karma slider, they'd be either locked in +100 Karma or fully outside of the system. Because of this, I think the middle threshold (-33 to +33) should either not exist, or have different (but arguably weaker) modifiers to the positive threshold (+33 to 100). Actually, as of writing, I just got an idea...

Finally, there's the Karma description which I found peculiar.

"the past deeds of a Country". AFAIK Karma is not based on the country, it's based on the person. It's the person's past deeds (and intentions, depending on the religion/school) that generate/attract Karma. So it should depend on what the ruler does, and it should affect the ruler directly. Technically every character should have a Karma slider but this is not CK3, so we limit it to the ruler. Following this, the modifiers should ideally be more ruler-centered, so for example you should not get Discipline from it, but rather a General trait that gives Discipline. But I admit that's much easier said than done.

Honestly, all in all, it feels like Paradox mistook Karma for Yin-Yang and nobody bothered to correct course in all these years lol.

So, If It Were Me™, I'd change Karma to this (all scaled modifers):

Negative Karma:
-10% Estates Satisfaction Equilibrium
-10% Clergy Satisfaction Equilibrium [so it amounts to -20%]
-2 Tolerance of True Faith

Neutral Karma:
-25% Stability Cost [or +0.025 Stability Investment, idk how it works tbh]
-50% Karma Gain
-50% Karma Loss

Positive Karma:
+10% Estates Satisfaction Equilibrium
+10% Clergy Satisfaction Equilibrium [so it amounts to +20%]
+2 Tolerance of True Faith

I don't remember where I read it (Wikipedia?), but there's also a vicious/virtuous cycle in Karma, in that doing bad deeds makes it easier for the person to do even more bad deeds, and the same applies to good deeds. Tbh it's obvious in hindsight, if you are a terrible person you'll keep being terrible out of habit... So I guess neutral Karma could be the "stable path". It's more difficult to get out of it than the others, and you also has to invest less to maintain Stability.

Finally, there should be "Karma farming" Religious Actions. This isn't even a gamey tactic, laypeople do it to this day lmao, it's part of their religious practices. Some of my suggestions are:

-Donate to the Sangha: Pays 6 months of Income, Clergy receives the Income; +10 Karma, +1 Yearly Karma, +10% Clergy Power for 10 years
-Organize a Pilgrimage: Ruler Unavailable for 6 months; +0.5 Yearly Karma for 5 years
-Offer Relief to the Peasants: -20% Peasant Tax, +10% Peasant Satisfaction Equilibrium, +0.5 Yearly Karma for 10 years

Then you'd also have other sources of Karma like building a temple, developing a province etc. There should be some Actions where you pay with Karma too, but I don't know what they could be.

Also: this is all considering Karma has to be a one-dimensional slider. Because *technically* there should be two 0-100 sliders, one for Good and other for Bad Karma. I can understand sacrificing that for gameplay, but if we wanted to be fully historical we'd need two sliders.

Bookmarking this suggestion, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

Any chance you add a Neo-Confucianism sect which acts almost the same as Confucianism, but forces all other Sects to be Disfavored?

We've also taken note of all the suggestions to better portray Neo-Confucianism, and it's something we want to incorporate. Thanks!

 

[Pavía]

The other issue is modifier stacking. The more different mechanics in EU5 provide modifiers, the more attractive stacking them becomes.

We're aware of this issue, as we have worked on late EU4. One of the brainstormings we had in the first or second year of the project was 'how to limit modifier stacking'. In general terms, there are fewer sources of modifiers that you can stack, as there are way fewer perma-modifiers (we've been very restrictive with this in the content, so as not to have an event that gives a modifier until the end of the campaign, for example). And on those sources of modifiers, there's usually a trade-off in what you select. So, specializing in a country on some modifier farming is still possible, but is far less important than in EU4.

 

[Pavía]

I can see what the idea was behind the initial concept of having most of East Asia under Mahayana: Buddhism allows several sects to be recognized by the state, and I guess the idea for China, Korea and others was that Confucianism and Daoism would have been accepted sects in that system, although it created the problem, pointed out by many, that Daoism and Confucianism were heavily syncretic with but also definitely not Buddhist schools of thought themselves.

The situation is definitely better now with Sanjiao, at least for China, but I think the problem still exists for Korea, because just like it was going to be awkward to consider China a Buddhist state when the dominant ideology was Confucianism, it's going to be even more awkward to portray how historically in this period the Korean government would end up persecuting and driving Buddhism underground in the name of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy... All while being labelled as having "Eastern Buddhist" religion. It's also awkward how the Buddhist group ends up having a lot of definitely not, or not properly Buddhist religions in them, I guess as a way to represent how Buddhism syncretism was all over the place in East and South-East Asia, but they seemingly don't share a group with Hinduism and Jainism, which should be fairly close religions too.

Maybe a way to handle this is to give Vietnam and Korea their own versions of Sanjiao and "Shintoism" too (aka, local religions heavily syncretized with Buddhism too), and then put these 4 religions into their own "Taoic" group, while the remaining Buddhist religions would go into the Dharmic group. Taoic religions that accept Buddhist sects then would go on having very high acceptance of Buddhist religions, and vice versa specifically Buddhist religions would have high tolerance of Taoic ones. But I don't think that the devs might want to redesign the whole religion of East Asia all over again.

Thanks for the feedback!

I definitely don't envy having to design such a religiously messy region while having all kinds of contradictory proposals being thrown at you, each having at least some decent points.

This is a super good point. We'll try to improve the design as much as possible, but it's also an easy task to do so, while reflecting the view of the majority.