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Tinto Talks #68 - 18th of June 2025

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:
Buddhism.png

Buddhism.jpg

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

Eastern Buddhism.png

Tibetan Buddhism.png

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:
Karma.png

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.
Mahavihara panel.png

Main Philosophy.png

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.
Religion Panel.png

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:
Theravada Sects.png

Eastern Buddhism Sects:
Eastern Buddhism Sects.png

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:
Tibetan Buddhism Sects.png

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:
Meditation School.png

Meditation School spread.png

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.
Tantric Practices.png

Tantric Actions.png

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:
Favor Buddhist Schools.png

Shinto Buddhist.png

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

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:
Sanjiao.png

Sanjiao Panel.png


Confucianims.png

Daoism.png

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

Harmony.png


Sanjiao Map.png

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!
 
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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.
 
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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.

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 sects?
- 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 / landowners (if scholar-officials are being represented through the landowner estate)? Will they maybe pressure you to always favour that sect?
 
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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. :)
 
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Didn't Tokugawa Ieyasu import Tendai and Shingon texts to promote Confucianism as the state religion?

And during much of Japan's history there was a enormous demand for Buddhist texts.

While maybe difficult to portray in game, could we perhaps have some flavour? Maybe tied to any potential trade missions between Japan and China/Korea? Maybe being able to get a copy of certain relics/books if China/Korea decide to sell them?
 
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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.
 
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The return of moist and bimoist
 
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No, and no.
I'd say that, at least for the case when the location is no longer buddhist, there should be a way. But I don't know which kind of effect or if it affects at all if you (being non buddhist) own a location that's not buddhist but it's part of the sect.
BTW, the colors of Bimoist and Sanjiao look really similar. Could you check if you can adjust them a bit? :)
 
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If/when a player changes to Joseon Korea via event, will the state religion also change to Sanjiao instead from Eastern Buddhist? Or will this be something we have to do manually? (If we even can)
 
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Korea and Vietnam should follow and be majority Sānjiào like China though? I don't understand drawing a distinction between these three countries. Both Dai Viet and Joseon would soon start favoring Confucianism over Buddhism. Logically Japan would be the same too but at least Shintō has very distinct mechanics to justify its separate existence.

And Indonesia should probably get its own Buddhist religion, as it had nothing to do with Confucianism, Daoism or any other Chinese philosophies/sects. They had a distinct form of esoteric buddhism
 
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