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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 don't think it makes sense for Indonesian pops to be lumped in with Eastern Buddhism with access to Confucianism, Daoism, and other Chinese schools.

I made a little post here which I think could solve the issue, essentially it would give Vietnam and Korea their own versions of Shinto/Sanjiao to maintain consistent representation across regions. Further comments in the thread suggested using either the local names of folk religions or using Shendao/Sindo/Shinto as the names (which is the same term/concept translated to the different languages)
 
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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.
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.
 
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Maybe the Shingon school of Japanese Buddhism could be an option in the Tibetan Buddhist as its a major school in Japan, despite being in the Vajrayana group
 
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Why this middle Karma mechanic again? I never see any buddhist in my life moaning that they did merit making to much and need to do some bad thing to balanced it out.

In fact, it's the opposite, avoding doing bad things and should keep doing good things.

Sure, Buddhism does promote the Middle Way but not in this context, it's specifically referred to avoiding extreme asceticism and extreme indulgence.

Also anyway to represent the absolute blender that was Theravada back in those day? They blended everything from Buddhism, Hindu-Bhramism, local animism, ancestor worship and they absolutely have Bodhisattva, just see what the Thai believe in back then regarding their kings.

Spoiler alert, Thai kings are not only mantling gods (usaully Indra, see, specific named gods are actually an office, there are actually a lot of being assuming the office of Indra, Vishnu, etc., Thai kings assumed to be one of them), being descendant of Rama (from Ramakien/Ramayana) somehow, they are also on their way to being Bodhisattvahood too (specifically being Thai king means that they are only a couple of reincarnation away to achieve Buddhahood).

Speaking of these, any event on the insanity that Ayutthaya believed that Buddha personally came to spreading Buddhism in Ayutthaya? Despite the fact that Buddha should be long since dead even before the foundation of the city, their reasoning being Buddha just caually time travel because he is Buddha afterall.

Theravada only became something resembling Secular Buddhism as a reaction against colonialism, and it's only nominal only, the vast majority of Theravada practitioner to this day still blending a lot of things that they like anyway.
 
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Good overview of the Buddhism religion.
 
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Regarding the map, aren't the colours of Theravada Buddhism and Hinduism unhelpfully similar? It seems hard at a glance to differentiate them.
 
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The description needs to be updated, it still refers to Eastern Buddhism as Mahayana.

I also feel like generic county level monarchies outside of Europe should be called princedoms instead of counties

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*Eastern Buddhist tradition

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
I feel like this could be used for Islam for the schools and Shia sects
 
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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
Sanjiao Panel.png

Shinto Buddhist.png
Tantric Actions.png
 
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For all the dynamism in the game, the portrayal of Mahayana as Eastern Buddhism, Sanjiao and Shinto is one of the largest failures in the religious gameplay we've seen in my opinion. Buddhism syncretised with local beliefs pretty much wherever it was present. It's so weird that China and Japan are being singled out as being shown as fusions with local beliefs when that was the case for every region.

Therevada in Thailand/Siam was influenced by Tai folk belief, in Burma it was influenced by Mon folk belief and in Khmer by Khmer local belief. Mahayana in Vietnam was influenced by Vietnamese folk belief, in Korea it was influenced by Korean folk belief. Tibetan Buddhism was influenced by Tibetan belief, and when it spread to Mongolia, the local variety was influenced by Mongolian belief.

Why out of all of those are Japanese and Chinese belief given special portrayals when they're not all that different to any of the other regions I've mentioned?



That's aside from some obvious errors here.

Why is Bon in the Buddhist group? It influenced Tibetan Buddhism and took on some elements of Buddhism in turn, it is not Buddhist itself.

Why is Tibetan Buddhism called that, rather than Nang chos, when you don't call Therevada 'South-East Asian Buddhism'? It spreads beyond Tibet in the game's timeline. I understand not using Mahayana because of the awful split of that branch you're doing, though Eastern Buddhism is a really bad name which doesn't describe what you have here, which is Korean-Vietnamese-Tarim-Basin Buddhism, which is bewildering.

I'm also curious what evidence you have for an extant Sammiyita school, most sources describe it as having almost disappeared in the 10th century already - and it's definitely not the major religion in Sindh as you've previously portrayed - any remnants would have probably been in Northern India, but I'm happy to be corrected on that.

The Karma system doesn't represent Karma in the slightest. Why would you not want as much Good Karma or Merit as possible? Clearly you're misunderstanding the idea of the middle way, and making it into a weird currency which doesn't accurately reflect anything in actual Buddhism.

Is there anything mechanically to now portray a sort of grouping between Buddhism and Dharmic religions, given that you've split them off from that group despite them being Dharmic? We know there are mechanics around religious groups, so it's actually mechanically impactful that you've done that.

I somewhat like the idea of the sects, at least, but I don't like how exclusive the Main Philosophy is. It's so game-y. You'd be hard pressed to pick just one of those to describe the main philosophy of any iteration of Buddhism at the time, and often many were favour at the same time. For just one example, Japan has often been associated with both the Chan and Pure land Buddhist movements, and often had practices from both.

I hope that this setup is one of those things we look back at in a few years and go "Wow, EU5 sure had some weird decisions at launch. I'm glad it doesn't look like that, anymore"
 
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Can we rename "Tungusic Shamanism" back to "Shamanism" or "Samanism"?
1750254493571.png
 
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Maybe Sānjiào could also be added in CK3
 
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The description for Tibetan Buddhism is wrong; it is not a branch of "Eastern Buddhism" with Vajrayana sympathies, but rather a branch of Vajrayana Buddhism with occasional Chinese-style Chán influences. And even these influences are not really valued in the theology; all Tibetan Buddhist schools assert a "pure" lineage from India to Tibet.

Please check out the Samye Debate and the lineage documents of all four orthodox Tibetan schools.
 
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