Tinto Talks #72 - 16th of July 2025

[Pavía]

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

Today, we will talk about the Inti & Folk Religions! Let’s start without further ado.

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Inti​

Inti is quite a unique religion that stands out in the Peruvian region:

As you see, Inti is part of the Peruvian Folk Religions group. We’ll explain how that works further down.​

Here is the panel of the religion, which may be familiar to you at this point:

The most important mechanic of the Inti religion is the Yanantin, which is a value that can go from -100 to +100. You’ll mostly get penalties if you’re above or below 0, but it gives the most modifiers when it’s exactly and perfectly balanced at 0:

Depending on the gods that you worship, from seven available, you’ll get positive or negative Yanantin:

As you see, the base value is +0.50.​

Apart from that, the worship of each of these gods gives passive modifiers to the country:

Here we’re using one of those ‘Building Blocks’ that we’ve talked about before, the Religious Aspect, in a way that promotes the worship of a certain god, which has the consequence of increasing their effects - therefore, being one of the ways of balancing the Yanantin of the country:

You can only promote the worship of one god at a time, and changing it costs Stability:

As usual, take the numbers as a matter of balance and WIP.​

Another way of balancing the Yanantin of your country is by performing any of the available actions:

Note: There are 13 different festivities, with different modifiers; which one you get when you Host a Ceremony depends on the time of the year.​

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Folk Religions​

Very large sections of the world are covered by Folk Religions, the new denomination of what formerly in EU4 were Animist, Pagan, or Totemist religions, and that we’ve been able to set up thanks to your feedback in the Tinto Maps series:

Due to the huge amount of Folk Religions, we are focusing on the “Gods” and “Religious Aspects” as Building blocks for the Folk religions. We're aiming to have some baseline gods based upon 'spirits', which are based upon natural forces (wind, water, fire, sun, etc.). And then, we have some of the main gods for 'Folk Religious families'; so, as in this example, the country of Benin, which worships the Isese religions, has a number of deities to worship upon:

The Isese Religion as an example

The Gods that are available to the people of Benin
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And that’s all for today! We will come back on Friday, as we will talk in the Tinto Flavour about the Inca!

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

 

[Pavía]

Is there any research or folk religions you need god lists for?

We already have some lists, but additional feedback and information never hurts.

 

[Pavía]

I'm curious, do folk religions see other folk religions as 'heretics' or 'heathens'?
Or it does not really matter for them?
Thanks!

They use the base mechanics, which means that different religions in the same religious group are considered heretics, and in different religious groups are considered heathens. You can set up the religious groups differently, as they're scriptable, and thus, moddable; so, for instance, if you want a mod with more nuanced African Folk Religions, you can script it completely differently from the base game. And you can also script the different opinions that countries of different religions have among each other; so, you might consider the individual pops of a certain religion as 'heathens', but then set up a 'Positive' opinion on countries of that religion:

 

[Pavía]

Are there any plans for some of the folk religions to receive their own icons ? Or maybe have different icons for folk religions of each region

We have 254 different Folk Religions, which mostly have an impact on the pop-related systems and mechanics. We've prioritized this over the pure flavour of having so many different pantheons, etc., because we think it's more relevant for gameplay purposes.

 

[Pavía]

It is written in the religion description for inti that Doom impacts the country. How exactly does it work ? or is this display a bug ?

Tooltip bug, lol, as it should say 'Yanantin' instead of 'Doom'. Just fixed it, thanks.

 

[Pavía]

Where are the Religious aspects for folk religions? Or are they the same as for the Inti religion?

I think you're mixing 'Aspects' (which they have) with 'Actions' (which they don't). But you've given me the idea that we may port some of the actions to be available to Folk Religions (because celebrating religious festivals is a very widespread activity).

 

[Pavía]

View attachment 1334579
Where did the banner's pixels go?

Oh God, I've been in this forum for 20 years, and I still hate it with passion.

To compensate, here you have another nice illustration for Folk Religions:

 

[Pavía]

Peruvian Folk Religions???

Wasnt Peru a colonial term which didnt existed in 1337, the religion group name should be Andean Folk Religions, Andean was the original name of the religion group already as shown in past tinto talk

Good points, just changed it.

 

[Pavía]

Do the different folk religions give different bonuses, or it's the same for all, but the Gods are named different? Based on comparing Inti and Isese, it's the latter, without the Yanantin, which is unique to the Incans.

They're similar as of now, as we have 18 different Folk Religions religious groups, as we wanted to mark them as separate, based on common beliefs. But if you think that 'Andean' Folk religions need this differentiation from 'Brazilian' Folk religions, it's something we can look towards polishing, because it shouldn't take much time (just some thought).

 

[Pavía]

I really don't get this fixation with adding religious currencies. It might have been unique, interesting gameplay if it wasn't something every religion seemed to have their flavour of, with very minor impact. It feels like the current Paradox design philosophy for religions is:

1. Religion name?
2. What can we use for it's currency mechanic? (Piety, Karma, Doom, Yanantin, Mysticism/Spiritualism, etc)

I don't feel like these currencies add anything really, and they're all so abstract that I don't think it's unfair to call them mana (Wait for the Polynesian faiths when they actually use the word mana...). Add on the fact that most of them are based on fundamental misunderstandings of the concept they're named after and I suspect they're going to be deeply unsatisfying to everyone.

I like the pantheons, and I'm excited to see the work that went into the name lists for them. That said, I was hoping for a more in-depth set of mechanics, such as including mummification of rulers, the Capacocha sacrifices, huacas, and of course the oracles of Pachacamac and Apurimac. I guess there's nothing here's that's awful, other than another religious currency, but there's not that much that's exciting here, either. I guess this will have to be one of those regions that doesn't get that much unique religious content until post-release, which is fine - but my reception of this would have been better without the currency.

I was wondering if there's anything to represent close-family marriages, but I suppose there needs to be some way to represent that more on a dynasty level than a religious one so that it can be used in the rulers of a lot of different cultures. Hopefully that's covered on Friday!

It is fair to have that opinion, and we've been presenting these religion-related TTs in the last couple of months to get community, and try to improve them as much as possible, based on this feedback. That said, I think the mana-currency debate is not entirely productive; we're already moving away in EU5 from the most important mana-based mechanic in EU4 (monarch points), and tying a lot of the systems and mechanics into a more simulationist approach. However, we will still need to work with currencies, such as Prestige, Stability, etc., so, in the case of religions, please consider them as tools, not as means.

That being said, I'll repeat again that we'll try to improve the mechanics that we've shown as much as possible based on the community feedback, because that's the main point of the Tinto Talks series, and presenting different EU5 content for 2 or 3 (and for some time, 4) days a week.

 

[Pavía]

Does the "maximal amount of spouses" modifier" include the "basic one" consort that everybody gets or is just additional consorts? Becauss if it's the former then it should be detracted or just remove the + from it

Also Islam shoul have those modifier as well

Basic one; so, in the case of Inti, it's 4 female consorts, and 1 male consort, in total.

Other religions as Islam, have similar modifiers, yes, although they're tied to policies in the 'Marriage Law'; this is a bug, so we're just going to create a policy for 'Inti Marriage', that will appear instead of the direct modifier.