Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll go into details about mechanics for some religions, that will become available with the next expansion.
Protestanstism
Each protestant church will have their own name in the interface, like Church of England and so on. You can then customise the benefits of your church, and also change it over time whenever you need. To change the aspect of your church, you have to spend Church Power.
Church Power is accumulated each month, depending on your current religious unity, and your monarchs abilities.
Adding an aspect to your church costs 100 church power, but you can remove an aspect at any time, but that will lower your stability by 1.
A Church can have up to 3 different aspects, and there are 12 different ones to pick from. Some of these include.
Buddhism
The Buddhist Faith gained the concept of Karma. Karma needs to be balanced, because if it goes too positive or negative, you end up with penalties. If you go too positive you end up with penalties to your diplomatic abilities, and if you go too negative, you end up with penalties to your military abilities.
However, If you keep a balanced karma, you gain bonuses to both diplomatic and military abilities.
Some examples on how you gain Karma include: Starting wars decrease Karma, while honoring defensive alliances increase Karma.
While adding the Karma mechanic and its related events it also became clear that the game setup could benefit from splitting the existing religion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada. These three religions will all use the same Karma mechanic but don't all share the same events related to it and can in some cases have different event options in the events they do share. Events related to Lamas are for instance reserved for the Vajrayana faith while only Theravada countries can turn to Ceylon for spiritual inspiration. The three religions also differ in what bonuses they provide.
Next week we will talk about about subjects and how to interact with them...
Protestanstism
Each protestant church will have their own name in the interface, like Church of England and so on. You can then customise the benefits of your church, and also change it over time whenever you need. To change the aspect of your church, you have to spend Church Power.
Church Power is accumulated each month, depending on your current religious unity, and your monarchs abilities.
Adding an aspect to your church costs 100 church power, but you can remove an aspect at any time, but that will lower your stability by 1.
A Church can have up to 3 different aspects, and there are 12 different ones to pick from. Some of these include.
- Holy Sacraments: +2.5% Discipline
- Individual Creeds: -5% Idea Costs
- Adult Baptism: +1% Missionary Strength.

Buddhism
The Buddhist Faith gained the concept of Karma. Karma needs to be balanced, because if it goes too positive or negative, you end up with penalties. If you go too positive you end up with penalties to your diplomatic abilities, and if you go too negative, you end up with penalties to your military abilities.
However, If you keep a balanced karma, you gain bonuses to both diplomatic and military abilities.
Some examples on how you gain Karma include: Starting wars decrease Karma, while honoring defensive alliances increase Karma.
While adding the Karma mechanic and its related events it also became clear that the game setup could benefit from splitting the existing religion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada. These three religions will all use the same Karma mechanic but don't all share the same events related to it and can in some cases have different event options in the events they do share. Events related to Lamas are for instance reserved for the Vajrayana faith while only Theravada countries can turn to Ceylon for spiritual inspiration. The three religions also differ in what bonuses they provide.

Next week we will talk about about subjects and how to interact with them...