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.

• 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...

 

[Te. Kenzo]

The three buddhism now have their own religion group? are in the dharmic gruoup? or something similar?

 

[Dark Kain]

So... what is the point in remaining Catholic now that Protestantism is being made uber powerful and even customizable?

Catholicism boni are like a chicken run: if few catholic states remains they end with lots of cardinals and papal influence and better chance to get an hold on the papacy.

 

[Grand Historian]

The bonuses from confucianism could be +2 advisiors (meritocracy) and +33% religious unity (confucianism work well with other religions).

+2 Advisors is a bit OP. +1 is enough. And -0.05 Local Autonomy would be better because 1): contrary to your claim, Confucian Emperors actively suppressed non-state ideologies and religions such as Buddhism, 2): Confucianism's legalistic emphasis on societal order and law made the state and Emperor the closest things to God, and 3): it would serve as a nice balance to the autonomy limit that Celestial Government has.

 

[ThreeMinutesEarly]

Catholicism boni are like a chicken run: if few catholic states remains they end with lots of cardinals and papal influence and better chance to get an hold on the papacy.

I love buying Stab. and mercantilism, even if I've never stayed Catholic before.

 

[IsadorBG]

Umm I appreciate the devs work on polishing religions... BUT I think they confused Chinese (Taoist/Confucian) Yin-Yang with Buddhism Karma.

Not an expert on Eastern Religion but that's my impression.

Keeping balance between Yin and Yang makes some sense in a potential Confucian rework but in Buddhism ?
I am not sure.

 

[Mauer]

National churches, I called it.

 

[minhtuvn]

splitting the existing religion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada.

Yessss. I've been waiting for this change since EU4's release day.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

Really not pleased with the Buddhist changes. We needed something, but we could have gotten something that would be both logical as a game mechanic, and also remotely historical.

It's understandable given that the region isn't as well known as Europe or other parts of Asia, but still. The Karma mechanic as described sounds like the kind of thing that someone would come up with if they thought it too daunting to do something historical (again understandable, given required research times and dev time limits), so just implemented something based on a crude understanding of Buddhist philosophy.

How does good Karma hurt you? If you answer allied calls to arms too frequently, your diplomatic ability will eventually suffer, because... other nations think you're too trustworthy? And losing military ability because you wage war too much makes you worse at war because... your men and generals have become too experienced? At least the mechanic would make sense from a gameplay point of view if it penalized you diplomatically for making war too much, or militarily if you never fought wars. But making you constantly aim for a balance so that you get better at both things only makes sense in an extremely misinterpreted Karate Kid-like understanding of Eastern Philosophy.

EDIT: If one tears down, one must also try to build up. Will soon follow up with suggestions.

 

[spyroware1]

This is so good I'm actually sad. The feature is far too cool to limit it to Protestantism. Every religion should work like that, with you shaping your people's relationship with religion and picking beliefs like in CiV. And if it gets behind a paywall it will never get implemented for others. Oh no

 

[IsadorBG]

Oh... Sounds strange. 'I tolerate my own faith more than you tolerate your own faith!'

In practical term it means that followers of that faith are less prone to revolt against a same faith religion than other faiths.

Luther wanted a reform led by princes and not by the people to avoid "chaos" so that "paternalist" view in Lutheranism is transformed into less revolt risk for Lutheran in protestant states.

Sunni and Orthodox are others faiths that have a bonus to own faith's tolerence and are also known to put more emphasis on the prince authority in their religion than other same religion variants.

 

[Prince Ire]

So, any changes to make Catholicism less worthless for countries without cardinals?

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

EDIT: If one tears down, one must also try to build up. Will soon follow up with suggestions.

Keep the slider, but rename it to Dharma. Have it instead represent the way that your state is remodeling Buddhism to support its goals. If you wage aggressive war frequently, you are trying to mold Buddhism into a philosophy that can support war (Japanese Buddhists were particularly good at this at certain times), while if you abstain from war, you will gradually be molding Buddhism as a tool to keep the populace in check, and buff up the legitimacy of your dynasty's rule. A balance between them will represent that you are more willing to let Buddhism govern itself and/or that you support doctrinal diversity, increasing diplomatic relations because other rulers don't mistrust you for warping your religion or being a narrow-minded zealot (or something, seems less historically plausible but for gameplay, allows for a choice between ADM-DIP-MIL).

There should also be specific mechanics to each branch of Buddhism:

Vajrayana: As your Dharma meter moves up the peaceful branch, lamas and monasteries get more power (historically, IIRC, they grew in power after Tibet and Mongolia stopped waging war frequently), while a war-happy Buddhist country will avoid this. In game terms, the effects from having ADM-focused dharma will be greater (both benefits and penalties), due to the massive effects that lamas and monasteries had in late-early-modern Tibet and Mongolia.

Mahayana: Pick a school of Mahayana to patronize: Zen, Pure Land, and Tiantai. Tiantai would increase ADM-dharma gain, Pure Land would increase MIL-dharma gain, Zen would be neutral (unsure about how to divide them up, particularly Zen and Pure Land, if you have more knowledge of the political history of these schools and think they should be switched, explain why and I'll do so)

Theravada: I know less about the political history of this than the other branches, but IIRC there was a stronger influence from Hinduism in the Siam-Khmer region, and more from local paganism in Burma. So perhaps it could receive a special tolerance for heathens. Perhaps the changes to the dharma-meter could occur faster, based on how the Taungu empire went rather quickly from being an aggressive expansionist empire to an efficient, localized, mostly peaceful state.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

According to wikipedia, this interpretation and the causality with the rebirth theme is just one of multiple interpretations of the concept of Karma.
I remain unconvinced.

His interpretation sounds more like the Jain theory of religious liberation than the Buddhist one. Also, even in Buddhist countries there is the sense that Karma is largely tied to rewards and punishments in the physical world (including one's status upon reincarnation back into the world after death).

However, Buddhist monks have as their goal not inherently the elimination of all action, but rather enlightenment. Jains say that Karma are like atoms that stick to you, and that you can't escape samsara until all the atoms of Karma are removed and you don't gain any more. Buddhism teaches that you escape samsara when you reach enlightenment, which is not inherently tied to being free of karma.

 

[Gurluas]

Question: Will this expansion include new Designer religions?
If so, which?

Also will the designer be updated with new GFXs?
Like Japanese.

 

[jdrou]

Another way to look at "+1 tolerance of own" is that it is sort of equivalent to "-1 tolerance to all others" since it increases the difference between the two tolerance levels.

 

[nkibilko]

TALK ABOUT CRUSADER KINGS 2

 

[blackchoas]

So, any changes to make Catholicism less worthless for countries without cardinals?

Has Catholicism always kinda been useless if you aren't big enough to really maximize it? Isn't that realistic anyway? What does the Pope care about some backwater Duke? Now the King of France or the King of Spain those are people the Pope cares about.

The reformation happened in part because the Pope didn't care about the German peoples and sought to exploit them rather than help or lead them

 

[IsadorBG]

"The reformation happened in part because the Pope didn't care about the German peoples and sought to exploit them rather than help or lead them

Tell that to the Southern Germans.

They really fought hard for that jerk afterall.

 

[Grand Historian]

So, any changes to make Catholicism less worthless for countries without cardinals?

They could always turn -1 Heretic Tolerance to -5% Tech Cost. Would do well to represent the network of universities, monasteries, religious orders and various other institutions the Catholic Church set up. It wouldn't be too radical for Western Tech, would be a minor but valuable difference for Eastern Tech, but it would be really good for the RotW.

 

[Denkt]

They could always turn -1 Heretic Tolerance to -5% Tech Cost. Would do well to represent the network of universities, monasteries, religious orders and various other institutions the Catholic Church set up. It wouldn't be too radical for Western Tech, would be a minor but valuable difference for Eastern Tech, but it would be really good for the RotW.

But protestant can probably get that bonus to + more. As long as Catholic mechanics are for european nations it will be weak for rest of the world.