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...

 

[LRDK]

This would work, if the karma meter actually represented how people would act. Honoring defensive alliances reduces your diplomatic ability. Waging frequent war of your own reduces military ability. Perhaps you could attribute the loss of military ability to increasing war-weariness, but we already have war exhaustion, which represents that factor just fine in the rest of the world. And I can think of no reason why honoring alliances and generally not being a dick would somehow reduce people's opinion of you.

I can only imagine that they were inspired by the idea of the Middle Path and notions of balance in eastern religion, but if so, these represent a blatant misunderstanding of both. The Middle Path referred to a midpoint between a normal materialistic life and the insane nearly-suicidal brand of asceticism that existed around the Buddha's time. The idea that it's somehow necessary to balance violent aggression with loving peace is not Buddhist at all. Only by conscious and strained warping of Buddhist teachings can one bring them to justify aggression of any kind.



As per the devs' plan, Karma is probably preferable to Dharma. It refers to the balance of your ruler's actions, not to their philosophical doctrine or accepted/propounded understanding of the world (not a good translation of dharma but eh, it's a tough word).



As I said previously, in Buddhism you do not accumulate karma - rather, your karma is a balance of the moral weight of your actions, which can affect the conditions of your rebirth, and according to much popular belief, your fortune in your current life. Having good karma sets you up for a better reincarnation, and is the result of not being a dick, generally speaking. Crap karma arises from harming other beings, primarily.

I imagine by high karma, the devs mean good karma. Which properly should be lowered by waging offensive war, while it makes some sense for karma to increase if you defend an unjustly attacked ally. As per your example, I fail to see how high/good karma gained via using diplomacy over violent, murderous warfare would make you less virtuous in the eyes of the community.

I must have been mistaken, as I was inferencing from the Jain system of karma, in which it is accumulated for every bad action and just decays naturally. Karma is always bad in this system. So it would make sense if it was Jain.

 

[saegoto]

Protestantism gets +1 ttf instead of -10% idea cost. Good, with new mechanism it would be too OP
but +1ttf has catholic already. still not fun, not unique. many religions have this
historicly protestantism was developing NATIONAL church, enhancing sense of NATIONAL unity. maybe -5%/-10% culture convert cost would fit better? it would be more fun for sure;p

also
+2 heretic tolerance doesnt fit to Reformed. it was not tolerated religion at all in time period. Kalvinists hate Catholics.

In gameplay point of view, it's just not fun

Maybe get back to the trade efficiency bonus. 5% or 10%. Or give reformed provincial trade power 10% e.g.

 

[josh127]

Karma is bad: you accumulate karma when doing something like killing someone. Thus the high karma for diplomacy makes sense, as you will be less virtuous in the eyes of the community, but more adept to killing and war.

The dev diary does not say that when you become less adept at diplomacy you become better at discipline, it only says that you take penalties to diplomacy in that situation. It would make sense that you get bonuses, but let's not make assumptions based on information not provided.

 

[TheDungen]

Protestantism seem a very good religion now, I really like this system.

Does anyone found the catholic faith interesting ? I mean I found it a little weak dont you think ? (especially in term of papal influence)

Well they could make it easier to get papal influence post reformation. But in a way it allready is since there are fewer nations to have cardinals.

 

[wickermoon]

So I guess it's only those two religions who'll get reworked? I had hoped for Sikhism to get a bit of a rework.

But apart from that, I really love the changes.

 

[TheDungen]

Protestantism should have a mechanic where countries with similiar focuses for their protestantism get along better then those with diffrent focuses. This would show how unlike catholicism protestantism isn't a united religion.
CN that become free should be able to start an event chain that gives them a church of their own, but if they'd rather not (because the event chain should have drawbacks, kind of like westernizing) they could just keep using their former overlords church.

Also did anyone notice the Hansa is still in that screenshot? So much for any hopes they they'd be handled diffrently than a tag.

 

[Krajzen]

Protestantism should have a mechanic where countries with similiar focuses for their protestantism get along better then those with diffrent focuses. This would show how unlike catholicism protestantism isn't a united religion.

This wouldn't work at all.

You have 12 possible focuses and you pick 3 for yourself, this means there are 220 possible combinations of focuses. Even if you aim at having only 2 of 3 bonuses the same as another protestant nation, there are 66 possible variations of that. Meanwhile there are only a few Protestant nations after Christianity splitting on Catholic-Reformed-Protestant (I don't think there are often more than 20 Protestant nations in the entire world). It would end with you having not only relation penalty with Catholic and Reformed but also with majority of Protestant nations due to how low the probability of similar focuses is.

Essentially this would screw Protestantism.

 

[radiatoren]

Protestantism rework is an improvement even if it is somewhat surprising given some other religions need more basic concepts.

Buddhism is one of the most anticipated religious mechanics in the game. It seems based on "the middle way" principle as the feature distinguishing it from Hinduism.

The implications of a balance-based mechanics for only this religion could be restrictive on playstyle, since you are forced to adhere to balancing unless you are willing to suffer the penalty! It seems like a difficult principle to really make viable without overdoing it.

 

[perhje]

This wouldn't work at all.

You have 12 possible focuses and you pick 3 for yourself, this means there are 220 possible combinations of focuses. Even if you aim at having only 2 of 3 bonuses the same as another protestant nation, there are 66 possible variations of that. Meanwhile there are only a few Protestant nations after Christianity splitting on Catholic-Reformed-Protestant (I don't think there are often more than 20 Protestant nations in the entire world). It would end with you having not only relation penalty with Catholic and Reformed but also with majority of Protestant nations due to how low the probability of similar focuses is.

Essentially this would screw Protestantism.

One solution could be a base 20 for all with +5 for each similar bonus. This way it can work and the numbers can of course be addjusted.

 

[Golladan]

This wouldn't work at all.

You have 12 possible focuses and you pick 3 for yourself, this means there are 220 possible combinations of focuses. Even if you aim at having only 2 of 3 bonuses the same as another protestant nation, there are 66 possible variations of that. Meanwhile there are only a few Protestant nations after Christianity splitting on Catholic-Reformed-Protestant (I don't think there are often more than 20 Protestant nations in the entire world). It would end with you having not only relation penalty with Catholic and Reformed but also with majority of Protestant nations due to how low the probability of similar focuses is.

Essentially this would screw Protestantism.

I don't think he said anything about a relations penalty.

 

[Chaos_TLW]

I don't think he said anything about a relations penalty.

He implied it when he said they should "get along better".

 

[Dorevai]

I think the opinion modifiers for religions ought to be tossed and based entirely off of tolerance. If I tolerate protestants +3, then they like me +30. If I tolerate protestants -3 (or -6 or w/e) then they dislike me -30, and all chunks of 10 inbetween. Do that for all religions. Then +1 tolerance own turns into a diplomatic benefit, and you could use it in the vassalage accept/deny weighting (tolerates my religion +5).

 

[Krajzen]

I don't think he said anything about a relations penalty.

Protestantism should have a mechanic where countries with similiar focuses for their protestantism get along better then those with diffrent focuses. This would show how unlike catholicism protestantism isn't a united religion.

I see here heavy implication of dissimilar churches getting relation penalties.

Anyway, even if it were only bonuses I don't think it would work due to how totally random this is - you can have some impact on whether your neighbors choose your religion and how react to reformation but there is no way ever to predict or impact what AI will choose for their protestant focus, so it is impossible to adjust your strategy to that. Unless you delay converting your own country on protestantism, of course, to see what other nations pick as their focuses (am I the only one who always try to be one of first reformed countries to get Center of Reformation?...)

...and even in this case it would be mechanic only human player could use to his diplomatic favor, as there is no way AI protestant countries would predict each other's focuses and adjust their diplomatic strategy etc

In the end it would look like totally pointless diplo - randomizer where some protestant countries get relation bonus while other don't get it.

 

[Golladan]

He implied it when he said they should "get along better".

No he didn't. If country A has a +5 opinion modifier with country B and +0 with country C it doesn't have a penalty with country C. It has a bonus with B.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

Math , monarch points saved thanks to reduction are way less attractive than reformed bonuses. Reformation usually starts when you have filled two idea groups.

I did not know there were reformed bonuses. I have never played as Reformed and never noticed it. I was actually going to switch to reformed once, but was at war when reformed became an option. Without the ability to create a reform center in my nation, I was afraid to convert so I did not. I will have to try it once... my final play through before the new patch.

 

[bussoloni]

Looks awesome.
Its also nice to see some of the western world gaining more detail province-wise

 

[TheArkayn]

I think the opinion modifiers for religions ought to be tossed and based entirely off of tolerance. If I tolerate protestants +3, then they like me +30. If I tolerate protestants -3 (or -6 or w/e) then they dislike me -30, and all chunks of 10 inbetween. Do that for all religions. Then +1 tolerance own turns into a diplomatic benefit, and you could use it in the vassalage accept/deny weighting (tolerates my religion +5).

I really like this idea. It makes tolerance much more of a "real" feeling mechanic. Why would my tolerant PLC not be able to ally with an equally toleraae Persia?

 

[chrnno]

I think the opinion modifiers for religions ought to be tossed and based entirely off of tolerance. If I tolerate protestants +3, then they like me +30. If I tolerate protestants -3 (or -6 or w/e) then they dislike me -30, and all chunks of 10 inbetween. Do that for all religions. Then +1 tolerance own turns into a diplomatic benefit, and you could use it in the vassalage accept/deny weighting (tolerates my religion +5).

Right now that does exist to a degree(tolerated is -5 only) though I can't recall the details I think it requires humanist in both countries. If they expanded it to be more detailed and helpful then it should consider both sides, if you have tolerance of +3 that means you are 'friendly' to them so makes them like you more but if they have tolerance of -3 and would normally hate you that might just even things at neutral.

 

[Petrucci]

I noticed more provinces in Europe.

 

[saegoto]

I noticed more provinces in Europe.

gj!