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EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of March 2017

Hello everybody. When rounding off last week's Dev Diary, I was planning on bringing up a certain mechanic which has everyone who has touched it dazzled and not wanting to ever be without it. Something about Diplos and building with macros, I forget. Those who have been poking around the store page and done some leg work have been speculating over it.

In view of that and how I do love to read speculation, I will let you stew over what it could be for a couple weeks and instead take this week's Dev Diary talk about the first of our religion overhauls: Confucianism

It's high time Confucian got the spotlight. It's been a troubled child of religions in EU4, existing almost exclusively in China and Korea without its own mechanics. For owners of Mandate of Heaven though, that changes with the introduction of Confucian Harmony.

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Confucian nations will have a value for the Harmony in their nation. As it grows, so too does their tolerance of the True Faith. By default, it grows by one every year, faster if they keep stability high and complete Humanism Ideas. Low Harmony will reduce tolerance of the True Faith as well as causing higher costs in development and hurting Meritocracy.

So keeping your nation's Harmony high will ensure good times for your nation, but there is a choice to be made. Converting provinces in your realm will cause Harmony to fall, scaling on the development of the province you convert, so at least in the short term, wiping out heathens may cause rough times for your nation.

For Confucian Nations though, they have the unique ability to Harmonize with other religions and religious groups. While Tengri nations have the ability to instantly Synchronize with one other faith, Confucian nations can gradually adopt and mesh with many religious. For Heretics, they can choose to gradually Harmonize with that religion, treating it as the True Faith. For Heathens, this process applies to that religious group.

Harmonizing with a religion is a process taken in the religious tab. A religion or group to Harmonize with is selected and the process of adapting with their beliefs will begin. This process will cost 3 Harmony per year, so more stable empires will have an easier time adopting new faiths, and will tick up a progress bar from 0 to 100 by 3 per year. Harmonizing is a long process punctuated with events, but the end result will be a religion or religious group that is treated as True-Faith for your nation for the rest of the game (Assuming you yourself remain Confucian)

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Each Harmonized religion also gives a nation-wide bonus for 25 years

eu4_140.jpg


My totally Legit Korea in the above screenshot will now enjoy +2 tolerance of the True Faith for 25 years. Some of the other religious bonuses include:

Muslim: +10% Trade efficiency
Shinto: +10% Infantry Combat Ability
Jewish : +33% institution Spread

We'll leave the others for you to explore, and next week we'll discuss another religious mechanic added in Mandate of Heaven
 
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So now there are mechanics for the Korean conquest of India. Um... yay? Gotta say, EUIV sure has strayed from it's routes of historical gaming.
 
I want to be excited about this but... it just seems a little off the mark to me. Confucian ALREADY has tolerance of heretics +2, with humanist its +5 and +50% religious unity. At that point you don't care about other religions anyway, meaning the only reason you would need to incorporate them is for some bonuses that probably range from gimmicky to overpowered. Add to that the fact that having humanist ideas and one or two stability will at least give you a base +2 harmony a year, and the result is a religion that accepts all other religions BEFORE you even start harmonizing, and then has little to no instability impact from hrmonization. And I don't even know if the current Mandate of Heaven modifier of -5 global unrest will still be around- with humanist thats -7 unrest on TOP of +5 tolerance of heretics!

IMO the confucian tolerance of heretics should be changed to -2 tolerance of heretics to actually give more reward for harmonizing other religions, further incentivize picking up Humanist ideas sooner over say exploration to steal colonialism (risk/reward) and to better fit with the in-game description of the Temple Faction, who apparently seek to purge Buddhists but as of now follow a religion which is ambivalent or even loves them.
 
I want to be excited about this but... it just seems a little off the mark to me. Confucian ALREADY has tolerance of heretics +2, with humanist its +5 and +50% religious unity. At that point you don't care about other religions anyway, meaning the only reason you would need to incorporate them is for some bonuses that probably range from gimmicky to overpowered. Add to that the fact that having humanist ideas and one or two stability will at least give you a base +2 harmony a year, and the result is a religion that accepts all other religions BEFORE you even start harmonizing, and then has little to no instability impact from hrmonization. And I don't even know if the current Mandate of Heaven modifier of -5 global unrest will still be around- with humanist thats -7 unrest on TOP of +5 tolerance of heretics!

IMO the confucian tolerance of heretics should be changed to -2 tolerance of heretics to actually give more reward for harmonizing other religions, further incentivize picking up Humanist ideas sooner over say exploration to steal colonialism (risk/reward) and to better fit with the in-game description of the Temple Faction, who apparently seek to purge Buddhists but as of now follow a religion which is ambivalent or even loves them.

I don't think Confucian - or any religion - should have a penalty in its base bonuses, but I do think a bonus to tax/advisors would be better now than heretic tolerance (or Adm Tech at that).
 
I want to be excited about this but... it just seems a little off the mark to me. Confucian ALREADY has tolerance of heretics +2, with humanist its +5 and +50% religious unity. At that point you don't care about other religions anyway, meaning the only reason you would need to incorporate them is for some bonuses that probably range from gimmicky to overpowered. Add to that the fact that having humanist ideas and one or two stability will at least give you a base +2 harmony a year, and the result is a religion that accepts all other religions BEFORE you even start harmonizing, and then has little to no instability impact from hrmonization. And I don't even know if the current Mandate of Heaven modifier of -5 global unrest will still be around- with humanist thats -7 unrest on TOP of +5 tolerance of heretics!

IMO the confucian tolerance of heretics should be changed to -2 tolerance of heretics to actually give more reward for harmonizing other religions, further incentivize picking up Humanist ideas sooner over say exploration to steal colonialism (risk/reward) and to better fit with the in-game description of the Temple Faction, who apparently seek to purge Buddhists but as of now follow a religion which is ambivalent or even loves them.

Let's not hard-lock humanist for another faith. Access to this tolerance means you can actually pick other things and not be a unity tanked rebel hell. How good Confucian is will depend on the specifics of the events and harmonization.

Right now, Confucian is as bad as generic pagans (animist and totemist), with no tolerance for heathens any longer, terrible conversion power that lowers tolerance of heathens to leave still bad conversion power.

In a vacuum, the proposed changes are still weaker than Christianity and Islam by a margin, and that remains the case unless you're emperor of China. If you count emperor of China you must also count HRE emperor...Christianity is still in front easily and without the "lack of harmony" downsides.
 
Harmonizing with a religion is a process taken in the religious tab. A religion or group to Harmonize with is selected and the process of adapting with their beliefs will begin. This process will cost 3 Harmony per year, so more stable empires will have an easier time adopting new faiths, and will tick up a progress bar from 0 to 100 by 3 per year. Harmonizing is a long process punctuated with events, but the end result will be a religion or religious group that is treated as True-Faith for your nation for the rest of the game (Assuming you yourself remain Confucian)
Will Catholic harmonizing discuss Mathew Ricci's Christo Confucian works? I'd love it if the flavor included it. They wanted to name the new Christian Emperor Constantine you know. Can I live out my Catholic Chinese dream?
 
@DDRJake

Protestant, Reformed, and Orthodox folks need mechanical incentives to not want to convert each other.

The Protestants and Reformed were generally much friendlier towards the Orthodox and friendlier with each other than they were with Catholics, yet current mechanics had them treating each other on the same level with Catholics.

There should be some way for Protestants and Reformed to treat each other as 'true faith', and for Orthodox folks to accept Reformed, Protestant, or Catholic (but only one of the three) as true faith.
 
Oh boy. That ugly Korea has got my mod-maker gears going. Lets see if we can't make some formable china tags based on culture groups. Loving the diaries btw.
 
Interesting new tool, it is always pleasing to see religions gaining mechanics and Confucianism looks like an attracting pick.
 
this is too much for my brain, confucian actually being good WTF

that's a really cool mechanic too

Whoa. Confucian isn't dumpster tier? I'll believe it when I play it :p.
yeah man, now Buddhists have three choices to pick between!!!
 
Much as I love the idea of this mechanic, I hope harmonizing with entire religious groups as opposed to just individual sects will cost more or take more time or so on, as it seems it would be rather OP otherwise.
Well, it did say a 3 points per year process, so you are looking at the very least 34 years to integrate a religion.
 
So do the Manchu still convert upon forming the Qing, and if so do they start with their former religion harmonized?
I agree very much with this. I think Qing should be the exception though
 
I don't think Confucian - or any religion - should have a penalty in its base bonuses, but I do think a bonus to tax/advisors would be better now than heretic tolerance (or Adm Tech at that).
You mean like catholics having tolerance of heretics -1? Or Aztecs literally having their civilization end if they don't pass reforms? Having negative attributes included is an established trend already. But I would settle for advisor cost reduction (advisors to the emperor and such)
 
This looks great! The Fetishism Cults was one of my favorite mechanics introduced to EU so this is really cool in my opinion. If you do some reworks for Shinto, which I guess would be the other religion mechanic, it would be like Hinduism since Shinto has a variety of deities?
 
Indeed, you harmonize by religious groups, so Christian, Pagan, Muslim, Dharmic.... The exception is for the Easten Religious group, which Confucian is part of, those are harmonized individually (Theravadan, Shinto, Mayahana, Vajrayana)

If I mod the game so that Totemist has this Harmony mechanic, would harmonization work the same or would it use Totemist's heretics instead (so, Pagans)?
 
My totally Legit Korea in the above screenshot will now enjoy +2 tolerance of the True Faith for 25 years. Some of the other religious bonuses include:

Muslim: +10% Trade efficiency
Shinto: +10% Infantry Combat Ability
Jewish : +33% institution Spread

We'll leave the others for you to explore, and next week we'll discuss another religious mechanic added in Mandate of Heaven

Probably a minor thing for PDX, but something to think about for flavour.
Ming did have a Jewish population at the beginning, Jewish and Muslim together exposed the heretical practices of their Nestorian Christian cousins, and had them purged.

Perhaps it will be wise to make a restriction, you can only harmonize Jewish/Islam, or Christians, but not both groups.
 
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