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EU4 - Development Diary - 12th of September 2017

Welcome all to another fine Tuesday and its accompanying EU4 Dev Diary. In last week's diary we mentioned that we would take a look at changes to Islam in the upcoming expansion which will be released alongside update 1.23. As we have made clear, we're giving a lot of love to the Muslim world in 1.23 and as such let's look at changes we've made to Islam and Piety.

We'll start with looking at the Piety bar. As a mechanic, it has remained fairly untouched for EU4's existence. Few would doubt that the Piety bonuses are strong, but they can't be called the most engaging of the game's content. In 1.23, we've visually spruced up the Piety bar, introducing terms for both ends of the spectrum, with low Piety being called Mysticism and high piety being depicted as devotion towards Legalism. Additionally, Piety events have been rewritten to reflect different the types of piety (Mystic vs Legalistic) rather than trying to measure "how pious" a ruler was. We have also taken this opportunity to weed out some of the older events that were not up to our current standards, with book burning no longer being a Pious action.

piety bar.jpg


Additionally, for expansion owners your passive Piety bonus can be passed up in favour of one-off effects depending on your Pious leanings. At -75 piety or lower, you can call on Religious Followers to bolster your manpower, gaining 2 years' of manpower growth. At 75 or greater Piety, you are able to Enforce Faithful Adherence for an immediate loss of 2 corruption. These actions will push your piety back towards the centre by 50, so consider carefully if the one-time action is worth foregoing the Pious effect you have built up.

Additionally, each Islamic nation will follow one Muslim School of Law. The School that your nation adheres to is predetermined and cannot be changed, or for new nations/converts, chosen at your spawning/conversion. Each School grants its own bonus and has a relationship with each other school, ranging between Respect, Ambivalent and Hate. While Ambivalence grants no particular effect, nations from Schools with a mutual respect or hatered will find relations and diplomatic acceptance strengthened or shakier respectively. The relationships between schools are harmed by large scale and prolonged wars between larger nations of those schools, and conversely can be improved by longstanding, trusting alliances between them.

schools.jpg


Schools and their bonuses are as follows:

religious_schools = {
#Sunnis
hanafi_school = {
technology_cost = -0.05
}
hanbali_school = {
ae_impact = -0.1
}
maliki_school = {
development_cost = -0.1
}
shafii_school = {
merchants = 1
}
#Shias
ismaili_school = {
horde_unity = 1
legitimacy = 1
republican_tradition = 0.5
devotion = 1
}
jafari_school = {
shock_damage = 0.1
}
zaidi_school = {
shock_damage_received = -0.1
}
}

relations degrade.jpg


So while your own School is set in stone, we allow Islamic nations to Invite Scholars from other Schools. Assuming an alliance and high relations with another nation, you will be able to spend 50 Admin points to invite a Scholar who will give you an extra effect in addition to your own School's for 20 years.

invite scholar.jpg


Inviting a scholar from an opposing faith's School (Such as a Sunni nation trying to invite a Zaidi Scholar) will require low piety, although the Ibadis are exempt from this.

Additionally, as I like to do, let's have a look at Another region of the world and how trade goods have changed. In fact, let's just grab all of western/Central Europe!

W europe trade goods .jpg


With Piety and Muslim Schools covered today, we shall spend the next week sheepishly looking at two nations in particular who had a profound effect on the Middle East in the 15th Century.
 
Interesting news. With recent changes to Confucian, Shinto, Orthodox and upcoming patch featuring rework of Islam I would really like to see a rework of Catholicism in near future.

PDX adding flavour to the most played countries?

While I appreciate they give flavour to the rest of the world, it is slightly annoying that the countries that arguably made most impact on the time period feel like EU4 default and have barely no specific mechanics (or bad one such as the Cardinal gamble simulator).
 
Since you guys are talking about AQ and QQ next week, I have a few suggestions:
- Dynasties should be renamed. "Bayandurid" for AQ and "Baranid" for QQ
- Shouldn't AQ be a Beylik at the start and have them upgrade that to a Sultanate and make Tabriz capital when they take it through decision? I believe Uzun Hasan was the first AQ ruler to be called Sultan.
 
To anyone who wants to discuss trade goods, feel free to post trade good suggestions in the suggestions forum :)
Also I will note that there will be new trade good events for all the new goods, and some old prices might have been tweaked a bit as well...

are you gonna change the building pictures of anatolian tech? seperating them from arabic building pictures (icons) must be done. putting yellowish mosque pictures to a nation which is famous with its own style mosques is inappropriate.
 
Wait, crystal in extremadura and barcelona provinces? Can you please provide some historical reasons for that or is this just out of your magic hat? Historically I think that barcelona was more suited to have Wine, and Extremadura to have the Cow resource (Cattle, was the name?)
 
To anyone who wants to discuss trade goods, feel free to post trade good suggestions in the suggestions forum :)
Also I will note that there will be new trade good events for all the new goods, and some old prices might have been tweaked a bit as well...

I won't give up my hopes then. Speaking of suggestions, for those instances when source information is highly welcome, I bet nobody at EU4 team speaks Polish, so either English sources or translations would be needed?
 
This is exactly the idea :)

Current requirement is -50 piety or lower, so Mysticism.

Why is Mysticism represented as negative Piety? It gives the (wrong) idea that mystics aren't pious, which is exactly what you wanted to change with the patch.

Can't it work like the Dutch Republic does (Orangism vs Statists)?
 
Why is Mysticism represented as negative Piety? It gives the (wrong) idea that mystics aren't pious, which is exactly what you wanted to change with the patch.

Can't it work like the Dutch Republic does (Orangism vs Statists)?
That's precisely why it's reworded. It's not Pious vs Impious anymore. Both extremes would be considered pious. Just in different fields of study (Mysticism vs Legalism)
 
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That's precisely why it's reworded. It's not Pious vs Not pious anymore. Both extremes would be considered pious. Just in different fields of study (Mysticism vs Legalism)

Perhaps you might want to re-word that to something like "It's not pious vs impious anymore.". It could be viewed as "not pious" vs "not pious".
 
Perhaps you might want to re-word that to something like "It's not pious vs impious anymore.". It could be viewed as "not pious" vs "not pious".
Does the game explicitely use "impious" ? From what I remember of my Tunis run, it said "Lack of piety". But yeah it might be clearer that way. My main point was just that it won't be about how pious you are, but if you're more inclined to Mysticism or Legalism
 
Does the game explicitely use "impious" ? From what I remember of my Tunis run, it said "Lack of piety". But yeah it might be clearer that way. My main point was just that it won't be about how pious you are, but if you're more inclined to Mysticism or Legalism

Not arguing with you just making sure you realize that someone might read that opposite of what you meant to say.
 
Not arguing with you just making sure you realize that someone might read that opposite of what you meant to say.
I'm not arguing either, I think you're right and that's why I edited my post according to your suggestion. I'll probably check if the game uses Impious, but in the meantime I'll stick with your term, it seems clearer that just "Not pious"
 
Good change. It always looked odd to me that you could gain tech bonuses by refusing to defend pilgrims and just being a hedonist. Now I can roleplay a ruler favoring sufism for those bonuses, much better.
 
Seems odd bonuses for mysticism. Mysticism is inherent to the Asharite school of islam which pushed islam away from scientific progress.
Granted at this point in history the Avicennian school has long been abandoned, but still its odd seeing cheaper tech from something related to the abandonment of logic is the islamic world.

But that happened way before the timeline of EUIV. In this time, mysticism would mostly mean various forms of syncretism and cultural flexibility. Things like Akbar's Din-i-Ilahi and sufism.
 
My main point was just that it won't be about how pious you are

If so, why is Mysticism represented with "-80" in the OP's screenshot?

I understand that now it's about the kind of piety, not the possession or lack thereof, but I still don't get why Mysticism must be represented by negative values if there isn't any "negative Piety" anymore!
 
If so, why is Mysticism represented with "-80" in the OP's screenshot?

I understand that now it's about the kind of piety, not the possession or lack thereof, but I still don't get why Mysticism must be represented by negative values if there isn't any "negative Piety" anymore!
I think the Dutch Republic's Orangist vs Statist meter has negative values as well.