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Tinto Talks #63 - 14th of May 2025

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Wednesdays where we talk about Europa Universalis V!

Today, we will be taking a look at three of the religions born in India: Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism, which in the game are part of the Dharmic religion group:
Dharmic.jpg

As usual, take all UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.

So let’s start by taking a look at the religious divide of India at the start of the game, in 1337:
Indian Religions.jpg

We now have an interesting feature when in the religious map mode, as by hovering over a certain religion in the religious breakdown, you can check the religious spread and heatmap of that said religion. So let’s check Hinduism and Jainism, as both are present in 1337:
Hinduism spread.jpg

Jainism spread.jpg

You also have these tooltips with the most important characteristics and the flavour of each religion, as we saw in previous Tinto Talks.



Hinduism

Hinduism1.jpg

Hindu Panel.jpg

The first thing to talk about is the Hindu branches, which appear as an icon and action in the panel:
Hindu Branch1.jpg

There are four branches in Hinduism, and each one is represented through an International Organization. Here you can see all:
Hindu Branches.jpg

When you click on a Hindu IO, each has its own panel:
Hindu Branch3.jpg

In ‘Agenda’ (which is a common building block for different religions), you have a religious law set for each branch, that defines its mechanics:
Hindu Laws.jpg

This is the one for Vaishnavism:
Hindu Laws2.jpg

Vaishnavism2.jpg

Don't you love nested tooltips? Because we do!

It allows the country to activate as many as 3 Avatars of the god Vishnu, depending on having access to one of its holy sites:
Activate Avatar.jpg

And each avatar has different modifiers attached to it:
Narasimha.jpg

Captura de pantalla 2025-05-14 125751.jpg

Matsya.jpg

Shaivism:
Shaivism.jpg

Self Control.jpg

You can gain or lose Self Control by performing these actions, and also some random events:
Self Control Actions.jpg

Perform Yoga.jpg

Indulge in Feasts.jpg

Discard Wordly Possesions.jpg

Indulge in Bloodbath.jpg

Shaktism:
Shaktism.jpg

This only allows you to have 1 Avatar active at any time of 10 possible, 5 in peace times and 5 in war times. By declaring war or stopping being at war makes you change from an avatar of one category to an avatar of the other. These avatars are randomly assigned, but you can change/reroll them using the Change Avatar action. The main difference with Vaishnavism is that you don’t need to have access to a holy site:
Avatar.jpg

Change Avatar.jpg

Change Avatar2.jpg

Candi.jpg

And Smartism:
Smartism.jpg

In Smartism, you want to have all 5 gods favored equally, or otherwise they will give you negative modifiers. You can favor one over the others, though, to get more benefits from that one, at the cost of getting these negative modifiers from the others:
Smartism.jpg

Smartism2.jpg

Favor God.jpg

Favor God2.jpg

Ganesa.jpg



Jainism
Jainism.jpg

Santara is the only country that starts with Jainism as its state religion.

Jainism starts with interesting features, as seen in the previous tooltip, of which the disallowance to declare wars without a Casus Belli might be the most striking one, as portraying the peaceful and self-defensive nature of this religion. On top of that, they also have a kind of similar behavior to Shaivism, with the addition of the Karma mechanics on top of it:
Jainism panel.jpg

Karma1.jpg

Karma2.jpg



Sikhism

Sikhism is a religion that is not present at the start of the game, but it will be able to appear after 1509 in a country that is either Hindu or Muslim, with locations of the other religion. If that happens, the following event will trigger:
Sikhism starting event.png

That will not only enable the religion and convert some pops, but will also create a unique building, the Gurgaddi, to serve as the seat of a newly created building-based country led by the Guru himself. The second option of the event allows you to convert to the newly created religion, while the third option allows you to continue playing as the newly created Sikh country.
Sikhism event b.png

Sikhism event c.png

Gurgaddi.png

Sikhism.png

The new country will have a unique government reform, with a unique heir selection making it so that basically only the gurus are able to be the rulers of it.
Guru Leadership.png

When Sikhism appears, it will also create a new IO, and the first guru will cement its bases. There will be further events for each of the historical Sikh gurus, and each subsequent guru that appears will add to that IO, configuring the religion with further teachings.
Guru teachings.png

Teachings policies.png

All Guru Teachings 1.png

All Guru Teachings 2.png


A final common feature for all of them are Holy Sites. There are several different holy sites for all religions and (and branches, in the case of Hinduism):
Vaishnavism Holy Sites.jpg

Holy Sites.jpg

These are examples of holy sites associated with the Vaishnavism branch of Hinduism.

And that’s all for today! We will continue taking a look at the Indian content this Friday, with a Tinto Flavour for the Sultanate of Delhi, and on Monday, with the Tinto Maps Feedback for the region of India. And next Wednesday, @SaintDaveUK will be hosting the Tinto Talks, with the topic being Unit Graphics. Cheers!
 
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I'm surprisingly happy with most of this portrayal. I was expecting to have a lot more issues with it!

That said, I still have a couple. First and foremost is the exclusion of Buddhism from the Dharmic group. This is perhaps another of many symptoms pointing to the underlying issues with the way non-Therevada Buddhism is being portrayed as a collection of different beliefs in China despite it being a movement not particularly tied to Confucian beliefs outside of China, Korea and Vietnam. (I'll save most of my issues brewing with 'Eastern Buddhism' for an appropriate thread.)

Regardless, Buddhism as a whole is an Indian-origin religion, typically considered among the Dharmic traditions, and shares more with the beliefs in this thread than any other. It's just plain incorrect to exclude them, but I'd hope that at the very least there are fairly equal opinions between Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and Sikhs, as if they were in the same grouping. Is that the case?

(Edit: I see now that there are gamerules and mechanics relating to how conversion treats religions in the same or different groups, so it's more than just a 'religion in same group' opinion modifier issue, now. Now the mechanics are treating it as totally separate to the point of conversion rules treating it differently to the other Dharmic religions. This has to be fixed)

Hindu:
  • I notice that you have monasteries on the Jain screen, but not the Hindu screen. Is that intended? Both traditions have a deep history with monasticism.
Sikhi:
  • Would you consider using the term Sikhi rather than Sikhism? It's the typically preferred term, and the '-ism' is something many Sikhs take issue with on a theological basis.
  • Are there are any mechanics around the 10th guru proclaiming the 11th to be the Guru Granth Sahib, the last and everliving Guru, or something similar?
  • I assume it's tied to the guru mechanics, but are there mechanics around the founding of the Khalsa and the Sant Sipahi?
  • How is the gender equality professed by the faith represented? Are women more likely to become leaders, or similar?
  • How is conversion handled? Sikhs actively discourage proselytizing or trying to convert others. They hold that Sikhi does not hold universal truth and should not be imposed. All of the Dharmic beliefs should have a lesser emphasis on trying to convert others, but this is especially true here. I'd hope that upon its appearance, there's a regional modifier for popular conversion, rather than proselytizing, but otherwise conversion should largely be passive and slow - in return they'd have a very high tolerance of other faiths.
Jainism:
  • Are the dietary restrictions followed by Jains represented mechanically? For example by having pops not demand meat products?
  • Describing Jain non-violence as 'self-defensive' is incorrect. All violence is seen as unacceptable, even if done in defense of the self. It very reluctantly changed to allow violence to protect the faith (Temples, particularly), and to protect the helpless, but there should be mechanics to discourage even defensive war and encourage ending any wars very quickly (Such as growing internal pressure after a few months, unless a holy site is targeted)
 
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Do any of the faiths force you to have a specific liturgical language like Sanskrit? If that's the case then please put it in the description of every religion that does this, like Latin for catholics and Arabic for muslims
 
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Shouldn't Hindusism(and maybe other religions too) have modifiers that slow down pop promotion to represent the caste system?
 
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A bit of a tangent, but did you consider having the "cannot declare war without CB" extended / adapted for intra christian conflicts ? Especially having catholics / HRE princes be at least risking an imperial ban / an excomunication if they decided to do it to the same faith anyway ? (So not "per se" a full FORBIDDEN for war without CB, but at least a heavy incentive against)
 
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Question to @Pavía. Not really related to this Tinto EU5 Talk, but I have a question some players would like to hear the answer to, if You can talk about it now, of course.
Since EU5 is finally unveiled, will EU4 receive any update (not necessarily a big one) in the meantime as we wait for the successor, kind of like last hurrah? Are you allowed to confirm or deny that?

EDIT: Since people misunderstand, as I said, by update in question I do not mean expansion, it can even be small changes/bugfixes.
fixing random crashes which (still) occur on MacOS version would be something I (and probably all Mac players) would really appreciate. It can get very annoying sometimes
 
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One issue I have with the UI that I would love to see improved on is the generic looking pages for religion and IOs. It's immediately obvious to me in EU4 that I'm looking at the Celestial Empire, not to mention that it looks beautiful.
It builds immersion and creates a sense of uniqueness and feeling that you're in a different culture.
Comparatively EU5 feels bland, and you really notice that it's a copy and paste formula.
We are going to be looking at these for a long long time...


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For EU5 that's supposedly not too character centric the interaction for the Dharmic religions here is kinds out of place. Would you consider changing it into more of society one? Say:
Perform Yoga -> Promote Yoga
Indulge in feast -> Popularize Feasts
Discard worldly possession -> Encourage Voluntary Poverty
Indulge in bloodbath -> Applaud Soldiers' Bloodbath
 
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They made Hinduism the "choose a god, get boons" religion again, but this time with appreciated extra steps.
 
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That’s some damn tasty flavor
 
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