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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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Now for Jainism questions and comments. I just have two comments.

1.) will Jainism vegetarian policy be reflected? Jainism is one of the factors that has helped to promote vegetarianism throughout india, notably in Gujarat. I would make Jain pops make fruits and vegetables more valued in the market and meat products to not be valued, thus affecting the price.

2.) You should probably just remove "encourage bloodbath" for jainism. Yes its greyed out but even seeing it kind of makes little sense. or is that tied to the mechanic as a whole?
 
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Actually no wait, I'm a bit confused.

Vishnu gets +3 enabled avatars (so you get more modifiers), but you need holy sites
Shiva gets Self Control (and no avatars)
Shakti gets 5 peace and 5 war avatars (you only choose one), but you don't need holy sites
Smartism gets five gods and you can either balance them out or favor one of them

So, like. Why is this a single religion? There is clearly a case for differing them.

Just to iterate on this, imo it doesn't make sense to justify it on the population ("pops don't focus on a single branch, that's more the ruler/government"). Indian people aren't more prone to syncretism or to not strictly follow their religion's preachings. This should be dealt with at the religion level: all the four branches could be separate religions with more intra-tolerance (either to outsider religions or to Jainism/Sikhism); the pops would mingle as much as this tolerance (and the country's) would allow, just like it is with other religions.

A case could be made that these branches are the Dharmic equivalent to real-life Christian denominations but ehhh... we're talking about actual Gods with different rituals and morals etc here, it makes them more discrete groupings than the differences between, say, Anabaptists and Methodists imo. Then again, I *do* also think the Lutheran/Calvinist religions could be split up a bit more in-game, so maybe it's just a design disagreement.


I also agree with everyone complaining these bonuses feel cheesy/too ruler-centric. At the very least, change the action descriptions in Shaivism to be about the pops doing them, and then maybe tie everything more to Societal Values.
 
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1747233678372.png

How does the religious attitude system tie into all of this? I don't think we've seen it for over a year, in fact is it still in the game? We see 3 separate attitudes here and we know that it ranges from Kindred-Enemy, but how many different attitudes are there in total. Also, now that there's 100s of Pagan faiths, will they all just be treated as a 'Pagan group' for attitude purposes (with exceptions).

As a final note, can you please show a list of attitudes in all the Tinto Talks on religions. Such as including a list of Hinduism's attitude towards every religion/religious group; same goes for Sikhism and Jainism in this talk. Also can we please in future get attitude lists and also see the lists for all the faiths that have already been covered? Pretty please?
 
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I wonder if there will be (if not at release, then in a potential thematic DLC about India) the opportunity to create Din-i Ilahi - a syncretic faith, as OTL Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great did in the late 16th century?
 
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There are Saint Thomas Christians in SW India at the start, I showed in yesterday's TF comments a screenshot of them.
What religion are they? Nestorian?
 
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Indonesian Hinduism
As mentioned above I am not sure where Indonesian hinduism fits on the tradition system. Of the branches though my understanding is that Indonesian Hinduism syncretizes with Buddhism far more than the others. Hence why the various empires that formed are sometimes called hindu-buddhist empires. But Buddha is only an avatar of Vishnu in the details shown here. So I am curious to how the syncretism that occured here will be reflected.
The Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms often have mix of followers of both religion in their courts. Rulers also make use the other religion's clergy as way of legitimizing their rule and earn support. On societal level people's belief is syncretized af. Most Moslem, Hindu, and Buddhist still worship local deity and combined many religions practices in their way of worship.

Syncretism is big thing in Southeast Asia, hopefully it can be represented. But yeah, messy...
 
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I don't think representing the gurus with a model is a very good idea, it's generally considered taboo to show them moving, though a still image is fine. The sikh content apart from that looks good, though I think it should be restrained to just Northern India for spawning
 
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View attachment 1298671
Do any of these faiths have unique mechanics and what group do they belomg to?
those religions are the various tribal religions of India. Some of them are completly separate from Hinduism, mostly the north east traditons. However it becomes a tad more complicated when it comes to the faiths like Sarnism and Koyapunem as they do draw from Hinduism, but are also their own thing. Personally I would make them part of the dharmic religious group to reflect this shared connection.
 
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I'm not a big fan of "perform Yoga"...

We are playing as the  country, aren't we? So who is performing the Yoga? It is implied that this means that everybody from the country must gather and perform Yoga together.

Is there no better option here?
 
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I'd prefer if you make sure it pretty much always starts in Punjab tbh. The religion has always been strongly tied to Punjab and the Punjabi people.
Seeing Sikhi in Java as Majapahit was bit icky in EU4... Spread of it to Southeast Asia should be possible, but perhaps not as place it got birthed.
 
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Screenshot_20250514_170813_Wikipedia.png

Small suggestion, but since the Mizo faith has been added, and you seem to have a preference for calling pagan religions something other than just the name of the culture, it could be named "Sakhua"
 
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