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Tinto Talks #66 - 4th of June 2025

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

Today, we will discuss the mechanics of Islam. In EUV, it is considered a Religious Group, as Christianity or Buddhism:
Islam.png

As usual, please consider all UI, 2D, and 3D art WIP.

As you see, three Religions compose the group: Sunnism, Shiism, and Ibadism:
Sunnism.png

Shiism.png

Ibadism.png

They share similar features, and then inside them is where we make the religious differentiation:
Islam panel.png

The first mechanic is Schools, an old companion from EU4, but that has been reworked in EU5:
Religious School.png

Muslim countries start with a School, which gives some modifiers:
Hanafi.jpg

As you can see, each School has a different view of the other. This is important because you can invite Scholars of Schools that are available for your branch of Islam, and also don’t have a negative opinion of your chosen School.

Because, yes, the old EU4 Scholars are also present in EU5, but they’re now inside a new category, the ‘Religious Figures’, which gives some more flexibility on how to use them:
Religious Figure.jpg

Scholar.png

Scholars are now characters that can travel through the Islamic world and be invited to work for you:
Invite Scholar.png

This unlocks the possibility to change the Main School of your country to that of the Scholar:
Change Main School1.png

Change Main School2.png

Change Main School3.png

In total, we have this number of schools, with some schools being available to more than one religion:
  • 10 Sunni:
    • Ḥanafī
    • Ḥanbalī
    • Mālikī
    • Shāfi'ī
    • Ẓāhirī
    • Ash'arī
    • Māturīdī
    • Aṯarī
    • Mu'tazilī
    • Wahhābī
  • 11 Sufi - Both for Sunni and Shia, except 3:
    • Bektashi
    • Chishtī (only for Sunnism)
    • Ḵalwātī
    • Mevlevi
    • Naqshbandī (only for Sunnism)
    • Qādirī (only for Sunnism)
    • Ṣafavī
    • Shāḏilī
    • Suhrawardī
    • Īsāwī
    • Dīn-i Ilāhī
  • 8 Shia:
    • Ismā'īlī
    • Ja'farī
    • Zaydī
    • Imāmīya
    • Nizārī
    • Musta'lī
    • Alevism
    • 'Alawī
  • 1 Ibadi:
    • Ibadi - only for Ibadi
    • It also has access to all the Sunni and Shia schools, but not the Sufi ones

The main currency for the religion is Piety, again a returning concept from EU4. Piety can go from a value of -100 to +100 (representing Mysticism or Legalism respectively), giving scaling benefits to the country depending on the direction.
Piety.png

Piety will be modified towards one extreme or the other mainly through events, although there are also some ways of adding a passive monthly tendency towards one direction, including privileges and cabinet actions. Another important aspect to mention regarding piety is the fact that to be able to invite a Scholar belonging to any of the Sufi schools, the country must already be leaning towards Mysticism.

There are a couple of actions in which the country can spend its piety to gain some benefits. A country can exchange piety for either stability or manpower, and both actions require being at 50 piety towards either direction, and move the value 40 towards the center.
Manpower Action.png

Stability Action.png

There is also the option to perform a pilgrimage to one of the Holy Sites, as long as they are owned by the country, an ally, or someone with good relations. Performing a pilgrimage will give a small increase in piety, as well as sending the ruler on a holy journey.
Pilgrimage.png

Another important aspect to mention is the fact that Muslim countries have access to some unique laws and policies:
Iqta Law.png

Nikah Policy.png

Shariah Law Policy.png

Implementing the Sharī'ah Law will unlock an extra law, the Sharī'ah Jurisprudence, with policies dependent on the country’s main school.
Shariah Jurisprudence.png

Finally, there are a couple of unique buildings available for Islamic countries:
Madrassa.png

Sufi Loge.png

And that’s all for today! Tomorrow is Thursday, which means that we will publish a new ‘Behind the Scenes’ video, and on Friday, we will take a look at the Ottomans and the Rise of the Turks situation!

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!
 
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We'd like to potentially have the Madhhab and Aqidah schools separated in different categories, because you may notice that we're already covering both types in detail. But that requires some non-trivial code work to make it work as it should, which is why I'm saying potentially.

Regarding orders, we don't really have Catholic religious orders as BBCs, just some Military Orders (Iberian). If, some time in the future, we add religious orders, which is an interesting suggestion, we might think about it. We also had an initial draft of having the Schools as IOs, like with the Hindu branches, but that wasn't really working as we wanted from a design standpoint, so we changed to the current design.

There is no "potentiality" here. As it stands this is not merely inaccurate, it is completely off to be disinformation. It's as if being part of Order of Santiago was exclusive with being part of Roman Rite and you chose one or the other. This is completely off! Honestly it shouldn't require much of a work to just make them subordinate each other as School of Jurisprudence, School of Theology and Creed.

What it should be is simple, it should be a simple order of categories, with a binary selection of availability:

1. Sunni, Shia, Ibadi or Heterodox
2. Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki, Shafi and Ismaili, Jafari, Zaidi respectively for Sunni and Shia, then Heterodox for any of the rest
3. Atari, Ashari, Maturidi, Mu'tazilī, Wahhābī

After all that is selected, the remaining which seem to be orders ought to be distributed as allowed or disallowed and have any which applies be accepted.

For example for Ottomans it would be:

1. Sunni
2. Hanafi
3. Maturidi
4. Naqshibandi, Bektashi, Halveti, Mevlevi, Qalandiriyya

As state religion

While Alevis would be

1. Heterodox
2. Jafari (Twelver)
3. Maturidi
4. Bektashi, Safavi

Safavid state would be:

1. Shia
2. Jafari
3. Usuli
4. Safavi, Qalandiriyya

Current implementation is a disaster and it needs to be rectified this is completely inaccurate to any Islamic belief system and disinformation of Islamic law and thought.
 
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Also I am really not sure about alcohol being blanket banned for all Islamic countries. The precepts of sharia are one thing, the laxness of their application in society (especially before modern times) is totally another. I remember reading that Europeans described Hormuz as a place where drinking and other excesses were common. It looks like the Ottomans allowed it for non-muslims and just taxed it. It seems to have been prominent, if officially marginalized, among the Safavid, Mamluk and Mughal elites as well.
Alcohol was always allowed, it was a sacred right for Christians (Dhimmi) to produce and consume alcohol. Every Caliphate and subsequent Sultanates allowed it. It was only forbidden to bring alcohol out of the Christian quarters (same with pork) or drink or be drunk outside private establishments or private residence (aka in public). This is even the case today, with “Christian quarters” being replaced with designated drinking zones.
 
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Also I am really not sure about alcohol being blanket banned for all Islamic countries. The precepts of sharia are one thing, the laxness of their application in society (especially before modern times) is totally another. I remember reading that Europeans described Hormuz as a place where drinking and other excesses were common. It looks like the Ottomans allowed it for non-muslims and just taxed it. It seems to have been prominent, if officially marginalized, among the Safavid, Mamluk and Mughal elites as well.
To be fair it says that it's forbidden to import alcohol and not consume, produce or export it
 
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I'm curious about how Pilgrimages, if they were deemed a relevant mechanic for Islam, were not also deemed relevant enough to include for Christianity. Are there any particular reasons for this?
I assume because of Hajj (obligatory pilgrimage every Muslim has to do to Mecca at least once if they are able), but the weird thing is this pilgrimage Paradox has made are Umrahs (voluntary pilgrimage to Mecca or another Islamic holy site like Medina or Jerusalem). Umrah is similar to Christian pilgrimages, so yeah weird…
 
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I believe sunni islam should have a caliphate IO.

Twelvers should be able to claim their leader is the mahdi if they have enough 'religious power'.
It was claimed by multiple people. By the 19th century you have 3 sunni (Morocco, Ottoman, Egypt) and 1 shia (Persia) countries claiming the title. It wont work.
 
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I think in general Islam isn't well made yet, I hope it will have a full rework before game is released. It is just EU5 adjusted EU4 islam with only few extras.
Islam is pretty inaccurate in CK3 too with promises of a rework “eventually”, I wouldn’t get my hopes up, but all we can do is provide feedback that they can use I guess.
 
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So the Madhhab you have are: Hanafi, Hanabli, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Zahiri. Picking between them, is good as these are legal matters and a country would have its lawyers trained in that school of law.
The sunni school of thoughts are not about the interpretation of islamic law and more about how everyday religion should be practized. Anyone (sunni) can adjust their life-style to any school of thought on the fly, without changing any religious views.
I don't know if the schools of theology were personal or if they were something that a polity patronized.
They were most definetly patronized, but were still personal in nature.
sufi orders and their various saints should also play a major role in South and South east Asian islam as my understanding is that what helped to spread islam were the sufi orders in those regions. Sufi Saint shrines should be possible to build IMO as pilgrimage sites, IIRC the Chishtī were rather popular among the Mughal emperors and nobility. Akbar visited one of the shrines like over a dozen times IIRC.
Sufis did their own thing. Independent of government involvement. Them being BBCs is fitting. Countries influencing their behaviour not.
what i would probably do is break off the branches all together and have the religions be: Zaydi, Imamiya, and Ismailism(with there being an IO over if you support the Nizari branch or the Musta'li branch), along with having 'Alwai and Alveism as their own separate religions, with a trait or something to reflect that they are shia in origin.
Alevism and Alwai is a mixed bag tbh. In Syria some of them were even more akin to christianity than Islam.
 
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It was claimed by multiple people. By the 19th century you have 3 sunni (Morocco, Ottoman, Egypt) and 1 shia (Persia) countries claiming the title. It wont work.
Shias should not be part of the sunni caliphate anyhow. Egypt did not claim the caliphate either, so the only outlier is morocco.
The caliphate IO could work a bit like orthodox patriarchates were you can reject the current caliph and form your own IO, that would allow Morocco to reject the ottoman caliphate and proclaim themselves as caliphs.
 
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Bringing back the instant manpower buttons was a bad call. Overall a really disappointing dev diary when compared the the 4 Christian dev diaries.

Also is druze not considered part of the Islamic group? I can see why it wouldn't but am curious to how it's defined.
Very much agree about instant manpower. I would love to see a bonus to something like population promotion speed from peasant to soldier as a substitute, where you still get the effect of more manpower but without manpower spontaneously appearing.
 
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AFAIK, all the other "sliders" similar to Piety in game don't have "positive" and "negative" values, but are referred to as "+X toward YYYY". It seems a bit odd that Piety is now +/-, rather than like the other ones. I understand that is how it is in EU4, but it seems out of place compared to the rest of the sliders in EU5.
 
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I believe sunni islam should have a caliphate IO.

Twelvers should be able to claim their leader is the mahdi if they have enough 'religious power'.

Yea, at least that would make them feel seperate as currently all of the mechanics are same for both Shia and Sunni which is lackluster compared to Christianity
 
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Very much agree about instant manpower. I would love to see a bonus to something like population promotion speed from peasant to soldier as a substitute, where you still get the effect of more manpower but without manpower spontaneously appearing.
I agree. Something like "Slacken Recruiting Standards" in EU4 caused you to burn Professionalism. Something that causes you to burn Piety over time to increase stability or grow manpower seems much better than a magic button that makes those things appear.
 
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Not as of now, but we're open to suggestions to potentially add them.
Indirectly related to the concept of Islamic holy orders, I think Granada should be able to benefit from the "Military Sponsorship" feature that holy orders have, in order to represent the flow of North African Soldiers to defend the polity.
 
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Then make them all having their own IO
Which other states might join or leave
Didn't the ottomans only claimed caliphate after conquering the mamluks and their abbasid "shadow caliphate"? I don't think a caliphate IO should be hardcoded to certain tags but dynamic when meeting certain criteria.
 
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