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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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Is the ban on alcohol entirely at the nation level, and only for imports? It seems that it would be more relevant for pops to not consume alcohol, and this change to local demand have impacts on imports, rather than applying at the nation level.

How do alcohol goods work for other pops anyway - is their satisfaction affected by not being able to get the alcohol they demand? Are there buildings that might be active that use alcohol, that would have trouble operating? Do local RGOs for wine stop producing?

And how does all this work for animals products for Jains?
 
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I have a few questions regarding this post
1. Will the food RGO demands declined during Ramadan and how's the Ramadan affect the army qualities (morale,etc) and the supply intake
2. How the pork represented in Islam and judaism in the food RGO
  1. I too would like some dynamic goods needs changes over time!
  2. Pork is abstracted away - even if there was a Pig Farm building, it would just produce Food, perhaps Livestock (Livestock being an abstraction of animals still alive, I would guess)
 
Also its really funny, if druze is not under any of those groups then i dont think alawites and alevis should be either
It seems rather influenced by modern politics. Both druze and alawites are gnostic variations of shia islam, and while druze do deviate further the current set up seems influenced by modern desire of alawite groups to be asociated with muslims and of druze groups to not be asociated with muslims.
 
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Nah, the US has underages getting married too. Wikipedia says there have been a couple cases of 12yos being married, even.

Still, a very weird decision. CK3 has 16yos marrying already, and I can't believe Paradox ever got into trouble for it.

Well PDX can't shrug their shoudlers and go "Let's have 12 year olds marry" because people do it illegally (the US legal age is at minimum 18; if Mormons or the like marry before that age the State still deems it illegal.

I wouldn't give this any thought if the age had been 18, even 16 is fine in accordance with CK and history - is there some clause on Steam that rules lower ages out, perhaps?
 
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The caliph is not the equivalent of the pope.
1) what the role of the caliph ?
2) is there a plausible alt-history where the calif would centralize religious power in some way ? ; if there is a caliph IO it should give some goal to work towards, even if it's something only good players could achieve consistently.
 
I'm less irritated by the "exchange piety for manpower button" game design for being instant than I am it being a board game mechanic complete out of place in a simulationist game.

What's being modelled here is the pretty standard historical trope of inspiring people to take part in a war through fervent appeal to religion, which should definitely be part of the game. But what does "piety" model here – the state/ruler's adherence with orthodox religious beliefs and practices? Why would officially endorsing a religious war *decrease* this – is Ibrahim Peasant thinking to himself "Wow, that speech stirred up my religious zeal enough to motivate me to sacrifice my life for Allah. Shame I immediately trust my Emir's religious sincerity less now"?

I understand from a game design perspective you're a) modelling the requirement for a certain level of religious credibility to motivate people into a religious war – if a ruler is seen as a corrupt cynic people will doubt his motives, and b) preventing players from just spamming the button mindlessly, but there are far more interesting ways to do this that add rather than reduce depth.

Sure, you can inspire religious zeal to win a war in the short term, but this should have potentially dangerous effects on your society. What if it increase the power of your religious scholars, making them potentially important enough to demand you break an alliance with a strategically important Christian ally? What if it increased fanaticism and intolerance, causing valuable minority pops like Armenian and Jewish traders and advisors to flee to more tolerant countries? What if it inspired radical religious rebels who didn't think you were going far enough to start building power?

The abstract mana system here is just an incredibly poor fit from what you're modelling here, and incentives really bizarre false choices with incredibly counter-intuitive outcomes. This isn't even getting into modelling sects of Shia Islam and Sunni jurisprudence schools as equivalent, interchangeable "pick your favourite colour for an arbitrary 10% bonus" non-mechanics. It's like if being Christian let you switch from Anabaptist to Livonian Order in exchange for +10% trade efficiency.

Just a really disappointing lack of thought, curiosity, and care put into what was one of the single most influential forces in this time period.
 
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Blame the US, I guess. In Sweden and Spain you can get married at 18.
In the US you can get married at 18 too tho, with the exception of the state of Mississippi....
 
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Well PDX can't shrug their shoudlers and go "Let's have 12 year olds marry" because people do it illegally (the US legal age is at minimum 18; if Mormons or the like marry before that age the State still deems it illegal.

I wouldn't give this any thought if the age had been 18, even 16 is fine in accordance with CK and history - is there some clause on Steam that rules lower ages out, perhaps?

As I understand it from the wiki article, those marriages were legal. There is a per-state general minimum age but a bunch of them used to have lower or no minimum age for the exceptions.

And still, CK3 lets you murder children. Steam greenlights games where you have sex with furry Hitler. Now a 16yo marrying someone in a modern era game - a game in which you can enslave entire peoples - is too much?
 
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Sunnism.png

A) Yeah but what about Bosinaks and Albanians they did not stop consuming and importing alcohol after converting.
B) Alawites shoud be a separate group from shia just like reformed and protestants are separate groups.
 
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In the US you can get married at 18 too tho, with the exception of the state of Mississippi....
Mississipi actually seems to have a very outdated view of marriage, 21 is the age to marry without parental permition, but with parental permission there literally is no minimum age.
That latter part also applies in California and a couple of other states.
Screenshot_20250604_202535_Chrome.jpg
 
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Should the different Shia sects really be represented as the same religion? My understanding is that there was a lot less unity between them than between the different Sunni schools, and that they would actively see each otheras heretics to be converted.

Also, I think the mysticism vs legalism thing should be made into a national value bar available for Muslim countries. It's pretty much the same concept, so it just muddles things by splitting it off as a separate mechanic.
 
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Those Sunni School all more like real schools, but Shiia are more denomination same as Lutheranism, Calvinist, Catholic etc. Alawi and Alevi are same style gnostic groups than "Christian" Kathars, bogomolist, Bosnian Church etc..
 
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Not a fan of:
1-Using piety as a currency to exchange for anything (maybe you can get temporary over time modifiers)
2- the islamic school mixup (legal vs theological)
3- special bonuses for being in a specific school/islamic religion
4- this is minor but Sharia law should be either Islamic law or sharia, because sharia law kinda sounds like “law law”
 
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By the way I think calling it Piety is a bad idea. Every religion has piety, every religion could "gain manpower" or "improve stability" if pious (and unpious?) enough. At least Karma is Dharmic-centric and something that does exist in their doctrine.

Actually no nevermind, what does the entire mechanic even mean in EUV? We already have societal values. We have Sufi orders (as Schools). We have the islamic clergy as an Estate. What is being covered by Piety when I say "The Ottoman Empire has -70 Piety"?
 
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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.
I'm not opposed to sliders (qualitative spectrum for country) working this way, they could call decentralization vs centralization just negative vs positive centralization, but it doesn't make sense in this case for piety. Is this saying that mystics are not pious? I thought that maybe piety meant something different in an Islamic interpretation, but after reading the Wikipedia page (hey its something) it doesn't seem to make sense to say that being impious would mean being mystic.
 
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Mysticism and Legalism represent Sufism and Salafism, if I am not mistaken.
Won't it be better to use these terms since EU5 is going to be more historically accurate?
Mysticism and sufism in Islam are largely equatable, but there exist non-Sufi 'mystical' elements too (although strictly defining mysticism is icky). Salafism a very specific branch or school of thought that would be considered a form of legalism, but that's way broader. I think these terms are pretty fine as-is as they represent broader movements and ideas rather than specific ones
 
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