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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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In know the term "Mana" regarding EU and GSG in general is a bit tired, but the concept of using Piety (or any religious/spiritual "ressource") as a spendable currency is literally mana - a magical substance wishing things into existence. That's not how being devout works irl.
If anything Piety should be a scale increasing or decreasing depending on "virtous" (or "sinful") actions and decisions you take but not by spending God points to buy stuff. In game mechanics this could mean the level of Piety influencing legitimacy, prestige, estate satisfaction, foreign opinion, stability etc depending on various factors like religion, rovernment, culture, reforms, laws...

The same would actually apply to Prestige as well.
 
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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.
Wholeheartedly agree. I believe the increased pace of dev diaries as well as the reveal that this game is going to come out sooner rather than later is causing some serious internal crunch where there's no longer any time to re-imagine or change features from EUIV that don't fit into EUV's more simulationist vision. Instead devs might be scrambling to borrow any flavor and mechanics they can from EUIV to fluff out areas that otherwise would be severely lacking in mechanics and flavor compared to EUIV. I hope that I'm wrong about this, but the last couple of dev diaries has made me worried this is the case.
 
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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.
Idk man ive seen alevis trying hard to disassociate themselves with the shiites even though they technically are but you are right mostly
 
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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.
Idk man ive seen alevis trying hard to disassociate themselves with the shiites even though
Gain 'manpower' and 'Increase Stability' needs more flavourful names. Otherwise it will feel more 'gamey'.
How about "summon the faithful out of thin air subhanallah" ? Sounds like a fitting name for this mechanic
 
since Sunnism and Shiism are 2 main branch of Islam, the design and color of both of them are important! I think the Shiism symbol needs to be changed! in my book it should be the same as sunnism (not rotated to the top) just like EU 4, and since sunnism's color is yellow it can be green (red is not appropriate)
 
How strong is the prohibition on alcohol in-game? Early Hanafi jurisdiction wasn't too strict on it yet, although I'm not sure how far things progressed in the EU5 period. Like, poets like Rumi openly celebrated the benefits of alcohol, and in Iran at least wine was drunk openly before the Islamic Revolution.

Also even if a religion teaches something, it is not necessarily followed (Reading about pre-Saud Mecca is very interesting).

Good to keep in mind the Islam of history is not the same as nowadays with puritanical ideology coming up in reaction to 19th-20th century colonization.
 
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It should say "Gain Manpower in exchange for decreasing our Piety" just a slight typo.
It is correct technically, because it lowers Piety if it's positive (in Legalism) and increases it if it's negative (in Mysticism). It's not very intuitive, though
 
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Again, religious schools are a very disappointing missed opportunity to have an actual impact on your society (societal values, estates...)
And religious bonuses are kind of out of place and unjustified, what makes Sunnis better at trading than Shias ? What makes Shias have higher moral ? Isn't it even just a little bit problematic to essentialize religions this way, especially when your game has better tools to represent how each religions has an impact on society.
Also, knowing that the developers have openly stated that they didn't want to make this game about modifier stacking, aren't all these unjustified modifiers counterproductive ?
 
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I don't like the mechanic to ban imports. Muslin pops should just not consume those goods, but countries that have other religions should still be able to import them. It makes no sense for Sardinia or Cyprus to not be able to import wine just because they are part of a Muslin market. It is unrealistic. I would just make muslin pops not demand those goods so markets that have a very high Muslin population would not have a high demand for them.
 
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Idk man ive seen alevis trying hard to disassociate themselves with the shiites even though they technically are but you are right mostly
Well that's because you are talking about alevis and I'm talking about alawites :p. Not too familiar with alevis, but the alawites desire to be recognized as muslims is tied to the Al-Assad rise to power in Syria, which led to calls to depose the infidels ruling over muslims amongst the sunni population. This led to the Al-Assad family looking to get recognized as true muslims to look for legitimacy, eventually getting Khomeini to recognize alawis as a subsection of twelvers (which makes no sense, as, if anything they would be a subsection of ismailis, much like the druze, but you know, politics...).
 
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I really don't understand why EU4 mechanics were ported for Islam as-is when other facets of the game saw huge revisions that added new, deeper, more interesting and historically accurate systems.
The amount of innovative systems in the Orthodoxy dev diary compared to here is glaring. This is why people are complaining about it being gamey - in EU4 we were used to gamey mana systems, but we came to expect more out of EU5.
Is EU5 being rushed?

We haven't even seen an IO for Islam, and Islam is a very obvious religion to have IOs for.
 
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since Sunnism and Shiism are 2 main branch of Islam, the design and color of both of them are important! I think the Shiism symbol needs to be changed! in my book it should be the same as sunnism (not rotated to the top) just like EU 4, and since sunnism's color is yellow it can be green (red is not appropriate)
The shia symbol probably should be the Zulfiqar sword, the sword of Ali over the ottoman star and crescent.
 
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It is correct technically, because it lowers Piety if it's positive (in Legalism) and increases it if it's negative (in Mysticism). It's not very intuitive, though
Oh didn't even notice it, but then it should preferably be dynamic since it does currently say -40 piety, hence, you do loose piety currently.
 
I don't understand what manpower modifiers are supposed to represent. I thought that manpower came from soldier pops and was used to build units, and then when those units take casualties the pops will lose an equal amount of people. So how do you get more manpower, i.e. more people, from the same amount of soldier pops?
 
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