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Tinto Talks #67 - 11th of June 2025 - Shinto and Shogunate

Hello, and welcome to another issue of happy Wednesdays Tinto Talks. Today, we will be taking a look at the mechanics for Shintō and the Shogunate.

Let’s start with the religion. In EUV, it is part of the Buddhist religious group:
Shinto Tooltip.png

Shinto Panel.png

As you can see, Shintō has two currencies: Honor and Purity. Besides being modified through events and the actions we’ll talk about in a bit, one thing to note is that fighting in battles will decrease your purity (due to the fact that blood is considered impure). Having high purity will allow the accumulation of honor, which will be able to be used for other actions, while having low purity would make people perceive you as an Oni on Earth, which may also have its benefits.
Purity.png

The different actions in the panel are ways of regaining purity, from the more simple ones of spending prestige or money for a cleansing ritual or a pilgrimage respectively, to the more expensive ones of offering a work of art or even the life of the ruler.

Besides these actions, the religion also features an International Organization, where countries can interact with the different factions present there. At start, there are three factions present: the Imperial Court, the Shogunate Court, and the Religious Sects, although more factions can appear in the future related to some other religious followers…

Each faction has some actions available, at the cost of honor, although not all the factions will be available to all countries. For example, if you are at war with the current Shōgun, you will not be able to access the actions of the shogunate court, for obvious reasons.
Shinto IO.png

Expansion Action.png

Demand Extra Payment.png

Appease Temples.png

Some of the actions of the Religious Sects will allow the country to interact with the mechanics of other Buddhist religions, but you will have to wait for future Tinto Talks for an explanation on those.

Shintō also gives access to some unique advances, like for example:
Matsuri.png

Nanto Rokushu.png

Shinbutsu.png

Kagura.png

Hachiman Worship.png

Let’s now move to talk about the Shogunate, which is present in the game as an International Organization:
Shogunate Tooltip.png

Shogunate.png

There is currently a bug with the ruler’s name not appearing in the proper order, it will be fixed.

There’s two types of special statues in the Shogunate International Organization: the Sugo and the Emperor (or Emperors in this case, more on that on Friday). The Emperor is the one that is “technically” the ruler of Japan (although the one actually in charge is the shōgun), while the Shugo are provincial governors, giving them some nice bonuses.
Shugo.png

There’s an action for the shōgun to either grant or revoke the governorship of a province, while the individual clans also have the option of basically becoming a de-facto shugo if they manage to establish enough presence in a particular province.
Shogunate Laws and Actions.png

However, these actions will only be available as long as the Shogunate itself has the appropriate law, and will be disabled once it centralizes control.
Residence Law.png

Becoming the leader of the Shogunate is something that is not granted, and instead it has to be earned. The first step to take is to obtain the backing of the imperial court, with the action Become Shōgun of the Imperial Court faction in the Sintō IO:
Become Shogun.png

This will grant a modifier directly to the ruler (not the country), and a casus belli to declare war on the current leader of the shogunate. If the war is declared and won while still having the same ruler, a special peace treaty can be enacted forcing the change of leadership.

And that is all for today. Tomorrow we have the ‘Behind the Music of Europa Universalis V - Composing the Grandest Score’ video, and on Friday we will be back with a further look at flavor content for Japan (and the Japanese clans), as well as the situations of the Nanbokucho and Sengoku Jidai. See you there.

And remember, Wishlist Europa Universalis V now!
 
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1. I get that we can become a Shogun, but is there a way to depose the Emperor and install our own family as one?
2. How expensive is to make overly powerful Daimyo to off themselves and does it lead to revolts?
3. Is there a price for Seppuku, is it always available and do you have a way to stop us from abusing it?
1. We'll talk about that on Friday.
2. There's no option to force another country's ruler to commit seppuku
3. There's a stability hit
 
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The shogunate could have events for banning (like the shogun at the start did) and allowing tea ceremonies and funding the art of the tea ceremony, for example through holding tea ceremonies with loyal vassals, commissioning tea vessels, funding tea masters and building tea rooms :)
 
I also assume the ikko-ikki are one of the "other religious followers" that can generate more factions.
 
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Will unique forms of Buddhism (such as Shingon, which was an esoteric Vajrayana school, or the various Pure Land sects who were influential in Japan throughout this era) be portrayed as different religions from Shinto, or would all strands of Buddhism be included under the Shinto banner?
We'll talk about this when we talk about the Buddhist mechanics.
 
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Most of these mechanisms are quite good. However, categorising Shinto under Buddhism feels as awkward to me as grouping Haitian Vodou under Christianity. Couldn’t we establish a separate category for Shinto alone, assuming all other factors—such as its relationship with various Buddhist sects—remain unchanged? Perhaps it’s just my obsessive tendencies…
 
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I hope that the Daimyos flags are still WIP, the mons look fine but there are too many flags with black mon on white background and vice versa I hope you keep adding colours(preferibly based on their map colour like in EU4), it shouldn't be a problem since most clans didn't have specific ones
 
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This formulation of a dichotomy between Buddhism and Shinto practices is wildly out of place for the time period. This is literally just Japanese imperial project post-Meiji to conceptualize Emperorship in religious terms and create an imperial cult around person of emperor separate from Buddhist leanings of the educated clergy. The religion should also probably be called Shinto-Buddhism since putting just Shinto in the Buddhist group is not accurate.

Any sort of "favoring" of "Buddhism vs. Shinto" should rather be favoring the court scholars vs. favoring the rural temples.
yeah I was kinda shocked at that. The idea of having "honor" as a currency also struck me as stereotyping.
 
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