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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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I think money and manpower should always come from somewhere, even more so in a game where those resources are so related to everything. Creating manpower from nothing just feels weird
Manpower is actually fine to create because it still comes from your pops. You aren’t really creating new manpower but accelerating the process of getting your existing manpower pool capped out. It’s money that actually gets created from nothing.
 
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Second instance of "Press this button and convert this one slider currency into manpower (and gold in this case too)". Really disliking that, especially since it basically creates the manpower from nothing and doesn't subtract them from someone else.

Please rethink this mechanic, it's way too gamey in an otherwise fantastically looking simulation.
It's never "created", manpower is always pooled from the population
 
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Second instance of "Press this button and convert this one slider currency into manpower (and gold in this case too)". Really disliking that, especially since it basically creates the manpower from nothing and doesn't subtract them from someone else.

Please rethink this mechanic, it's way too gamey in an otherwise fantastically looking simulation.
Manpower is not a resource thats created from nothing, it's more like "job opportunities" that still require pops to fill it. It does not really make a difference if these "opportunities" come from military buildings or special Call to Action.
 
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China, syncretising Mahayana Buddhism, confucianism and local beliefs: Mahayana/Eastern Buddhism
Korea, syncretising Mahayana Buddhism, confucianism and local beliefs: Mahayana/Eastern Buddhism
Vietnam, syncretising Mahayana Buddhism, confucianism and local beliefs: Mahayana/Eastern Buddhism
Japan, syncretising Mahayana Buddhism and local beliefs: Shinto

What is the reasoning for this? Why does the Japanese local syncretism merit a separate religion, but not the Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese local syncretisms? Not even wanting a separate set of religious mechanics works as an excuse, seeing how Hinduism can include multiple mutually exlcusive mechanics under the same religion.
I understand the proposal in mechanic terms to place Shintoism in the Buddhist group, but it still sounds strange since Shintoism is not even considered a Dharmic religion.
Suggestion/idea ---> Thanism for Vietnam, Muism for Korea, Shenism for China, Shintoism for Japan, all these religions and perhaps other eventual religions such as Taoism (they would be grouped in the classification of Taoic religions), "Eastern buddhist/Sinic Mahayana" has a characteristic that makes it tolerant and tolerated by the group of taoic religions, even though it is a dharmic religion. something similar to the tenet mechanics of the bon religion in CK3.View attachment 1316785
 
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I understand the proposal in mechanical terms to place Shintoism in the Buddhist group, but it still sounds strange since Shintoism is not even considered a Dharmic religion.
Well the Buddhist faiths aren't in the Dharmic group anyway, so I don't see how that is an issue.
 
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It's because blood is impure, so if you spill blood you get tainted.

Ok I gotta ask. Is this a legitimate thing on their shintoist doctrine/philosophy/etc, or is this a meme-like implementation like Calvinism's fixed diceroll? Because it honestly sounds a bit puerile for Purity to be literally and only about "being stained by blood".
 
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Well the Buddhist faiths aren't in the Dharmic group anyway, so I don't see how that is an issue.
So if Buddhism is outside the Dharmic group, why not rename the "Buddhist" group to "Eastern" group or something similar, I think it would sound better, even if all the syncretic and historical relationship of buddhism with native religions of the Far East, it would still be wrong to classify these native religions as buddhist.
 
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Ok I gotta ask. Is this a legitimate thing on their shintoist doctrine/philosophy/etc, or is this a meme-like implementation like Calvinism's fixed diceroll? Because it honestly sounds a bit puerile for Purity to be literally and only about "being stained by blood".
It's not made up out of nothing, but I hope they're getting feedback on its accuracy from actual adherents of Shinto (which does not include me, I just happened to see the post).

 
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Manpower is actually fine to create because it still comes from your pops. You aren’t really creating new manpower but accelerating the process of getting your existing manpower pool capped out. It’s money that actually gets created from nothing.
You're true, my bad. But could you please remind me in which step exactly you loose pops in the manpower creation cycle? Cause I didn't understand it well.
For example, if your pool is capped already, with this free manpower can you get a free buffer of manpower for troops that you can loose without loosing pops?
 
You're true, my bad. But could you please remind me in which step exactly you loose pops in the manpower creation cycle? Cause I didn't understand it well.
For example, if your pool is capped already, with this free manpower can you get a free buffer of manpower for troops that you can loose without loosing pops?
The part where your troops die. If your troops never die you'll never loose pops from the army or navy. Units have manpower/sailor upkeep but that represents turnover and we can imagine they're just retired out of the army/navy.
 
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So if Buddhism is outside the Dharmic group, why not rename the "Buddhist" group to "Eastern" group or something similar, I think it would sound better, even if all the syncretic and historical relationship of buddhism with native religions of the Far East, it would still be wrong to classify these native religions as buddhist.
Do you have a list of all the faiths that are included in the Buddhist group? Currently we only have Shinto confirmed (and Therevada, Vajrayana and Eastern Buddhism as reasonable assumptions), which is intrinsically tied to Buddhism in this period. There was pretty much nobody worshipping the Kami who didn't also venerate the Buddha. Unless you can give an example of a faith that is confirmed to be in the Buddhist group but doesn't fit as a branch of Buddhism, then I don't see any reason to rename it.
 
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Ok fair, I kinda overlooked that. Still, the only way your Purity is negatively affected by your actions is by battle because you get physically stained with blood, which seems a very straightforward approach.
I mean is it any more straightforward than becoming impure from say menstruation? That's a typical source of impurity. The linked article mentions that presence to death is a major cause of impurity, but I don't know how exactly that affected people's views of war and battles.
 
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Do you have a list of all the faiths that are included in the Buddhist group? Currently we only have Shinto confirmed (and Therevada, Vajrayana and Eastern Buddhism as reasonable assumptions), which is intrinsically tied to Buddhism in this period. There was pretty much nobody worshipping the Kami who didn't also venerate the Buddha. Unless you can give an example of a faith that is confirmed to be in the Buddhist group but doesn't fit as a branch of Buddhism, then I don't see any reason to rename it.
There is no complete list, at most only "Eastern Buddhism" and "Sanjiao" (three teachings), it is presumed that the other native religions of Korea, Vietnam and China will be grouped in the Buddhist group (by the justification of syncretism), unless they do not exist and will be represented as appendices of the blob of "Eastern Buddhism" or "Sanjiao", but then it would be another problem.
 
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I would like to ask the devs to please consider changing the demand extra payment to something transactional, where the shogun loses, and you gain, it feels too abstracted and rubs me the wrong way.
 
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When I started the TT and saw that there would honor and purity mechanics, which seemed like they could be really interesting, I was thinking Shinto was going to have some of the best religious mechanics in EU5. But as I continued to read the TT and the dev responses, to my dismay I found that this mechanic was just another currency system that isn't tied to our actions in the world very much. The devs can correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope that I am), but it seems that purity is reduced by battles and then simply gained by taking one of these four actions, two of which are just converting another currency (prestige or money) into this purity currency. Having purity allows you to accumulate the second unique currency, honor. In addition, there will be events with choices that reduce/increase the two currencies. These events will probably mostly be random ones, with a few being historical, and based on every past Paradox game I assume both of these event types will have very few triggers and thus won't have anything to do with your actions or the situation in your country. Once you get enough honor, it is then used exclusively as a currency to purchase things, such as CBs, money and manpower, and modifiers.

This could be another one of those things I'm in the minority on, but I was really hoping EU5 would have more nuance and complexity than this. Why can't purity and honor be primarily based off your actions in the game? For example, you would gain honor from acting honorably, such as treating enemies with respect, being loyal and not acting treacherously, being just in the rule of your lands, and honoring calls to arms. The way you fight wars and interact with other daimyos would be the primary influencing factors for gaining honor, rather than your purity being the only factor you can influence outside of events, which is a value that is basically just based on how often you click one of four buttons and pay their costs. The only example of this type of interaction explained in the TT was purity being reduced by battles. While it's debatable whether this makes sense (I noticed in the comments some people don't like it), this is the type of reactivity to the player's actual actions I'd like to see more of.

Once you've accumulated honor due to your actions, this should change the way that other "countries" (daimyos, shogun, the emperor) treat you, making them more likely to ally with you or pledge their loyalty to you. It's fine to have high honor also unlock new actions in the IO, but the idea of "spending" honor to "purchase" these actions comes across as strange to me.

It's also unfortunate to see that prestige is becoming another currency, similar to how it's used in the CK series. It just seems like most of the game's abstract values, such as stability, prestige, and religious influence, are nothing more than currencies for buying instant bonuses and modifiers.
 
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I see that the Shogunate has an Overseas Interaction law that starts as "Opened the Country". Does the other option represent Sakoku isolationism? How limited will it make trading and is there any benefit of it?
 
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