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Tinto Talks #71 - 9th of July 2025

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

Today, we will talk about the Tonal religions! This is a religious group that covers the Mesoamerican religions:

Tonal Religions.jpg

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



Nahua Ritualism

Let's start with Nahua Ritualism, which is the religion in the group that has more detailed features:
Nahua Ritualism.jpg

This is the panel of the religion:
Nahua Panel1.jpg

Nahua Panel2.jpg

Let’s start with the core mechanic of the Nahua Ritualism, an old EU4 friend, Doom:
Doom.jpg

Doom2.jpg

Doom3.jpg

As you can see, Doom accumulates over time, and the bigger the country is, the more Doom it accumulates. It can be mitigated either by performing some mechanics, such as killing enemies and looting locations, or by some of the Religious Actions. But there’s only one way of completely escaping from it, which is Reforming the religion. This can be achieved by passing by enough Religious Focuses, the former EU4 ‘Reforms’:
Religion Focuses.jpg

These Focuses are a necessary pain, as they give a debuff to your country while they’re active, but you need to accumulate some of them to be able to reform the religion. Here you have some of them.
Elevate God.jpg

Gods1.jpg

Gods2.jpg


Establish Cihuacoatl.jpg


Institute the Flower Wars.jpg


Raise Sacrifice Rate.jpg

Raise Sacrifice Rate2.jpg

These are the available Religious Actions:
Appease Gods.jpg


Host a Ceremony.jpg


War Path.jpg

Flower Wars.jpg

The last action, Reform Society, allows to Reform the religion when enough Religious Aspects have been enforced, but it has a big con: It triggers a disaster, 'Reform Society', which needs to be resolved to become a 'Reformed Nahuatl Society':
Reform Society.jpg

Reform Society Disaster.jpg

Reformed Nahuatl Society.jpg

Reformed Nahua Ritualism.jpg



Maya Ritualism

Let’s talk now about another of the Tonal religions - Maya Ritualism:
Maya Religion Panel.png

Different from Nahua Ritualism, Maya Ritualism doesn’t have any Doom, but centers instead around the concept of the K’atun.
Katun.png

The mechanic revolves around preparing for the K’atun celebrations every 20 years in the game. The player needs to invest resources using the different actions to raise the country’s preparations for the K’atun, measured with the Religious Influence currency.

The country can choose between three degrees of intensity in their preparations, and that will impact the effects they get while preparing for it.
Katun modifier.png

The K’atun will happen on the actual dates according to the historical Maya calendar, so the first one to encounter once the game starts will be in September 1342, with the following ones occurring every 19.7 years (so they will not always be on the same month). Once the K’atun finishes, the country will get an event with different outcomes depending on how much preparation they have been able to accomplish, as well as resetting the value of preparation back to 0.
Katun event.png

Katun bad option.png

Katun celebrated.png

Katun well celebrated.png

Besides the normal preparations, other additional actions can contribute to the gain of Religious Influence:
Maya Sacrifice.png

Maya Pilgrimage.png

The religion also has other ways to spend the Religious Influence before the end of the K’atun comes, although at the risk of not being fully prepared when it does.
Maya Celebration.png

The modifier granted by the celebration will be different depending on the date on which the ceremony is hosted, varying according to the historical Uinal.

Same as Nahua Ritualism, Maya Ritualism also has gods, some of them are actually the same ones with different names (so we have dynamic naming for gods). For example, Quetzalcōātl and Kukulkan are the same god with dynamic naming.
Mayan Gods.png



Tonal
This mechanics for gods is common to all Tonal religions, as well as many of the Folk Religions. We can now show the religion we have decided to call Tonal, namesake of the Tonal group, gathering under its umbrella beliefs related to those of the Nahua and Maya, but still distinct.
Tonal Panel.png

Tonal Gods.png

The gods of a country of these religions are always present for the countries, but the countries can choose a Religious Aspect to worship a specific god as their patron, doubling the effects of such a god.
Tonal Aspects.png

And that’s all for today! We will come back on Friday, as we will talk in Tinto Flavour about the Aztecs!

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!
 

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And that’s all for today! We will come back on Friday, as we will talk in Tinto Flavour about the Aztecs!

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!
One thing I thought was sorely lacking from the Meso-American flavor in EU4 was too narrow a focus on retaining the native religions. I get that strategy gamers find bloodthirsty human sacrifice to be meme-y (lets not forget we’ve made Crusader Kings infamous for all sorts of depravity). At the same time:
- human sacrifice is just plain inefficient (no reward, demographic and economic insanity)
- historically, whenever societies had a way “out” of human sacrifice, they took it. Not necessarily willingly, but the number of people sacrificing was always smaller than the number of potential sacrificees.

I’d really like for there to be a way for one of the pre-Columbian societies to embrace the faith(s) of the old world colonial powers, and have some actual flavor for doing so. Think about how much fun you could have with Protestant Maya and Catholic Aztecs.
 
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These events imply that they involve sacrificing slaves, but don't actually say they do in the UI, only saying "more clergy power" and "-10 doom". Are slaves being sacrificed when you do these things?
 
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1752067393793.png

With the negation this is difficult to understand I find, does this mean that we must have between -100 and -80 centralization, or on the contrary, have between -80 and 100 centralization?
 
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Hm, this is alright. I would suggest an opinion bonus to having the same cult, including equivalent deities across religions. These three religions shouldn't have much of an opinion malus to each other, as the Mesoamerican world didn't really conceive of religious divisions in this way, but rather more in terms of specific patron deities and cults. It would also be good for tags to start with their historical patron deities.

I'll suggest some additional deities:

Nahua
  • Camaxtli (patron deity of Tlaxcala and Huejotzingo)
  • Otontecuhtli ("Otomi lord", associated with the Otomi and the related Matlatzinca and Mazahua. Was the patron deity of Temascaltepec and the Tepaneca of Tlacopan and Azcapotzalco)
  • perhaps Ometochtli, Xōchiquetzal, Cihuacōātl (patron deity of Culhuacan), seemingly popular in different regions
Maya
  • Tohil (debatably equivalent to Tezcatlipoca; patron deity of the K'iche' Maya)
  • Itzamna, the main deity of the Classic Maya and still practiced in the strata untouched by the waves of Mexican influence:
yucatan cults.png

source:
1752069025755.png


Tonalism
  • Mixcōhuātl (same deity as Camaxtli; patron deity of the Otomi and Chichimeca)
  • Tlazolteotl (the Huastec/Teenek worshipped a deity equivalent to this)
  • Curicaueri (debatably equivalent to Huitzilopochtli; patron deity of the Purepecha of Tzintzutzan)
  • Xipe Totec (the people of Yopitzinco were associated with him)
  • perhaps Ehecatl or Chichini (Totonac sun god)
Honestly if I were designing the region, I would probably just merge Nahua and Tonalist religions, and maybe even Chichimecah - though I'd get rid of the duplicate gods and at most make them culture-based dynamic names. I mean, Huehueteotl is already a Nahua god, and so are most of the ones I'm suggesting for Tonalism.

Might come back and suggest more later.
 
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What does the "unrestricted slavery" modifier do exactly and in what way is it different to countries that use slaves but don't have such modifier?
 
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One thing I thought was sorely lacking from the Meso-American flavor in EU4 was too narrow a focus on retaining the native religions. I get that strategy gamers find bloodthirsty human sacrifice to be meme-y (lets not forget we’ve made Crusader Kings infamous for all sorts of depravity). At the same time:
- human sacrifice is just plain inefficient (no reward, demographic and economic insanity)
- historically, whenever societies had a way “out” of human sacrifice, they took it. Not necessarily willingly, but the number of people sacrificing was always smaller than the number of potential sacrificees.

I’d really like for there to be a way for one of the pre-Columbian societies to embrace the faith(s) of the old world colonial powers, and have some actual flavor for doing so. Think about how much fun you could have with Protestant Maya and Catholic Aztecs.
1736651116413410.jpg
Why limit it to Christianity?
 
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Very interesting! What about Chichimeca? Which tags does it apply to and does it have any unique mechanics?
1. Here is the spread.
2. It doesn't have unique mechanics, I'm sorry to say.
Chichimecah.jpg
 
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