• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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!
 

Attachments

  • Katun prepared.png
    Katun prepared.png
    272,1 KB · Views: 0
  • Katun prepared.png
    Katun prepared.png
    272,1 KB · Views: 0
  • 87Like
  • 78
  • 42Love
  • 7
  • 5
Reactions:
Doom seems very gamey. A fun mechanic to be sure, but I'm not sure that a game trying to focus on realism should lean that much into fantasy-esque elements. As @LordThanatos has pointed out, there would be better ways to make the Nahua playable.

Also will the Aspects feature retain the very Christian Chalice-and-Missal icon, even for non-Christian religions?
 
  • 42
  • 11Like
  • 2
Reactions:
Has the distribution of these religions been updated since the tinto maps, and if so can we see the current map? There were some innaccuracies.
IIRC, some work was done; we'll have the Tinto Maps Feedback for Central America next month.
 
  • 27
  • 17Like
  • 4Love
Reactions:
Very interesting system! My only "problem" is that Nahua Ritualism and Maya Ritualism have very long and jarring names that doesn't really fit in with the other religions of their group and aren't very immersive in themselves either. Have you had any alternative name ideas or suggestions?
 
  • 9Like
Reactions:
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?
Oh no, no, they're just, er...

On vacation.
The slaves (we'd prefer if you used the term "involuntary trainees paid in experience") are just going on a very long vacation, fully paid by the high priests, in exchange for helping with the ceremonies. You see, they're brought up to the pyramid, then they enter, there's some nice chanting (it's not screaming, it's just part of the ceremony), and then the trainees are brought to the exit on the back, up to the airport, and then to Honolulu for their very long, well deserved vacation.

There's nothing to worry about.
 
  • 13Haha
Reactions:
Does Doom only malus be sacrifice ruler and stability decay? Because I can totally see some people just tanking it to get better rulers and such.

Do the reforms have to be passed in order? Also what is the cooldown between them? I didn’t see anything that prohibits pass all of them but I very well may just be blind.

Can you spoil what the one country in Columbia follows?

Lastly maya and Nahuatl are heretics not heathens to each other? Can you say what the Inca and NA SOPs are?
1. Estate Satisfaction is also impacted, which is important. But we're open to suggestions for further rebalancing.
2. No, they don't need to be passed in any specific order. When you select a Religious Aspect to implement, it takes some time, which is dynamic and different for each aspect. When the implementation is completed, you can select a different one. So no hard cooldown, just the time each aspect needs to be completed.
3. Naoma.
4. Heretics, correct. And, that will be in the NA and SA map feedback review.
 
  • 19
  • 12Like
Reactions:
Very interesting system! My only "problem" is that Nahua Ritualism and Maya Ritualism have very long and jarring names that doesn't really fit in with the other religions of their group and aren't very immersive in themselves either. Have you had any alternative name ideas or suggestions?
Why don't we just call them Nahua and Maya? The "ritualism" at the end seems superfluous to me
 
  • 9Like
  • 4
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions:
Is the symbol for eagle/jaguar warriors a conquistador? Wouldn't it be better to have instead something representing... an actual mesoamerican warrior?
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
View attachment 1331550View attachment 1331551

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?
You're actually sacrificing the slaves, but it's not showing correctly in the tooltip (just reported it, thanks!):

effect = {
scope:actor.capital = {
random_pop = {
limit = {
pop_type = pop_type:slaves
}
add_pop_size = {
value = -0.1
}
}
}
 
  • 37Like
  • 5
Reactions:
Okay, seriously, Doom is back?

Why, when it has no links to real Nahua religion do you insist on bringing back the most inaccurate aspect of EU4's mechanics? Where do you get the idea that people rose and sacrificed their rulers? Most sacrifices were prisoners of war, and were not to placate angry gods, but to return the divine energy in a person's heart - their Tyolia - to the sun and keep it - the god Tōnatiuh - shining. This is because the Nahua believed that the world has ended four previous times and is now in the fifth age. The day the world could end was marked as being every 52 years, at the intersections of their solar and ritual calendars, this is the day of the largest ritual observance, the New Fire ceremony.

I can see a mechanic for mass unrest if you don't contribute enough for the New Fire ceremony, but that sacrifice is not only composed of captured prisoners, but also food, drink, and goods. There might also be goods given to the rain or harvest gods or to ancestors for favour.

Where is all the stuff that actually feels like authentic Mesoamerican religion? Where's stealing defeated group's gods for your pantheon? Where is the god impersonation rituals? Where's the new fire festival that you're actually adulterating with the doom mechanic? The effigies of gods brought for rituals and to war - where they might be captured? The human sacrifice is also far more fascinating than you're making it out to be. Sure, some sacrifices were nobodies, but others were dressed as, and treated as gods for a year before sacrifice - and I don't mean that as a metaphor - they were actually seen as being the living god.

Hopefully that stuff just wasn't talked about, because this is by far the least accurate religious setup so far - and I don't even think it looks nearly as fun as it could be. This is a fascinating religious group and you're just representing the pop-religious aspects. Armies literally stealing the gods of their defeated foes and putting them in their own temples is metal, but you focus instead on Apocalypse-Now type representations instead.

(P.S The religion practiced by the Maya should be called 'Maya ritualism', not 'Mayan ritualism'. Mayan is just the name of the language, Maya is the adjective and demonym)
Yea, this is something that I hope @Pavía addresses. as there is a lot more to the Aztec Religion and beliefs that should be focused on and included.
 
  • 21Like
  • 7
Reactions:
I think the comment of Lord Thanatos could potentially be handled by changing the loc for the doom mechanics, and adding (at least for the "human sacrifice" part) some other ways to reduce doom, i.e by sacrificing food. These shouldn't require too much work and could make for a better representation if I understood his arguments correctly.
 
  • 6Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Okay, seriously, Doom is back?

Why, when it has no links to real Nahua religion do you insist on bringing back the most inaccurate aspect of EU4's mechanics? Where do you get the idea that people rose and sacrificed their rulers? Most sacrifices were prisoners of war, and were not to placate angry gods, but to return the divine energy in a person's heart - their Tyolia - to the sun and keep it - the god Tōnatiuh - shining. This is because the Nahua believed that the world has ended four previous times and is now in the fifth age. The day the world could end was marked as being every 52 years, at the intersections of their solar and ritual calendars, this is the day of the largest ritual observance, the New Fire ceremony.

I can see a mechanic for mass unrest if you don't contribute enough for the New Fire ceremony, but that sacrifice is not only composed of captured prisoners, but also food, drink, and goods. There might also be goods given to the rain or harvest gods or to ancestors for favour.

Where is all the stuff that actually feels like authentic Mesoamerican religion? Where's stealing defeated group's gods for your pantheon? Where is the god impersonation rituals? Where's the new fire festival that you're actually adulterating with the doom mechanic? The effigies of gods brought for rituals and to war - where they might be captured? The human sacrifice is also far more fascinating than you're making it out to be. Sure, some sacrifices were nobodies, but others were dressed as, and treated as gods for a year before sacrifice - and I don't mean that as a metaphor - they were actually seen as being the living god.

Hopefully that stuff just wasn't talked about, because this is by far the least accurate religious setup so far - and I don't even think it looks nearly as fun as it could be. This is a fascinating religious group and you're just representing the pop-religious aspects. Armies literally stealing the gods of their defeated foes and putting them in their own temples is metal, but you focus instead on Apocalypse-Now type representations instead.

(P.S The religion practiced by the Maya should be called 'Maya ritualism', not 'Mayan ritualism'. Mayan is just the name of the language, Maya is the adjective and demonym)
Wait...you are telling me that the Aztecs didn't like this guy?!?!
kratos-and-doomguy-switch-places-and-have-to-kill-each-v0-fpnjeon23xee1.png
And here I thought Doom was eternal...
 
Last edited:
  • 15Haha
  • 2Like
Reactions:
View attachment 1331554
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?
In this case, you need to be 'more to the left' than the -80 positions - which means, as Centralized as possible, as the most Centralized possible position is -100; reporting to our UI to improve clarity.
 
  • 32Like
  • 5
Reactions: