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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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So something I'd like to bring up- human sacrifice isn't unique to the Aztecs and Native-Americans. Christianity has had lots of human-sacrifice. We just identify them as Witch Burnings.

They have the same broad societal purpose, cleansing the community, avoiding the wrath of the gods.

Now someone is going to tell me that the church didn't officially support the witch trials, and I'll rebutt: What does it matter? People on the ground were doing it for religious reasons. When they said God wanted them to burn the Witches, were they lying when they did it?

I'll also note it seems that Paradox has given the Catholics the ability to confirm or deny the existance of witchcraft (with it off in the 1300's as is historical), so it seems that aspect for europeans will be included.
The scale are simply completely different...

20 000 a year VS 60 000 for the entire game period.
 
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So something I'd like to bring up- human sacrifice isn't unique to the Aztecs and Native-Americans. Christianity has had lots of human-sacrifice. We just identify them as Witch Burnings.

They have the same broad societal purpose, cleansing the community, avoiding the wrath of the gods.

Now someone is going to tell me that the church didn't officially support the witch trials, and I'll rebutt: What does it matter? People on the ground were doing it for religious reasons. When they said God wanted them to burn the Witches, were they lying when they did it?

I'll also note it seems that Paradox has given the Catholics the ability to confirm or deny the existance of witchcraft (with it off in the 1300's as is historical), so it seems that aspect for europeans will be included.
That was mostly protestants so im not sure why you are talking about the Catholics specifically, but aside from that people DO call it barbaric and people DID reform from this
Also it was nowhere near the same level and it wasn't a religious belief, nowhere in the bible it says "Go take women and burn them", for Aztecs it was a major belief
 
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While I agree that things could change and that could be fun, but what's the argument against having the reforms be inside the religion? It makes a lot more sense to me to have any 'reforms' be just an internal mechanic, like what's done in the rest of the world. I don't see any point in having a separate reformed religion to convert to when it's supposed to be the natural progression of the existing religion.
I agree- I think I glossed over that in the dev diary.

How about this- while 'reformed' Aztec religion wouldn't create like a head of religion like the Pope. But it might create an organized priesthood that crosses national boundaries- similar to say the Buddhits or Muslims. So if a nation manages to complete their reforms, it codifies this priesthood and ruleset- thereby eliminating DOOM for all nations, and codifying the reforms. A new religion isn't spawned, but there'd be perhaps a situation or at least series of events as other Nahuatl nations react to these changes.

These 'reforms' could also include elements that create a bit more of a unified national or ethnic or religious identity in opposition to Spanish Christianity. I don't know if maybe a 'defender of the faith' mechanic could be added, but maybe something similar?
 
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That was mostly protestants so im not sure why you are talking about the Catholics specifically, but aside from that people DO call it barbaric and people DID reform from this
Also it was nowhere near the same level and it wasn't a religious belief, nowhere in the bible it says "Go take women and burn them", for Aztecs it was a major belief
The Bible literally says 'suffer not a witch to live'.
 
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This type of stuff is always only said about non European and Asian societies, you call Germanic, Hun, Mongolic tribes barbaric and everyone agrees (because you can only really agree) but the second someone dares to suggest that maybe having a constant influx of human sacrifices (not to mention the material ones) MAYBE needs to be reformed people start to bring up the racist card
What about reforming to not sacrifice kids to the God of Rain is racist?
In I:R if you play as an illitterate germanic tribe in the middle of nowhere you have to reform into a higher level of governance to progress, is that racist?

Really? So there's no difference between a Buddhist monk and an aztec priest. they do the same job, one isn't worse than the other
I think it depends on how reforming is framed/what it actually does. We see Catholicism get reformed, or attempted to be reformed, after all.

What I would like to see is variation on what the reformed religion looks like. Maybe there's no human sacrifice. Maybe there's more, or it's done in a different way. We should be able to influence it just like we can the different Protestant sects.

But to take the bait, whether human sacrifice is moral or not is immaterial. Slavery is not moral, but that didn't stop advanced empires around the world from doing it during this era. Human history is full of blood and guts, that's just how it is. You could even make the argument that the Flower Wars, which were focused on capturing and not killing enemies, meant that on average, perhaps the same percentage of people in Mesoamerica were being sacrificed as were being killed in wars in Europe during this era. Obviously we don't have the numbers on that, but I think the "Aztecs were obsessed with sacrificing everyone" idea needs to be understood in that sacrificing captives in temples actually meant fewer fatalities on the battlefield. And that sacrifice was only one part of their religion & society.
 
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I thought Mexico has plenty of Aztec natives on reservations. Just, you know, they don't club people with obsidian axes anymore, so they aren't as sexy.
As far as I know, the reservation thing is largely a North American thing. Natives in Southern America, and especially Natives in Mesoamerica and the Andes where large urban societies used to be, continued to make up the majority of the population of the colonies under the Spanish and just slowly turned to speaking Spanish and be Catholics rather than be thrown out of their land.

So, the Aztecs and other Mexica people ethnically speaking went nowhere. They stayed where they were, and just started speaking Spanish and going to church, as far as I know.
So something I'd like to bring up- human sacrifice isn't unique to the Aztecs and Native-Americans. Christianity has had lots of human-sacrifice. We just identify them as Witch Burnings.

They have the same broad societal purpose, cleansing the community, avoiding the wrath of the gods.

Now someone is going to tell me that the church didn't officially support the witch trials, and I'll rebutt: What does it matter? People on the ground were doing it for religious reasons. When they said God wanted them to burn the Witches, were they lying when they did it?

I'll also note it seems that Paradox has given the Catholics the ability to confirm or deny the existance of witchcraft (with it off in the 1300's as is historical), so it seems that aspect for europeans will be included.
To be more precise, Witch Hunt were more of a Protestant thing than a Catholic thing. The Witch Hunt craze hit all of Europe in the 1500s and 1600s, but you can see from the data that it was much more widespread in Protestant areas where local priests would take things into their own hands than in Catholic areas, where the Church would keep things more under control and they were generally more skeptical about it compared to many places in Germany or Scandinavia.
 
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I agree- I think I glossed over that in the dev diary.

How about this- while 'reformed' Aztec religion wouldn't create like a head of religion like the Pope. But it might create an organized priesthood that crosses national boundaries- similar to say the Buddhits or Muslims. So if a nation manages to complete their reforms, it codifies this priesthood and ruleset- thereby eliminating DOOM for all nations, and codifying the reforms. A new religion isn't spawned, but there'd be perhaps a situation or at least series of events as other Nahuatl nations react to these changes.

These 'reforms' could also include elements that create a bit more of a unified national or ethnic or religious identity in opposition to Spanish Christianity. I don't know if maybe a 'defender of the faith' mechanic could be added, but maybe something similar?
I don't know near anything about Aztec religion to say what it would change into, I just wanted to voice that having it change to a separate religion is pointless imo. Mesoamerica is not my thing, lol but your ideas sound pretty cool to me. I'd play it.
 
Yea, afaik we haven't seen this with other religious traditions. even though christianity thought that Hinduism and Buddhism were primitive and savage(just read the british views on Indians). Yet there isn't anything about Hinduism or Buddhism being primitive and needing to be reformed. No religion is more primitive or advance then others. Religious traditions can be different but neither is better or worse.
Ngl I fail to see what’s problematic with a religion ridding itself of human sacrifice but I otherwise agree with you and dualninja on this
Well I also don’t really mind the doom mechanic as a abstraction either but I understand the hesitation the idea that the tonal religions need to reform (again outside of the human scarifice stuff)

For the record though I do think a human scarifice one should be viable infact I’m intending on doing one
IMG_5370.jpeg
 
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So something I'd like to bring up- human sacrifice isn't unique to the Aztecs and Native-Americans. Christianity has had lots of human-sacrifice. We just identify them as Witch Burnings.

They have the same broad societal purpose, cleansing the community, avoiding the wrath of the gods.

Now someone is going to tell me that the church didn't officially support the witch trials, and I'll rebutt: What does it matter? People on the ground were doing it for religious reasons. When they said God wanted them to burn the Witches, were they lying when they did it?

I'll also note it seems that Paradox has given the Catholics the ability to confirm or deny the existance of witchcraft (with it off in the 1300's as is historical), so it seems that aspect for europeans will be included.
That's not correct at all. Witch trials had more to do punishing perceived criminals and dangerous elements and protecting the community from a dangerous person than appeasing God or cleansing the community. The immediate danger was to you and yours not to the church or the "body of the faithful". Something like a general heresey would be such not witchcraft. And yes the differences between hierarchy and "popular" practice matters immensely as you'd have to substantiate how popular that practice was when generally condemned. This is like saying executing someone like John Wayne Gacy was a human sacrifice - words have meanings.
 
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Two questions:
  1. Why does Nahua get to reform itself? I don't think this is historical.
  2. Is religious reform not a thing in other religions?
I don't really see the benefit of having this in game - in EU4 religious reform existed for everyone in the Americas because you were locked out of institutions and gov reforms until you did, which gave Europeans a comparative advantage, but that doesn't seem to be the point here. Here it looks like a solution for "Nahua is bad because it copies the doom mechanic from EU4, it has to be made good somehow". How does it actually help with advancing society? What does it have to do with the technological gap between natives and Europeans - how is this gap even portrayed?

Besides, as others have said, if gods are a global mechanic I would very much like there to be a global system for unlocking and incorporating gods from different religions. This somewhat existed in EU4 Fetishism - to unlock different gods you had to come in contact with different regions of Africa or outside religions - but now we have a lot more religious granularity and collecting gods for all polytheistic religions could be very fun gameplay and very historical.
 
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That's not correct at all. Witch trials had more to do punishing perceived criminals and dangerous elements and protecting the community from a dangerous person than appeasing God or cleansing the community. The immediate danger was to you and yours not to the church or the "body of the faithful". And yes the differences between hierarchy and "popular" practive matters immensely as you'd have to substantiate how popular that practive was when generally condemned. This is like saying executing someone like John Wayne Gacy was a human sacrifice - words have meanings.
How is that different from 'we need to do it, or the sun is going to get eaten'?
 
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How is that different from 'we need to do it, or the sun is going to get eaten'?
The sun being eaten (or more accurately killed by his sister and her allies) is eschatological. The world will end if we fail in this task of supporting the gods (and to do so after their own sacrifices for us would be an immense failure for the Aztecs as well). The sacrifice is human sacrifice. Witches were killed because they were a danger or could bring a danger (demons) to you and your community but the world certainly wasn't ending because of them nor were you aiding God in any way aside from the constant guard against evil.

Again words have meanings.
 
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Two questions:
  1. Why does Nahua get to reform itself? I don't think this is historical.
  2. Is religious reform not a thing in other religions?
I don't really see the benefit of having this in game - in EU4 religious reform existed for everyone in the Americas because you were locked out of institutions and gov reforms until you did, which gave Europeans a comparative advantage, but that doesn't seem to be the point here. Here it looks like a solution for "Nahua is bad because it copies the doom mechanic from EU4, it has to be made good somehow". How does it actually help with advancing society? What does it have to do with the technological gap between natives and Europeans - how is this gap even portrayed?

Besides, as others have said, if gods are a global mechanic I would very much like there to be a global system for unlocking and incorporating gods from different religions. This somewhat existed in EU4 Fetishism - to unlock different gods you had to come in contact with different regions of Africa or outside religions - but now we have a lot more religious granularity and collecting gods for all polytheistic religions could be very fun gameplay and very historical.
I think the Native Religious Reforms came from an era before Institutions better simulated the tech gap, but then they never got revisited (why I don't know). The institutions have been expanded, so the Aztecs get better tech than like north american natives, but worse than the Spanish, but in theory the ability to completely play catch up (which should have always been the case). Linking tech to religion was always really silly.

Doom in this instance might be an attempt to how Nahua societies were much more aggressive and warlike, and less stable as the Spanish were able to knock over the Aztec Empire.
 
The sun being eaten (or more accurately killed by his sister and her allies) is eschatological. The world will end if we fail in this task of supporting the gods (and to do so after their own sacrifices for us would be an immense failure for the Aztecs as well). The sacrifice is human sacrifice. Witches were killed because they were a danger or could bring a danger (demons) to you and your community but the world certainly wasn't ending because of them nor were you aiding God in any way aside from the constant guard against evil.

Again words have meanings.
This is a real potato potato thing to me. The main difference seems to me that one religion did this in Europe, and another did it in North America. We're talking about appeasing supernatural forces in either scenario, the why seems pretty immaterial to the fact that people decided that their religion required them to execute random people. Both don't seem to escape the definition of 'human sacrifice'.
 
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This type of stuff is always only said about non European and Asian societies, you call Germanic, Hun, Mongolic tribes barbaric and everyone agrees (because you can only really agree) but the second someone dares to suggest that maybe having a constant influx of human sacrifices (not to mention the material ones) MAYBE needs to be reformed people start to bring up the racist card
What about reforming to not sacrifice kids to the God of Rain is racist?
In I:R if you play as an illitterate germanic tribe in the middle of nowhere you have to reform into a higher level of governance to progress, is that racist?

Really? So there's no difference between a Buddhist monk and an aztec priest. they do the same job, one isn't worse than the other
Edit because i just thought about this, but putting all religious traditions in the same moral axis is way more racist than calling for a reformation of the mesoamerican religions, what about all the scientific and philosophical progress that Buddhist monks or Catholic priests brought because of their religion, are they on the same moral level as an aztec priest?
Human sacrifices are obviously evil and it was unnecessary to call the game racist lol. But calling certain cultures "barbaric" is pretty subjective and vague. I do think distinctions like state vs non-state societies can be useful to draw but they have more nuance than we sometimes think, nor do they correspond to moral judgements. The more 'advanced' a historical culture was, the less rights the average commoner had.

Also mesoamerican societies had some notable scientific achievements.
 
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Human sacrifices are obviously evil and it was unnecessary to call the game racist lol. But calling certain cultures "barbaric" is pretty subjective and vague. I do think distinctions like state vs non-state societies can be useful to draw but they have more nuance than we sometimes think, nor do they correspond to moral judgements. The more 'advanced' a historical culture was, the less rights the average commoner had.
I disagree on the term "barbaric" being vague and subjective, but I do agree it's not a proper distinction to aim for in a GSG and as such, should be avoided in favour of a more neutral and descriptive approach of the world being represented.

I'd still love to see ideals be more accurately represented (things that made counties search more than what was immediately or even realistically advantageous for them), but I don't see how to properly represent this without some sort of "beliefs" system represented, and actual drives to accomplish actions that are coherent with these beliefs.
 
The sun being eaten (or more accurately killed by his sister and her allies) is eschatological. The world will end if we fail in this task of supporting the gods (and to do so after their own sacrifices for us would be an immense failure for the Aztecs as well). The sacrifice is human sacrifice. Witches were killed because they were a danger or could bring a danger (demons) to you and your community but the world certainly wasn't ending because of them nor were you aiding God in any way aside from the constant guard against evil.

Again words have meanings.
This makes me wonder even further what's even the point of Nahua religious reform. What do centralization reforms and convincing everyone what the world won't end if we stop human sacrifice have to do with instituting the flower wars and raising the sacrifice rate?
 
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I also kind of fail to see how all the religious wars the abrahamic religions waged against each other wouldn't count in some way as human sacrifice.

Regardless, the point is: how would a society in which human sacrifice is central to the religion determine they have to move on from it? The answer is actually not so obvious - how many in the current era are willing to "die for their country", after all? - but that would only make sense if the belief system or realm governance are too unstable because of the sacrifices. What if people hated the idea of sacrifice but recognized its efficacy? What if they saw it as fair as long as it was random? What if they yearned for the honor of being sacrificed? The current system just tells you that the sacrifices are necessary and numerous, but not that people aren't okay with it or that it's unsustainable; it's not like Mesoamerica is devoid of people.

And, of course, this is all before considering what "reforming religion" would look like, even in the current memey setup: maybe I can sacrifice animals instead. Or maybe I should just hope the Sun will beat the moon by himself. Maybe my calcs are incorrect and the cycle takes 520 years instead of 52. Or maybe I should sacrifice human souls to that Jesus guy the whiteys are pestering me about (wait so he sacrificed himself to save humanity? Hmmm).
 
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