• 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
  • 76
  • 42Love
  • 7
  • 5
Reactions:
The discussion of what religions were morally right for killing people has kind of lost the plot.

I might be going blind, but does anything in the TT confirm that a reformed Nahua ritual religion no longer performs sacrifices? I assume it includes getting rid of sacrifices because the doom mechanic is no longer active in the reformed faith, and the sacrifice mechanics for the Nahua are tied to that - however I guess it's always possible that reforming instead ties it to something like a stability increase if you perform a sacrifice. I don't actually say anything saying that there are no longer sacrifices.

The real point is that if the reforms are meant to lead to a version of the faith without the need for sacrifice, then how does taking these actions help to do that?
Religion%20Focuses.jpg

Other than Legal reforms, none of these even touch on the possibility of reducing or eliminating the need for sacrifice.

So far as repealing a need for sacrifice, both Raise Sacrifice Rate and Institute the Flower wars are directly for continuing sacrifices in some form. If the game does entirely get rid of human sacrifice for the reformed belief, then these reform actions are completely nonsensical. If these are the steps to a version of belief where people are no longer sacrificed, there need to be changes to reflect that in the reforms.

Raising the sacrifice rate should reduce how 'reformed' the faith is, not be an integral step to do so, if the definition of reforming the faith in any way includes reducing or eliminating the theological reasons for the sacrifices.
Thinking on this a moment more, I just realized how dumb these 'reform' options really are. Let's explore them:
  1. Adopt Ometeotl : Ometeotl is the dual supreme god - and possibly the only god, with all other gods as their aspects, depending on which side of the modern scholastic argument sways you. Why is adopting them part of reform? The Nahua already believe in them - and if this means to make them a primary part of the religion, then why is that necessary? There are other polytheistic religions in the game that do not need reform.
  2. Elevate our Patron God : Again, this is dumb. The Nahua already had patron gods, how is this a reform - and why would it be necessary for reform?
  3. Establish the Cihuacoatl position : This is a position similar to a Vizier, and I can imagine that it might help with reform on a civic level, and might have some part to play in ritual.
  4. Expand the Cuahpipiltin : I believe this refers to the class of noble warriors. How does this help reform the faith?
  5. Increase Militarism : How is this a reform?
  6. Institute the Flower Wars : I suppose more established ritual combat and sacrifices might help with reform so long as that reform doesn't eliminate the practice of human sacrifice.
  7. Legal Reforms : This is incredibly vague, but might actually be a reform - depending on what it entails.
  8. Raise Sacrifice Rate : How is this a reform?
Now, let's look at what the Aztecs did, historically:
  1. They believed in Ometeotl
  2. They had a primary patron god - Huitzilopochtli
  3. They created the Cihuacoatl position
  4. They expanded the noble warrior class.
  5. They were incredibly militarized
  6. They created the flower wars
  7. Vague, depends what it entails.
  8. They definitely increased the number of sacrifices over the years.
So the first actions are things that every Nahua tag should already have unlocked - there's nothing reformative about those two, and other than that, the Aztecs tick every box by the time of the Spanish contact, other than possibly the legal reforms.

So what does a reformed religion mean when the steps to take to get to it are the ones that the Aztecs did historically? Did the Aztecs by the time of the Spanish contact believe in the game's reformed faith - because if these are the steps to get to it, they'd already been reformed for a long time - or only needed some legal reform to qualify.
 
Last edited:
  • 45
  • 6Like
  • 2
Reactions:
View attachment 1331552

Ngl, "Pyramid of the Magician" sounds like some kind of trap card I'd use to beat Kaiba in his own Duel Monsters tournament.
I believe the Pyramid of the Magician refers to the pyramid that existed in the ancient city of Uxmal in Yucatan, now an imposing archaeological site. It looks like it came from who knows where, but it does exist and once did.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Jews don't burn people at the stake for eating bacon, the analogy falls apart.

I don't get why you are acting like 'kill the witch because god wants us to kill them' and 'kill this sacrifice because the Sun god needs the blood to keep going' is some sort of important difference in kind that invalidates witch burnings as a form of human sacrifice. At the end of the day both are religious beliefs causing people to get murdered in the name of God.

I'm not saying they happened in the same scale. I'm saying the represent the same behavior. A point you seem eager to divert away from.

What does it matter that you're killing people because you need the Sun not to go out, vs. the neighboring countries church doesn't practice communion?
The analogy is that their both keeping to the law not sacrificing anything outside of it. Again do you see executing killers - murder being condemned in nearly all religions - as human sacrifice. If so you're
A) Wrong
B) Pointless to consider this with

> kill the witch because god wants us to kill them
Is the wrong way to look at it is the point and again.

Even thinking about it the Aztecs were never commanded besides to do this. They did is as a sacrifice (lol) to help stave off the fates of the last 4 worlds. Divine command (of which your examples aren't even always that and again don't always apply) and carrying out isn't sacrifice.

> I don't get why you are acting like
Don't make it weirdly personal.
 
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
I absolutely can't believe that people in this thread are equating Aztec human sacrifice with European wars, witch trials, or anything.
Absolutely baffling to me.
I mean, I think I saw some people making arguments that burning odd women alive was a necessity to defend the civilized Christian community from their ability to allegedly spoil milk through spooky action at a distance, and something about dancing with goats in the woods, and that's pretty baffling as well, so...

Sure, why not?
 
  • 9
  • 4
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Thinking on this a moment more, I just realized how dumb these 'reform' options really are. Let's explore them:
  1. Adopt Ometeotl : Ometeotl is the dual supreme god - and in some scholarship, the only god, as all other gods might have been aspects of Ometeotl in a form of Monism. Why is adopting them part of reform? The Nahua already believe in them - and if this means to make them a primary part of the religion, then why is that necessary? There are other polytheistic religions in the game that do not need reform.
  2. Elevate our Patron God : Again, this is dumb. The Nahua already had patron gods, how is this a reform - and why would it be necessary for reform?
  3. Establish the Cihuacoatl position : I can actually see how this one might help with reform to a degree, but this position was actually historically established
  4. Expand the Cuahpipiltin : I believe this refers to the class of noble warriors. How does this help reform the faith?
  5. Increase Militarism : How does this help with reformation?
  6. Institute the Flower Wars : I suppose more established ritual combat and sacrifices might help with reform, but as with point 3, this was instituted by the Aztecs historically.
  7. Legal Reforms : This is incredibly vague, but it actually is the only thing on here that's might unequivocally be a reform.
  8. Raise Sacrifice Rate : How is this a reform?
Now, let's look at what the Aztecs did, historically:
  1. They believed in Ometeotl
  2. They had a primary patron god - Huitzilopochtli
  3. They had the Cihuacoatl position
  4. They expanded the noble warrior class.
  5. They were incredibly militarized
  6. They created the flower wars
  7. Vague, depends what it entails.
  8. They definitely increased the number of sacrifices over the years.
So what does a reformed religion mean when the steps to take to get to it are the ones that the Aztecs already did? Did the Aztecs by the time of the Spanish contact believe in the reformed faith - because if these are the steps to get to it, they'd already been reformed for a long time - or only needed some legal reform to qualify.
The game begins in 1337. A lot of what's "Aztec" would be formulated after that. While still somewhat under discussion Flower Wars are the key example only being instituted in response to natural disaster about 60 or so years before the Spaniards arrived. I agree as a reform towards "whatever reformed means" though it doesn't make much sense as that's what the Aztecs did IRL as you said.

Edit: Ah sorry you say as much.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
1. Here is the spread.
2. It doesn't have unique mechanics, I'm sorry to say.
View attachment 1331559
You may think this doesn't belong here, but I'll add it anyway.
Perhaps the Tinto Maps of Mesoamerica needs to be reviewed. However, it seems that the modifications we've suggested for the Purepecha, for example, have not been made. They should be much smaller in territory/location. The same applies to the Kingdom of Colima, which is also inaccurate for the game's starting period.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I'm sorry, but the whole idea that Native Americans (and ONLY them) had to "reform" their religion to succeed was terrible in EU4, in gameplay, thematics and historicity, and will be terrible here. I've been trying my best to mod it out from EU4 and to see it repeated here is... dissapointing. A single respectful disagree is not enough to convey my rejection.
 
  • 16
  • 6Like
  • 2
  • 1Love
Reactions:
I'm sorry, but the whole idea that Native Americans (and ONLY them) had to "reform" their religion to succeed was terrible in EU4, in gameplay, thematics and historicity, and will be terrible here. I've been trying my best to mod it out from EU4 and to see it repeated here is... dissapointing. A single respectful disagree is not enough to convey my rejection.
It was rightfully pointed out that these aren't really "reforms" as much as actions that the Aztecs historically did which makes it all very confusing and weird
These aren't "Reforms" they are more akin to the muslim mechanic tied to religious actions, so i really don't get how they magically reform their goverment by killing more people for the sun god or militarizing the state even more
Which at this point i think is the worst of both worlds, they aren't actually reforming anything so you don't get to make your religion any different,no more legalistic, no more codified,no more philosophical, but you also can't keep your starting religion because of the doom mechanic and because the reformed version is just straight up better
This seems more of a mechanic to keep the Aztec AI in check after the 15th century more than anything,
 
  • 15
  • 5Like
Reactions:
It's too much to ask for more gods to be included in the case of Tonalism; they could at least include Curicahueri, the patron god of the Purepecha.

It's insulting that the Tonalist religion uses the Purepecha language as its liturgical language but doesn't have any Purepecha gods to choose from.
That's just one example; there are more.

Please fix that.
I didn't realize the liturgical language was Purepecha. Countries should be able to choose their own liturgical language instead of it being limited to just one. Like how orthodox countries can have Greek, Church Slavic, Georgian, Aramaic etc as their liturgical language.

And honestly I would rather combine Nahua and Tonalist religions, there's a lot of overlap in terms of deities and Tonalist doesn't have enough distinct mechanics to justify its existence in my opinion. Curicaueri and Dzahui could be merged with Huitzilopochtli/Xiuhtecuhtli and Tlaloc respectively, or just be limited to Purepecha and Mixtec cultures.
 
Last edited:
  • 2
Reactions:
I didn't realize the liturgical language thing. It should allow different languages instead of having just one. Like how orthodox countries can have Greek, Church Slavic, Georgian, Aramaic etc as their liturgical language.

And honestly I would rather combine Nahua and Tonalist religions, there's a lot of overlap in terms of deities and Tonalist doesn't have enough distinct mechanics to justify its existence in my opinion. Curicaueri and Dzahui could be merged with Huitzilopochtli/Xiuhtecuhtli and Tlaloc respectively, or just made available to Purepecha and Mixtec cultures.

This is worse because it means the Mixtecs and Zapotecs will have to use the Purepecha language as their liturgical language, which is as inaccurate as naming the Nordic language as the liturgical language of Judaism. That's how silly it looks.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
This is worse because it means the Mixtecs and Zapotecs will have to use the Purepecha language as their liturgical language, which is as inaccurate as naming the Nordic language as the liturgical language of Judaism. That's how silly it looks.
No no, they won't. I meant Tonalism shouldn't have any set liturgical language. Each country will be able to choose their own language. So Tzintzuntzan will use Purepecha, the Mixtecs will use Mixtec (or the vague "Otomanguean") and so on.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
What does it matter that you're killing people because you need the Sun not to go out, vs. the neighboring countries church doesn't practice communion?
the rain god Tlaloc required the sacrifice of children to honor him, and it was believed that the tears of the doomed children would ensure rain in the coming year, so the Mexica went to great lengths to have the children destined to die for Tlaloc to cry as much as possible before their hearts were ripped out.

Is this the same as going to war because your neighboring country doesn't practice communion?
 
  • 6
  • 5Like
  • 3Haha
Reactions:
So what does a reformed religion mean when the steps to take to get to it are the ones that the Aztecs did historically? Did the Aztecs by the time of the Spanish contact believe in the game's reformed faith - because if these are the steps to get to it, they'd already been reformed for a long time - or only needed some legal reform to qualify.

One also could wonder why "legal reform" is considered a religious focus. Not a law, or a Privilege, or a DHE or Situation or mechanic, just a Legal Reform™.
 
  • 5
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I agree, although I guess in this case "reforming" is more in the sense of "let's get rid of human sacrifices", in which case I would accept it. In fact, only the Aztecs have it apparently, and they were the ones who sacrificed people the most.
The Aztecs weren't the only ones who performed sacrifices; only someone unfamiliar with Mesoamerican history would say that. To give a small example, the Tlaxcalans, who were allies of Hernán Cortés, also performed sacrifices, as did other Mesoamerican peoples. As an additional fact: Cortés didn't prohibit human sacrifices for his Tlaxcalan allies, and the latter continued to do so many years after the fall of Tenochtitlan. Please, do your research before commenting, so as not to believe things like what you say.
 
  • 7
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
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?
Germanic, Huns and Mongolic tribes werent "barbaric" lol, in fact that people believe it is still appropriate to use biased roman imperial sources or medieval european ones as gospel is more of an issue. And yes the supposed backwardness and "demonic nature" of native americans is still a great source of justification of modern day repression and economic marginalization - I think it warrants some more nuanced direction on aztecs.
 
  • 5
Reactions:
A lot of the discussion in this thread seems to be about whether Nahua religion is good or bad or moral or immoral. That seems to be triggered by an assumption that the point of reformation is to make the religion less bad or more moral or something.

But all of this seems like a distraction from the game. I thought the point of the game was to have some historical things, and some alt-historical things, but in many ways to take a step aside from judging things as good or bad or moral or immoral - just judging them on whether they are successful for what you are trying to do.

Given all that, why is reformation of this religion in the game at all? Is there some historical event this reproduces? It seems to me that this is rather just alt-history content of the sort they haven’t wanted to include elsewhere, like re-establishment of the caliphate, or Brittany becoming a powerful kingdom whose inheritance plays the role of Burgundy in the actual world, or mending of the Catholic-Orthodox schism.

But if reformation of the religion stays in the game (because getting rid of human sacrifice would certainly be a practical thing for a society developing into modernity!) then I definitely agree with the others saying that the steps toward reformation should be understandable as steps towards this - unless it’s meant to represent some sort of “heightening the contradictions” where everything gets worse before a big rebellion finally overthrows the religion?
 
  • 11
  • 5Like
  • 1Love
Reactions:
No no, they won't. I meant Tonalism shouldn't have any set liturgical language. Each country will be able to choose their own language. So Tzintzuntzan will use Purepecha, the Mixtecs will use Mixtec (or the vague "Otomanguean") and so on.
All countries need a liturgical language, but not all religions are equal from this point.

Per the TT about language:
Catholicism and islam force all countries following that religion to use, all other religions will give individual countries the possibility to change that at will independently from all the other ones.
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
All countries need a liturgical language, but not all religions are equal from this point.

Per the TT about language:
Catholicism and islam force all countries following that religion to use, all other religions will give individual countries the possibility to change that at will independently from all the other ones.
Yeah that's what I was remembering, thanks.
 
A lot of the discussion in this thread seems to be about whether Nahua religion is good or bad or moral or immoral. That seems to be triggered by an assumption that the point of reformation is to make the religion less bad or more moral or something.

But all of this seems like a distraction from the game. I thought the point of the game was to have some historical things, and some alt-historical things, but in many ways to take a step aside from judging things as good or bad or moral or immoral - just judging them on whether they are successful for what you are trying to do.

Given all that, why is reformation of this religion in the game at all? Is there some historical event this reproduces? It seems to me that this is rather just alt-history content of the sort they haven’t wanted to include elsewhere, like re-establishment of the caliphate, or Brittany becoming a powerful kingdom whose inheritance plays the role of Burgundy in the actual world, or mending of the Catholic-Orthodox schism.

But if reformation of the religion stays in the game (because getting rid of human sacrifice would certainly be a practical thing for a society developing into modernity!) then I definitely agree with the others saying that the steps toward reformation should be understandable as steps towards this - unless it’s meant to represent some sort of “heightening the contradictions” where everything gets worse before a big rebellion finally overthrows the religion?
This is what I've been trying to say in my original comment - the narrative behind this reformation is very unclear. On the one hand it arises from doing everything the Aztecs historically did, and on the other hand it results in an ahistorical outcome. I hate human sacrifice just as much as the average Paradox forum poster but I didn't understand what this reform has to do with anything. My immediate assumption was that it was just another religious feature copied from EU4.

Maybe, as you said, this reform is a result of overcoming a major revolt that topples the old Aztec religion, and this does seem to be the case since Reform Society happens after a disaster of the same name (which was not showcased at all - hence all the confusion). Such a revolt might have happened if the Spanish didn't conquer the Aztecs when they did, who knows, but this is definitely ahistorical and begs the question why ahistorical content isn't being implemented elsewhere.
 
  • 13
  • 2Like
Reactions: