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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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Is that it?
I was expecting more, especially on the Maya.
I hope there will be more content and the details of various mechanics will be shown in the future developer diaries.
 
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So basically the reasons stated for the Doom counter are inaccurate, and the consequences of failing to manage Doom are inaccurate on a very junior level. Even an enthusiast or someone who read just a little actual scholarship on the subject should be able to pick that up, it's not a doctoral level mistake that can be easily made if you're trying at all to do the due diligence and research. Let's put it like this: If the devs had purely used Wikipedia as a source, they might have actually gotten something more accurate (Though the result would probably take the Spanish on their word a little too much)
I think the one thing where a gamey consequence can at least be defensible (even though it has no basis in reality) is for the things tied to the actual beliefs of the people of that time. So having "ruler and dynasty death" as a consequence for something no ruler of that time would even consider doing (not helping the gods fight their battle for the fifth age) can at least have some rationale behind it. Though this would just be a bandaid for the lack of a system representing the ideals and "primary motives" of the people of that time (primary motives that we can tend, as the spirit of the nation, to completely disregard)

And yes, I'm considering making a thread for this topic, or on one to encompass other 'pagan' religions outside of the Abrahamic or Dharmic groups, if we get more Tinto Talks on similar subjects if they're also error-ridden (Let's be honest, based on the track record for these religious posts, they will be). Otherwise I'm considering a larger post on the errors across all of the religions we've seen so far - or one on the topic of just how they keep making these fundamental mistakes.
Sadly true, but hopefully they'll change their religious versions. At least that's what I hope for.
 
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IIRC, some work was done; we'll have the Tinto Maps Feedback for Central America next month.
Two months ago, you mentioned that there would be a special log introducing the characteristics of China a few weeks later. It has now been two months; may I inquire if there are any specific updates regarding this?
 
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It's the generic Infantry icon, just as EU4 has this stuff https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Category:Military_icons

Mesoamericans have 11 flavourful unit illustrations though, for example:

View attachment 1332015
Random idea: generic unit illustrations like this could have an overlay colour mask for the clothing parts (where applicable), which would always take the colour of the country like 3D unit models.

It's a bit ambitious and it's not necessarily easy to figure out the exact shader that should be applied to the overlay colour mask, but as the game's catchphrase says, "be ambitious". It would be cool to have, and these grayish-off-white Mesoamerican warriors look so uncanny, given how much they liked colour.
 
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Does that mean that North America's feedback will come sometime before then?

(This is presuming the original chronology of the threads is maintained).

Thanks.
Which might also mean that the South America feedback is close as well. I really hope they did something about the lack of location density on the Andean regions of South America (especially in Colombia and Venezuela), as well as the lack of Societies of Pops and the misnaming and misplacing of various names in various locations (Duitama (an important Muisca settlement) being almost 50 kilometres away from its actual location, or the area of Chunsa, named after the city of Hunza (modern Tunja), not even including said city nor covering the region historically associated with it (Boyacá), etc. etc.)
 
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I'm not the person you're replying to, but I would define sacrifice as "offering something as a gift to a deity, usually by (partially) destroying that thing".

The thing offered could be incense, bread, money, an animal, something metaphorical like "time" or "a contrite spirit", or indeed a human. But the point is that a human is 1) giving something valuable to a deity, 2) because the deity enjoys or requires it, 3) in order to build a relationship with that deity and in expectation of receiving something back.

Witches were not being offered as gifts to God, they were being executed as dangerous criminals. The Aztecs, on the other hand, were giving human blood as a gift to the sun in order to strengthen it. Therefore, completely irrespective of morality, one is human sacrifice and the other isn't.
That sounds nice, but I think that's kind of missing the forest for the trees that you're still executing a person in the name of religion at the end of the day. Like, the idea that you aren't 'gifting' witches to God shouldn't subtract that the religion is still compelling people to murder. To me the murder of human beings is the aspect we should be most focusing on.
Except the motivation, ritualisation and as such, the way they should be represented as game mechanic wouldn't have anything in common. To start being alike, you'd need for the witch burning to become something required / extremely incentived (so the initial law would become "burn at least X witches every year or else"). And that burning should become a necessity / ritualised thing as a way to honour the gods rather than a punishment for someone disobeying them. Or, the other way around, aztec sacrifice should have been a way to kill the people who angered the gods by disobeying them too much, requiring them to be killed in a violent manner to appease them. But both are simply not the case...

With that being told, if witch burning can be represented by something else than an event, I'd be all in for that too.
I'm not arguing it needs to be the same kind of game mechanic at all. My argument is that christianity doesn't represent an inherently more enlightened belief system than the Aztec religion. It's all just human beings ascribing to supernatural forces to do irrational things. Christians could have easily have been lead to a system where they offer the hearts of witches to God atop pyramids in an alternate history scenario, because the same human behaviors that made the Aztecs think that was okay exist for white europeans too.

Now that said- it looks like there already will be game mechanics for the witch-trials, given that Catholicism starts off with a reform that declares witchcraft to be nonexistant (as is historical) which implies that it might get flipped during the era of the witch trials (and I don't care how many people say the Pope never endorsed it, or that protestants did it more, fact remains that catholics on the ground still did it).

But I don't think the same kind of game mechanic is necessary there to make things clear- where you push a button to get mana for burning a hundred witches or anything like that.
 
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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 Teyolía - 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 is the practice of stealing defeated group's gods for your pantheon or the effigies of gods brought for rituals and to war - where they might be captured? Where are the god impersonation rituals? Where is the new fire festival that you're actually adulterating with the doom mechanic? 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 a 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 and entirely real, but you focus instead on Apocalypto level 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)
Somebody hire this man
 
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Why do you think doom mechanic is innacurate? It sounded fun to me as a game mechanic but I have no idea about aztec religion so I am just curious. Also would you consider making a seperate thread for it too like other religions?
What's being discussed here is historical accuracy and precision, which is what these types of games are all about: accuracy in maps, characters, events, religion, etc.

The fact that you thought it was a fun mechanic doesn't hold water as an argument.

In that case, why don't we put dragons in the game? I like dragons.
 
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Regardless, I think this system is so far pretty good and interesting, and I wouldn't want them to focus on reworking in as of now - I think it's good for now, probably in a future update they could rethink if these intended mechanic should really be a religious feature or not
"...so far, this system is good and interesting..."

According to whom? Someone who has no idea about Aztec history and religion?
 
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Really, this "Reform Society" thing again? It just feels so eurocentric and colonialistic. Like "The primitive natives have to give up their backwards ways in order to become an enlightened, civilized people". Is there even historic precedent for such a reformation? Why can't we keep the religion and just get strong through strategic gameplay?
 
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Really, this "Reform Society" thing again? It just feels so eurocentric and colonialistic. Like "The primitive natives have to give up their backwards ways in order to become an enlightened, civilized people". Is there even historic precedent for such a reformation? Why can't we keep the religion and just get strong through strategic gameplay?
In general I think that the religious systems in the game should portray that religion changed over time, and I think this would be true of the Aztecs as well. But I think this is true of every religion- and it looks like they will be doing this for catholicism as well- specifically with the ability to go back on forth on whether witches are real.

Though I think maybe with the Aztecs it works better if this is something they can choose to 'reform' or not. Like one path could be they moderate their society more (toning down the human sacrifice) that plays a bit more normal, while the other stays much more aggressive and opens up different gameplay opportunities, while perhaps being less stable (as the Aztec Empire was historically).

Neither of these routes I think should require representation as being a different religion though- but maybe with some sort of indicator on the diplomacy screen like a tooltip to let players know what version they are dealing with.
 
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1. Here is the spread.
2. It doesn't have unique mechanics, I'm sorry to say.
In case you do decide to expand on the Chichimeca at some point, know that they were notoriously hard to conquer, for both the Aztecs and the Spaniards (the terrain had a lot to do as well), to the point that the Spaniards decided to migrate other natives into their land to found towns instead, and it took decades to finally pacify them.
 
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What's being discussed here is historical accuracy and precision, which is what these types of games are all about: accuracy in maps, characters, events, religion, etc.

The fact that you thought it was a fun mechanic doesn't hold water as an argument.

In that case, why don't we put dragons in the game? I like dragons.
I didn't say it should be implemented because it is fun or something just asked what is inaccurate.
 
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Depressing to see the Doom Mechanic back. As others have already said, entirely ahistorical. Also why would looting decrease Doom? Postclassic ritual warfare was conducted outside cities. I guess taking and adopting (the 'Aztecs' had an entire temple made for Gods of conquered peoples, the Coateocalco) the enemy's patron deity could tie in here, but why not make that a separate mechanic then?

And the reforming... (I'm choosing to ignore the fact that here it's more like societal reforms)
Why would the Nahua need to reform their religion if the Hindus, Buddhists etc. do not have to? Religions should change dynamically by themselves IMO. If human sacrifice is the issue then most religions in the game would need reforming (not that the Thai or Japanese sacrificed anywhere as much people as Mesoamericans, but still). Further codifying the faith is fine though. I'd also absolutely LOVE to see syncretic deities/cults - as a Nahua, Mixtec or Maya polytheist I should also be able to worship a syncretized version of Jesus, Mary etc. (which could eventually result in an event chain leading to a gradual conversion to christianity, but contrary to some people's warped view of history christianity didn't just magically take off in the New World because the people were "tired/scared of sacrifices")

"Nahua Ritualism" is a little bland and long, maybe something like Teotlamatiliztli/Tlateomatiliztli (okay, not mcuh shorter, but more flavourful for sure!).
Weird that there's nothing about the Zuyuan Regime too. I guess it's pretty niche, but could fit here very well (and was even a thing in MEIOU and Taxes at some point). It was a religious way of organizing a hegemonic military empire in Mesoamerica; essentially based on the cult of Quetzalcoatl/Nacxit as creator of mankind and the notion that all peoples descend from some singular, universal mythical place. It was an ideology that sought to bring all peoples into one prosperous, universal, ethnically heterogenic state (even somewhat seen in Popol Vuh: "and all nations had/shared but one dawn"). Seems like the Mexihcah gradually replaced Quetzalcoatl with Huitzilopochtli as the paramount patron of their empire. (This is an extremely dumbed down description of the Zuyuan Regime, read Lopez Lujan and Lopez Austin if you want to know more; there's also a few good papers on Mesoweb about the concept of Zuyua)

Many people here seem to completely misunderstand Mesoamerican sacrifice (so do the devs, sadly). As said above, the Gods were not seen as angry or wrathful and in need of appeasement. The human offerings were reenactments of divine self-sacrifice, a way to honour the deities and their hard work they do for Mankind, Earth and the Universe.
But neither were the Gods exactly "in a constant battle to keep the Sun moving and prevent darkness from consuming the world". The Nahua did not literally believe that the Sun would stop moving/die if they didn't sacrifice X people every day. Hell, the Sun (Tonatiuh) died for them every single night: it becomes Tlachitonatiuh just to emerge as newly formed Tonatiuh in the morning. Now, there was a small chance of things going badly and the world entering a state of cosmic chaos/apocalypse every 52 years - this is what the New Fire Ceremony is for. But the idea that doomsday is right away behind the corner is essentially a pop-culture factoid. It probably emerged from conflating Huitzilopochtli with Tonatiuh - in fact Huitzilopochtli does not represent the Sun anywhere in the primary sources (though he is somewhat related to the Heavens and heat). His fight against Coyolxauhqui and Centzonhuitznahuah as the Sun fighting against the Moon and the Stars is seemingly an entirely modern interpretation and probably a misunderstanding (as are the "4 Tezcatlipocas", but that's a story for another day, another Tinto Talk...)

The sacrifices usually were not slaves (though incorrigable slaves indeed could be sacrificed), but war captives, mostly elite soldiers and warriors. And they were rather accepting of their deaths according to the primary sources. It was essentially a glorified and controlled, ritualized version of the death that would otherwise occur on the battlefield. When the conquistadores "rescued" some young men about to be sacrificed, the warriors got mad at the Spaniards and demanded to be offered up anyways. The war captives would also integrate into the captor's city and family for a good while, often for more than a year (and archaeological records support this). Now, I don't care for virtue signaling and the moral aspect of this (same with stuff like seppuku or holy wars), I'm just spewing out historical info here. For those truly interested, I can't recommend Bonds of Blood by Caroline Dodds Pennock enough - an amazing book on Nahua sacrifice. I believe everyone tackling the topic should be familiar with it.
 
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