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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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Read about this. It is really interesting how many Indians actually wanted to be christian and not "meat" for Aztecs or their overlords. This is quite forgotten
They were fine with adopting christian deities (in their eyes Mary, the Saints and Jesus would all count as Teteoh - deities and ancestors associated with these specific deities) because that's how Mesoamerican worldview worked. The Tlaxcallan people gladly put up an idol of Mary next to other mother goddesses. But Mesoamericans were very unhappy when their new allies eventually told them they have to forsake their main deities as well. If it wasn't for diseases christianity would still surely dominate New Spain (might makes right after all), but we'd surely see even more syncretism and nuance.

No one was "meat" for their overlords. I assume you are referring to the idea that Mesoamerican empires (especially Triple Alliance) would collect "blood tribute" in the form of taking citizens for sacrifice... The issue is that it never happened. We have loads of 'Aztec' tributary records and such a tax is nowhere to be seen.

The topic is incredibly complex. The existence of the "Aztec black legend" of sorts does not warrant some of the more egregorious "christianity bad" takes.
 
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Hi! I'm going to spend some more time replying today to this Tinto Talks, as I couldn't spend as much time as I'd like on Wednesday.
 
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Can you talk about how eagle and jaguar warriors work? Also why doesn't the reformed Nahua faith have them?
1. Check today's TF.
2. Fixed!
 
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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?
There are usually religious or cultural restrictions on what pops you can enslave. With this modifier, countries with Nahuatl Ritualism as religion doesn't have this type of restriction anymore.
 
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So what does the adopt omenotl decision do? I dont think you went over it
Ometeotl.png


PS: Made a minor loc fix, the final sentence now reads as 'We will worship Ometeotl as the only God.'
 
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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.
We'll follow the original TM orders, yes: North America -> Central America -> South America.
 
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Will the Inti religion have unique mechanics, or are these three the only ones in the Americas that have them?
It has some unique features, yes.
 
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Also there's something nagging on the back of my mind, @Pavía. Do we still have Religious Views? Because this was the only time we ever saw this screen, none of the Religion tooltips ever mention it. Did you drop this idea?
No, it's already there, in the 'Religious Breakdown' tab:
Religious Breakdown1.png

Religious Breakdown2.png


PS: God, the GUI has undergone some breaking changes since the first Tinto Talks, doesn't it?
 
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Why is there no holy site?
We need to do a balance pass, some religions have a humungous amount of holy sites (Hinduism), others regular numbers (Christianity, Islam), and we should add some for the Tonal religions.
 
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Are the religion and god icons placeholders? I hope they will get some unique icons like the Hindu patron gods do
Checking if we can add some unique icons for them, yes.
 
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Now, regarding DOOM (yes, this is the proper way to write it), I'm not really happy to see it again in EU5. I understand at this point it's iconic and kind of a meme, but there are much better ways to represent how the Aztec religion worked, like this one.

Also, since you're writing ejectives (as you should), Kukulkan should actually be written K'uk'ulkan. The difference is important: K'uk'ulkan means "feathered serpent" (k'uk' quetzal + -ul adjectival suffix + kan serpent), while Kukulkan would be something more like "beetle-serpent" or "insect-snake" (kukul beetle, insect + kan serpent, although I don't know if that's actually grammatical).
Just fixed K'uk'ulkan and Tláloc.
 
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Will the Maya also have a reforming system or is it exclusive to the Nahua? If the Maya do have a reforming system, how does it work without Doom?
It is exclusive to Nahua.
 
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No, it's already there, in the 'Religious Breakdown' tab:
View attachment 1332647
View attachment 1332648

PS: God, the GUI has undergone some breaking changes since the first Tinto Talks, doesn't it?

Oh this is absolute peak. May I ask if they can ever change? Like, by events, or Advances, some unique modifer etc? Or are they set in stone? An example I have in mind is if you were to ever mend the Great Schism: could this then fire an event that makes Catholicism and Orthodox Kindred to each other?
 
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Really not happy to see Doom come back. I'm also kinda confused by the nature of having the religion need to be reformed. What about the existing history of Aztec religion implies the necessity of reformation?

Also, there's are typo here, 10 yeas should be 10 years
View attachment 1331645
Just fixed the typo, thanks.
 
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