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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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I've just finished all the posts in the Tinto Talks, so first things first, thanks for your feedback! I've been bookmarking posts and taking notes, with your suggestions to improve the current mechanics of Tonal religions.

I'll ask you for a bit of patience on any major changes, as they need to be discussed and scoped internally, then implemented, and later tested and debugged. Let's see if in some weeks from now, I can present you with some changes based on the aforementioned feedback.
 
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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...)

I really think you should write a thread on this, because this is news to me. Not that I am anywhere knowledgeable on Nahua mythology, but I'm actually interested in how it really was and how it could be translated into in-game terms.
 
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Checking if we can add some unique icons for them, yes.
That would be great! You probably could find cool period-accurate depictions for most of them
 
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View attachment 1332606

PS: Made a minor loc fix, the final sentence now reads as 'We will worship Ometeotl as the only God.'
What's the point of converting the Nahuatl religion to monotheism?

It seems like polytheistic religions are backward and have to "evolve" toward monotheism.

That stale eurocentrism again...

There's no evidence that this happened either before or after the arrival of the Spanish.

In fact, this is why Mexico currently has many saints, because they had no problem accepting another god in their religion alongside other gods, and this led to only changing the names of the gods they already had.

Besides, what makes you believe that a religion should always evolve toward monotheism? Look at Hinduism in India/Bharat; their religion is thousands of years old, and that hasn't changed to monotheism.

Seriously, what's the argument for this?
 
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An added thought- if you want to focus on 'alt-history religious reformation' then why not add a 'defender of the faith' mechanic for the Aztec religion in their final reform?

One of the issues playing in the region is you are really only playing for yourself while the Spanish eat up everyone else, and there isn't really a way to form a 'united front' against them. Adding a 'defender of the faith' mechanic would be alt-historical, but it would be a useful game mechanic, and I think players might prefer that to some of the stuff that's currently in there.
 
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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 see 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.
If that happens to be the case then the reformed Nahua faith probably shouldn't have unrestricted slavery, since there is no more reason to sacrifice people the concept of slavery may be less integral as it becomes more similar to other Mesoamerican societies or even to the ones practiced by the people of the old world(forbid to enslave people of the same religion and culture)
 
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If that happens to be the case then the reformed Nahua faith probably shouldn't have unrestricted slavery, since there is no more reason to sacrifice people the concept of slavery may be less integral as it becomes more similar to other Mesoamerican societies or even to the ones practiced by the people of the old world(forbid to enslave people of the same religion and culture)
Nah, if anything they'd double down on enslaving people of the same religion and culture. Most of Nahua slaves (more like servants, since they were not used for hard physical labour) were citizens who fell in debt or committed some kind of serious crime. In fact slavery was less integral to Nahua society than Maya or Purepecha and the Triple Alliance gradually reduced the amount of ways to get enslaved. War captives on the other hand were an entirely different "class" of people (and these could maybe reduce/disappear once Mesoamerica has been in contact with the Old World for long enough, just like sepukku more or less disappeared in Japan). In an ideal world they would be two separate types of pops.
 
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View attachment 1332606

PS: Made a minor loc fix, the final sentence now reads as 'We will worship Ometeotl as the only God.'
Okay, I sort of get what you're going for here, but I think it needs some major rewording. The view of imperial Nahua belief as Monist is still debated, but I'm all for representing it - it has some backing. Now if the upper classes are reforming the faith to be closer to their views and to enforce it on the lower classes, they'd not be enforcing the view the Ometeotl is the only god, but that all other gods are just aspects of Ometeotl.

The way you're wording things here makes it seem Monotheistic when they were not Monotheistic. Ometeotl was not the 'only god', but all gods were parts of Ometeotl. It's a subtle but important difference. Those other gods would still be worshiped as aspects of the divine whole - similarly to how Monistic beliefs in Hinduism operate.

Also, could you please use a better name? Adopt Ometeotl is a really bad name, the Nahua have already 'adopted Ometeotl'. Perhaps something like 'Promote Ometeotl to the commoners' or something would be better, if what this is meant to be is the creation of an orthodoxy by imposing the beliefs of the nobles on the lower classes.
 
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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)
I know citizens would be sacrificed but did the Aztecs practice sacrifice of any other social classes?

Like nobility? Or even royalty? Would a warrior be sacrificed if a ceremony called for it? Were there any restrictions who could or could not be sacrificed? Were there any qualities or characteristics a person could have that would make them a *bad* sacrifice?
 
I know citizens would be sacrificed but did the Aztecs practice sacrifice of any other social classes?

Like nobility? Or even royalty? Would a warrior be sacrificed if a ceremony called for it? Were there any restrictions who could or could not be sacrificed? Were there any qualities or characteristics a person could have that would make them a *bad* sacrifice?
Everyone could be sacrificed, but the most common was the sacrifice of elite soldiers and warriors. But these were mostly people from outside the city. What about the citizens of Tenochtitlan itself?

Seems like it was still mostly people related to the military, especially young noble men. Duran's informants told him that the sacrifices were "nearly always... friends of the [Royal] House". For example at Toxcatl a young man would become an ixiptla (deity-impersonator, literally a living vessel for a deity) of Tezcatlipoca for an entire year before getting sacrificed. The ixiptla of Tezcatlipoca had to be perfect: not too short but not too tall, his teeth, hair, eyes, posture, all had to be perfect. Or rather, in perfect, natural balance. But that is more or less reserved to Tezcatlipoca.

In other cases it was the deformed, sick and dying that would be sacrificed. Dvarves and terminally ill children (especially deformed ones) were sacred to Tlaloc. There is also one archaeological find of a young boy that was sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli - osteological analysis showed that he was suffering from some serious illness, no doubt that's why he was picked. But this is a rather rare occurence, most sacrifices were adult men, no doubt warriors.

Sometimes incorrigable slaves were sacrificed. Regular slaves could not be sold at the market for sacrifice, but ones who committed heinous crimes could be.

Sacrifices of women were more rare, but it did happen few times a year. Seems like they too were mostly willing.... or rather, stoic, about their fate.

If one did not wish to die, there was a way to escape. Ironically all that one had to do was to escape their quarters before the ceremony and head for the temple of the specific deity. If one managed to reach the stairs it was considered divine favour and the person would not be sacrificed. Incorrigable slaves could also escape from the market through the main gate in a similar manner (though some sources mention that one also had to step in excrement, which must've been much harder in such a clean city)

A bad sacrifice was a fearful one (apparently very rare, an extremely bad omen and they'd get extra drugged before the ceremony), one taken unhonourably or simply one with a very low social standing (as in, a newbie teenager was a much less prestigious and desired captive than a more experienced and elite warrior; and while all war captives had to integrate into their captor's family for some time, it seems like at least some of these lower ranking ones could in fact become free citizens of the city).
 
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Everyone could be sacrificed, but the most common was the sacrifice of elite soldiers and warriors. But these were mostly people from outside the city. What about the citizens of Tenochtitlan itself?

Seems like it was still mostly people related to the military, especially young noble men. Duran's informants told him that the sacrifices were "nearly always... friends of the [Royal] House". For example at Toxcatl a young man would become an ixiptla (deity-impersonator, literally a living vessel for a deity) of Tezcatlipoca for an entire year before getting sacrificed. The ixiptla of Tezcatlipoca had to be perfect: not too short but not too tall, his teeth, hair, eyes, posture, all had to be perfect. Or rather, in perfect, natural balance. But that is more or less reserved to Tezcatlipoca.

In other cases it was the deformed, sick and dying that would be sacrificed. Dvarves and terminally ill children (especially deformed ones) were sacred to Tlaloc. There is also one archaeological find of a young boy that was sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli - osteological analysis showed that he was suffering from some serious illness, no doubt that's why he was picked. But this is a rather rare occurence, most sacrifices were adult men, no doubt warriors.

Sometimes incorrigable slaves were sacrificed. Regular slaves could not be sold at the market for sacrifice, but ones who committed heinous crimes could be.

Sacrifices of women were more rare, but it did happen few times a year. Seems like they too were mostly willing.... or rather, stoic, about their fate.

If one did not wish to die, there was a way to escape. Ironically all that one had to do was to escape their quarters before the ceremony and head for the temple of the specific deity. If one managed to reach the stairs it was considered divine favour and the person would not be sacrificed. Incorrigable slaves could also escape from the market through the main gate in a similar manner (though some sources mention that one also had to step in excrement, which must've been much harder in such a clean city)

A bad sacrifice was a fearful one (apparently very rare, an extremely bad omen and they'd get extra drugged before the ceremony), one taken unhonourably or simply one with a very low social standing (as in, a newbie teenager was a much less prestigious and desired captive than a more experienced and elite warrior; and while all war captives had to integrate into their captor's family for some time, it seems like at least some of these lower ranking ones could in fact become free citizens of the city).
It seems like this is much less "Blood for the blood god!" and more a highly ritualized, specific, and... I want to say dignified? Procedure. In that you dont, you cant, just grab any old person and drag them to the temple. There were rules and procedures to be followed.

Like the most prestigious position one can achieve is to be part of the warrior class but being part of the warrior class also means you risk getting sacrificed either by your own people or by the enemy. The nobility also dont get away from it. They have 'skin in the game' as it were too. It is probably a much more tolerable institution since it touches virtually every level of the society. No one is able to duck out of it, and if you were truly afraid there were ways to get away from it.

Though my understanding is that being chosen for sacrifice was also seen as a very prestigious thing both for the family of the person chose, and for the person themselves. I read once that when the sacrifices were stopped in the city, the people to be sacrificed (The citizens) were outraged and demanded that they go through with the ceremony and were furious that it was halted.

But people are still people and its a scary thing to go through and people are probably still upset if their family member or loved one gets picked. There is a reason when it happens everyone, including the people doing the sacrificing, are blitzed out of their gourds.


I think for Tonali religions, but specifically the Aztecs who I think did it more often than others, sacrifices requires pops and if you cant grab pops from your neighbors you need to sacrifice your own pops for the ceremonies. Pops who are sacrificed are pops who cant do labor like gathering RGOs or working in buildings to produce goods.

I think this is how you would reform tonalist religions. People become uncomfortable with sacrifice and try to get away with it or change how the rituals work so that they dont require people to have their hearts carved out in order to consider it 'good enough'.

Also Pavis, you could also make it a reaction to various plagues and diseases that spread from european contact. If your losing a ton of pops to disease, then it suddenly becomes much harder to justify human sacrifice because every person you sacrifice is one less hand to bring in the harvest, or to fight off spaniards and their allies. Or to expand your borders.

So reforming Nahua religion (Or converting entirely) is a reaction to the massive loss of life war with colonizers and the diseases they bring, meaning there is a concrete dedicated material cause for why your changing how you do things. Of course being a simulation, you can choose to stick with the old ways and increase the number of sacrifices instead and try to thrive in that direction...

But your literally killing off the people who do valuable work that you need to arm soldiers to fight off invaders and hold the empire together.


I think much like the Black Death, once you hit a number of pops in your empire killed off, either from war, internal or external, or from disease, you get an event where you can choose the direction you want to go in. Double down, reform the religion, or convert to the religion of whatever european country is in the area in an attempt to appease them. It just feels like the perfect catalyst to drive rapid social change such as this.

It would make more sense because then you arent just face-tanking smallpox like in EU4 and never noticing it. Its impacting your ability to do stuff like hold yourself together, fend off enemies, or feed your cities and towns.
 
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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?
The bottom 3 religions have 2 religious groupings; one local and the other "Folk religions". Does this mean religions can share religious groups like how cultures can share culture groups?
 
What's the point of converting the Nahuatl religion to monotheism?

It seems like polytheistic religions are backward and have to "evolve" toward monotheism.

That stale eurocentrism again...

There's no evidence that this happened either before or after the arrival of the Spanish.

In fact, this is why Mexico currently has many saints, because they had no problem accepting another god in their religion alongside other gods, and this led to only changing the names of the gods they already had.

Besides, what makes you believe that a religion should always evolve toward monotheism? Look at Hinduism in India/Bharat; their religion is thousands of years old, and that hasn't changed to monotheism.

Seriously, what's the argument for this?
The funniest part is that the reform right next to this is called "Elevate Our Patron God" and talks about making your patron deity the main deity of your religion. So you're simultaneously declaring Ometeotl the only god and making a different deity your main god.
 
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