1.14 Edit:
While I wanted to avoid updating this post for a while, I feel that a recent comment made by the devs needs addressing. To quote Wiz in 1.14 Patch Excerpts Part 2:
This comment was made in response to the fact that Shinto, as said, has had its heathen tolerance penalty removed (and replaced with nothing, making it the only religion in game with only one modifier). However, this comment, which clearly does not acknowledge the fact that Catholic has a penalty in its country-wide bonuses, has left me with two conclusions on Paradox's stance on this matter:
The first would be that they are willfully ignorant of Catholicism's arbitrary penalties. While I don't like to think that they are, since Paradox is one of the best companies I've seen when it comes to listening to community feedback, given that I refuse to believe that they are somehow unaware that Catholicism has -1 Heretic Tolerance, and that Wiz did not respond to the many people who replied to his comment pointing out Catholicism, not to mention that this thread has not been replied to either, it is a possibility.
The second would be that, given how CoR work, they do not consider -1 Heretic Tolerance as a penalty, and I am much more apt to believe this is their reasoning. For those who do not know, the speed at which a CoR converts Catholic provinces is slowed down by how much Heretic (in)Tolerance a nation has, so -1 Heretic Tolerance inherently gives Catholicism some resistance to it. However, the problem with this line of thinking is that Catholicism must be inherently punished, while everyone else is inherently rewarded, to make a mechanic designed to convert its provinces work/balanced. In short, this is the equivalent of saying; 'I'll step on your toes so you won't be so focused on that blow to your head'.
If -1 Heretic Tolerance is truly necessary for CoR to work, then that means that CoR needs a rework, not that -1 Heretic Tolerance should stay. If not, then I see no reason why it can't be replaced with a Local -1% Missionary Strength modifier like Orthodox gets to help slow down the rate of conversion. This, of course, would beg the question of what it should be replaced with. Going over the many posts in this thread, I've narrowed down my initial suggestions to these:
-10% Development Cost - or -5% if 10% is too much. While -5% Tech Cost is my personal favorite, I feel that this would actually be the best game-wise; it would make playing as a tall or small Catholic nation much more feasible and would make sense flavor-wise, seeing as how Dev Cost seems to also represent the passive benefits of education, if the University is any indication. Likewise, I don't think it would be as divisive as -5% Tech Cost.
-5% Tech Cost - my personal favorite, though this would require the removal of -5% Tech Cost from Papal Controller for balancing
-10% Build Cost
Likewise, it's been mostly agreed that the Counter-Reformation should not give a penalty to tech, and the old complaints of Catholicism being more harmful than helpful outside of Europe (not even Jerusalem can get cardinals, and Catholic nations in the New World get penalized by the Treaty of Tordesillas) still stand.
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Perhaps rebalance would be a better term...
Anyways, before 1.8 all other denominations of Christianity except Coptic were arguably better than Catholic. Reformed was the best if you had Res Publica, Protestantism was better due to the Idea Cost reduction and Tax Bonus, and even Orthodox could have arguably been better due to the reduced revolt risk, increased manpower and missionary strength at the cost of a bit of money you were no doubt swimming in. With 1.8, Catholicism became relevant again, but there still wasn't much of a reason to stay Catholic if you weren't in Europe. Now that Protestantism has been expanded, having the ability to customize your church a la Civ 5 as you see fit, but even going one step further and adding the ability to change your tenets as the situation demands (as long as you have the church power), combined with the fact that it has no inherent disadvantages and that it spreads like the plague due to CoR, Catholicism has fallen back down the ladder in relevance again. There's still some advantages in staying Catholic as certain nations this time around even as everyone converts, so it's not as bad as it used to be pre-1.8, but I would still like to see there be a better incentive to stay Catholic, either in Europe or RotW to balance things out.
So here's what I propose;
Switch the -1 Heretic Tolerance with -5% Tech Cost. This would achieve so many things by just a small change. Some should be obvious, but because I'm one for backing up my claims, I might as well put this here;
Now for my second simple suggestion; buff the Counter-Reformation decision by removing the Tech and Idea malus’. I probably won’t need to go into as detail on this one as the previous; I think everyone can agree that an increased emphasis on education should not increase tech costs.
For starters, the counter-reformation is the only effective way to combat the CoR, especially given their unlimited reach, and is vital for nations outside of Europe if they want to effectively spread Catholicism, and having to suffer penalties to your tech and ideas is another blow that makes Catholicism even more difficult for RotW. Likewise, the Counter-Reformation was all about education and being able to effectively and intellectually refute the reformer’s theology while still acknowledging they were right about many of their complaints, and the Jesuits, whose contributions were mentioned earlier, were one of the products of it.
I think everyone can agree it would be fine, from both a balance and historical perspective, to axe the Tech Malus. I can understand how some people can argue that the idea malus would be fitting, but the Counter Reformation wasn’t just a bull-headed reassertion of the infallibility of the Catholic Church; they did acknowledge that the reformers, even if they thought they were wrong theologically, were still correct about many of their complaints and even on some points raised against doctrine, and as a result the Catholic Church had to jump through hoops to come up with new ideas and points on how to refute them. So, while I advocate getting rid of the Idea Malus as well, from both a game and historical perspective, I will concede that it is not as strong a case as before either.
Despite the incredible length I’ve used to advocate for these two changes, they really are pretty simple and wouldn’t require anything more than a rewriting a few lines in a couple of folders; literally only take a few minutes long to implement since all they would do is change existing values. These are the simple changes I’m advocating. The longer, more time consuming and less certain ones I would advocate are;
Give CoR a range limit of five provinces (ocean provinces included). Despite the fact that Religious Zeal stacking got fixed in 1.12, the fact that it is now -100% Missionary strength means that it’s literally impossible to reconvert a province after a CoR converts it (and the CoR can continue to convert immediately afterwards at the same rapid pace) for a few decades, and the moment you reconvert it, it will simply get converted back later. Since provinces branch, a five province limit on CoR is actually a lot more provinces than it sounds on paper, and it would also mean that a center in Bohemia would convert all of Bohemia before just converting the surrounding provinces and moving onto Italy (I.E result in the slightly more historical outcomes of the reformation that happened before 1.8).
Bonus’ for Catholics outside of Europe. Well, I’ll admit this one is pretty vague, but there’s also a lot of potential here.
EU4 is a game of ifs, after all, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say something would have happened if a Catholic Nation reconquered and reconverted Jerusalem (outside of reforming the Kingdom of Jerusalem), or conquered and converted Constantinople - or if the Byzantines retained the Union with Rome. Maybe had the Inca or Japanese converted (for whatever reason), they would have been appointed Cardinals or given some Papal bull or the like. Basically; maybe just some triggered modifiers and a few flavor events.
And that’s really it for my suggestions. If anything, I would be content with just seeing the first two I spent a gratuitous amount of time advocating get implemented; they wouldn’t take that long or be that hard to do so, and would go a long way to balancing out Catholicism in comparison to Reformed and Protestant.
While I wanted to avoid updating this post for a while, I feel that a recent comment made by the devs needs addressing. To quote Wiz in 1.14 Patch Excerpts Part 2:
This comment was made in response to the fact that Shinto, as said, has had its heathen tolerance penalty removed (and replaced with nothing, making it the only religion in game with only one modifier). However, this comment, which clearly does not acknowledge the fact that Catholic has a penalty in its country-wide bonuses, has left me with two conclusions on Paradox's stance on this matter:
The first would be that they are willfully ignorant of Catholicism's arbitrary penalties. While I don't like to think that they are, since Paradox is one of the best companies I've seen when it comes to listening to community feedback, given that I refuse to believe that they are somehow unaware that Catholicism has -1 Heretic Tolerance, and that Wiz did not respond to the many people who replied to his comment pointing out Catholicism, not to mention that this thread has not been replied to either, it is a possibility.
The second would be that, given how CoR work, they do not consider -1 Heretic Tolerance as a penalty, and I am much more apt to believe this is their reasoning. For those who do not know, the speed at which a CoR converts Catholic provinces is slowed down by how much Heretic (in)Tolerance a nation has, so -1 Heretic Tolerance inherently gives Catholicism some resistance to it. However, the problem with this line of thinking is that Catholicism must be inherently punished, while everyone else is inherently rewarded, to make a mechanic designed to convert its provinces work/balanced. In short, this is the equivalent of saying; 'I'll step on your toes so you won't be so focused on that blow to your head'.
If -1 Heretic Tolerance is truly necessary for CoR to work, then that means that CoR needs a rework, not that -1 Heretic Tolerance should stay. If not, then I see no reason why it can't be replaced with a Local -1% Missionary Strength modifier like Orthodox gets to help slow down the rate of conversion. This, of course, would beg the question of what it should be replaced with. Going over the many posts in this thread, I've narrowed down my initial suggestions to these:
-10% Development Cost - or -5% if 10% is too much. While -5% Tech Cost is my personal favorite, I feel that this would actually be the best game-wise; it would make playing as a tall or small Catholic nation much more feasible and would make sense flavor-wise, seeing as how Dev Cost seems to also represent the passive benefits of education, if the University is any indication. Likewise, I don't think it would be as divisive as -5% Tech Cost.
-5% Tech Cost - my personal favorite, though this would require the removal of -5% Tech Cost from Papal Controller for balancing
-10% Build Cost
Likewise, it's been mostly agreed that the Counter-Reformation should not give a penalty to tech, and the old complaints of Catholicism being more harmful than helpful outside of Europe (not even Jerusalem can get cardinals, and Catholic nations in the New World get penalized by the Treaty of Tordesillas) still stand.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps rebalance would be a better term...
Anyways, before 1.8 all other denominations of Christianity except Coptic were arguably better than Catholic. Reformed was the best if you had Res Publica, Protestantism was better due to the Idea Cost reduction and Tax Bonus, and even Orthodox could have arguably been better due to the reduced revolt risk, increased manpower and missionary strength at the cost of a bit of money you were no doubt swimming in. With 1.8, Catholicism became relevant again, but there still wasn't much of a reason to stay Catholic if you weren't in Europe. Now that Protestantism has been expanded, having the ability to customize your church a la Civ 5 as you see fit, but even going one step further and adding the ability to change your tenets as the situation demands (as long as you have the church power), combined with the fact that it has no inherent disadvantages and that it spreads like the plague due to CoR, Catholicism has fallen back down the ladder in relevance again. There's still some advantages in staying Catholic as certain nations this time around even as everyone converts, so it's not as bad as it used to be pre-1.8, but I would still like to see there be a better incentive to stay Catholic, either in Europe or RotW to balance things out.
So here's what I propose;
Switch the -1 Heretic Tolerance with -5% Tech Cost. This would achieve so many things by just a small change. Some should be obvious, but because I'm one for backing up my claims, I might as well put this here;
Let me explain the first one in the form of a question: do you know the devs removed Byzantium's cores on all Greek land that wasn't controlled by the Ottomans? Well, obviously, it's because that was where Byzantium kept coming back the most often due to revolts, and they didn't want Byzantium to get resurrected almost every game. The question, though, is why Byzantine rebels popping up in small island-nations, who accepted Greek and had their armies constantly present, without player intervention was almost a certainty.
The answer is because of that small -1 Heretic Tolerance modifier (and the Knight's larger government modifier, but the Byzantines would pop up in Cyprus, Naxos and Theodosia just as often) that would often be the catalyst to push those provinces into revolting. So, getting rid of the -1 Heretic Tolerance modifier would obviously fix (or go a long way towards) the problem with revolts.
Now, as I said earlier, there isn't much of an incentive at all to stay Catholic as someone outside of Europe; converting to Reformed or Protestant is almost always the better choice. Adding in -5% Tech Cost would change that. For Western Nations, it won't make much of a difference. For Eastern Catholics, such as Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and The Knights, it would be a small but noticeable bonus. For nations not in Europe, such as Japan, Kongo, or a country the Americas, it can make all the difference. Cardinals pre-1.8 actually did give a (miniscule) discount to tech, and that was pretty much the only modifier that did not get carried over into 1.8, so in addition to balancing it would bring everything full circle.
Now, outside of the actual game balance, there's also historical accuracy behind my reasoning. For starters, Catholicism is one of the two religions in game that has a negative modifier as a base ‘bonus’ (the other would be Shinto, which should probably have -1 Heathen Tolerance replaced with +10% Fort Defense), and having -1 Heretic Tolerance would imply that Catholics were more intolerant of Protestants and Orthodox than they were of them and each other, but I think that everyone who looks at the historical record can agree that they were all pretty much equally in/tolerant of each other (though, before the Ottoman Conquest, Catholicism and Orthodoxy were a bit more civil than the reformers).
Now, there’s the matter of Tech Cost. The Catholic Church has arguably been one of (if not the) greatest and most consistent sponsors of scientific progress in the history of man. The institution of the University as we know it (meaning open to all strata based on merit for the pursuit of their own intellectual desires as long as they could afford it) was a result of the Catholic Church’s patronage and emphasis on education (hence why it first emerged, and was only widespread, in Europe) and first appeared during the Medieval Ages.
The monasteries it established were, in addition to their obvious functions for the creation and preservation of books, also the equivalent of medieval laboratories, acting as an interconnected network where technological advancements could be shared and distributed freely across the continent. The fact that there were also vying orders encouraged competition between the monasteries, which spurred even quicker technological growth and arguably set the base for capitalism. They also acted as hospitals, wineries, and the monks usually were the ones to dig wells, create irrigation, and other various activities that furthered their knowledge of natural science.
During this period, the Jesuits, in addition to acting as diplomats, traders, artists, historians, philosophers, missionaries and so on, were some of the biggest contributors to the sciences and mathematics. And, wherever they went, they would usually build missions, which, in addition to being used a base to proselytize the natives, were also places to teach them western thought, science and skills.
Even during the so called Enlightenment, twenty six of the most important scientists of the period were Roman Catholic, nine of them clergymen (another twenty six were Protestants, and almost all of them religious. The most famous figures of the Enlightenment, however, such as Voltaire, Locke and Hobbes, had almost nothing to do with science and instead were philosophers).
So, to sum it up; wherever the Catholic Church has went, education, in some way, shape or form, was close behind, meaning that a -5% Tech Cost bonus would be far more fitting than -1 Heretic Tolerance, and better for balance and historicity. In compensation; the Tech Bonus that being the Curia Controller provides can be removed for balance.
The answer is because of that small -1 Heretic Tolerance modifier (and the Knight's larger government modifier, but the Byzantines would pop up in Cyprus, Naxos and Theodosia just as often) that would often be the catalyst to push those provinces into revolting. So, getting rid of the -1 Heretic Tolerance modifier would obviously fix (or go a long way towards) the problem with revolts.
Now, as I said earlier, there isn't much of an incentive at all to stay Catholic as someone outside of Europe; converting to Reformed or Protestant is almost always the better choice. Adding in -5% Tech Cost would change that. For Western Nations, it won't make much of a difference. For Eastern Catholics, such as Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and The Knights, it would be a small but noticeable bonus. For nations not in Europe, such as Japan, Kongo, or a country the Americas, it can make all the difference. Cardinals pre-1.8 actually did give a (miniscule) discount to tech, and that was pretty much the only modifier that did not get carried over into 1.8, so in addition to balancing it would bring everything full circle.
Now, outside of the actual game balance, there's also historical accuracy behind my reasoning. For starters, Catholicism is one of the two religions in game that has a negative modifier as a base ‘bonus’ (the other would be Shinto, which should probably have -1 Heathen Tolerance replaced with +10% Fort Defense), and having -1 Heretic Tolerance would imply that Catholics were more intolerant of Protestants and Orthodox than they were of them and each other, but I think that everyone who looks at the historical record can agree that they were all pretty much equally in/tolerant of each other (though, before the Ottoman Conquest, Catholicism and Orthodoxy were a bit more civil than the reformers).
Now, there’s the matter of Tech Cost. The Catholic Church has arguably been one of (if not the) greatest and most consistent sponsors of scientific progress in the history of man. The institution of the University as we know it (meaning open to all strata based on merit for the pursuit of their own intellectual desires as long as they could afford it) was a result of the Catholic Church’s patronage and emphasis on education (hence why it first emerged, and was only widespread, in Europe) and first appeared during the Medieval Ages.
The monasteries it established were, in addition to their obvious functions for the creation and preservation of books, also the equivalent of medieval laboratories, acting as an interconnected network where technological advancements could be shared and distributed freely across the continent. The fact that there were also vying orders encouraged competition between the monasteries, which spurred even quicker technological growth and arguably set the base for capitalism. They also acted as hospitals, wineries, and the monks usually were the ones to dig wells, create irrigation, and other various activities that furthered their knowledge of natural science.
During this period, the Jesuits, in addition to acting as diplomats, traders, artists, historians, philosophers, missionaries and so on, were some of the biggest contributors to the sciences and mathematics. And, wherever they went, they would usually build missions, which, in addition to being used a base to proselytize the natives, were also places to teach them western thought, science and skills.
Even during the so called Enlightenment, twenty six of the most important scientists of the period were Roman Catholic, nine of them clergymen (another twenty six were Protestants, and almost all of them religious. The most famous figures of the Enlightenment, however, such as Voltaire, Locke and Hobbes, had almost nothing to do with science and instead were philosophers).
So, to sum it up; wherever the Catholic Church has went, education, in some way, shape or form, was close behind, meaning that a -5% Tech Cost bonus would be far more fitting than -1 Heretic Tolerance, and better for balance and historicity. In compensation; the Tech Bonus that being the Curia Controller provides can be removed for balance.
Now for my second simple suggestion; buff the Counter-Reformation decision by removing the Tech and Idea malus’. I probably won’t need to go into as detail on this one as the previous; I think everyone can agree that an increased emphasis on education should not increase tech costs.
For starters, the counter-reformation is the only effective way to combat the CoR, especially given their unlimited reach, and is vital for nations outside of Europe if they want to effectively spread Catholicism, and having to suffer penalties to your tech and ideas is another blow that makes Catholicism even more difficult for RotW. Likewise, the Counter-Reformation was all about education and being able to effectively and intellectually refute the reformer’s theology while still acknowledging they were right about many of their complaints, and the Jesuits, whose contributions were mentioned earlier, were one of the products of it.
I think everyone can agree it would be fine, from both a balance and historical perspective, to axe the Tech Malus. I can understand how some people can argue that the idea malus would be fitting, but the Counter Reformation wasn’t just a bull-headed reassertion of the infallibility of the Catholic Church; they did acknowledge that the reformers, even if they thought they were wrong theologically, were still correct about many of their complaints and even on some points raised against doctrine, and as a result the Catholic Church had to jump through hoops to come up with new ideas and points on how to refute them. So, while I advocate getting rid of the Idea Malus as well, from both a game and historical perspective, I will concede that it is not as strong a case as before either.
Despite the incredible length I’ve used to advocate for these two changes, they really are pretty simple and wouldn’t require anything more than a rewriting a few lines in a couple of folders; literally only take a few minutes long to implement since all they would do is change existing values. These are the simple changes I’m advocating. The longer, more time consuming and less certain ones I would advocate are;
Give CoR a range limit of five provinces (ocean provinces included). Despite the fact that Religious Zeal stacking got fixed in 1.12, the fact that it is now -100% Missionary strength means that it’s literally impossible to reconvert a province after a CoR converts it (and the CoR can continue to convert immediately afterwards at the same rapid pace) for a few decades, and the moment you reconvert it, it will simply get converted back later. Since provinces branch, a five province limit on CoR is actually a lot more provinces than it sounds on paper, and it would also mean that a center in Bohemia would convert all of Bohemia before just converting the surrounding provinces and moving onto Italy (I.E result in the slightly more historical outcomes of the reformation that happened before 1.8).
Bonus’ for Catholics outside of Europe. Well, I’ll admit this one is pretty vague, but there’s also a lot of potential here.
EU4 is a game of ifs, after all, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say something would have happened if a Catholic Nation reconquered and reconverted Jerusalem (outside of reforming the Kingdom of Jerusalem), or conquered and converted Constantinople - or if the Byzantines retained the Union with Rome. Maybe had the Inca or Japanese converted (for whatever reason), they would have been appointed Cardinals or given some Papal bull or the like. Basically; maybe just some triggered modifiers and a few flavor events.
And that’s really it for my suggestions. If anything, I would be content with just seeing the first two I spent a gratuitous amount of time advocating get implemented; they wouldn’t take that long or be that hard to do so, and would go a long way to balancing out Catholicism in comparison to Reformed and Protestant.
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