Province religions and the Reformation

[Incompetent]

Weall know how province religion works in EU2, in the absence of missionaries/random events/colonists:

- at the start of the game, you have a mass of Catholic provinces. When Martin Luther comes along, suddenly many of them convert to Protestant, and which ones do and don't has all been decided by the mod-maker.

- a similar thing happens with Calvin, with loads of provinces suddenly turning from Catholic to Reformed.

- other religions stay the same.

Now I don't want to discuss the other religions, as we can make them change if necessary by event. The problem is that the portrayal of the Reformation is unrealistic:

1. It didn't all happen at once

2. Some people adopted Protestant beliefs before turning Reformed

But the most important thing is:

3. Having the Reformation as a hard-wired province-based phenomenon suggests that it was a popular movement, independent of politics, which rulers had to grudgingly deal with. THIS IS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED IN REALITY. In fact, the Reformation was mostly a political phenomenon: rulers and aristocrats decided that it would be convenient to break from Rome, latched onto the new ideas and then imposed them on the populace.

This has two consequences:

A: Relatively few provinces should automatically convert

B: During the Reformation, mass conversions as a result of political events are perfectly acceptable, as this kind of thing really happened, eg England turned from Catholic to staunchly Protestant in the time between 1534 (Henry VIII's break with Rome) to Mary's ascent to the throne just 19 years later.

Here are some ideas for how the Reformation should happen, by region:

Occitania: here it really is a popular movement. Large numbers of province conversions, but not because Savoy, Burgundy etc want them. If Savoy is in charge in the South, it's as likely to want to suppress the Protestants as support them.

Scandinavia: Historically Sweden and Denmark had a really easy Reformation: the monarchs turned Protestant and the populace more or less just obeyed their masters. Hence there should be very few automatic province conversions in Sweden or Denmark; BUT the Kalmar player should get a choice of religion at some point. The Swedish and Danish provinces should pretty much all convert if they turn Protestant, but if they stay Catholic, nothing happens.

HRE: This is the most complicated one. Certainly some religions, such as Anabaptism, got somewhere because they amassed followers. But in many cases local princes simply converted to Protestantism because it allowed them to seize Church land. Hence the HRE can be a mixture:

- a few provinces convert, and this happens over time
- HRE minors choose randomly which faith to follow, and their capital converts in the process
- the majors also have a choice, and get some conversions in their 'heartland' for each choice to ensure it's stable (ie the AI won't convert straight back again). Possible default choices: Bavaria - Catholic, Swabia - Protestant (Swabia wants to control its church), Hansa - Reformed (the Hansa aren't keen on a powerful church hierarchy at all)
- If Bavaria goes counter-reformed, we can have some perverse conversions in the Netherlands: the provinces turn Reformed because the Catholic church's intolerance has alienated them. But a tolerant Bavaria can keep its part of the Netherlands Catholic.
- there's the whole UP business - basically every province they own turns Reformed up to a certain number, as they get flooded with Calvinists from all over the HRE to build their 'Kingdom of God', and they're loony enough to kill/drive out most of the people who refuse to convert. This could be coupled with province culture change.

BTW, the classic vanilla divide in the HRE (Protestant North, Catholic South, Reformed Netherlands) has no historical justification for our purposes:
- the north-south divide was largely a result of migration and religious purges during the 30 Years' War, so didn't emerge until the 17th century. In fact, Luther had a lot of supporters in Austria of all places.
- the Calvinists had some early support in the Netherlands, but they only became overwhelmingly popular because of Spain's attempts to aggressively impose its version of Catholicism and tax the region more than the local nobles could bear. Basically, a lot of people turned Calvinist BECAUSE they opposed Spain, rather than the other way around.

 

[MattyG]

The Reformation event could easily be replaced. You have cited excellent reasons for it.

First, we disable the current Reformations events, and replace it with the following.

event = {
id = 11111
random = no
trigger = { religion = catholic }
name = "Martin Luther Demands Reform"
desc = "Some nice historical notes"
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1501 }
offset = 6000
deathdate = { day = 29 month = december year = 1520 }

action_a = {
name = "The catholic world has begun to shudder"
command = { type = stability value = -1 }
}

Because this event has no country designation it will fire for all catholic countries sometime in the first 20 years of the 16th century. The stab hit is a nice touch, but mostly the event is there for players to know that certain other events will now begin occuring, and to act as a key trigger for each of those events.

For the Occitan provinces, here is how their event could look.

event = {
id = 265938
random = no
trigger = {
event = 111111 #yep, that's right, the luther event
OR = {
owned = { province = 421 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 422 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 423 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 424 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 425 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 426 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 406 data = -1 }
}
name = "Cathar Resurgeance"
desc = "Sme thing nice about the Cathars"
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1501 }
offset = 500
deathdate = { day = 29 month = december year = 1522 }

action_a = {
name = "Try and supress the Cathars once again"
command = { type = provincereligion which = 421 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 422 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 423 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 424 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 425 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 426 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 406 value = protestant }
command = { type = revolt which = 421 }
command = { type = revolt which = 422 }
command = { type = revolt which = 423 }
command = { type = revolt which = 424 }
command = { type = revolt which = 425 }
command = { type = revolt which = 426 }
command = { type = revolt which = 406 }
command = { type = manpower value = 5 }
command = { type = relation which = PAP value = 50 }
command = { type = domestic which = innovative value = -2 }
command = { type = stability value = -1 }
}
action_b = {
name = "Accept the Cathars"
command = { type = provincereligion which = 421 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 422 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 423 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 424 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 425 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 426 value = protestant }
command = { type = provincereligion which = 406 value = protestant }
command = { type = relation which = PAP value = -50 }
command = { type = domestic which = innovative value = 1 }
command = { type = stability value = -2 }
}

Again, because there is no country definition, the event will trigger after Luther's event and for each country that owns once of the Cathar provinces.


In this manner, and using the Luther event as a trigger base, all of the events that offer or demand religious change can be prepared as required and not form part of a single, sweeping event.

It also means that we don't have to write the Luther event and get it right before we do anything else, as it currently represents on a trigger (plus the stab hit).

Matty

 

[Incompetent]

...

I'm not sure you can have a single event fire multiple times like that; AFAIK events can be province-based or country-based, but they can only fire once in a game.


So, Occitania's going to be Cathar country, is it? That's a bit more radical than having it Huguenot country, and it'll require a major rethink of what happens down there.

1. As I've said before, it's doubtful whether you can call the Cathars Christian - while they did believe in Jesus (though only as an apparition!), their beliefs seem to be at least as different from any mainstream flavour of Christianity as those of Islam. They certainly wouldn't have been too friendly with Lutherans and the like. I'd rather model them as 'confucian' or something, but if they are modelled as Christians, Reformed would be a better choice of religion as they were vehemently opposed to the Church hierarchy.

2. This really changes things for Cordoba. I know Muslims in the period tolerated a lot of religions, but I think one which believed the creator of the universe was evil would be beyond the pale. Cordoba would not want to protect the Cathars, and indeed might leave Savoy et al alone for a while so that they could deal with this dangerous cult.

I just had a strange idea - what if Savoy turned Cathar, because say its king converts, while many of the Occitan people become Huguenots? This would provide an excellent excuse for Cordoba to invade, and although Burgundy et al would be very unhappy about the rise of Catharism, if they're Catholic they'd rather the Huguenots and Cathars carried on fighting each other so that both would be weakened. If we model Catharism as non-Christian, it would also be stable, and Savoy could rule over mostly Christian provinces without drifting over to Catholic or Reformed.

The only question is: would a player Savoy be mad enough to convert?

 

[MattyG]

When an event has no province or country defined, then it fires for every relevent country in the game. Everyone sees the treaty of tordesillas event because it doesn't have a country designator.

So, if you set the trigger as being religion = catholic and set no country definition, it will happen for every catholic country, or should. I'll test it out some time. All of the Revolution events in the misc_colony file work the same way. Mostly they are based on the key province, but when the secession event occurs, there is no country designator. So, if event 210014 has occured, country u11 exists and the u11 revolutionaries flag (whatever that means) is true, and if you own at least one of the listed provinces, then you would get the event below, in all aspects that pertain tou you. So, if you owned only province 11, but the Revolution event (210014) had triggered, then your personalized readout would say

"Secede San Berdardino, -50 ducats, -25 vp"

event = {
id = 210015
random = no
trigger = {
event = 210014
exists = U11
flag = U11rev
OR = {
owned = { province = 8 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 9 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 10 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 11 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 1474 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 1475 data = -1 }
owned = { province = 1476 data = -1 }
}
}
name = "Loss of California"
desc = "With the victory of the rebels in California, we are rapidly losing control over the rest of the region..."
style = 4
date = { day = 1 month = january year = 1777 }
offset = 60
deathdate = { day = 30 month = december year = 1788 }
action_a = {
name = "This looks bad..."
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 8 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 9 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 10 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 11 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 1474 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 1475 }
command = { type = secedeprovince which = U11 value = 1476 }
command = { type = vp value = -25 }
command = { type = cash value = -50 }
}
}

Of course, if it does not work this way, ie an event cannot read for religion, then we would have to get rid of the Stability -1, or else the whole world receives that when the Luther event goes off (which would be a pity). Likewise, for the above event the changes I made to include the vp and cash hits would have to be removed, or they will happen to all countries, not just those with provinces to lose. Again, pity. And either way, the event will register on everyone's screen, which can become annoying. But better to know about major events than not.

Next, the Cathar reference does not need to be taken literally. It is a flavour reference only. We can use the historical Hugenot name or - because this is Aberrated - we can call them Juicedribblers if we thought it might be better. These people will be Protestants. But perhaps the cathar sympathies (if not their actual precepts) are part of what drives the move to break with Rome. And the Cathar name is known among the people and an easy handle for the leders of this religious revolt to use. Or perhaps its the label they are given by their opponents?

The main element is that the Occitan province (or all of them except one, can't make things too uniform ) go protestant. The Savoy kings can perhaps have also the option of embracing the new faith, at great cost. It would need to be action_c so that it rarely happens for the ai.

Otherwise, the idea would be that these protestant provinces would emerge. Each of the owning countries (Savoy, Brittany, Genoa, Burgundy and Granada are all strong possibilities here) get the event described above. Mostly they are going to repress the Cathar/Hugenot/Juicedribblers. Revolts will ensue, although I think we would need to have the number of the revolts increase. Occitania would be a revolter that exists from 1501 onwards. It would have an event file with an initial start-up event to help it 'get going', an perhaps an 'aid from Granada' event.

We could be more forceful about the start of Occitania, but this would need very deterministic event scripting.

Matty

 

[Incompetent]

I suppose the huge events do trigger for everyone... maybe you're right on the multiple-firing event score, but we'll need to test it.

The main element is that the Occitan province (or all of them except one, can't make things too uniform ) go protestant. The Savoy kings can perhaps have also the option of embracing the new faith, at great cost. It would need to be action_c so that it rarely happens for the ai.

Hmm. There's still the problem of getting AI Savoy to stay Catholic in spite of so many Protestant provinces. One trick which might work is to make Savoy counter-reformed - this might tie in with the storyline, but more importantly I believe the AI has serious difficulties in converting away from counter-reformed, so they might just keep it up in spite of having a majority of Protestant provinces.

 

[MattyG]

Well, I think that if we make their capital Catholic that should make a difference. But, that's part of the game too. Maybe they bow to pressure and go Protestant to keep their country together? This will certainly be Savoy's Trial By Fire period, so I won't be scripting a civil war or similar event for them and if they make it through I'll give them something nice.