Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations – Dev diary 5: Religion
The theme for this weeks dev diary will deal with the wholly uncontroversial topic of religions, and in particular which one is right and which one is wrong.
Just kidding
The dev diary will however cover what we are adding in the area of religions in Wealth of Nations. Note that all of these changes are part of the Wealth of Nations paid expansion; they will not be in the large free update that traditionally comes with our expansions.
Reformed
First up is the Reformed Religion, the Calvinist faith that was particularly embraced by the Dutch in this time frame. We figured that doing something for the Dutch would be an appropriate thing for our trade themed expansion. It is a distinct religion in EU4 and has an increasing chance of spawning in a European province that has been Protestant for a long time. It also has an increased chance of appearing in nations that have selected more innovative ideas.
For Wealth of Nations Reformed nations can direct the industriousness of their people via a new concept called Fervor. The player will get a base value of 2 Fervor points per month if the nation is at peace and 1 per month if it is at war. Like most things in EU, this rate is also infuenced by things like prestige and stability. If its not used it’s stored. So how do you use it? Reformed nations have 3 place to focus their Fervor: Trade (Global Trade Power and Trade Steering bonus), War (Morale of Armies and Morale of Navies) and Stability (National Revolt Risk and Diplomatic Reputation). The player can activate one or more of these but each will cost 5 Fervor each month, which means that your nations needs to be fairly stable and at peace the be able to run one permanently - but you can also save up so run several at once for a power boost in times of crisis or expansion. We have also changed one of the Reformed religions regular modifiers from +10% trade efficiency to +2 tolerance for heretics, instead.
Hindus
Since we are adding East India Companies to Asia and Africa, we wanted to see if we could add something more to make it more interesting to play in India as a local and not just as a European conqueror. For one thing, we have added about 50 new events for Hindu rulers that deal with the Hindu religion (and we’ve added some nice new art for ambience). We have also added a personal deity system.
If you have the WoN expansion, Hinduism will lose its regular modifiers. Instead you get to pick a deity to follow. You can choose from Shiva, Ganesha, Surya, Ganga, Shakti and Vishnu. Each god has its own bonuses (and also specific interesting events as mentioned earlier). The ruler picks a deity for life, but when the ruler dies you get to pick a new one (though there is also a rare event that lets you change while the monarch lives). This is going to add an interesting new dimension as you build your Hindu empire in an interesting part of the world that we might revisit in the future in another expansion or add-on.
Papacy
And finally, as a little extra to those who buy Wealth of Nations, you will now be able to automate cardinal influence, by using a checkbox next to each cardinal. With that checked the game will automatically assign enough influence to selected cardinals to keep your guy ahead in the competition. This is mostly to avoid the busy work of fighting to add +5 here and there to keep France out of the Throne of Peter.
That’s it for this week. Next week, we will talk a bit about the diplomatic additions that come with Wealth of Nations.
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