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EU4 - Development Diary - 20th of October 2020

Hello everyone! Today we’ll be exploring two of the smaller religions in Europa Universalis IV. Zoroastrianism and Sikhism. For the coming update we’ll be working on making these more interesting by giving them their own mechanics. Keep in mind that everything you see is very much work in progress, you’ll see a lot of my very temporary coder art.



So first let’s start with Sikhism. They already got some stuff in the game using events. Throughout the game's timeline as a Sikh you will go through the various Gurus that were a big part of shaping the faith in history. Each of these gurus would add their own modifier to the religion. We are now making this more integrated by making it a mechanic and adding some more player agency for what the player can do with this.

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UX is very much WIP, here it is showing you currently have Guru Nanak as your incumbent Guru and that Guru Angad is his future successor.

You still get gurus over the decades giving you various modifiers as you progress through the game. But I’ve also done that each Guru will provide three teachings unique to that guru that the player can pick between. In total there will be 30 teachings to pick between throughout the game, and once the guru that gives that teaching is succeeded the picked teaching becomes permanent and you can’t switch to the other two anymore. You can at max have 6 teachings, and for each teaching you take you will lose 1 missionary strength. Each teaching is associated with either Adm, Dip or Mil mana and cost 50 of their respective category of monarch power to enact.

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As Johan mentioned last dev diary I got sick so I don’t have a full list of the new guru’s values and teachings as some of these features got literally finished this morning and I haven’t had time to fix that yet. But I’ll provide a list as soon as it’s done for the people who love to crunch the numbers.



Next thing is my favorite religion of all time and why hedgehogs are holy. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions still in existence and has a lot of fascinating things around it which is a shame that it has gone so long without having gotten any mechanics tied to it. If you didn’t know Hedgehogs are considered a sort of “holy dog” within Zoroastrianism, a creature of the light which is obviously why it’s the best religion.

Anyway so what are we actually doing with Zoroastrianism? Since in the start of the game they are not in any particularly strong position, a people in sort of a diaspora we’ve been focusing around that. We already have some remnants in Yazd but we are also adding the Parsi in Gujarat. At the start of the game the province Daman will start as Zoroastrians. But there is also an event that you will get if you employ a lot of Parsi Zoroastrian advisors that will let you convert the province to Parsi.

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Continuing with the diaspora theme their mechanic added to them will be based on the Coptic Blessings but instead called Rituals. The Zoroastrians have been given 5 fire temples they need to rekindle, like in their old decision, and as they do they will be rewarded.

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Keep in mind art here is WIP

The various rituals you can pick are as follows:
Yasna: -0.05 Yearly Corruption
Haoma: +5% Goods Produced Modifier
Navjote: +2% Missionary Strength
Manthras: +10% Governing Capacity
Dakhma: -5% Construction Cost

Also since we are talking about holy hedgehogs and zoroastrianism I believe it is only fair I show off my Lord Cyrus, King of Kings, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the world(also known as my bedroom). Click on them for larger pictures.

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Curious boi

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Burrito boi

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Hungry boi

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Sleepy boi

Hope you’ve enjoyed today's dev diary! Do remember that today we are celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the EU Franchise. Among the hosts of the stream will be me so be sure to drop by! Cya there!

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Stream Schedule (all times in CEST)
13-14 - Dev Stories from EU1 and the board game with special guest Philippe Thibaut
14-15 - Dev Stories from EU2
15-17 - Dev Stories from EU3
17-18 - Break
18-21 - EU4, events and the upcoming board game Europa Universalis: The Price of Power with Aegir Games
 
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I guess the question I'm asking is: is this a good allocation of department time

Zoroastrian is reusing something already existing, Sikhs are getting something entirely new. This is about just making sure there's "something" for faiths that currently have nothing.
 
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Will Sikhism and Zoroastrianism also get access to extra missionaries? Would suck if the only possible playstyle is by using humanist ideas.

Both religions historically and including today did not practice much Proselytism and even had some ethnic religion beliefs developed (the modern Parsi for instance believe you need to be Parsi to be a true follower, etc.) so they are not intended by design to be strong in converting others.
 
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Those Zoroastrian bonuses seem very weak compared to Coptic ones.

They are balanced around that as Zoroastrian you are most likely going to form Persia considering the holy sites and as such they combine together with this
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Plus the really good trade goods of the region.
 
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Good morning,good DD,however,question.Will the new religions mechanics all be in the new unannouced expansion or some will go as an update for older expansions?
Thanks for any replies about this.

These mechanics will be part of expansion yes, if you don't have it then Sikh's will get their old events as before.
 
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Hey @Groogy i have a q. Will Parsi belong to Iranian culture group?

No it's Western Aryan. I was pondering back and forth on that one but the Parsi today don't consider themselves Iranian as I understood it and the Parsi at start of the game would have been long enough where they would most probably not be speaking Farsi anymore even though they would have a distinct culture separate from their neighbors around them.

For game mechanic purposes the best is to just put them in Western Aryan, if I can figure out some way to represent the Iranian heritage I will.
 
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Though it's always good to add flavour to the game, do we really need to add flavour to Zoroastrian?

I feel as though this perpetrates the meme trend the game has been having for a while. After the first couple weeks of this religion launch, I'd be surprised if people were still using it in any real numbers.

I guess the question I'm asking is: is this a good allocation of department time - rather than addressing more serious issues to the game state. And if it'd adding flavour, why not flesh out religions which need the favour and are getting picked such as any of the outdated karma mechanics.
 
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The Parsi records basically say that integrating into the local culture was required by the king of somewhere-or-other, and modern Parsis (in India) are certainly 100% Indian! They speak Gujarati at home and only use Farsi for liturgical purposes. The historical precedent of being able to separate religion and culture was actually used as the justification for abolishing the caste system later.

I'm not sure that there were ever enough Parsis to justify giving them an entire province, but I'm very happy to see them get representation :) Now to put pressure on the CK3 team!

I know giving them an entire province is a bit of a stretch but it is going to be quite rare I think and I just wanted them to have the ability to be on the map and not only as a culture for advisors.
 
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Tbf, Persian are a bit on a bad side. The two best options to form Persia, QQ and the Timmies, both have idea sets which I rate higher, you can always just play one of the Hordes, or flip to Turkish to from Rum, or simply go into India to form the Mughals.
Also tbf, not everyone plays the game to min-max. I play the countries I play to play the country, not to balance its stats to be the best it can be in terms of modifiers while it simultaneously becomes an amorphous blob with no identity or personality. I'd rather form Persia for the theming if I wanted to play in the region than play a horde just because their ideas are better. Obviously a country having *bad* ideas isn't fun, but not everything has to be on the good side to justify its existence, imo. Not every new addition needs to be balanced against the most powerful meta options in the game.
 
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*Sees Zoroastrianism getting an official rework*
Good thing I haven't started reworking it for my mod then.

As an aside- while Animism also be getting a rework? Since the expansion will be covering mostly SEA and Indonesia, where there are Animist nations, it would be nice to see Animism (and Totemism) at least getting some minor love
 
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Zoroastrian is reusing something already existing, Sikhs are getting something entirely new. This is about just making sure there's "something" for faiths that currently have nothing.

In that case, will you do something with Jewish faith? At least there is a possibility for a lot of flavor events and maybe making Jerusalem jewish at least religiously.
 
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Also, will Parsi belong to Iranian culture group?
 
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While you're at it, can you guys please remove the custom nation restriction on this?
There is not much point in reviving a religion if you're cheating your way into doing so day-1.

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Post Leviathan Edit:

Wow guys, i guess it'd have been incredibly difficult to remove a few lines of stupid restrictions on an achievement to make it more fun. Thanks.
 
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And if today's topic is religion then let me ask: Will CK2 converter religions be added to EU4's base game? I believe I read in one of Emperors dd's that it will be done. Have I missed sth or is it still sth to be done in future or...?
 
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