Welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll go into details about mechanics for some religions, that will become available with the next expansion.


Protestanstism
Each protestant church will have their own name in the interface, like Church of England and so on. You can then customise the benefits of your church, and also change it over time whenever you need. To change the aspect of your church, you have to spend Church Power.

Church Power is accumulated each month, depending on your current religious unity, and your monarchs abilities.

Adding an aspect to your church costs 100 church power, but you can remove an aspect at any time, but that will lower your stability by 1.

A Church can have up to 3 different aspects, and there are 12 different ones to pick from. Some of these include.

• Holy Sacraments: +2.5% Discipline
• Individual Creeds: -5% Idea Costs
• Adult Baptism: +1% Missionary Strength.

Buddhism
The Buddhist Faith gained the concept of Karma. Karma needs to be balanced, because if it goes too positive or negative, you end up with penalties. If you go too positive you end up with penalties to your diplomatic abilities, and if you go too negative, you end up with penalties to your military abilities.

However, If you keep a balanced karma, you gain bonuses to both diplomatic and military abilities.

Some examples on how you gain Karma include: Starting wars decrease Karma, while honoring defensive alliances increase Karma.

While adding the Karma mechanic and its related events it also became clear that the game setup could benefit from splitting the existing religion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada. These three religions will all use the same Karma mechanic but don't all share the same events related to it and can in some cases have different event options in the events they do share. Events related to Lamas are for instance reserved for the Vajrayana faith while only Theravada countries can turn to Ceylon for spiritual inspiration. The three religions also differ in what bonuses they provide.

Next week we will talk about about subjects and how to interact with them...

 

[SignedName]

The protestant churches was always under the command of the monarch, and many have had those bonds until this day so a strong protestant church was only a good for the king to easier get his will. Of course the protestant kings was under God and the bible but the clergy was appointed by him and under his command.

...That is not true. Like, at all. I can name numerous Protestant movements that were not state religions, among them the Anabaptists, the Baptists, the Methodists, and Unitarians.

 

[josh127]

Protestant church mana sounds ok I guess. 3 modifiers is a lot. Do they still get their base 2 modifiers as well?

Karma sounds like rubbish. No other religions are dealing with negative modifiers, and to top that off, the bonuses shown in the screenshot for having completely balanced karma aren't anything special when compared to religious modifiers for other religions. If you want a system where you're going to punish someone for their religion, then when they achieve the balance they should have extremely powerful modifiers to make it worthwhile. As it stands, Buddhism sounds like it will just be more punishing than it is now.

Heck, the biggest problem with Eastern religions is they lack conversion power. The mechanic doesn't address that whatsoever.

 

[Zhetone]

...That is not true. Like, at all. I can name numerous Protestant movements that were not state religions, among them the Anabaptists, the Baptists, the Methodists, and Unitarians.

except we're talking about state churches in this case

 

[SignedName]

except we're talking about state churches in this case

It does not change what perhje said, that Protestantism was always under the control of monarchs. This is clearly not the case (even excluding Calvinism).

 

[Zhetone]

It does not change what perhje said, that Protestantism was always under the control of monarchs. This is clearly not the case (even excluding Calvinism).

in which countries was there a state church not controlled by the monarch? no other protestant churches matter in terms of game mechanics.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Having to play balancing scales has never - ever appealed to me.

Oh no! I can't declare war on this nation, because it would throw my Karma too deep into the negatives! Oh noes! It ruins a plethora of my nation!

No. Just.... No.

Karma as presented is....... odd, upside down.

Hmm, karma is the general idea that if you do good things good comes back to you, if you do bad things, bad returns to you (both in deed and in intent), and is not at all a Buddhist thing, being also important in Hindu and other Eastern faiths. Being Buddhist means the Middle Way is the desired path, being extreme (in game min/max?) is a bad thing that would create bad karma, right?

So following that logic, from the point of view ONLY of a Buddhist, you would see karma as encouraging you toward balance. Everyone else would say "Wha?" that's not karma, doesn't make sense. All neighboring faiths would say to get more good karma means do more of the good stuff no matter what, balance be danged. I don't know real Buddhists, so this is my take on the thought process. The mechanism could be a good way to enforce players to behave more like the national religion, more concerned with balance.

Shame there isn't a Buddhist-only term for karma. Maybe call it the Middle Way?

Anyway, I like the idea of splitting up the Buddhist faith into the historical divisions.

edit - And as a separate point, I like the new Protestantism concept. Each Protestant church did do their own thing after all.

 

[mwyeoh]

Awesome changes to both religions
The League wars though need a little refinement. It should be a back-and-forth tussle, but right now is usually over in 1 or 2 wars (Not quite 30 years)

 

[spinoza013]

in which countries was there a state church not controlled by the monarch? no other protestant churches matter in terms of game mechanics.

Scotland. The presbyterian church did not recognise the King as head of the religion. Look up Covenanters.

 

[Zhetone]

Scotland. The presbyterian church did not recognise the King as head of the religion. Look up Covenanters.

they would be reformed in-game.

 

[SignedName]

in which countries was there a state church not controlled by the monarch? no other protestant churches matter in terms of game mechanics.

Countries without monarchs, for one. Besides this, not all states had an established religion, the Protestant USA being the most prominent example.

 

[Zhetone]

Countries without monarchs, for one. Besides this, not all states had an established religion, the Protestant USA being the most prominent example.

if it doesn't have a monarch, then your point is irrelevant. the argument is over whether the monarch would be able to manipulate the religion. in other states, you could easily say the church is reforming itself. (you could use it everywhere else too to be honest)

 

[spinoza013]

they would be reformed in-game.

I guess you could argue it that way for a simple life.. It's a grey area though. Church of Scotland was most definitely Protestant compared to Church of England.

 

[lolada]

@Johan
(I'm sorry if this sounds rude in any way.)
I've had the opportunity to try EU4 a few times, and from what I see, this is one of the few games I would like to acquire.
However, as a principle, I only acquire games when they are as complete as possible as well as available at an affordable price.
EU4 is still being updated through DLCs/expansions, would you be able to mention a very rough date as to when the game should reach its final stages of development? Also, it seems that right now EU4 costs around 100€. However, in my current situation and as I usually see it, 20-30€ can be a lot when invested on games.
All in all, is there any way to know if the game will be completely "finished" and affordable before 2017-2018? But then, the game will be 5 years old, will it still be able to compete?
So, the feeling I get is that Paradox is just trying to get as much €$£ out of it as it can. Now, I think that's fully understandable to a great extent, however, my feeling is that Paradox might have crossed the line to which this is understandable, as in putting more weight on the profit than on the raw quality and availability of its product, thus leading to a decay on the later.

Its the way many games work and unfortunately it is true they can be very expensive. Try to catch summer sale you can get everything for good price, like 75% reduced.
Paradox is doing great stuff, keeping the game alive and adding lots of content so your complaint is a bit misplaced. It does cost a bit but they need to get their wages or we wouldn't have this great game. So, wait and catch next discounts you can get almost complete EU4 for 20-30 euro.

 

[Zhetone]

I guess you could argue it that way for a simple life.. It's a grey area though. Church of Scotland was most definitely Protestant compared to Church of England.

that doesn't mean anything though, the scottish church is clearly reformed. from wikipedia: "Presbyterianism is a branch of Christian Reformed Protestantism"
in addition reformed represents calvinist churches and the Scottish church is pretty clearly calvinist in origin.

 

[blackchoas]

Looks decent, I would say two things to those with issues with these systemed as introduced, Protestant and Reformed were always broad abstract terms but this makes it clear that Protestant religions in this game represent the movements liked to a state while the Reformed religion represents those who were against the combination of state and church

In regards to Karma, I find the term Karma perhaps misused here but I don't know of one to replace it, however as a mechanic this seems decent, it is similar to the Muslim Piety mechanic but instead of encouraging going to either extreme it encourages you to stay in the center which is a significant enough difference to make the mechanic play differently instead of feeling like a copy paste, and I will point out that while the word Karma seems misused here, the central revelation of Buddhism is one of balance which is the key to the mechanic, Siddhartha Gautama the 1st Buddha lived the opulent life of a prince and they ascetic life of a monk and he found neither happiness nor enlightenment in either of these, it was in finding a balance in life that he found happiness and the key to Nirvana, so since the central theme of the mechanic is balance I feel it is quite fitting for Buddhism

Although I do worry that Buddhism is already a small religion in EU4 and if we split it up into 3 parts how much of any impact will any of them ever have? No to mention that Confucianism the largest of the eastern religions is still lacking a mechanic, and personally I would accept an argument that Confucianism is really a mixed belief system among Chinese people which is a blend of Doaist Confucianist and Buddhist beliefs and should thus share the Buddhist mechanic

 

[spinoza013]

that doesn't mean anything though, the scottish church is clearly reformed. from wikipedia: "Presbyterianism is a branch of Christian Reformed Protestantism"
in addition reformed represents calvinist churches and the Scottish church is pretty clearly calvinist in origin.

All protestant churches are clearly reformed. Some clearly reformed more than others.

 

[ultrarobprime]

Are Protestant church aspects modular?

 

[perhje]

It does not change what perhje said, that Protestantism was always under the control of monarchs. This is clearly not the case (even excluding Calvinism).

I sorry I wasn't spesific enough, but since it is about state churches in this case and the topic I commented was about a strong church I assumed it was the state church he talked about which was ruled by the monarch.
The baptist movement where often seen as anabaptist which didn't think of the baptism of infants as baptism and therefore were unpopular by all the other western confessions. Many of those went to the colonies same was the case all over Europe. And mostly the people followed their rulers religion or moved. Either to the colonies or to the realm of an european king with their religion and confession. Many countries didn't allow other churches than the state church until after the time frame, even if they had all the same teology as the state church. Meetings of religious matters was something that was to be approved by the local priest or the bishop and often with the one who approved the meeting to see that everything was true to the faith, if not it was a act against the law.

 

[ian13ian]

I like how you guys redid the western german provinces and Loon in Belgium, but can you please improve the Netherlands too. Especially the province of Limburg looks very awkard. For a picture showing the Netherlands at that time, this is what the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands looked like (Though make it a bit more easier, because the dutch border has always been a bit strange in the south):

 

[WhiskyGlen]

Wauw! Its finally worth it to go for Protestanstism.

I am curious. Why do so many here think going Reformed is a no brainer compared to Protestantism? I tend to like Protestantism for the discount on ideas cost. Never have gone reformed. Considered it, but every time I view it, I conclude it's not worth it. What am I missing?