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...

 

[Tom013]

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

In game terms, Reformed is meant to indicate Calvinist faiths that rose to prominence later in the Reformation, and Presbyterianism (i.e. Scottish Presbyterianism) is definitely Calvinist. In general, "Reformed" is used to refer to Calvinist faiths even outside of the game but not to the Protestant movement in general. Reformed with the capital R. You could describe lots of things as "reformed" with a lower-case "r."

 

[klingonadmiral]

Will you also gain church power for joining the Protestant League/the Protestants winning the war?

 

[josh127]

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

The idea of having a balanced piety bar seems fine from a game mechanic perspective. The issue is the concept you're going to have penalties for going outside their thresholds yet the bonuses for being perfectly balanced aren't all that spectacular anyway. To make matters worse, the bonuses aren't even what you're most in need of for that area of the world. So yeah, decent mechanic, but either have the bonuses tick down to 0 as you approach the extremes or make the bonuses something more significant to offset the fact that you have the added need to balance the religion that no other mechanics require.

 

[Shadowstrike]

I like the Protestant mechanic, but not the Buddhist one, mainly because it doesn't actually reflect how states interacted with their religious establishments. Protestant state churches did exist to prop up the goals of the state, but Buddhist rulers didn't necessarily try to "maintain balance" in their actions. Rather their interactions involved funding monks and monasteries to gain merit on their behalf (and to prop up their prestige), which of course needed to be balanced against letting the monks own too much of the land tax-free. I suppose I have the same issues with the Nahuatl, Maya and Inti mechanics too.

 

[Pilchowski]

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?

Reformed has the 'fervour' mechanics, where you can build up fervour points and can spend them on bonuses to military (+15% army and navy morale), stability ( -2 national unrest, +1 dip. rep.) and/or trade (+10% trade power and steering). Get the right level of prestige, legitimacy and stability, and you maintain one of those bonuses indefinitely.

Protestantism has no mechanics like that at the moment, so is regarded as the weaker of the two

 

[WhiskyGlen]

This is going to be the best patch/expansion ever.

To think that could be said after AoW

Agreed... Except at probably $30. I fail to see how it will be less. Hope I am proven wrong.

 

[johnleeyx]

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...

Nice additions, once again. Here come my questions.
Turning to ceylon for inspiration? Hmm it seems something like a tsar Alexander europe tour or Muslim haj stuff, which incerases ruler stats? Or gives bonuses? Talking of which the haj would be an awesome mechanic to implement. Hmm how about lamas, only events? He was their version of the pope you know?

Subject interaction? Hopefully give them focuses like develop military, core stuff etc

On a Side note no hansa rework? TT

Last but not least, ok you wont tell us the release date? But can you tell us a rough period on when you will announce when it will be released?

 

[WhiskyGlen]

Reformed has the 'fervour' mechanics, where you can build up fervour points and can spend them on bonuses to military (+15% army and navy morale), stability ( -2 national unrest, +1 dip. rep.) and/or trade (+10% trade power and steering). Get the right level of prestige, legitimacy and stability, and you maintain one of those bonuses indefinitely

Thanks. That makes sense. If I do one more play through before the update, I should try it.

 

[blackchoas]

The idea of having a balanced piety bar seems fine from a game mechanic perspective. The issue is the concept you're going to have penalties for going outside their thresholds yet the bonuses for being perfectly balanced aren't all that spectacular anyway. To make matters worse, the bonuses aren't even what you're most in need of for that area of the world. So yeah, decent mechanic, but either have the bonuses tick down to 0 as you approach the extremes or make the bonuses something more significant to offset the fact that you have the added need to balance the religion that no other mechanics require.

To be fair, I doubt the bonuses are finalized but are the bonus really that bad if at the extremes they give us -3 diplo rep and +15 Discipline or vice versa? If you really wanted to you could push heavy to one side or the other to annex a vassal or win a tough war but more often than not you would just wanna stay in the middle and get 1 diplo rep and 5 discipline

 

[Lamahorse]

The UK should really have some special mechanics. It's kind of an amazing case the way Ireland, Scotland and England split along religious ways. Catholicism remained strong in Ireland among the Old English, Royalists and the native Irish. The Scottish lowlands, islands and other parts went Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) and England followed the Anglican Church. It just feels wrong to see the UK one homogeneous religious blob in 1550.

(Arguably due to the recent accommodation of the recent schism in the Anglican Church entering into a special communion with Rome; one can argue they are similar enough.)

I don't really like the Act of Union decision either. The Scottish parliament wasn't merged into the English parliament until past 1700. The Irish parliament survived until 1800.

Like in other countries, Nationalism and Religion can be interlinked. Non-accepted cultures will always see the state religion of a foreign conqueror as 'foreign'. The irony in the case of Ireland, is that the native Irish preferred the 'foreign' Roman Catholicism to English 'Anglicanism'. Like in history, technology should improve tolerance of the true faith and tolerance of heretics. The English brought in very harsh Penal Laws in Ireland to dispossess the Catholic gentry and impoverish them. In this, they were very successful but after a hundred years or so; the ban on Catholics voting, inheriting land etc. were all eased; cumulating in Catholic Emancipation. This should be modeled in the current technology system.

 

[Lord Finnish]

Agreed... Except at probably $30. I fail to see how it will be less. Hope I am proven wrong.

I doubt they'll ask that much.

 

[Nyrael]

...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.

Calvinism and all you mentioned are represented by the Reformed faith. The Protestantism faith represents Lutherans and those who are supporting the idea of church united with the state. This is the very reason why Protestantism is split into two faiths.

 

[spinoza013]

So, just to be clear, the Church of England would be considered Protestant in game?

 

[Mobsterman120]

The Karma seems backwards to me. Having really good Karma should help your diplomacy and hurt military, while having bad Karma should help military and hurt diplomacy.

 

[josh127]

To be fair, I doubt the bonuses are finalized but are the bonus really that bad if at the extremes they give us -3 diplo rep and +15 Discipline or vice versa? If you really wanted to you could push heavy to one side or the other to annex a vassal or win a tough war but more often than not you would just wanna stay in the middle and get 1 diplo rep and 5 discipline

Well, perhaps that's something Paradox could clear up. It doesn't say that you get +15 discipline and -3 dip rep at an extreme, the dev diary only says that you get penalties. If it's a scale where you're balancing diplomacy vs military in a way like you're describing, that's different from how I'm interpreting what I am reading and I don't think I have a problem with it.

However, I hope they also looked into the decisions and such for Buddhism since conversion power is awful. It could really use something to help impact missionary strength.

 

[InFerroVeritas]

Glad Protestantism finally gets some love. It was pretty terrible after Catholicism and Reformed got buffed and it didn't. Now it's a legitimately strong religion.

Also glad that Confucianism's ghastly color is finally changed.

 

[Denkt]

Well the important thing is that the religions play out differently.

Confucianism mechanic could be the importance of the relationship between ruler and people (need better namn).

It would be a bar with one side that give bonuses and one sided that give penalties. To improve the relation you need to do good things such as developing provinces, bad things such as war would reduce the relationship.

The bonuses from confucianism could be +2 advisiors (meritocracy) and +33% religious unity (confucianism work well with other religions).

 

[kerannymi]

Last but not least, ok you wont tell us the release date? But can you tell us a rough period on when you will announce when it will be released?

Or at lest the name of the expansion? the map changes, the fort changes, which completely change the way the wars will be fight right now, the new development system and free cites, which give the ability to play as a single province minor, and other changes, all huge but giving that we still don't have the name of the expansion suggest that the real pièce de résistance is yet to come. what could be bigger than these?

 

[BarskiPatzow]

Agreed... Except at probably $30. I fail to see how it will be less. Hope I am proven wrong.

They already said all their future expansions will be 15 or 20 $/€, not more, not less.

 

[Grand Historian]

No other religions are dealing with negative modifiers

Catholics and Shinto have negative tolerance as base 'bonus' to begin with.