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...

 

[Grand Historian]

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

America, though it technically wasn't a state church, it would still be odd to see 'The Church of America'. I don't know, maybe they could modify the American Dream to accommodate this.

 

[blackchoas]

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.

rereading the OP what Johan says does not imply what I was thinking although I doubt that they would make a mechanic which seems to be entirely downside if it is just losing military or diplo bonuses going one way or the other and gaining nothing for it, although I think it would make sense to balance the system so you lose more than you gain for going to an extreme making the center more ideal

 

[loup99]

These are some great changes incoming! Protestantism is looking good over-all, but it was so bad and unnecessary previously to switch to it from catholic previously, now is a lot more balanced (might need a bit more tuning). The mechanic for the Buddhist branches is great, although there is one very simple issue: the name. Either the mechanic should be revamped to be the actual ruler's karma, which might be a good choice, or you keep the current slider, but with another name, like Dharma which someone suggested. The system in itself is not wrong, just badly named.

I'm intrigued by the next dev diary, and hoping for more religions flavour/mechanics with this extension. The Coptic church or Confucian religions could get some love, in my opinion.

 

[Prom_STar]

All the strains of Buddhism I'm assuming will still have their +2 tolerance of heretics, right? (Theravada does in the screenshot. I assume the others are the same.) In that case, doesn't it make sense for them to have a reduced relations penalty for neighboring heretics? My understanding is that rulers/countries of different strains of Buddhist thought didn't have any of the antagonism to match something like the wars of religion in Europe. If I'm Theravada and having a Mahayana province doesn't generate any unrest from intolerance, doesn't seem I should get a relations penalty to a neighboring Mahayana ruler.

Maybe, more broadly, the penalty to heretic and heathen relations should depend upon one's tolerance?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The main concern with karma is that it is far more common to declare wars than honor alliances, and that if you're strong nobody will declare on your allies no matter what you do. Perhaps the events will offset it, but it sounds like it could be a real problem for aggressive players to stay Buddhist because it will be impossible to avoid constant warmonger karma.

 

[Thure]

Protestants with tolerance bonus...? Hahaha... nice yoke... Protestants were historically not really tolerant... Not in any way.

 

[josh127]

rereading the OP what Johan says does not imply what I was thinking although I doubt that they would make a mechanic which seems to be entirely downside if it is just losing military or diplo bonuses going one way or the other and gaining nothing for it, although I think it would make sense to balance the system so you lose more than you gain for going to an extreme making the center more ideal

If nothing else, we'll find out when it's released. Your description seems to make a lot more sense than the direct interpretation, so perhaps it's just left out. I don't normally go for that type of logic, it's just that it sounds like a whole lot better fit than pure penalties.

 

[Grand Historian]

Protestants with tolerance bonus...? Hahaha... nice yoke... Protestants were historically not really tolerant... Not in any way.

Tolerant of Own.

 

[loup99]

Protestants with tolerance bonus...? Hahaha... nice yoke... Protestants were historically not really tolerant... Not in any way.

It depended really. Like with Catholics or any other Christians. Some were, some were not.

 

[Metz]

Will Colonial Nations make their own church or be stuck to your church? As they grow will they be able to have their own church?

 

[loup99]

Will Colonial Nations make their own church or be stuck to your church? As they grow will they be able to have their own church?

This is a really good question. Would be interesting if there was some mechanic related to this. Good subject for a Suggestion thread, I guess.

 

[cpm4001]

This is definitely looking interesting, though the mechanics all sound like they could be fleshed out more (but that's something modders should be able to handle.)

 

[Thure]

It depended really. Like with Catholics or any other Christians. Some were, some were not.

Of course. But I see no reason to give them a tolerance bonus... In this era protestantism was not a generelly tolerant religion.

 

[Heinrikr]

Of course. But I see no reason to give them a tolerance bonus... In this era protestantism was not a generelly tolerant religion.

But it's a bonus for tolerating their own faith. To call that tolerance is a bid wierd though if that's what you mean.

 

[Metz]

When they said they will talk about Luther I thought they were going to include a Martin Luther event chain regarding the rise and conversions into Protestantism.

 

[Thure]

But it's a bonus for tolerating their own faith. To call that tolerance is a bid wierd though if that's what you mean.

Oh... Sounds strange. 'I tolerate my own faith more than you tolerate your own faith!'

 

[Tom013]

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

Yeah, at least that's my interpretation based on in-game events. Church of England and Lutherans (including those in Sweden and the German states) are the two main movements that "Protestant" represents in the game, along with the Bohemian Protestant movements (also represented in some of its own events). Later movements (e.g. Methodism) would presumably fit under that top label as well, but they don't really figure prominently in the game in terms of either mechanics or events.

 

[indalecio248]

On protestantism: I love the split into national churches, and the idea that each church might turn their church in different directions, and that you need to spend some energy into reforming your church.

What I don't like is how it seems to be a prosess of "pick your three perks", especially seeing what those perks are (infant baptism and sacraments). Picturing the reformation as a movement where you could start with "catholic" perks, like the two mentioned, you could have a movement where you have bonuses and maluses depending on what choices your church does. One reason is that "picking" infant baptism makes little sense when that's where you start from - energy would be put into stopping the practise of infant baptism in your national church (if you want to do that). Perks like bible translated to the vernacular, or the abolishion of the latin liturgy makes sense like it is now though.


Something a gradual change like this could make possible is lumping all western christian countries together in the reformation, with some "lines" to show when you're classified as protestant, reformed or catholic - like the authority of the papacy or "evangelical sermons" to be classified as protestant, and maybe de-sacralisation of the eucharist as the stepping point for reformed.

That way we could picture the reformation as a progress (and a chaotic one) instead of the very fixed potitions the game pictures (which really just segmented towards 1580-1600)
Also you wouldn't have to stay a catholic in the beginning of the reformation if you wanted to become reformed.

I agree, Protestant religions should start very similar to Catholicism, with maybe only one thing changed at the beginning. As time goes on, you should need to spend church power to remove old perks, and then church power again to replace them with new perks.

EDIT

Oh... Sounds strange. 'I tolerate my own faith more than you tolerate your own faith!'

I've always interpeted it as how satisfied the general populace is with their religion. Having a higher tolerance means that they find the religion more fulfilling and more satisfying to practice.

 

[Rubidium]

Oh... Sounds strange. 'I tolerate my own faith more than you tolerate your own faith!'

Maybe, but it's an existing mechanic (every religion essentially has it, with different numbers).

Mechanically, it just represents an extra decrease in unrest for same religion provinces. I guess Protestants are happier being ruled by Protestants to an even greater degree than e.g. Reformed are happy to be ruled by reformed.

 

[Denkt]

I agree, Protestant religions should start very similar to Catholicism, with maybe only one thing changed at the beginning. As time goes on, you should need to spend church power to remove old perks, and then church power again to replace them with new perks.

Poor should then be able to reform catholicism like a global protestant church.