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The holy Swedish month of July is over and our workforce has been steadily trickling back into the office, resigned to the fact that sunlight is a luxury we won't be seeing for another 11 months. With that lovely thought in mind, let's return to our weekly dev diaries and talk about a new feature for our upcoming yet unrevealed expansion for Europa Universalis IV: Coptic Holy Sites.

Copts have had a rough time. Way back in EU's history they were simply represented as the Orthodox faith before getting their own religion within the Christian group, but even then they lacked their own flavour, destined to be left in the Horn of Africa and Armenia with hungry neighbours and their Patriarch being locked up and bullied in Mamluk-held Alexandria.

Well no longer! A feature in the upcoming DLC is a Holy Sites system unique for Coptic nations. Any nation which follows the Coptic faith will have access to a screen showing their Holy Sites. There are 5 in total, detailed with who is currently controlling them and the faith followed by the province. It is the Copts' holy mission to see these restored to Coptic control.

Armenia.jpg

As shown above, Armenia (Who I released&played as from QQ) can open their Coptic menu and see the state of their Holy Sites. If a Holy Site is held by any Coptic nation and the province itself follows the One True Faith™ then all Coptic nations will be granted a blessing from the Patriarch. You are able to pick from the 5 available blessings but be sure that you or your Coptic friends hold onto your possessions tightly, as losing ownership of a Holy Site to a nation of another faith will lose you the blessing until it is returned to Coptic hands.

Ethiopia blessings.jpg


In 1444 the only Holy site in control of the Copts is Aksum, in the far north of Ethiopia. This will allow all existing Coptic nations to pick one blessing of their choice from the above list.

Legitimize Government: +0.5 Legitimacy
Encourage Wariors of the Faith: +10% manpower recovery
Send Monks to Establish Monasteries: +1.5% missionary strength
Promote Territorial Rights: -10% Core creation Cost
Will of the Martyrs: +5% discipline

Unlike other religious mechanics, the Coptic Holy Sites will collectively make all followers of that religion stronger. It makes no difference in the available Blessings if your nation or another Coptic nation holds the Holy Sites. Should the Copts fight back from their perilous position in 1444 and secure their Holy Sites, they will be that much stronger. Co-operate with other Coptic nations and share the Patriarch's blessings

Coptic Playground.jpg


Alongside the Holy sites and Patriarch Blessings, Copts will have a healthy dose of unique flavour events and missions to drive their liberation of the Holy Sites. Coptic Holy Sites will be a paid feature in the upcoming DLC, which will be released alongside the free 1.18 patch.

Next week I'll pass the reins back to Johan, as we return to see what changes have been going on in the Throne Room
 
Coptic faith will retain it's current modifiers or are they changed in 1.18?

+2 Tolerance of True Faith and +10% fort Defense remain in addition to the Blessings

Is legitimize government also RT/Devotion/Horde unity?

Yes.

Looking good Jake! Will go for the Prester John in 1.18 :)

Good luck.

If all five holy sites are controlled by copts, will all coptic nations be able to choose all five blessings?

Correct. If Coptic Alodia holds Alexandria (and converts it) Then Coptic Ethiopia would get +1 blessings too.
 
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What no love for the Orthodox?The orthodox faith literally has nothing just a slider....

A lot of events and a slider*

Also Orthodox slider is vanilla afaik so free rework if they would decide to to this.

There are many faiths in europa without ANY cool things. The animist, fetishist, sikh, Totemist, Shinto Confucian etc.
 
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I can't but feel that the Orthodox should also have this feature (though maybe with smaller blessings). I'm pretty sure they'd be as happy as these Copts if they saved the Pentarchy.
 
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Should the religion not be renamed to Oriental Orthodox at this point? Calling it Coptic when it represents all of the Oriental Orthodox churches is a bit weird.
 
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Please make this moddable so we can have multiple religions with different kinds of holy sites and bonuses and preferably have it be compatible with other religious mechanics like Mayan reforms or Hindu deities.
 
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Nice, I always like seeing new religious mechanics. I hope you'll add one for every religion eventually.

Have you considered making some of the Egyptian provinces Coptic in 1444? There are areas with near- or actual- Coptic majority there now, over 400 years of Muslim rule later, there were certainly a larger percentage then. It's weird that in-game all of Egypt is Sunni.
 
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. . . they just gave some love to a religion has less than a slider.
They could have given them both some love..

A lot of events and a slider*

Also Orthodox slider is vanilla afaik so free rework if they would decide to to this.

There are many faiths in europa without ANY cool things. The animist, fetishist, Sikh, Totemist, Shinto Confucian etc.
Animist, fetishist,totemist are hard to represent since they are not single united religions but represented a collection of local beliefs tho I agree on the Asian faiths

Also the events are pretty bad for Orthodox,also I don't understand why most religions don't have holy sites like we get in CK2?
 
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Also am I the only one thinking coptic will become a tad too strong?

The Copts will get killed in the game's first century and playing with Copts in historical setting is hard-mode. If you can succeed in growing as a Copt, then you sure as hell deserve the rewards.

Should the religion not be renamed to Oriental Orthodox at this point? Calling it Coptic when it represents all of the Oriental Orthodox churches is a bit weird.

Or maybe it should be called Miaphesyte now that it represents the same faiths as in CK2 rather than only Egyptians.
 
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Coptic faith will retain it's current modifiers or are they changed in 1.18?

(In addition to Patriarch Blessings)
 
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Lol now orthodox is most shitiest christian sect.

A lot of events and a slider*
- five events that are related to a slider.

There are many faiths in europa without ANY cool things. The animist, fetishist, sikh, Totemist, Shinto Confucian etc.
- pagans are designed to die and sikh are on par with orthodox events wise.

. . . they just gave some love to a religion has less than a slider.
- it is also a minor religion that dies quickly with and has a minor historical relevance.
 
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Probably looking a gift horse in the mouth here, but I don't really understand how this mechanic relates to the actual history of Oriental Orthodox Churches. Catholic mechanics is based on the transnational nature of the medieval Church, Protestant ones based on the establishment of national state churches, Orthodox ones based on the relative influence of autocephalous national churches. But nothing about Church-state relations in Oriental Orthodox states were based on the idea of crusading to recover holy sites. It's like when the Buddhist karma mechanics were introduced: it wasn't clear how that actually reflected how Buddhist rulers interacted with their state religion.
 
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Throne room feature being added to EU4 confirmed
throne2.jpeg
 
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Finally Coptic gets some love! I would love if orthodox would get some too... they are a big religion but have only a slider with like 5 events to increase/decrease PA
 
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