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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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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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Cool additions, considering that Sikihism and Zoroastrianism are niche religions in game I like how they are updating old mechanics like Sikh gurus that now will have more player agency and adapting Coptic Holy Sites to Zoroastrianism.
 
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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.
This opens a precedent for a event that converts a province in Poland to jewish maybe?
 
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Like the Sikh upgrades, particularly how their Missionary Strength gets lower as time goes on; intial expansion followed by consolidation, which, as far as I know, was historically the way Sikhism actually spread in India.
The Zoroastrian upgrades seem a little more lackluster, but it's nice to see them getting some love regardless.
 
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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.
*Cries in totemist*
 
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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.
How does QQ have better ideas than persia?
 
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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.

Wow, I do not expect Sikh and Zoroastrianism going to get mechanic. A very nice surprise.

I am going to focus on Sikhism, because I remember seeing that mechanic somewhere...
About the missionary strength, I understand your reasoning for having it, and I want people to explore a bit more about Sikhism in game currently, because Sikhism has plenty bonuses, it just buried in a lot of places.
First, is the Sikh's decision "Save the burning world", it gives Sikh nation +3 missionary strength. Second, is Sikh's generic mission "Conquer Punjab", which also gives +3 missionary strength for 30 years. And third, Guru Amar Das' modifier, which gives +2 missionary strength as long as the Guru lives. So theoretically, Sikh can counter the -6 missionary strength with its own bonus (without religious idea), for a certain period of time.

This of course has several issues. Number one, if you start as a nation with unique idea, you can't get the generic idea, which mean you lost +3 missionary strength. Number two, because you have to change religion to Sikh, it means you start with very few provinces with your religion, which means very low religious unity, which means very untable country, so converting to Sikh will be really painful (and not very encouraging). These two issues can be band aid with Religious Idea (which has +3 missionary strength) but gives you the third issue, it pigeon holed you to one of two options, you either must go religious/humanist idea and sacrificed one idea group simply to "play normally", or you play as nation with generic idea (which is kinda a waste of Dharma DLC).

So, my solution is that Sikh should have additional source missionary strength. Not too big so they easily spread as other religion (so it stay within your design for it), but should be enough to counter the negative penalties. First, Guru Nanak should have teaching that gives +1.5% or +2% missionary strength. As far as understand it, he actively promoting his religion when he lived (I mean you have events that represent his journey across sub-continent), so I think it make sense for him to have teaching that increase missionary strength. Second, make a new modifier for Panj Takht so that for each province you conquer, it gives you +0.5% missionary strength for a total of +2.5% missionary strength. Finally, Sikh should get a unique event that happened periodically after the final guru which grant them +0.5% missionary strength for a limited amount of time.

With these suggestions, on average, a Sikh player should be able to get +3% missionary strength necessary to counter act the teaching penalties.

Other thing I want to suggest is that Sikh should get its own version of Hindustan/Bharat (probably named Khalsa Raj?) as extension of Punjab, and probably get its own event after "Unite Hindusthan". I think Sikh government reform should also be available for Theocracy, and at least Misl Confederacy should be available for Republic. And if there is resource to do it, a unique mission for Punjab (revolve around Sikhism) would be good, because you won't stuck with generic mission when playing as Sikh.
 
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Really nice additions! I'm loving how this expansion is turning out with various fixes and additions all around the eu4 world.

Just as a note to those calling for a Zoroastrian feudal theocracy Persia: arguably the best mechanic (in CoC), invite minorities for 50 diplo power, will most likely never be possible to use because the player will be owning all of the Zoroastrian provinces. While it would make sense to have Zoroastrian Persia as a feudal theocracy, the mechanic is much more oriented around Islam (specifically Shi'ism).
 
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-10% CCR, +3 Tolerance of Heathens, -10% liberty desire even.

Also, +20% CCA slaps earlygame.
Tolerance of heathens and liberty desire has been power crept by estate privleiges. CCR and province cost decrease is real good, and CCA will be useful for longer due to Muslims having cav focus, but I'd still think it'd be worth swapping over to Persian once you form it
 
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The Bonuses for Zoroastrianism seem kind of underwhelming. Most of them are 5% bonuses instead of 10%, it provides no military bonuses, and seems weaker than the religion it shares a mechanic with, Coptic, which is already relatively underwhelming as a religion.
 
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Perhaps Judaism could receive some attention by way of the Holy Sites mechanic, some events, and making Israel a formable given that it is already a tag from the CK2 converter?
 
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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.

Parsi are a special case: they developed strict anti-proselytism over hundreds of years being refugees in India to make sure the native rulers won't consider them a threat. Maybe they should be a heresy of Zoroastrianism, terrible at conversion but with high tolerance of heathens and some bonuses to trade/production? Regular Zoroastrianism proselytes (it just finds pretty hard time doing that in Iran and it's hard to interest people in this religion in the West), and in the game it makes sense for an alt-history resurgent Zoroastrian state to be actively promoting the religion. Since you already get +2% missionary strength I don't see a reason not to give Zoroastrianism an extra missionary through controlling a holy site.
 
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