Are buddhist mechanics going to be changed/rebalanced in 1.14

[petertel123]

Since the implementation of mechanics for theocracies I've wanted to play a tibet game, but the memories of my last buddhist playthrough were so horrible that I've held of for now.
What I (and many others as well AFAIK) have experienced is nearly constant negative karma resulting in a massive discipline malus. This malus is so crippling that any war with anyone without the malus requires massive numbers.
The trouble with buddhism has a few causes:
1. Things that increase karma (honoring CtA, releasing provinces/countries) dont directly benefit the player while things that decrease karma (declaring war, taking provinces) do. Call to arms are pretty rare and returning cores/releasing countries is of very situational usefulness (certainly in SE Asia), while taking provinces is pretty much always useful. Furthermore, the flat 25 decrease in karma by declaring war means that you have to release at least 3 provinces to even break even, which means that declaring war to increase karma is not very realistic in most areas that are buddhist at the start. The result of this is that you pretty much wait for events to increase karma that you can then spend on war like some sort of currency.
2. There are no meaningful peacetime mechanics that can occupy a players time. A mechanic such as karma could be cool in vicky 2, because an entire game without war can still be fun, but fighting is pretty much all you do in eu4. The ways of expanding/ increasing strength that dont require a lot of conquest (colonizing and building a trade empire) are not really viable for most buddhist countries.

Most religions (hindu, protestant, reformed, orthodox and islam) allow a player to change the bonusses to his playstyle, and some others (shinto, confusian, pagan, zoroastrian, jewish and sikh) have some static bonusses. Buddhist however requires you to adapt your playstyle to the religion instead of the other way around. While this may sound fun and innovative in theory, in practice it is mostly frustrating for the reasons I've given earlier. Buddhism is the only religion at the moment which can actively penalize the player without giving something in return. And even at neutral karma buddhism isnt particularly good, which sucks considering the effort/restraint required to remain at neutral karma.
Therefore I propose removing the penalties all together (just remove the discipline bonus at negative karma and dont give a malus) or at the very least nerfing the malusses (-5% discipline is plenty, it's still a 10% difference with neutral karma), giving more ways to increase karma (increasing development, converting, colonizing), and letting karma tick back to 0 gradually.

 

[bbqftw]

hey man, buddhism provides some great decisions when you are converting to another religion. So its useful for that.

 

[Incompetent]

Buddhism is also kind of interesting for breaking up other people's empires: you can force your enemies to release nations and return cores for no DIP, and you gain karma in the process. You could wade into India and pretend it's the Holy Roman Empire, and it's your job to protect the independence of the minor princes and prevent blobbing. Buddhist Ming would work, for instance, as they are already so big that simply breaking up any rival empires would be sufficient to stay top dog.

But yeah, it's not too useful for a normal game, where you try to make yourself powerful. Religions that punish aggression don't work too well in a game that is basically all about expansionism.

 

[Wizzington]

Yes.

 

[Puchacz]

Come on guys. Buddhist mechanism is great. You just need to find a proper vassal with many unowned cores, and then take them in peace deal by return core option. This returns your karma for declaring war, and gives you enough for a few provinces for yourself. Also, declare war on the small allaince for -10 karma and then vassalize all memebers for free. (+ 1 diplomatic power means faster diploanexing). And if country is to big, first make them release others, and then vassalize.

 

[zsImmortal]

Buddhist mechanics wouldn't bother me that much if all other religions weren't so much better without any kind of effort. You get 5% discipline and 1 dip rep for balanced karma? Hinduism has 5% discipline regardless and extra siege ability for no cost except not taking other great bonuses, because you can actually choose other solid bonuses. Let's not mention Piety gives good bonuses without any kind of drawback regardless of which way you're going. Christianity, nuff said.

Thankfully they're getting changed as per Wiz ITT.

 

[Zelius]

Played a game for White Elephant, with a slightly different playstyle where majority of expansion was diplo-annexing.
But I had to stop myself when I found I was returning provinces back and forth between two Malaya countries which shared a bunch of cores simply to farm karma.

Also, I believe it's only 10 karma loss. Anyone? Pretty sure. Releasing nations / returning cores is actually fairly useful: whether by design or not, you can gain karma by returning cores to your vassals in reconquest wars, and you can lose karma by taking them under Cede Province in the same reconquest war.

I went a little OCD managing that number; going to 34 so that after DoW I'd be at 24, so I could take 4 provinces, etc. I was actually a little annoyed by ruler death nudging the level towards neutral since it disrupted my plans / stockpile of positive karma currency for taking provinces.

 

[Sunspawn]

Thankfully they're getting changed as per Wiz ITT.

Unless Wiz is channeling his inner Johan and trolling us.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Come on guys. Buddhist mechanism is great. You just need to find a proper vassal with many unowned cores, and then take them in peace deal by return core option. This returns your karma for declaring war, and gives you enough for a few provinces for yourself. Also, declare war on the small allaince for -10 karma and then vassalize all memebers for free. (+ 1 diplomatic power means faster diploanexing). And if country is to big, first make them release others, and then vassalize.

There aren't that many cores in the world. I guess you could repeatedly feed someone then vassal the rump target + betray your ally, which ironically would be good karma...but it's still detrimental to expansion pace even if the irony is amusing.

Buddhist mechanics wouldn't bother me that much if all other religions weren't so much better without any kind of effort. You get 5% discipline and 1 dip rep for balanced karma? Hinduism has 5% discipline regardless and extra siege ability for no cost except not taking other great bonuses, because you can actually choose other solid bonuses. Let's not mention Piety gives good bonuses without any kind of drawback regardless of which way you're going. Christianity, nuff said.

It does have default bonuses, and the 10% morale 5% disc setup looks good on paper. I think it would have been fine if it just didn't have the large penalties on either end, and whichever way you went you'd simply lose the associated bonus. That would make it a solid religion...still weaker than every Abrahamic faith mind you, but not an active detriment.

Played a game for White Elephant, with a slightly different playstyle where majority of expansion was diplo-annexing.
But I had to stop myself when I found I was returning provinces back and forth between two Malaya countries which shared a bunch of cores simply to farm karma.

I didn't want to mention it because this kind of thing tends to bring out the "e" word but yeah that's the obvious workaround . Flatten Karma with provinces taken then use some poor scrubs in eternal conflict to reset your penalty. You can even do both wars simultaneously and make peace deals one after the other...one to bottom out Karma, the other to shove it back.

It's a lot of hassle to keep it neutral though, and you'd need two sets of core passers in primary culture to get it going consistently.

 

[zsImmortal]

Unless Wiz is channeling his inner Johan and trolling us.

They're reverting changes because Buddhism is now OP?

There aren't that many cores in the world. I guess you could repeatedly feed someone then vassal the rump target + betray your ally, which ironically would be good karma...but it's still detrimental to expansion pace even if the irony is amusing.

The only exceptions I've found are Kazakh, Timurids and Ming, which can allow you some fairly solid expansion as long as you're double dipping with giving those guys provinces (or taking a mass of provinces and releasing large vassals is also decent). Now the problem with that is that Ming is hell to keep unified as a vassal and Timurid cores expire fairly quickly. You can't have infinite vassals + there's a limit to liberty desire, and the diplo rep hit makes it so you can't really absorb fast enough to expand properly. So overall it just sucks.

It does have default bonuses, and the 10% morale 5% disc setup looks good on paper. I think it would have been fine if it just didn't have the large penalties on either end, and whichever way you went you'd simply lose the associated bonus. That would make it a solid religion...still weaker than every Abrahamic faith mind you, but not an active detriment.

If it loses the bonus it kind of becomes bad, because you're essentially down to default religious bonuses, which aren't really better than something like Shia without Piety. But yes it wouldn't be a detriment, it would just be...exactly like it was before with a slider you wouldn't really care about because getting to neutral is just way too much work when trying to expand at a steady pace.

 

[petertel123]

Yes.

That's great news! Now all tibet needs is an achievement

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If it loses the bonus it kind of becomes bad, because you're essentially down to default religious bonuses, which aren't really better than something like Shia without Piety. But yes it wouldn't be a detriment, it would just be...exactly like it was before with a slider you wouldn't really care about because getting to neutral is just way too much work when trying to expand at a steady pace.

It wouldn't be an ideal implementation, but it would be better than the one we have now, where we have an inverted piety slider that doubles as an eye gouger. But previously Buddhist bonuses were identical to those of Confucian, which is now only true for one branch (the rarest one). Without the karmic gimping, the 10% morale Buddhism would be strictly superior to Shinto for example, so weak but not in the dumpster. You could then burst yourself to neutral karma for tough wars if you so chose.

Buddhism w/o the penalties and with the 10% morale's primary weakness compared to Shia is the limitations of all non-Abrahamic faiths. Buddhism can get 5% missionary strength from decisions...without cycling through religions this is actually competitive with Christianity and Islam...but then those faiths get 3 times the missionaries possible and it can't even come close. Buddhism with 4 missionaries, the bonuses at neutral Karma, and no penalties (but no bonuses) at the ends of the spectrum would be competitive with Sunni as a faith, perhaps marginally worse. Buddhism with 2 missionaries and a 10% discipline penalty for playing the game relegates it to sub-shamanist tier.

 

[zsImmortal]

It wouldn't be an ideal implementation, but it would be better than the one we have now, where we have an inverted piety slider that doubles as an eye gouger. But previously Buddhist bonuses were identical to those of Confucian, which is now only true for one branch (the rarest one). Without the karmic gimping, the 10% morale Buddhism would be strictly superior to Shinto for example, so weak but not in the dumpster. You could then burst yourself to neutral karma for tough wars if you so chose.

Buddhism w/o the penalties and with the 10% morale's primary weakness compared to Shia is the limitations of all non-Abrahamic faiths. Buddhism can get 5% missionary strength from decisions...without cycling through religions this is actually competitive with Christianity and Islam...but then those faiths get 3 times the missionaries possible and it can't even come close. Buddhism with 4 missionaries, the bonuses at neutral Karma, and no penalties (but no bonuses) at the ends of the spectrum would be competitive with Sunni as a faith, perhaps marginally worse. Buddhism with 2 missionaries and a 10% discipline penalty for playing the game relegates it to sub-shamanist tier.

Yes, I'd be more than fine with simply removing the slider penalties. It is still a sad excuse for a fully fleshed out religion to essentially go from a mandatory mechanical interaction to an afterthought. But that's just how bad it is right now, even after the last buff.

 

[hashinshin]

Yes.

I think giving them -20% development costs at perfect kerma would keep their playstyle unique yet not weak.

 

[m1c]

I actually just finished a Siam (aytuhaya) game recently. the trick is releasing and feeding vassals (returning cores to vassals gives a lot of karma, so does releasing small states that are very easy to vassalize). I got the white elephant achievement for owning and coring all of Indochina fairly quickly and i wasnt below -10 karma even once

I agree that the mechanic needs a bit more work as it seemed like little more than an additional strategic obstacle imo.

 

[ahyangyi]

I think giving them -20% development costs at perfect kerma would keep their playstyle unique yet not weak.

It goes against the current theme though.

 

[ahyangyi]

Yes.

Good to hear.

Also, I'd like to see more action in Mahayana Buddhism. While not so much as a national religion (only in Dai Viet in game), Mahayana Buddhism had quite some influence on both China and Japan. If only some sort of syncretism is introduced to Confucianism and Shintoism...

 

[neondt]

I actually just finished a Siam (aytuhaya) game recently. the trick is releasing and feeding vassals (returning cores to vassals gives a lot of karma, so does releasing small states that are very easy to vassalize). I got the white elephant achievement for owning and coring all of Indochina fairly quickly and i wasnt below -10 karma even once

I agree that the mechanic needs a bit more work as it seemed like little more than an additional strategic obstacle imo.

I also did White Elephant recently. Having played about with Buddhism a bit before, my first priority was to convert to Hinduism. I think that made the playthrough much more enjoyable.

 

[petertel123]

I also did White Elephant recently. Having played about with Buddhism a bit before, my first priority was to convert to Hinduism. I think that made the playthrough much more enjoyable.

Did such a run as well but I had to stay buddhist because I also wanted the land of eastern jade achievement. Buddhism combined with an expansionist Ming which wont implode led to a frustrating game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Did such a run as well but I had to stay buddhist because I also wanted the land of eastern jade achievement. Buddhism combined with an expansionist Ming which wont implode led to a frustrating game.

I did a run at the achievement yesterday too. I'm not done but almost. It didn't take long, even with core returns, to be pushing nearly -100 Karma all the time. It also didn't take me long to annex my Sunni vassal and switch to that. Maybe one day I'll bother with eastern jade, or just disable DLC for it. It's a fast achievement if you rush it since you can reach the new world at ADM 5 DIP 7, meaning you'd need ~ 5040 diplo points in tech + ideas and 1920 in ADM. At 8 diplo/month you'd have those points in about 53 years, so even with a little bit of vassal annexation/expansion you could realistically be getting there +securing achievement early 1500's.