It's a well-known quirk of the Catholic church in EU4 that Catholicism as a religion grows stronger as there are fewer Catholics around - the less competition there is for Cardinals, the more PI and associated bonuses for me, right? Unfortunately, this result is fairly counter-intuitive, and also conflicts with the fact that increasing reform desire is apparently meant to be a bad thing for Catholic nations, not a good one. Also, the Pope himself gains very little from his Catholic faith, which is quite sad.
I propose to fix this by replacing Reform Desire with a new mechanic. Let's call this Religious Authority, and think of it as the lost cousin of the similarly named mechanic from Crusader Kings 2. Like Reform Desire and CK2's Religious Authority, the idea is that Catholicism is a whole, and the entire church should have a reason to stick together. It's a shared value between all Catholics, not a per-country modifier.
Religious Authority has a range from 100 to 0. It starts out high, maybe 90, to portray the Catholic church's great influence in Europe at the time. The value will decrease over time as the following happen:
Religious Authority can be increased, too:
Combined together, having a LOT of positive yearly modifiers should be able to outweigh the normal yearly decay, to represent a particular renaissance for the Catholic faith. Situations where the Reformation died early and Catholic Hungary has taken the entire Anatolia from the Ottomans while the newly established Jerusalem is conquering Mecca and every colonizer is a good Catholic and obeying the ToT.
Effects of having high Religious Authority should be positive for Catholic nations, while having lower Religious Authority ought to cripple Catholicism to counterbalance the current "the fewer, the better" mechanic.
Foreseeable positive effects:
Foreseeable negative effects:
Thoughts?
I propose to fix this by replacing Reform Desire with a new mechanic. Let's call this Religious Authority, and think of it as the lost cousin of the similarly named mechanic from Crusader Kings 2. Like Reform Desire and CK2's Religious Authority, the idea is that Catholicism is a whole, and the entire church should have a reason to stick together. It's a shared value between all Catholics, not a per-country modifier.
Religious Authority has a range from 100 to 0. It starts out high, maybe 90, to portray the Catholic church's great influence in Europe at the time. The value will decrease over time as the following happen:
- a slow erosion every year to portray the weakening of religious ideals against the imperialist struggles of the era
- someone defies the Pope (through decisions or events)
- Excommunication or Crusade is used (however, acting on these two could result in a net gain of Authority)
- Catholic provinces are converted by heretics or infidels (large penalty) or by tolerated heretics (smaller penalty)
- Catholic nations convert to heresy (large penalty) or tolerated heresy (smaller penalty)
- Papal States are vassalised or don't exist (severe penalty)
- Papal States conquer Catholic land (large lump penalty to represent suspicion against the Pope's need for secular power)
- Thirty Years' War end with Protestants victorious (moderate yearly decay) or Peace of Westphalia (minimal yearly decay)
- Major Catholic countries allied with heretics or heathens (medium penalty) or tolerated heretics (small penalty)
- Treaty of Tordesillas is violated (small ongoing penalty)
- Royal Marriage is broken without Papal approval (small penalty)
- Heretic, Lollard, Heathen etc rebels break a country (large penalty, scaled on country's size)
- Religious unrest disasters ongoing in Catholic countries
- Each existing Center of Reformation (small yearly decay)
Religious Authority can be increased, too:
- Major Catholic countries allied with each other
- Pope is obeyed (through decisions or events)
- Counter-Reformation is picked up by a Catholic country
- Catholicism is spread to infidel or heretic province (large bonus), or tolerated heretic or colony province (small bonus)
- Catholic countries at war with the current Crusade target or an excommunicated country (large bonus), or any heathen or heretic (small bonus)
- Number of Catholic countries, scaled by country rank and increased further for being a theocracy
- Catholic states with religious ideas (minimal yearly boost)
- Catholic victory in the Thirty Years' War (small yearly boost)
- Holy sites and other historically significant objectives: Constantinople, Jerusalem and similar goals are Catholic (small yearly boost for each objective)
- Kingdom of Jerusalem exists
- Center of Reformation is eliminated (lump boost)
Combined together, having a LOT of positive yearly modifiers should be able to outweigh the normal yearly decay, to represent a particular renaissance for the Catholic faith. Situations where the Reformation died early and Catholic Hungary has taken the entire Anatolia from the Ottomans while the newly established Jerusalem is conquering Mecca and every colonizer is a good Catholic and obeying the ToT.
Effects of having high Religious Authority should be positive for Catholic nations, while having lower Religious Authority ought to cripple Catholicism to counterbalance the current "the fewer, the better" mechanic.
- Reformation can only trigger when Religious Authority drops low enough. The limit should be set so Reformation still happens almost every game, but can possibly be averted with serious determination.
- Papal actions for Excommunication and Crusades are only available as long as Religious Authority is high enough. The 1650 limit should be removed - it doesn't make sense if the Catholic church manages to retain its Medieval relevancy through EU4's timeframe.
- Bonuses for Papal Influence should scale in power with Religious Authority, but even low-powered bonuses should be strong enough to make Catholic not utter garbage
- Usual country modifiers (like +tax income, +prestige, -development cost and the like) that scale with Religious Authority: good near 100, meager near 0. These should be doubled for the Pope, as he is the ultimate victor when Catholicism triumphs. Think of other Catholics trading a portion of their bonuses for Papal Influence with the Pope!
Foreseeable positive effects:
- Catholics now have a proper reason to stick together and defend their faith
- The Pope now has an actual reason to care about his church
- The Pope is now rewarded for paternalistic protection of his Catholic flock, which is thematically fitting
- The Pope has to balance expansionism with maintaining Religious Authority, reducing the viability of Papal snowballing of the Balkans and other weird outcomes without outright barring them
- The Catholic faith becomes toothless dynamically when hurt enough, not magically at 1650
- The Catholic faith, with its scaling bonuses, becomes a good choice of religion for any country committed to keeping Religious Authority high, instead of just the current "large colonizing superpower"
Foreseeable negative effects:
- Catholics can go into death spiral as Religious Authority falls, countries pick up Protestantism or Reformed, causing Religious Authority to fall further and so on. However, since there's still the cardinal mechanic which rewards a small number of Catholic countries, it will eventually, if tweaked properly, reach a sweet spot where there are few enough Catholics for them to get good enough bonuses from cardinals alone.
- Since many people want to play as Protestants or Reformed Christians, this'll certainly attract gamey tricks like purposefully sabotaging Religious Authority to trigger reformation. This is somewhat true for the current system as well, though.
Thoughts?
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