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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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If I had this I could make any number of alt history maps without having to convert anything. It would be awesome.

As for the patch, I really enjoy the SE Asia changes, as well as the potential for change in Australia, and the update to North America, but it doesn't seem like this update has any clear focus yet?

As for whether Zoroastrianism and Sikh as uses of department time: I don't know how much time Zoroastrian actually takes seeing as it's just reusing the coptic mechanic, and Sikhism kind of desperately needed mechanics imo, as playing Punjab didn't seem very attractive otherwise.
CK2 Converter religions'd be also an opportunity to tie these religions with eu4's heretic rebels and if someone says these heresies lack mechanics then it'd be way more important to defend your country's religion against these heretc rebels but adding these religions to nation designer'd be great too. Fingers crossed
 
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Will Sikhism and Zoroastrianism also get access to extra missionaries? Would suck if the only possible playstyle is by using humanist ideas.

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.
 
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CK2 Converter religions'd be also an opportunity to tie these religions with eu4's heretic rebels and if someone says these heresies lack mechanics then it'd be way more important to defend your country's religion against these heretc rebels but adding these religions to nation designer'd be great too. Fingers crossed
Interestingly, some of the converter religions have more mechanics than some of the ones currently in the game do (even if all of them are just reusing mechanics from other religions with different words)
 
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They are balanced around that as Zoroastrian you are most likely going to form Persia considering the holy sites and as such they combine together with this

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.
 
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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.
Also tbf, not everyone plays the game to min-max. I play the countries I play to play the country, not to balance its stats to be the best it can be in terms of modifiers while it simultaneously becomes an amorphous blob with no identity or personality. I'd rather form Persia for the theming if I wanted to play in the region than play a horde just because their ideas are better. Obviously a country having *bad* ideas isn't fun, but not everything has to be on the good side to justify its existence, imo. Not every new addition needs to be balanced against the most powerful meta options in the game.
 
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I'm liking this!
I understand the drawback of the Sikhism teachings, however, I have mixed feelings. Reducing missionary strength will naturally push the country towards humanism, so you just won't care about this drawback. Especially for CN nations, you just build in some tolerance and then you might have access to a super powerful religion all the time, assuming that the teachings have a somewhat meaningful bonus since you pay monarch points as well. The things I think of right now, to less railroad Sikhism into Humanism, is by tying a local modifier to it. IF you accept Sikhism, every province with Sikhism gives modifier X. So then you have the choice to sacrifice the province modifier (and missionary strength) for teachings, or you go converting provinces and have fewer teachings.
While I generally dislike copying mechanics, I think it works perfectly in the case of Zoroastrism.
 
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They are balanced around that as Zoroastrian you are most likely going to form Persia considering the holy sites and as such they combine together with this
View attachment 643969

Plus the really good trade goods of the region.

I'm not sure how that makes the bonuses any better. Going Zoroastrian is considerably harder than remaining Shia, and offers no benefits other than saying you did it. You don't even get to keep feudal theocracy if you go Zoroastrian, and that reform is better than every Zoroastrian perk combined. In my opinion the holy site bonuses should at least have +1 missionary somewhere to make playing Zoroastrian less obviously painful due to losing feudal theocracy.

Of course, this is assuming that Zoroastrianism and forming Persia are directly linked, which they aren't. I don't agree with balancing an entire religion over a single tag's ideas (and those ideas aren't even very good to begin with).
 
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Hey @Groogy i have a q. Will Parsi belong to Iranian culture group?

No it's Western Aryan. I was pondering back and forth on that one but the Parsi today don't consider themselves Iranian as I understood it and the Parsi at start of the game would have been long enough where they would most probably not be speaking Farsi anymore even though they would have a distinct culture separate from their neighbors around them.

For game mechanic purposes the best is to just put them in Western Aryan, if I can figure out some way to represent the Iranian heritage I will.
 
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Well, just finished a This is Persia! achievement. I guess this time I will do it by converting to Zoroastrianism, since by the time I got Yazd it had already been converted.

Nice dd tho

Edit: will we have some more missions for Persia? It was kind of underwhelming when I formed it and I only had like 3 or 4 unique missions.
 
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If I understood your teaching correctly:
1. There are a total of 30 Guru teachings in the code.
2. Each Guru will come with three teachings and they will be added to the Guru teaching selection pool.
3. Apon Guru's death, two will be forgotten and only one will remain in the Guru teaching pool.
4. New Guru will come with three teachings.
5. You can select up to six teachings and each will lower your missionary power by -1%.
right?

This Zoroaster and Sikhism make me wonder what is the main theme of the new DLC.
 
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If I understood your teaching correctly:
1. There are a total of 30 Guru teachings in the code.
2. Each Guru will come with three teachings and they will be added to the Guru teaching selection pool.
3. Apon Guru's death, two will be forgotten and only one will remain in the Guru teaching pool.
4. New Guru will come with three teachings.
5. You can select up to six teachings and each will lower your missionary power by -1%.
right?

This Zoroaster and Sikhism make me wonder what is the main theme of the new DLC.
Well first we had SEA focus, later on North America passion project and now we have Sikh and Zoroastrian rework, which i don't mind. I think they're trying to get every bit of the world instead of focusing on a single region.
 
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I like that you give new mechanics to religions that have none. Does this mean that Animism, Judaism and Totemism will get something? Currently they feel pretty bland.
 
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For game mechanic purposes the best is to just put them in Western Aryan, if I can figure out some way to represent the Iranian heritage I will.

You can give zoroastrians unique missions, like christians and muslims. For example, acceptance of Persian culture could lead to the event that can change their primary culture to Persian and to include Parsi into Iranian culture group.
 
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