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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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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.
This sounds like a very good idea. Also Persia needs some missions so I couldn't agree more
 
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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.

View attachment 643937
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
Heh, literally the suggestion I've given to the Zoroastrianism in the past. Nice to see. Now on to make Animist interesting as well!
 
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It`s cool, that instead of making a huge expansion, you prepare new ways for playing in already interesting regions/
Rituals it`s very cool, but in this game Military>economic, you know (wars are too cheap in late-game, so honestly, no one needs any bonuses for economic in 1600+)
What do you think about adding some military bonuses for the rituals or teaching to make these religions a little bit really useful for changing into?
 
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Any idea if/when Judaism will get their own mechanic?
 
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Those Zoroastrian bonuses seem very weak compared to Coptic ones.


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

Plus the really good trade goods of the region.

Um, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, I'm just curious is this now a thing? Balancing local religions and mechanics based on a single tag? Did Anglicans or Hussites get a similar treatment for their bonuses?

Should we keep in mind the power of likely tags when suggesting new content?
 
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Hmm hindu is already nerfed after emperor and sikh is kinda very good choice in this region, u sure about buffing sikh without touching hindu?
 
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Guru's seem like a fine addition, though its going to crash up upon neighbouring Muslim faiths who are harder to convert in the Indian Subcontinent area so i hope there's something in the wings to help out, else players simply aren't going to use Sihkism over other religions with much more gameplay potential. A targeted missionary defence/offence against muslim missionaries/provinces would be perfect to even it out, given this paints the religion as too pacifistic to the deep rooted divisions that still occur between those two religions to this day.

Figuratively you can offset it, but -6 missionary power is back-breaking to have all ideas operational at a time and ever expect to reach any sort of long-standing achievement of world domination. On the other hand, nations like Hungary, New Zealand, Pirates, Texas, Vermont and the Colonial NI's can have all the Guru benefits active irregardless of which religion is currently in the majority.

Also, i hope Zoastrianism lighting all the flames does something special, like the occupation of Rome/Fixing the Schism or winning the religious league war to make it over-archingly worth the effort to co-ordinate the restoration.
 
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It might be worth pointing out that Zoroastrians already have 3 unique decisions. So it's possible for them to get stronger than just the Rituals modifiers suggest.


Also, if nothing's changed, as Sikh you can "Save the Burning World" for +3% missionary strength at the cost of 1 tolerance of Hindu.
 
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Seems cool. Always nice to have more unique play options, but I wasn't really planning on playing either of those. Everyone else, have fun tho!
 
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The Shikism changes seem interesting. Sihkism is already a deceptively powerful religion [Easily the most under-rated religion in the game] and is actually the best military religion in the game for ~75 years [10% Morale and 5% Discipline; unmatched by any other religion]. It's basically a strictly better Shinto baseline as well. There's also it's unique government reforms which are decent.

I wonder if Sihkism will get any Tolerance options, especially as selection these permament teachings lowers your Missionary Strength. That could make it an interesting Tolerance+Warfare religion, which we only really have in Reformed and Buddhism [if you keep your karma good].

That said; if the Tempoary Guru benefits stay the same; and there's some permament military options... whoo boy I would not like to fight Sihks while they have a Discipline Guru up. It would make them hands-down the best religion in the game.
 
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.

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!
 
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About the naval, I know you don't care much about my opinion but maybe we should get a bigger overhaul like the entire naval dlc? For now, it's not fun because there is no point in having more ships, engagement width is like 25 to 40 while heavy ships fill 3 engagement width each. With sick bonuses, Great Britain can kill 800 heavy ships with just 40 and it's not like it historically was(i know some GB fanboys may disagree and I'm sorry guys, but it's not accurate at all). GB ruled the waves because they had a lot of ships(well-constructed ones I don't deny it) and experienced crew. At the moment we cannot do anything in naval, unlike land, just the right button to start a battle or maybe switch fleet stacks during battle. I humbly ask to focus more on the field and make it as important as in hoi4 or even more (wasn't this time frame the peak of navy importance?) with some more options to do when we are not dominating, like cutting supply and avoiding enemy fleet, maybe make it more expensive and funds dependent.
 
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While you're at it, can you guys please remove the custom nation restriction on this?
There is not much point in reviving a religion if you're cheating your way into doing so day-1.

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Post Leviathan Edit:

Wow guys, i guess it'd have been incredibly difficult to remove a few lines of stupid restrictions on an achievement to make it more fun. Thanks.
 
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Will we be able to mod what modifier penalty you get for choosing a guru tenet? Say if we wanted to make a new religion using the mechanic but with +unrest instead of -missionary strength for instance.
 
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