Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations – Dev diary 5: Religion

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Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations – Dev diary 4: Religion

The theme for this weeks dev diary will deal with the wholly uncontroversial topic of religions, and in particular which one is right and which one is wrong.

Just kidding :) The dev diary will however cover what we are adding in the area of religions in Wealth of Nations. Note that all of these changes are part of the Wealth of Nations paid expansion; they will not be in the large free update that traditionally comes with our expansions.

Reformed
First up is the Reformed Religion, the Calvinist faith that was particularly embraced by the Dutch in this time frame. We figured that doing something for the Dutch would be an appropriate thing for our trade themed expansion. It is a distinct religion in EU4 and has an increasing chance of spawning in a European province that has been Protestant for a long time. It also has an increased chance of appearing in nations that have selected more innovative ideas.

For Wealth of Nations Reformed nations can direct the industriousness of their people via a new concept called Fervor. The player will get a base value of 2 Fervor points per month if the nation is at peace and 1 per month if it is at war. Like most things in EU, this rate is also infuenced by things like prestige and stability. If its not used it’s stored. So how do you use it? Reformed nations have 3 place to focus their Fervor: Trade (Global Trade Power and Trade Steering bonus), War (Morale of Armies and Morale of Navies) and Stability (National Revolt Risk and Diplomatic Reputation). The player can activate one or more of these but each will cost 5 Fervor each month, which means that your nations needs to be fairly stable and at peace the be able to run one permanently - but you can also save up so run several at once for a power boost in times of crisis or expansion. We have also changed one of the Reformed religions regular modifiers from +10% trade efficiency to +2 tolerance for heretics, instead.

Hindus
Since we are adding East India Companies to Asia and Africa, we wanted to see if we could add something more to make it more interesting to play in India as a local and not just as a European conqueror. For one thing, we have added about 50 new events for Hindu rulers that deal with the Hindu religion (and we’ve added some nice new art for ambience). We have also added a personal deity system.

If you have the WoN expansion, Hinduism will lose its regular modifiers. Instead you get to pick a deity to follow. You can choose from Shiva, Ganesha, Surya, Ganga, Shakti and Vishnu. Each god has its own bonuses (and also specific interesting events as mentioned earlier). The ruler picks a deity for life, but when the ruler dies you get to pick a new one (though there is also a rare event that lets you change while the monarch lives). This is going to add an interesting new dimension as you build your Hindu empire in an interesting part of the world that we might revisit in the future in another expansion or add-on.

Papacy
And finally, as a little extra to those who buy Wealth of Nations, you will now be able to automate cardinal influence, by using a checkbox next to each cardinal. With that checked the game will automatically assign enough influence to selected cardinals to keep your guy ahead in the competition. This is mostly to avoid the busy work of fighting to add +5 here and there to keep France out of the Throne of Peter.

That’s it for this week. Next week, we will talk a bit about the diplomatic additions that come with Wealth of Nations.

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I'm very disappointed.
checked the game will automatically assign enough influence to selected cardinals
Spamming the cardinal bribe button is an oversight on your part, and its hardly material for an expansion. Next you'll charge the customers for patches. Its unfair. In CK you make all these minor UI changes without charging money except for new features. This is not a new feature this is correcting an oversight. But the religion changes come along nicely.
 
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I agree that the papacy feature should be free, but I also don't mind paying for it I can see Paradox's reason in wanting to squeeze a bit more money out of the tree. Nevertheless this expansion looks promising offering more features than COP. I'm mostly interested in the diplomatic aspects, I wonder if there will be anything added to great powers similar to that of Victoria 2. Wishful thinking but Crises would be nice also to gear the larger nations into war much earlier rather than avoiding eachother to blob.
 
I agree that the papacy feature should be free, but I also don't mind paying for it I can see Paradox's reason in wanting to squeeze a bit more money out of the tree. Nevertheless this expansion looks promising offering more features than COP. I'm mostly interested in the diplomatic aspects, I wonder if there will be anything added to great powers similar to that of Victoria 2. Wishful thinking but Crises would be nice also to gear the larger nations into war much earlier rather than avoiding eachother to blob.
I'll buy it anyway, but its a little bit on the lazy side. I am sure its possible to add more feature to the dlc without resorting to this. Or just leave it to the next patch if you don't manage.
 
I agree that the papacy feature should be free, but I also don't mind paying for it I can see Paradox's reason in wanting to squeeze a bit more money out of the tree.
To be honest, I DO mind paying for it. I loved the way Paradox handled new content with CK2, and I rewarded them by buying almost every DLC they released. I don't understand why the EU4 team doesn't have the same DLC policy as the CK2 one does (you are giving me free stars at an army, but not automated cardinals?)
I'm still waiting for a statement from the dev, hoping it was a misunderstanding.
 
Was expecting some way to have minorities. The changes are nice, but don´t change that VERY critical point.
 
Aww, nothing for stuff like Shinto, Buddhist or Confucian? Ah well, can't wait for WoN.

I'm a little disappointed too, since Buddhist and Confucian are the game's worst two religions. I'm happy that Hindu gets something, but heretic tolerance is just so awful right now that unless they change how it works those two religions are going to remain junk :(.
 
To me the Cardinal thing is an excelent dlc feature. The game was designed without it and you can have the same amount of fun as you could before the DLC was released, and its not something that affects gamebalance for the people that doesnt have the DLC. But if you buy the DLC you get a little bit of extra value, as you should.
 
Reformed is getting +2 tolerance for heretics? Can anyone give insight into what positives this would bring besides minor RR positives that get eliminated by conversion anyway?
 
Reformed is getting +2 tolerance for heretics? Can anyone give insight into what positives this would bring besides minor RR positives that get eliminated by conversion anyway?

They wanted to make sure they nerfed an aspect of it so it isn't too good.

Seriously, heretic tolerance +2 is awful in this game. If you finish religious ideas your provinces flip constantly. When I did Qing I had 200 conversion events before even finishing the playthrough...that's seriously grating. The alternative is to nerf yourself by taking religious and not finishing it for 50% BROT. Can we please stop with the heretic tolerance, or actually make it a good thing? Maybe positive tolerance allows it to not count against unity? Something that makes a supposed benefit not actively harmful?
 
Are we ever going to get a religion system where heretic tolerance isn't a bad thing? Namely, a system in which religions with non-negative tolerance don't affect religious unity?

Edit: I must have posted this just after the above post. Not trying to beat a dead horse.:)
 
Paying for UI improvements? Eh? Come on seriously...
 
Each of these updates are really great. The Hindu religion changes were completely unexpected, but definitely appreciated.

The only thing I question is QoL updates being apart of the expansion and not the patch (which is irrelevant to me, personally, since I will be buying the expansion).

Heretic tolerance and religious unity should be tied together, but that's a debate for another thread.
 
To me the Cardinal thing is an excelent dlc feature. The game was designed without it and you can have the same amount of fun as you could before the DLC was released, and its not something that affects gamebalance for the people that doesnt have the DLC. But if you buy the DLC you get a little bit of extra value, as you should.

If your idea of fun is having to micromanage points every time the flag pops up so that an AI candidate doesn't beat yours by the tiniest amount (or even 0), then we must have divergent opinions on what is considered fun. I rarely even play Catholics (and when I do, I switch to Protestant ASAP if I have the option, global wars be damned) because I hate the Papacy mechanics with a passion.

It was a design oversight. Papacy is boring as all hell and that change was requested time and time again. Honestly, it should have been there from the start. It's a fix to a deficient mechanic, not a new feature. Fixes to deficient mechanics are patched, and not paid for. It's like having a kitchen remade and finding out that you can open two drawers in the corner just barely because their handles are blocking each drawer from fully extending. Was it designed like that? Sure, the plans show that's how it would be and perhaps it seemed cool and functional if we don't take into account the added mass of the handles. Is it still functional? To an extent, I can still open them slightly and put stuff in them. Am I having fun with my screwed up kitchen drawers? No, of course not, they're pains in my backside and am I entitled to a free fix? You better damn believe it.

To see it as a paid feature is a little insulting as a consumer. Of course, it's your game - do with it as you will.
 
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Paying for UI improvements? Eh? Come on seriously...

Yes, this is bad waters. What's next, selling us instructions for all the strategy-based mechanics that are hidden from the player? Are we going to get an "accurate combat terrain % and modifiers that affect it" DLC?

I don't understand why stuff like support independence and now auto-papacy are "DLC" features when stuff like the new nations in NA and their unique (and bugged without CoP) government is not.
 
To me the Cardinal thing is an excelent dlc feature. The game was designed without it and you can have the same amount of fun as you could before the DLC was released, and its not something that affects gamebalance for the people that doesnt have the DLC. But if you buy the DLC you get a little bit of extra value, as you should.

The Cardinal thing would be alike to this: in vanilla you are not allowed to use "Shift" to give order to units, but with expansion you can. I don't play Catholics but it seems a bit strange. It is automation of routine tasks to prevent users do redundant, tedious and annoying actions.