ex-native Zulu

[Atey]

I have been planning on achieving max discipline in an EU4 run and so I gathered knowledge about all the different paths one must walk to acquire the modifiers. I have come across the indigenous idea group (exclusive to the native tribes of America) which together with exploration provides a policy giving the player a whopping 2.5% discipline. It is still discipline and thus it must be taken in order to get to max discipline.

One other aspect of the plan is to play as Zulu, since they are basically Prussia with their militarization but allow for any religion – most notably Zoroastrian which provides a record 10% discipline from their monument. The issue there is that according to the wiki, all of the possible ways of creating Zulu include releasing them and not reforming into them.

So my question is: Is there any way to play as Zulu while having the indigenous idea group?

 

[Iferius]

You can tag switch into the Zulu or you can spawn Zulu cores to release and play as them. I don't know how the latter interacts with being primitive, there might be a way there?

 

[grotaclas]

I did a quick test by starting as an Australian native, and getting the province 789 with console commands and then firing the zulu event event flavor_zul.1. I chose to declare war on them, annexed them and released and played as them. This made me a native tribe zulu which could choose indigenous ideas. To get the zulu government, you would then have to use the trading with foreigners reform to reform off a tribal country to become tribal. If you don't get a locked tier 1 reform, you can switch to the Zulu Tribe reform(reforming off a horde probably doesn't work, because their tier 1 reform doesn't allow switching). The following reddit post and its comments have some explanations how you can discover and conquer provinces outside of Australia while remaining a native tribe:
https://www.reddit.com/r/eu4/comments/uiys4b

 

[Atey]

To get the zulu government, you would then have to use the trading with foreigners reform to reform off a tribal country to become tribal.

Haven't tested it but this probably wouldn't work because it specifically says Copy government type of neighboring non-tribe country on the wiki. The only other way to switch out of the native government form that I know of is taking Lima, converting to Inti and switching to tribal despotism in the process.

 

[grotaclas]

Haven't tested it but this probably wouldn't work because it specifically says Copy government type of neighboring non-tribe country on the wiki. The only other way to switch out of the native government form that I know of is taking Lima, converting to Inti and switching to tribal despotism in the process.

I tested that this worked. You can't copy native tribes(government type "native") but you can definitely copy tribal countries (as long as they have feudalism). Unfortunately the game wording doesn't make it very clear that there is a distinction between native and tribal governments. I'll try to improve the wording in the wiki.

Edit: they don't even need feudalism. When updating the wiki I noticed that any institution works

 

[noldorin]

Why do you think of Zoroastrianism? It does the same job in totemism and is more powerful.

 

[Atey]

Why do you think of Zoroastrianism? It does the same job in totemism and is more powerful.

The Zoroastrian monument in Shirvan gives 10% discipline when fully upgraded. Totemism only allows for 5% discipline (from their deceased rulers) as far as I know.