Paradox: will religion in Europe be fixed post 1.30? As it stands the concept is in many ways reduced to a joke

[gaius valerius]

Has anyone else had this experience in the latest version(s) of the game?

- religious differences in Europe have become stale
- protestantism is an absolute joke
- anglicanism is dead
- major non-catholic powers (orthodox aside) don't exist unless you the player form them and hence defender of the faiths means one big geopolitical stand-off
- gameplay suffers under it
- on another note, no feature really conveys how states could work together across religious boundaries - flat hate modifiers really dominate the game whereas in reality a measure of flexibility reigned. Cross-confessional alliances are possible yes, but they are hardly so in a meaningful way (as is)
- orthodox religions are not heretics: they are schismatics - a profound difference that is not well reflected as it is

Mandatory extra:

-> Debt spiral is still a thing...
-> Colonisation is also reduced to a joke: long live the fact that roughly 2 nations will always colonize 75% of the Americas

 

[Piotrzeci]

I don't think I agree with most of these points, but there definitely is a need to work on Council of Trent. Fix the bug with it affecting heathens, add special treatment to tolerated heretics, make it not affect the game permanently with opinion debuff, etc.

 

[ImperatorRoman]

The Orthodox Communion, from the perspective of the Catholic Church historically, are heretics and schismatics. The latter for breaking communion with the Bishop of Rome and the former because the Orthodox reject certain doctrines fundamental to Catholicism such as Purgatory and Original Sin, along with most famously the filioque.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I can agree that Anglicism is dead. It was stillborn and I highly doubt the Devs will get around to addressing it's issues any time soon.

To me the joke has always been reformed. They never get many converts and tend to only feature small HRE nations that end up being killed by either Catholics of Protestants. Protestants, on the other hand, usually get one or two medium sized countries to convert so it is a tad bit stronger.

Something that I liked in EU3 that got completely dropped was that religions (I think only reformed and Protestantism) gave on the province level as well even if your official religion was different.

Say you were Catholic and had a Reformed province. That reformed province would get +10% local taxes because it was reformed. Same would be true if you were reformed.

 

[love sweden]

How is Protestanism a joke? Unless you already start as a major and cant become Orthodox its the best religion to choose in Europe.

 

[EarlKonrad]

How is Protestanism a joke? Unless you already start as a major and cant become Orthodox its the best religion to choose in Europe.

The objectively second best religion for any European nation is Ibadi. That sweet, sweet 10% Goods Produced is too good to pass

 

[k4sp3r00]

- religious differences in Europe have become stale

Religious differences could and should be better but I've seen sweden and england not leave catholic while france does and that's plenty of variety already.

- protestantism is an absolute joke

No. Protestantism is one of the best religions in the game and if your whole country just happens to flip protestant then there's no reason to not convert.

- anglicanism is dead

True. Unlikely to be fixed since it only ever matters for the brits.

- major non-catholic powers (orthodox aside) don't exist unless you the player form them and hence defender of the faiths means one big geopolitical stand-off

Not true, Sweden, France and England are all non-catholic reasonably often and are all usually major powers. The distinct lack of ai prussia should be fixed though. What comes to DotF it usually isn't a major power and is instead held by some shitty opm in the hre because of course it is so it's not such a big problem.

- gameplay suffers under it

See previous.

- on another note, no feature really conveys how states could work together across religious boundaries - flat hate modifiers really dominate the game whereas in reality a measure of flexibility reigned. Cross-confessional alliances are possible yes, but they are hardly so in a meaningful way (as is)

True. Nations were often much more pragmatic than they currently are in eu4. Not sure how you could fix it since religion was at times an even bigger factor than it currently is in the game. New dlc?

- orthodox religions are not heretics: they are schismatics - a profound difference that is not well reflected as it is

Orthodox are considered "misguided herectics" or whatever and get a smaller opinion penalty than normal with catholics and for all I know about religion I'd say thats plenty. The schism wasn't ever going to get mended in eu4 times anyways.

Mandatory extra:

-> Debt spiral is still a thing...

Good. It adds flavor to the game.

-> Colonisation is also reduced to a joke: long live the fact that roughly 2 nations will always colonize 75% of the Americas

Colonization has many problems but this is one that I've never seen. There are plenty of major colonizers and in my experience they split the Americas pretty evenly between each other. Also for what it's worth, spain did singlehandedly colonize almost all of the Americas historically. Minor colonizers like scotland, sweden and denmark are under-represented but that's hard to fix.

 

[Zaddy]

-> Debt spiral is still a thing...

Good. It adds flavor to the game.

I wouldn't really consider something that makes alliances useless half the time and which cripples the AI and makes the game much easier "flavor", but your mileage may vary I suppose...

 

[Quickmelty]

The Orthodox Communion, from the perspective of the Catholic Church historically, are heretics and schismatics. The latter for breaking communion with the Bishop of Rome and the former because the Orthodox reject certain doctrines fundamental to Catholicism such as Purgatory and Original Sin, along with most famously the filioque.

The pope does not get to decide who is a heretic or not because his silly little ass decided in 1054 that he was better than the First Among Equals. While your other points are valid and true, you are forgetting the whole debate started over the primacy of rome among the orthodox patriarchs. Along with this passage "I hand you the keys to my kingdom" which the pope "supposedly" derives his power from.

Also, PLEASE PARADOX FIX ORTHODOX PROVINCES FLIPPING TO REFORMED OR BEING AFFECTED BY COR.

Martin Luther's reformation targeted Catholicism itself, not orthodoxy. I find it laughable that my provinces as byzantium are being flipped by a religious argument that was largely ignored by the orthodox populations of russia and the balkans, along with the orthodox members of the ottoman empire.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Currently, I tend to see weird things wrt religions and HRE when I'm not playing in Europe. Three times I got the victory of protestants in religious League whereas they were in minority so there is not enough electors and the emperor is a little country such as Brunswick or Saxony. I really don't understand how AI can't win its 1V2 wars...

 

[Piotrzeci]

Currently, I tend to see weird things wrt religions and HRE when I'm not playing in Europe. Three times I got the victory of protestants in religious League whereas they were in minority so there is not enough electors and the emperor is a little country such as Brunswick or Saxony. I really don't understand how AI can't win its 1V2 wars...

Countries that are rivals of Emperor will likely join the Protestant League just to make their life harder and if you have enough majors on that side; like Ottotan, France, Russia, they tend to win the war for Protestants.

 

[Piotrzeci]

I really dislike how when deciding if I want to play as Catholic or Protestant I no longer look at positives but negatives. Protestant is still a nicer religion than Catholicism, but having a major always be a DoF and annoying me, as well as permanent -80 relations with Catholics, I end up staying with it just to not get less fun. I think this is what has to be addressed first, that AI constantly renewing DoF makes it really quite annoying to play as Protestant/Reformed.

 

[FrogCrusher]

One solution could be that DoTF applied to heathens and not heretics.

 

[Vetgirig]

DotF works fine. Yes its a problem if some big nation takes it and you can't attack the nations you wanted. But that is its role. To make it harder for the player.

Getting around DotF is just part of the diplomatic challanges that the game throws at you.

 

[love sweden]

DotF works fine. Yes its a problem if some big nation takes it and you can't attack the nations you wanted. But that is its role. To make it harder for the player.

Getting around DotF is just part of the diplomatic challanges that the game throws at you.

Yeah Im feeling really challenged as a african tribal nation know I gotta fight the Mamluks in 1467 to expand, or playing any Orthodox nation in the Balkans and needing to fight France in 1446 to annex Bosnia. It having no cooldown just adds to the challenge and is really a positive experience wich doesnt make me not want to play cause of all the tedium.

 

[Vin55]

The biggest Problem is Defender of Faith the ai takes it before 1500hundreds and yes WW1 will be over a protestant lord attacking Austria, who is not allied to Poland but Poland whants to defend them, it sucks as small nation in HRE or anywhere else, you are really forced to stay catholic which is a shite religion.

 

[fr-rein]

Also, PLEASE PARADOX FIX ORTHODOX PROVINCES FLIPPING TO REFORMED OR BEING AFFECTED BY COR.

They don't care.
And they are quite unwilling to do much about East Europe.

In fact, EU4 is worst game from publisher if you want to play in East Europe. Even EU3 is better.

 

[Quickmelty]

DotF works fine. Yes its a problem if some big nation takes it and you can't attack the nations you wanted. But that is its role. To make it harder for the player.

Getting around DotF is just part of the diplomatic challanges that the game throws at you.

You've revealed to me what I've always thought about the paradox AI. It's coded to be just smart enough to spite you and just retarded enough to hinder you. I'm glad I got good king rene before they made it any harder.

They don't care.
And they are quite unwilling to do much about East Europe.

See above.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I wouldn't mind Orthodox provinces getting CoR'd if I could respond to it at all, besides just sitting around for 30-35 years before I can flip it back. Religious Zeal feels too deterministic as a factor.

 

[Deliberus]

DotF works fine. Yes its a problem if some big nation takes it and you can't attack the nations you wanted. But that is its role. To make it harder for the player.

Getting around DotF is just part of the diplomatic challanges that the game throws at you.

lol, good joke