Gamers will need to deal with Church Power and Karma

Apr 30, 2015 14:38 GMT  ·  By

Video game companies tend first to announce the name of an expansion before offering details about the changes it will make to a title, but the team at Paradox Development Studio is not following that script for the coming content drop for Europa Universalis IV.

A new development diary on the forums talks about the way religions will be tweaked later in the year, with a focus on Protestants and Buddhists.

The big news is that each of the churches that break from Catholicism will have its own name in the interface and gamers will have an option to spend Church Power in order to tweak the advantages offered over time.

The developers state, "Church Power is accumulated each month, depending on your current religious unity, and your monarchs abilities. Adding an aspect to your church costs 100 church power, but you can remove an aspect at any time, but that will lower your stability by 1."

Each Protestant Church will have three different aspects active at one time, picked from a pool of 12.

At the moment, Paradox is only willing to reveal three of them: Holy Sacraments +2.5% Discipline, Individual Creeds -5% Idea Costs, and Adult Baptism +1% Missionary Strength.

Europa Universalis IV also makes changes to Buddhism

For the Eastern religion, the development team is introducing a new concept called Karma, which needs to be balanced in order for a country to gain the most advantages.

Basically, gamers will have to avoid too many positive actions because they will get penalties to diplomacy, and those who get too negative will see problems with their military strength.

Buddhism will also be split in the coming Europa Universalis IV expansion into Vajrayana, Mahayana and Theravada.

Each of them will have different events and options, and gamers will also be able to get different bonuses for their nation by accepting one or the other.

At the moment, the development team has not talked about the name of the expansion, which will also make changes to the Holy Roman Empire, the way warfare is conducted and other core mechanics.

A patch will also be delivered for free to better balance the Europa Universalis IV experience.

Presumably, the entire package will be launched before the end of the year.

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