Hello everyone, and welcome back to another Development Diary for Europa Universalis V! We’re thrilled to continue sharing this journey with you as we build Paradox Interactive’s next grand strategy title together with our amazing community.
In our very first diary, we introduced the foundation of EU5: the population system. Today, we’ll take the next step by diving deeper into how individual pops are defined across the world through their Religion, Culture, and Language.
Every pop in your nation carries with them an identity shaped by these traits. Their religion guides their values, needs, and aspirations. Their culture and language define their sense of belonging, their traditions, their influence and their names. Together, these elements form the living tapestry of your nation, influencing not only the daily lives of your people but also the kinds of advances, buildings, and bonuses available to you while playing EU5.
These systems are designed to make your population feel more alive than ever before, tying the identity of your nation to the people who make it up.
This is our longest development diary yet so buckle up and enjoy!
RELIGION
Religion has always been a driving force in history, and in EU5 it plays an even deeper role in shaping your nation’s identity and trajectory. The game represents nearly 300 distinct religions, making the spiritual diversity of the early modern world more represented than ever in a Europa Universalis title.
While the majority of these faiths are already present at the game’s start date, others will emerge dynamically over time. Movements such as Sikhism in South Asia or Lutheranism during the Protestant Reformation can rise and spread as your campaign unfolds, reshaping societies and sparking new conflicts.
Religion Map Mode in 1337
Religions Map Mode in a playthrough in late 1600s
Religions are structured into denominations under broader religious groups. For example:
Christianity encompasses traditions such as Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Islam includes Sunni, Shiism and Ibadi branches.
The Dharma group covers South Asian traditions such as Hinduism and Jainism.
The African Folk Religious group covers indigenous beliefs throughout Africa such as Bantu, Bori and Cwezi.
The Buddhist religious group covers Far East religions such as Sanjiao, Shintoism, Theravada, Eastern Buddhism and more.
These are just some of the many religious groups represented in EU5. This layered approach allows us to reflect both the shared heritage of religious groups and the unique differences between denominations in terms of their specific practices and beliefs, opening up new possibilities for interaction, conflict and cooperation.
Buddhism is one of the many religious groups represented in EU5
Religious diversity in Europa Universalis V extends far beyond broad groups and denominations. Within some faiths, there exist distinct branches that are represented in-game as multi-national religious organizations. These institutions transcend political borders, linking together nations that share allegiance to a particular religious authority or tradition.
Each of these organizations has a recognized leader, and that leader wields significant influence. By issuing religious laws, they can shape not only the internal affairs of their own nation but also the policies and practices of every country that belongs to their branch.
The most prominent religious organization is the Catholic church ruled by the Pope in his seat in Rome. But other international religious organizations exist in EU5, with some forming as the game progresses. For example, the Autocephalous Patriarchate of Moscow represents a specific branch of the Orthodox Church. Nations aligned with this branch are bound by its spiritual leadership, and the Patriarch’s decisions ripple outward, influencing the faith and governance of multiple countries at once
Autocephalous Patriarchate of Moskva in Muscovy run in 1397
Each religion in Europa Universalis 5 has its own unique bonuses, limitations, interactions and customization available to the players as they play.
A Sunni Islamic nation has a bonus to trade efficiency, the export and import of alcohol banned, access to religious figures that can give nationwide bonuses, and access to specific Sunni schools of jurisprudence such as Maliki and Hanafi. A Christian Catholic nation has a big bonus to Clergy literacy, a ban on becoming an Empire, access to the Catholic church interactions such as Papal Bulls, and the ability to canonize Saints using religious influence. While a Buddhist Shinto nation has a bonus to nationwide literacy, access to the Honor and Purity systems, and the ability to join a sect within Shintoism.
Shinto religion screen as the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1337
In EU5, locations do not just represent a single religion, it is lived and practiced by the pops that make up that location.
This creates far more dynamic and realistic religious landscapes. A bustling Mediterranean metropolis, for example, might include Jewish, Orthodox, Lutheran, Sunni, and Catholic pops all living side by side. Rather than a monolithic faith, your cities and towns can become mosaics of belief, reflecting the historical pluralism of the early modern world.
Religion of Valencia in the year 1337
As your empire expands through conquest or colonization, your religious demographics will naturally become more diverse. Managing this diversity becomes an active challenge for the player as they play their campaign. Balancing tolerance and conversion will play a key part of governing effectively.
This is where the tolerance mechanic comes into play. If you’ve played EU4, the concept may sound familiar, but in EU5 it has been expanded and tied more directly to your population system. Tolerance represents how respectfully and fairly a society treats followers of different faiths.
Every nation tracks tolerance in three categories:
Primary Religion – the primary religion of your nation (not necessarily your majority religion)
Heretics – Groups that share the same religious group but follow a different denomination (e.g., Catholic vs. Lutheran).
Heathens – Groups belonging to entirely different religious groups (e.g., Christianity vs. Islam).
High tolerance brings tangible benefits. Pops of tolerated faiths will enjoy greater pop satisfaction, reducing pop’s joining rebellions and contributing to your control and institution spread in locations throughout your nation. Diplomatically, tolerance also improves relations with nations that share those faiths, strengthening your international position.
Tolerance of Primary religion, Heretics and Heathens in Two Sicilies playthrough in 1540
However, embracing broad tolerance is not a universal strategy of pop religious management in EU5. Many nations will find it easier to focus loyalty and stability around their primary religion, leaving heretics and heathens at a disadvantage. In these cases, conversion becomes a powerful tool to reshape your demographics, unify your population, and assert the religious character of your realm.
This is where religious conversion comes into play. In EU5, religious conversion is a slow process that takes time depending on a multitude of factors varying from location to location.
Examples of these factors include:
Advances in technology
Estate Privileges
Average literacy of Clerics in a location
Control of the location
Buildings
Government and religious organization laws
Humanist versus Spiritualism value bar (covered later in this DD)
You can also use a cabinet action to increase pop conversion in a province, affecting all locations in that province.
So is one faith still possible in EU5?
In Europa Universalis V, your primary religion is not locked. At any point in your campaign, you as the player have the agency to change the nation's primary religion. This flexibility allows your nation to evolve alongside its population, but it comes with both opportunities and risks.
Switching between denominations within the same religious group is usually easier, not requiring much in terms of pop demographics. However, adopting a heathen religion is far more demanding, requiring 40% of your pops to be already following that new faith you want to adopt.
Of course, conversion at the state level is never painless. Changing your primary religion will sharply reduce national stability, and pops loyal to your former faith will be deeply dissatisfied, potentially sparking rebellions and a civil war. Choosing when and how to make this transition is therefore a high-stakes decision that can reshape the future of your empire.
Someone say Orthomans?
Your primary religion also unlocks unique advances that are exclusive to specific religions or religious groups. These advances grant powerful bonuses that can shape your long-term strategy and benefit you as you progress through the game. Examples of these are the Holi advance, available to nations of the Dharmic religious group, or the Mendicant Orders advance, unique to Catholic nations.
Holi Advance, only available to nations with the Dhamaric religion group in the Age of Reformation
Mendicant Orders Advance only available to Catholic nations in the Age of Reformation
This also means there are buildings available to only specific religions and religious groups. Some come at the start of the game and others unlocked through religion locked advances. Examples of these are the Madrassa building for Islamic nations and the Confucian academy for Buddhist nations
The Madrassa, a building unique to Islamic Religious Group nations
Confucian Academy a building unique to Buddhist Religious Group Nations
CULTURE
In our quest to simulate the most precise living world possible, we ended up with a lot of details concerning cultures. On a scale never seen before, the world in EUV is divided into over 2,000 different cultures.
Culture Map Mode of the world 1337
Each culture may belong to a wider culture groups, representing shared traditions or historical connections between cultures. Giving a bonus to cultural opinion and making accepting cultures within that culture group cheaper in terms of culture capacity. The particularity here is that a culture can belong to multiple culture groups, but if the culture is isolated enough, it can also not belong to any culture group. An example of an isolated culture is the Kurdish culture, not belonging in any culture groups. While an example of a culture belonging to multiple culture groups is Muscovite, belonging to both East Slavic and Slavic culture groups.
Each country in the game will have a primary culture, representing the nation’s representative culture. For example, Hungarian is the primary culture of the Kingdom of Hungary (duh), but within the Kingdom of Hungary there are also Slovak, Croatian, Transylvanian, Serbian, Székely, Rusyn, Cuman, Jasz, and many more cultures, especially as you conquer and expand into more territory. Very few nations in EU5 are perfectly homogenous, most contain a myriad of secondary cultural groups present throughout each location.
Each of these groups might have different aspirations as your primary culture, and can even become rebellious depending on their acceptance level and pop satisfaction. And depending on their acceptance level these other culture pops will be limited in terms of being able to join your armies and limit your level of integration as locations must have a majority of your primary or accepted culture in order to go from integrated to core level of integration.
Hungary is a very culturally diverse country in 1337, posing an internal challenge for anyone who plays as them
Culture tab of Hungary in a Hungary playthrough in 1723
As the player, to avoid those maluses, you have two options: Tolerate and Accept a culture or to assimilate the culture into your primary culture. For now, we’ll focus on accepting cultures.
First, before accepting a culture in your country, they must go from being discriminated against to being tolerated. In order to tolerate a culture there must be at least 1% of your total pops or 1 million pops represented in your nation.
In this campaign, we lack the amount of pops to tolerate the Greater Polish culture
To be able to accept a culture in your country, there must first be enough Pops from that culture. Either that culture must represent 2.5% of your total pops or have 1 million pops represented in your nation.
Although we have tolerated Serbian culture in this campaign, we need more Serbian pops to accept them
Both tolerating and accepting a culture comes at a cost of cultural capacity. The price of tolerating or accepting culture, in terms of cultural capacity, depends on the number of Pops in the world compared to the number of pops of your primary culture in the world, whether your primary culture and that culture share a cultural group, and the cultural opinion of your primary culture to the one you’re trying to accept. This means that tolerating and accepting cultures comes at a varied cost depending on these factors, one culture may cost you 0.15 cultural capacity to accept while another might cost 2 cultural capacity to accept.
Each nation starts with a base of 0 cultural capacity but this can be increased by these factors:
Nation rank: Duchies get +0.5 cultural capacity, Kingdoms get +1 cultural capacity and Empires get +2 cultural capacity.
Advances: Certain advances will increase cultural capacity by a flat number or by a percentage, most nations start with the Cultural Acceptance advance in the age of traditions granting +1 cultural capacity.
Laws: laws can either increase or decrease cultural capacity depending on what you choose.
You can go over this limit; however it comes at the cost of efficiency of your cabinet and the growth of your primary culture’s influence and tradition.
Culture capacity in Muscovy campaign in 1445
Culture Capacity in Vijayanagar in 1652
Culture opinion defines the relationship between two cultures. There are Five levels of cultural opinion:
Enemy - This culture sees your culture as a lifetime enemy, they will be heavily dissatisfied and rebellious being a part of your nation. Enemy cultures cannot be tolerated or accepted.
Negative - This culture sees your culture negatively, they will also be dissatisfied but can be managed if their needs and wants are met. Negative cultures cannot be accepted.
Neutral - This culture neither sees your nation negatively or positively. They can be both tolerated and accepted.
Positive - This culture sees your culture positively and cheaper to tolerate and accept in your nation compared to neutral opinion.
Kindred - This culture sees your culture as kindred friends, almost one in the same. They are much cheaper to tolerate and accept in your nation
Although Andalusian culture makes 10% of our pops, we cannot tolerate or accept them since they view our primary culture (Castilian) as an enemy culture
To improve this opinion, nations have access to a diplomatic action called “Ask to improve Cultural opinion”. This action will improve their primary culture’s opinion of your culture by one level. In order to be able to do this action you must have friendly relations between two nations, have favors available and not be a rival. A loyal subject with a positive opinion will also accept this diplomatic action. Making it a great strategy to improve cultural opinion with a subject of different primary culture before integrating to make accepting their culture cheaper in the future.
As Muscovy we can use favors to improve the Novgorodian culture’s opinion of our primary culture (Muscovite)
With the amount of cultures in EU5 and the limit of a nation's cultural capacity, tolerating and accepting every culture is not always possible in a large spanning kingdom. This is where cultural assimilation comes into play.
Just like religious conversion, cultural assimilation is a slow process. Every integrated location that has a majority of either your primary culture or accepted culture will get a base of +2 pop assimilation to your primary culture a month; however this does not mean every integrated location will automatically assimilate. Other factors comes into play:
Average literacy of clergy in the location.
Buildings like the marketplace
Level of control of the location
Laws
Estate Privileges
Spiritualism versus Humanist values
Your Cultural Influence versus the location majority’s cultural tradition
A cabinet action can also be used to assimilate a province, assimilating all locations within that province at the same time depending on your nation’s ruler and cabinet member’s diplomatic skill.
Thats some fast assimilation
Cultural influence of your culture versus the cultural tradition of the culture you are trying to assimilate is usually the largest factor in cultural assimilation.
Cultural Influence is the “Attack power” of a culture in the context of a culture war, representing how impressive it appears to other cultures, and the reach it has beyond its own borders.
It can be increased by many things, like works of art (which we’ll talk about later), prestige, advances, laws and cultural buildings like libraries. This number has a monthly growth, increased by all nations with that primary culture, but also a monthly decay. Cultural influence eventually will plateau to a level until you or another nation with your primary culture increases it further.
The Cultural Influence is opposed to the Cultural Tradition, the “defense power” in the context of culture war. Likewise, it has a monthly change, depending on buildings, values, advances, etc.
The comparison between those define the Culture war power of your primary culture, impacting multiple processes, like Assimilation, Integration, Spy Network, Diplomacy, and even Siege ability.
Having a high cultural influence will help you assimilate faster and cultures with low cultural tradition will be more susceptible to being assimilated
Cultural tab in a Two Sicilies Campaign in 1540
Usually, you will assimilate a culture to your primary culture, to help your country be more unified, but you can technically change a local culture to any culture that is present in your country, allowing you to shape the cultural tapestry of your nation in any ways you want.
Note that some specific cultures are directly tied to their Faith, so they will not be able to be assimilated unless they are converted first.
Nice.
Apart from the opposition between cultures, focusing on the cultural influence of your primary culture allows you to become the Cultural Hegemon of the world. Activating in the age of discovery, the Cultural Hegemon gives a bonus of 25% increase in cultural tradition gain and more importantly the ability to assimilate full areas (as a cabinet action) instead of provinces. Allowing much faster assimilation in your nation. To become the cultural hegemon you must have the highest total cultural influence in the world.
Everyone must eat Goulash
Just like religion, certain cultures and culture groups have unique advances: unlocking special units, buildings, and laws. One prominent example of this are the Iberian special boats advances available only to Iberian culture nations like Portugal and Castile.
Its better than the standard Galleon, because its Iberian
Spiritualist vs Humanist Value
As we’ve explored religion and culture in Europa Universalis V, it’s important to highlight a core ideological tension that runs through every nation: Humanist versus Spiritualist values. These two opposing outlooks shape how your society views faith, culture, and identity.
A Spiritualist nation grounds its identity firmly in its primary religion. The clergy play a central role, and religion becomes interwoven with the fabric of the state. This approach comes with faster conversion to your primary religion at the cost of assimilation to your primary culture.
By contrast, a Humanist nation shifts away from making its primary religion being the cornerstone of identity. Instead, it embraces tolerance, allowing heretics and heathens to coexist more freely. This also increases pop cultural assimilation but at the cost of conversion to your primary religion.
Together, these values create a strategic trade-off. Do you weave religion into the heart of your nation, ensuring unity through faith? Or do you foster a broader, more inclusive society that grows stronger through cultural integration?
Spiritualist versus Humanist values, which will you choose?
LANGUAGES
Tied closely to culture is the Language system. Every culture is associated with a language, the most common vernacular spoken by its people. This doesn’t just shape immersion through character names; it also determines how cultural tradition and cultural influence are built up over time, estate satisfaction and research speed.
The French Language in 1337
At the heart of this system is Language power, a measure of how influential a language is on the world stage. Language power can be increased by how much it's used throughout the world and at what level.
In each nation there are four different languages used:
Court Language - the official tongue of the administration and high politics. The more politically powerful the nation using this court language the more powerful the language becomes.
Common Language - the everyday speech of pops throughout your nation depending on your primary culture. The more cultural influence of cultures using this language and the more total trade capacity of nations who have this language as their common language, the more powerful the language becomes.
Market Language - the language of trade and commerce, varying from market to market. The market language is determined by the common language used in the market center. The more total trade advantage of markets using this language, the more powerful the language becomes.
Liturgical Language - the language of religion, worship, and ceremonies. The more clergy pops who use this language throughout the world, the more powerful the language becomes.
The language for all four of these can be the same throughout your nation but that is not always the case. For example England in the start of the game uses French (with the Norman dialect) as their court language, English as their common language, English (London Market) as a market language, and Latin as their Liturgical language. While the Mamluk Sultanate uses Arabic for everything.
You can change your court language in the laws tab of your government at the cost of 20 stability
Estates have their own agenda regarding languages, nobles want a powerful language as the court language to increase their own prestige, increasing their satisfaction the more powerful the court language is. The clergy want the liturgical language as the court language to increase religious influence on the nation. While commoners will want the common language to be the court language to increase their ability to take part in the court.
Language power comes into play with research speed, with the more powerful liturgical languages gaining more flat research speed. However liturgical language cannot always be changed, for example Islam is locked to Arabic liturgical language and Catholicism is locked to Latin. Technically Mandarin is the strongest language in 1337 but no religion uses it as a liturgical language at game start. This means that Latin is the strongest liturgical language at the start of the game (with Arabic at a close second) but after the protestant reformation, that might not always be the case.
The impact of Latin as a Liturgical Language in 1337
WORKS OF ART
Within your population, certain illustrious individuals can rise above the rest. These are painters, writers, architects, philosophers, storytellers and more. The great minds and creatives whose works leave a lasting impact on history.
When such a figure produces a work of art, it contributes directly to your nation’s primary culture’s Cultural Influence and boosting prestige. The total number of great works a nation possesses also strengthens its Cultural Tradition, reinforcing your people’s sense of identity and pride over time.
Works of Art in a Two Sicilies Campaign in 1540
The quality of the work of art will depend on the artistic skill of your nation which is impacted by average literacy and prestige. You can increase your cultural investment directly, increasing your prestige and artistic skill. This is managed in your budget, and directly helps artists, but the artist can also be very competent on their own, especially if they are a historical artist like Michelangelo or Shakespeare.
Lists of Artists in a Two Sicilies Campaign in 1540
A work of art can have 8 levels of quality : Locally Known, Locally Well Known, Well Known in Area, Renowned in Area, Regionally Well Known, Regionally Renowned, Masterpiece, Magnum Opus.
The higher the level, the higher the cultural influence and prestige gained from that work of art. Making art not just decorative but a strategic asset, shaping the legacy of nations. A patron of the arts can find their cultural influence reaching levels not even comparable to other nations, while neglecting art may leave your people overshadowed by more vibrant civilizations.
When a work of art is completed it is present in a Location where it was made, some works of art are moveable but others such as buildings cannot be moved.
Sorry Vector, you cannot steal the Pyramids of Giza in EU5
This also means that war plays a factor in art as art pieces can be stolen or destroyed through war. Either through sieging armies or land being conquered, so be careful when at war or that precious piece of art could end up becoming history.
That's Religion and Culture in Europa Universalis V. I had a great time telling you guys about this and can’t wait to see how players take these mechanics to their limits when Europa Universalis V releases on November 4th.
If you have not seen it yet, make sure to check out the accompanying feature video released on youtube here:
Next week we will cover Military and War, so stay tuned for that development diary here on the paradox forums!
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