The Complete RELIGION Tier List for Eu4 

one thing you didnt mention are the religion specific tier 5 reforms, all the reformed ones have a really good one, zoroastrian can ignore religion entirely, shinto gets free access to divine, etc.

Petition for LemonCake to make a video rating every province in EU4 and to do it in one take.

“The complete religion tier list” Oh this will be good “for eu4” aw

Now do a tier list for in-game religions

Sunday schools and several other decisions are also available to orthodox and coptic iirc. The only ones unique to catholic are embrace the counter reformation and declare restraint of appeals.

I personally skipped to the end to see the filled out list

Hindu can get you a free 6/6/6 and has many event buffs you can get from the different icons

Orthodox can easily get like 27% missionary strength and 8 missionaries (from monuments, patriarch authority, ideas and policies) without any wierd shenanigans. Recently did a byzantium world conquest by 1700, and turned it into an one faith world conquest by 1730s.

Hindu gives you a 6/6/6 ruler every 100 years, best monuments, lots of development, great positioning in the world with wonderful formables, great bonuses, it's positioning lets it expand into multiple religious groups (in both of it's possible positions) and it doesn't suffer from not being able to make any allies like pagan faiths. Definitely above Sikh with comparable military buffs and overwhelmingly better peace time options. You can switch deity for free very often with the gov reform and privilege. I would honestly give hindu S and put it on par with orthodox, the only religion possibly edging it out is catholic because of the HRE

Norse is like Hindu, but for Europe Also I tried the Norway event chain for norse, which i later found out is actually disabled in the live version, so two viable way of getting norse is 1. Be Scandi, get excommunicated, hope for forest event chain (easy) 2. get to new world, get animist rebels to spawn to homeland, wait for event chain to spawn norse rebels instead (less easy)

I would rate Totemist higher. Once you Reform out of a Tribal Federation and you switch to a republic just rotate rulers asap to get all ancestor buffs you want. In the end you have stacked a lot of good modifiers. Not to mention the custom nation totemist republic getting that done waaay faster. It deserves a spot in A Tier.

Buddha Diety allows you to use a lot of Eastern monuments too. My favorite is stacking Hue Palace and the Golden Temple plus the Economic Hegemony and other autonomy buffs, pretty much just removes autonomy in territories out of the story.

Let's go minmaxing religion! "for EU4" oh

This was a fun one, in the future however I really should not do these in one take, especially if I want to make an 'all Tags in Eu4' Tierlist...

Surprised you didn't factor in religion specific monuments for Confucianism. I feel like the sheer number of monuments (all Confucian, Shinto, and Buddhist monuments) you can get while being Confucian makes it a low A-tier religion.

you should try stack as many colonists as possible for a future video

Coptic actually got indirectly buffed recently with the Domination patch with added the special tier 4 government reform "Support Monastic Schools" that buffs your clerical ministers privilege with a -5% tech cost (along with +5 loyalty for every controlled holy site). Probably not enough to bump it up a tier especially since other religions got their new tier 4 reforms too, but it's definitely unique among them and as someone who frequently plays coptic nations it's a nice touch.

Animist should be higher, their icon looks cooler than the buddhist one

for me i'll put hindu on A tier, since with religion aspect + monument you can get -20% ccr and -15% ae impact

Confusian is great, just loved my ming and manchu runs. You're right it does kick you when you are down but that makes it a bit different, with low harmony and meritocracy you don't have a hope of mandate. Just made me play the game in a different way which was great

Eastern Roman empire, carolingian empire, and sassanid empire approves of your tier list.

one of the good things about ibadi is that it has access to both the military schools from shia and the economic and diplomatic schools from sunni without the mysticism requirement

"So then we move on to Confusion" Long ass paus. Making ME confused if i accidentally paused the video. Well played sir.

12:31 one thing you missed is that early game, because of the many minor HRE nations, catholic has probably the strongest defender of the faith buffs (maybe after sunni), which gives you 5% army morale, a bit of war exhaustion reduction and a huge 20% manpower bonus, which is kind of insane early game

I think the modifier stacking with confucian with harmonization and leting you use almost all monuments in the world make it at least A Tier.

I recently played with the thought in anbennar (gnomish religion thats pretty much confucian) and honestly its really underrated. The gnomes have a colonialist game going on and the religion pairs very well with that. You ingore reformation pretty much and you collect religions for buffs plus you get tons of tolerance of the true faith which applies to all harmonized religions. I think the main problem with confucian in base eu4 is the location of china and chinese gameplay in general. First 3 religions you get are probably animist, budhist 1 and budhist 2 and then you can start collecting religions. If you had this in england for example you could harmonize christian and immediately get to collecting

Hussite has a reform for +1 defender dice roll. You can’t be Poland or Prussia with it though.

You get native religion reforms for free if you flip to them as a non native tech group. Of course you have to switch via failed war or bankruptcy which is annoying if you’re a decent size and don’t have cleansing of heretics cb.

I play single player, so I usually rate war score cost reduction, diplomatic annexation cost reduction, and core creation cost reduction much more highly than other religious bonuses for a generic nation. I imagine multiplayers prefer military and economic bonuses. With how EU4 works, each nation could have a personalized religious tier list. Creating that seems nightmarish. 🙃

Confucianism slightly underrated here imo, harmony is incredibly easy to maintain and you get a lot of good monuments. Not sure if it deserves A but definitely a strong B imo

Music is a bit loud

just to add, coptic used to be the best because the buffs were stronger and got nerfed :3

I don't agree with the Protestant placement. for Mil it gives you 5 morale land/navy as you said but it also gives you 2.5 discipline + 5% morale dmg, 10% national manpower. For other stuff you have -10% prov warscore cost vs other religions, 15%global settles increase +10% settlers chance,-5% dev cost, -10% Construction cost cost. The fact that you put Protestant in the same tier as Hussite it just feels wrong. It will not put them in S tier (although i do believe that they are better than Catholic in MP) but it's an easy A tier!

I enjoy the list, I guess the one thing I sort of disagree with is the ranking of Fetishist in particular not including the ability to do single cult or shrine for heirs which means their bonuses can be doubled or diversified respectively. Likewise a power of Ibadi would be having more access to scholar bonuses regardless of policy.

With tengri you can get access to any great project by syncretising. And you can culture convert without converting to your religion.

The Alcheringa stuff could be fixed by making the cult requirement code not be region specific. Like with trade power it's easy to code out a scope that checks whatever your home trade node power is at no matter where it's located.

I like Fetishist Buddhism because you can grant the one faith estate in clergy to double your cults effect. 20% dev cost reduction is so fun.

While Buddhist sucks by default, there's something to be said for its Great Projects. It can get a ton of missionaries/missionary strength and culture conversion cost that makes it basically top tier for One Faith/One Culture. It can also access a -10% Minimum Autonomy in Territories monument. Very strong for wide play, too.

You went a bit hard on Coptic imo. The CCR is nice. And the discipline and manpower do add up, and Ethiopia and Karabakh/Armenia can buff Coptic to ridiculous levels from their missions…

23:32 the actual nice thing is that it allows you to have great projects from 2 religious groups, which is very powerful. And maximum tolerance of heathens can be achieved without Buddha, yes.

In my campaigns as Ming Qing and Shun I could stay at 100 harmony constantly even while harmonising other religions and the fact that you get permanent cb agains heretics / heathens (even harmonised) if you complete humanist makes Confucian really powerful plus the list of monuments you can get when you harmonise is pretty good. It only lacks in military buffs apart from 10% infantry combat ability but who needs them in singleplayer anyways. Top A tier religion for me

For me Confucianism in SP is easily S tier. It has very good monuments, if you go for a wc you also get a lot of the nice, altough not op, bonuses and in modern patches you can sustain 100 harmony while harmonizing something thanks to the 2 great monuments that give yearly harmony.

I want a ranking based on just modifiers though 😂

Ngl, ever sincs they buffed Catholic, ive stopped converting to protestant when playing in europe, its just so good now with all the possible buffs

I have a really hard time hearing you because the music is the same volume as your voice, and your master volume is low, so when I turn you up in RU-vid and my speakers, the noise gets turned up to and makes it hard to discern what you are saying. As a general rule, your backing audio should be no more than 20-30% of the decibel volume of your speaking track. Additionally, you always want to record "loudly" (which is actually just clearly). Your audience can always turn down the volume if they think you are too loud, but if you make them turn up the volume to hear you, you are also making them turn up the volume on any noise/artifacts in the track and that can make it even harder to pick out words. I hope this advice is helpful for your future video productions. Thanks for posting this very helpful guide to EU4 religions! I can tell you worked hard on it. That's why I wanted to give you the detailed advice. :) Have a wonderful day!

Petition for a DLC Tier list👆🤓

Alcheringa is better on C tier, as someone who has played quite a lot in Australia chasing the rainbow serpent is too much effort -4 Unrest on Fetishist alone ought to give it a B rank, -5 after taking the Encourage Divination decision (I think you forgot about the estate privilege that doubles the bonus of your cult, in addition to removing stab loss from monarch death) I think that you have to take the Estates unique to the religion into account All Pagan faiths also get +1.5 yearly prestige, -1 unrest and -10% stab cost (after taking stab penalties from the other decisions into account) I spat out my drink when you put Norse into B rank, HARD disagree on it being better than Hindu, Protestant, Hussite & Confucian. They also don't get religion-exclusive monuments and don't really have any events. With Muslim rankings, again, with the estates taken into account (in this case the Dhimmi), easy S tier, at least for Ibadi. Putting Buddhist faiths below faiths that need extra effort to work well/religions that need to be reformed feels wrong. The micromanagement is not THAT bad, I'd say Norse with Tyr god is still worse than any of the three branches. You forgot that Totemist countries never get rulers with bad traits. You seem have limited experience on some of the faiths and that your tiering considerations partially rely on hearsay (cough cough Totemist). That's all and well though, I hope you post an updated one. Maybe when a new religion or a rework rolls around?

Recently did an Inca campaign and the inti events are pretty insane imo. I got free temples/Stab or prestige for gold/ perma true faith throughout.

Music was a little loud compared to your voice, but I'm a huge fan of your content, best of luck being noticed by the algorithm

You don't need to have improve relations modifiers going year around for faster AE down tick. it just needs to be at the years end. So with reformed you can get like 34% or 33% or whatever it is quite easily on every yearly tick. In HRE very little can beat that the same goes for advisor, if i can afford it i'll hire an improve relations advisor just for the year tick then switch him out with whatever else i prefer for the rest of the year if im not concerned about monthly improvements/downticks

I would put confucian higher. A really cool thing about confusian is that if you peak humanist idea you will have acsees to a special cb called external perfectionism wich works just like deus vult. Once I tried to do a world conquest as confusian Mughals to accept every culture and religion. At the end it became boring so I didn't finish it but I didn't fought a single rebel while having so much overextension.

Literally yesterday was looking for an actual tier list. So don't deny, you pegasuses my phone 😂 Btw, I think it would be a nice idea to add some visualls, showing the owerall stats you get from a religion so you can compare easier. But might be a huge work, idk.

5:51 since 1.36 deving institutions is kind of irrelevant, since you can just ask for knowledge sharing

where is zoro idk the symbol and cba watching 1.2 hrs ty

So B tier is the best tier?

good list overall and i know we're reviewing religions in a vacuum, but i think you were a bit too harsh on protestant and reformed. Catholicism does have stronger modifiers but unless you're able to be the only catholic in the world, it takes a ton of work (heavily stacking papal influence,curia cost etc) to consistently take advantage of those buffs. whereas protestant and reformed can have almost as good modifiers from the get go pretty much till the end of the game, also prussia requires a non catholic ;D

Small note: Hinduism is OK in monarchy, but GREAT in republics, since you can switch the deity out every 3-5 years.

I'm really glad Zoroastrian is ranked quite high

Great tier list, although I'm a bit surprised that Norse is even above hindu given that it's got no unique monuments (well except walls of benin but that's in Africa which is quite far from the norse holy site) Also quick question - given that catholic is so extremely powerful, in what circumstance should one actually consider switching to protestant or reformed in a normal blobbing single player campaign except to form prussia or if your entire country is wrecked by centers of reformation (which shouldn't happen in a blobbling campaign)?

You forgot the strongest tengri mechanic: When picking a secondary religion you get access to all of their monuments. So you could build the Kaaba without being muslim for example

Budget Monk just came out with a great video on how to regain Norse as Gotland->Denmark or as Denmark. Reroll your starting heir for a minimum of a 4/4/2, buff him using the Danish missions to make him a 5/5/5, profit.

Keep the lists coming!

Did they fix the totemist "feature"? - I remember when you converted TO tothemist, you could still get > 1 trait on a new ruler. The only downside was you could also get a negative trait unlike "original" Tothemist but it was really good in general. Idk if it's the bug you mentioned.

For Fetishist you forget to mention you can embrace singular cult, giving double the bonus of the cult following. With a mission from Kongo you can also get a cult for your heir. This means you can get 25% dev cost reduction, -5 unrest, 5 merchants or 25% goods produced. Pretty strong

shia gives up to 15% moral -10% shock damage received AND +10 shock damage and the ability to call on followers piety interaction which scale gives alot of manpower and the dhimmi estate which is one of the most powerful estates IMO

I would point out, with Fetishism, there's the clergy privilege to commit to a primary cult, which improves the power of your cult buff. I'm not sure of what it does with all the cults and who exactly gets access to it, but I always do it when I'm playing Butua > Rozwi Empire > Zimbabwe or Mutopa > Zulu with the Mwari cult, and it increases the +2.5% Discipline to +5% Discipline. This is available Nov. 11, 1444.

I think you're massively underestimating how powerful the ccr from Maya is. If it was easier to convert to Maya you'd do it basically every world conquest. The main problem with Maya is that to become Maya you have to be small enough that a Mayan nation can force convert your religion. Also if you convert to Maya you get all the reforms for free

Normal people: - The religion issue is quite delicate, it's not fair to compare different confessions between each other... EU4 players: - Let's talk about which religion is Gigachad and which is just a trash...

Shinto doesn't have limited monuments. They have access to every Buddhist monument, so they have a decent number

I think Judaism diserves a Low s-tier placement, because the aspect Purim Teachings gives also 75 faith power for every won war, this means, that you can selebrate a festival every 3 month.

The new netherland missions make reformed much better, but is just for netherlands

Hindu is deffinitely at least an A tier and maybe even S tier religion. Between the variety of strong bonuses it gives, the events it has and the monuments it unlocks it's an A tier already. Then you take in the positioning of it which allows you to juggle multiple religion groups for AE and the ability to regularly pump out 6/6/6 heirs. Hindu is a strong contender for the strongest religion in the game right there with Catholic, Orthodox and Zoroastrian.

Confucian countries unlock a CB against other religions when completing humanist ideas, IMO this easily boosts it to A tier or even S tier. Harmonized religions count as true faith provinces for tolerance, which makes it much better at unrest reduction than anything else. It's probably the best religion for preventing rebellions.

Mayan has great bonuses but is annoying to get since you have to stay small to force convert to it or use rebels to force it. As long as you already have feudalism you get the full final version when you convert to it, I've never played as a native country they seem boring. I got it as Ryukyu by the rebels hopping back to my capital to convert me and as Jolof by coverting to fetishist at the start and releasing vassals to get smaller and forcing a mayan country to convert me once I got to them. Free colonist, ccr, unrest reduction, unit maintenence reduction, and infantry combat ability are awesome, its just annoying to get the religion in the first place.

Great video! One thing I want to point out is that your audio mixing is a bit off. It is kinda hard to hear you over the music. Its a little too loud, or youre too quiet.

Something I noticed while playing a Nahuatl custom nation with the High-American tech group, is that I did not have the doom mechanic. I haven't tested this, but I believe if you start with a "reformed" tech group (not natives, probably) you won't need to reform, though I missed out on the bonuses you get from reforming, so it's a trade-off I guess. Also I like how RU-vid marked the game as CKII lol

good video! I find the music a little loud compared to your voice, but that is my only qualm.

Hindu is too low. It can stack enough CCR that some tag changes get to < 10 month coring, and if you do pick up and run Buddha you get access to those monuments too. The fastest coring in SP + ability to swap off that into tons of missionaries from the Buddha monuments for one faith belongs in A at least. It's also rare enough that it's easy to use -score cost vs other religions. For SP, I put Fetish over Alcheringa in same tier, simply because you can pick Waaq for -2 unrest, then take the decision that doubles up the effect and just sit on that -4 unrest all game. Slap on interfaith dialogue and you're at baseline 1 ToH with -4 unrest, before factoring legitimacy or stability. This is one of the few faiths that can straight up ignore religious or humanist, sit at 100% OE, and not get rebels in wrong religion/culture provinces. A fetish nation with 0 fetish province at 100 legitimacy has 75% unity using interfaith, and 85% if you curtail clergy. Similar to Hindu, once you unlock the Buddhist cult you do have the option to drop Waaq, go Buddha cult, and use all their monuments once you're over there. I consider Norse a trap for similar reasons. It's bad at tolerance, bad at conversion, doesn't give nearly enough from monuments or deity choice to make up for it, and can't swap deity to pick up an entire other group's monuments late game. 10% discipline is simply not a competitive SP benefit compared to what other faiths are getting out of their monuments. Zoro might be S tier in MP if allowed to get that going, but no way is it there in SP. This religion doesn't tolerate well, doesn't convert well, and doesn't have the sheer monument count and benefit of the others. It can't even be like Tengri which can sync access into other monuments and hit +3 ToH w/o any idea investment whatsoever (which if you're not a horde, is something Tengri can do pretty easily, and if you ARE a horde you have the game's best government). It's okay, but it doesn't belong next to Catholic and Orthodox.

i find it very easy to balance karma with the buddhist religions, just take the karma accelerator from clergy privilege and from government reform then you basically never need to micro it again

I'll be honest: You need a bit more [[Charisma]] before I'm willing to watch an hour of content here. Dont fret, the shorter yet in Depth videos are still interesting and well written/improvised. But it's still a no for me dog, I'll be back in the updated version in 2026 or until you wear the funny suit and hat that increase [[Charisma]] by 3. Dialogue Options: > "A bit pretentious, are we?" > "Screw you" > "[[Bargaining]] Couldn't you simply watch it in 1.5x?"

Agreed, Ibadi definitely rocks. You play Kilwa? Go Ibadi and have tons of goods. You want to form Andalucia - go Ibadi Mzab -> Morocco -> Andalucia with inno+divine+espionage+offence fortbuster combo wich nets +25% fire damage reduced and +25% gp combined with Ibadi and Andalucian ideas.

Great video - i would love to see one on Ante Bellum´s exlusive religions.

You have to do videos on max reform progress and max manpower recovery and max manpower. You still haven't done max diplo rep, have you?

I dont see any point in going Protestant or Reformed since Catholic got buffed big time. Imo those three should be on an equal level of power to make it a choice. Right now i always stay Catholic cause the other two would just be nerfing my own country.

You didnt mention the Zoroastrian government reform that adds a government mechanic that lets you get +1 of every mana point per month with some other buffs.

I think the religions like Hindu or Fetishist should get a rework. The mechanic where you get to pick one or two tiny buffs for your monarch's lifespan isn't that interesting in my opinion, especially when one deity/cult is clearly better than the others.

did you completely forget to mention that you have to give up 1% missionary strength per guru for sikh? you talked a lot about religions giving you debuffs before, and i feel like giving up a total of 6% missionary strength feels really bad

buddha deity is far more useful than you think and of course as a country buff for example khmer. it basically grant the country the option to build dharmic great projects in india as well as eastern great projects. super useful.

Without any dlc that improves Catholic (golden century), do you think protestant is worth it as Italy? (I don't have the dlc that adds monuments. The nation I started as is Milan (I got an incredibly unlikely start so far. Austria for once has no interest in Italy (it's like the first time that happened in any play through I've tried in Italy). I managed to stabilize the Ambrosian republic before I could have gone bankrupt. I was able to kick Genoa out of Italy (I took there capital and there other province in mainland Italy while releasing a one province nation from Genoa that happened to occupy there last province in Italy) and subjugated luka (or whatever that Tuscan opm was called) in the same war without any coalition because they were only allied to Genoa. Catholic reform desire is very close to 50 even though it's almost time for shadow kingdom to occur, and France (even though rivals with a couple of my allies) became friendly with milan (unfortunately I don't really have a spare diplomatic relation available and neither does France) and it's only really Aragon and castle trying to meddle in the affairs of Italy) also in the long run I'm trying to form rome with one of the best republic's (I'll decide later if I keep the reform or switch to the Roman republic) in Italy (I looked into enough to know how to get the most absolutism I can as a republic for when the time comes, depending on how things go I might attempt a wc/one Faith)

Animist (and friends) have the advantage of more easily changing to other religious groups if desired.

Alcheringa - While Australia itself is not the best region, Indonesia is right next to it and that is one of the best region. So the area restriction is not so bad. Confucian - The negative Harmony is not a thing in practice. Keeping high harmony is not challenging at all. Shinto - Is better. The bonuses are really good. And let's not forget about the amazing events

I had a really long comment on this but RU-vid ate it. suffice to say that the Abrahamic religions are defined by their name. ABRAHAMIC as in those who worship the god of Abraham. Zoroastrianism worships a different God (and acknowledges 2 rather than only 1) who's key negotiator/prophet was Zoroaster not Abraham. they are so similar because early Judaism and Zoroastrianism were contemporaries and many anthropologists (myself included) believe they influenced each other during their formation. furthermore Zoroastrianism remained a powerful religion when Christianity was born and likely had influence in how some Gnostics and Dualists viewed the spiritual side of the faith.... Islam would kill the major remaining Zoroastrian empire in its early expansion though some people do still follow that faith to this day. Zoroastrians and Abrahamics are more akin to neighbors who lived next to each other for generations with similar traditions who can't agree on who started their many mostly shared but subtly different traditions. and who may or may not have copied who... as well as what version is best... whereas the Abrahamic are cousins who all agree they have a common ancestor but each claim to follow the families true (or at least best) traditions and that the others are doing it wrong or even shouldn't get to claim their common ancestor at all when relations get real bad. its all really weird and techichal. but yeah. Zoroastrains are there own family. not a member of the abrahamic family tree.

I think reformed ought to be higher. More suited towards tall/MP rather than world conquest though.

I've always hated religion differences in E.U.IV. - always focussed on events rather than having events that allow changes to the history of the game. Not just spreading this religion here or there as the only thing that really changes for them (i.e. which province has which religion).

I didn't watch the full video ( mostly watch confucian) but I will disagree with the ranking with confusian and should be low A (for his potential) since when you harmonize, as you said, you will consider harmonize faith as a secondary faith wich allow you to get the bonus from faith only monument wich give to much missionary strength, culture conversion, some tech cost reduction, tolerance, loyalty from estate, advisor cost, dev cost, less autonomie,yearly harmonisation, yearly devastation recovery,... (so no military) but are "easily" conquerable since most of them are in Asia. If confusian faith change and I allow to used every "faith lock monument" that you harmonize, it will be amazing with core cost creation (from India, need to be a dharmnic faith group but harmonize don't work), quality from zorastrian unique monument,... Amazing if you can harmonize pagan group faith and have they unique monument. So sure definitely not as strong as catholic or orthodox but definitely not weaker to reformed.

The only bad thing for Orthodox is that it take a lot of time to get to 100 patriarch authority. But yeah, +33% manpower is huge, especially for Russia.

I'm no theologian, but if there's any religion that SHOULD give Morale of armies (apart from Shinto), it's Norse. Vikings went into battle with the mindset of either A), they die and get to go to Valhalla, or B), they survive and become rich with the loot they probably plundered. It doesn't make sense to me how it has 0 morale related buffs, but hey that's just my take.

Anyway, I'm the one that commented on reddit that "a religion tier list out of context, it's better that abusing the Pope" of you want an awkward Christmas moment.

It's not controversial to say that Zoroastrianism is not an Abrahamic faith. It is however monotheistic (well you could argue dualistic but that's arguable) faith that's older than Abrahamic faiths and deeply historically and culturally connected to the abrahamic faiths.

I strongly disagree on coptic, hindu and shinto. Coptic has 1 extra missionary in Alexandria and the 10% CCR is very juice. Hindu has the 10% CCR monument, the -2 unrest monument, 2 minimum autonomy monuments and is on pair with Christians on missionaries. Shinto is like a Gem, you have access to almost all monuments has Hinduism and also you can have like 10 missionaries with japan. I also think Ibadi and jewish are overrated.