Westernization Gap
This mod introduces a simple “westernisation gap” by giving certain religion groups penalties to literacy, research speed, and institution adoption. Christian and Muslim religions remain the untouched baseline.
Christian & Muslim groups
• No penalties. These religions keep full literacy growth, normal research speed, and normal institution embrace costs.
Buddhist group (mild penalties)
• –5% max literacy
• –10% research speed
• +50% institution embrace cost
• +2.5% pop rebel-join threshold
This keeps Buddhist realms slightly behind Europe and the Islamic world, but nowhere near as handicapped as tribal or folk religions.
All other non-Christian / non-Muslim groups (full penalties)
• –10% max literacy
• –20% research speed
• +100% institution embrace cost
• +5% pop rebel-join threshold
These nations start further behind technologically and adopt institutions more slowly, creating a more asymmetric and historically grounded early-modern world.
The mod is extremely lightweight and alters only religion group modifiers.