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Tinto Talks #13 - 22nd of May 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, where we give out top-secret information about our upcoming unannounced game with the code name Project Caesar. This time we will touch a little bit on the aspect of religion in this game.

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Every country, pop, or character has a religion they adhere to. This impacts their relationship with the place they currently are, and their relationship with others in the world.


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This is the religious setup of Aragon in 1337.

Every religion in Project Caesar belongs to a Religion Group, such as Christianity or Paganism. Fellow religions in the same group consider each other to be merely Heretic, whereas religions in different groups condemn each other as Heathen.

Every religion has a specific view of other religions as well, that ranges from Kindred to Enemy, which impacts relations between countries of different faiths, and how populations of another faith view your country.

Each country also has their own tolerance of their true faith, of heretics, and of heathens, which impacts how happy or angry the population will be depending on which country they belong to.


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The Same Religion here, is from the law relating to valid heirs.

The religious unity of your country has a really large impact on the satisfaction of your Clergy Estate.

Important to know is that in Project Caesar, you just do not send missionaries to your locations and eventually they have changed religion. Here conversion is a slower process, which relies on government activities and infrastructure.


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A unique building for Muslim countries that has a tiny impact on conversion.

Each religion belongs to a group, which impacts which tolerance is applied and how religions interact with each other. Religions in the same group are viewed as heretics, but those of another group as heathens.

The groups we currently have are, but that may change as we continue to develop the game.
  • Christian
  • Muslim
  • Eastern
  • Dharmic
  • Zoroastrian
  • Manichean
  • Judean
  • Andean
  • Pagan

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The current Christian religions. Take into account that they are very much WIP!

In some games we have made there have not been any major differences between religions, merely being different modifiers, and while some religions in Project Caesar are still only a few modifiers, many will have mechanics. Right now, we have made unique mechanics for Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Miaphysitism, the various Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Shinto, Nahuatl, Hinduism & the Inti religion. Each of these will get their own unique later development diary.

Now every religion will still have some modifiers that describe them, in many cases it is things that enable or disable certain mechanics. Some examples include the fact that countries with Jain as their state religion can not start wars without a casus belli, and that Calvinist countries will never reroll the dice in a battle, as everything is preordained.

Stay tuned for next week, where we talk about another completely new feature that adds flavor to the game.

Sadly, I can’t reply today, as I am at some management thingie in Stockholm, but @Pavía will help you out!
 
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Johan can you say culture groups will change? Culture group of turks were wrong in the eu4. Whats the point of making belong the Turks in Anatolia as Levantine and those further east as Iranian. I'm sorry, but this just means that the creators of the game didnt care about these things. Turks should be belong to same culture group.
Lol you are a new player right? In the good ol' days, there used to be a culture group called "oghuz" which consisted of turkish, azerbaijani and turkmen cultures. Basically the thing you described. However not having turkish culture in the arabic culture group makes the ottomans very weak so they ditched the oghuz culture group for game balance reasons. EU4 sucks at representing cultures. Hopefully this game will be better.
 
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Since Manichaens are made into a Religious Group, does that mean the Manicheans are split into Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Central Asian variants, or are the sects based on something else?


And also, will Manichaens and Christians view each other as Heretics? Manichaenism was a Gnostic sect of Christianity.
 
Are there game mechanics representing social forces outside the direct control of state policy that will cause pops to flock to or from a religion? In other words, do pops ever start to behave with a mind of their own when it comes to religion?

The most obvious example would be the Protestant Reformation, where the dissatisfaction with Catholicism reached a boiling point until it finally "spawned rebel stacks", so to speak. Only then did national governments get involved on either side of the religious divide (i.e. backing and protecting Luther, etc.) to exploit it for their own political purposes.

It would a wonderful addition to EU if this kind of unrest could now exist on a social/cultural/religious level and dynamically spur social change amongst pops instead of only being a thing that happens in revolts against government control of provinces.
 
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Will existing faiths with no countries like Nestorian Christians, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and other faiths that are small minorities with no power anywhere be possible to empower and eventually embrace?

I.E. Can I end the error of Shiite Islam and embrace the truth of the eternal fire and restore the Achaemenid Empire?

While Jewish numbers in the time period are absurd for say converting France to Judaism would it be possible as in a hypothetical of the King of France fighting an intolerant empire to create a Jewish client state that will have Jews from around the world move there and that will be loyal to France as a result?

Or if I just go insane as an Eastern Roman Empire could I ditch Orthodox Christianity and embrace Miaphysitism?
 
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While the dice roll meme is funny, I hope it is not really a thing in the release game. It has no theological basis in reality of either calvinist or protestaants and it is a completely wrong understanding of the predestination issue. (Catholics believe in predestination as much as Calvinist, just not double predestination).
Thank you! Assuming this wasn't a joke, the Dutch Revolt, for example, would have been over really quickly if Calvinists had thought that every setback was preordained by God and trying again was sinful. Even the internet meme version of Calvinism usually makes predestination about salvation, not everything that happens. In the Calvinist writing that I am familiar with, this or that positive event is often ascribed to the will of God, while negative events are ascribed, for example, to the ignorance and malice of heretics, or directly to Satan's influence. These negative events then call for forceful action, there really isn't a fatalist sense of "God's plan".

Now, some aspects of Calvinism that I would like to see represented (whether mechanically or as flavor) include:

1) Presbyterian church government
Congregations were headed by church councils ("consistories") composed of the ministers and elected lay Elders. This lay involvement in leadership made Calvinism relatively non-hierarchical (no bishops!). I would argue that this was part of it's attraction to urban burghers.

2) Church discipline
Some stereotypes are true: Striving to enforce "godly" behavior among their members absolutely was a priority for Calvinist churches. I would say though that this was more about communities enforcing their norms, not authority figures wanting their rules obeyed. And the worst that consistories could do to unrepentant sinners was exluding them from communion. Still unpleasant.

3) Charity
Yes, charity. This is where the internet meme version of Calvinism is most misleading, as strong welfare institutions were a characteristic feature of all Calvinist communities. Now, this did interact with social discipline, but it is still the case that Calvinists absolutely did not go "Pfft, let the poor starve, guess they aren't predestined to be saved".

4) Tolerance?
Not if calvinist ministers had had their way. But consistories could only discipline their own members, for anything else they needed the cooperation of secular government. If the city council did not agree that pubs should be closed or heretics driven from the town, there was little that preachers could do. So Calvinism in itself was not particularly tolerant, but a Calvinist-dominated place like the Dutch Republic very much could be. A related example: The preachers would have liked to rip all pipe organs out of churches, but the burghers liked their recitals and wouldn't let them. So the organs stayed, they just weren't played during divine service.
In general, the relationship of church and state in Calvinism is pretty complex.

The main thing for me is that historical Calvinism was intensely community-oriented. I will leave it to the devs how these things could be represented ;)


For further reading, I recommend:

Diarmaid MacCulloch (2003). Reformation. Europe's house divided 1490 - 1700. Allen Lane.

Heinz Schilling (1991). Civic Calvinism in Northwestern Germany and the Netherlands: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Sixteenth Century Journal Pub.

Timothy G. Fehler (2016). Coping with Poverty: Dutch Reformed Exiles in Emden, Germany. In T. G. Fehler, G. G. Kroeker, C. H. Parker, & J. Ray (Eds.), Religious Diaspora in Early Modern Europe: Strategies of Exile (pp. 121-135). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315654317

Timothy G. Fehler (1999). Poor Relief and Protestantism:. The Evolution of Social Welfare in Sixteenth-Century Emden. Ashgate.
 
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Can't even see California on the map ;-;
But want to get out my suggestion so that maybe it can be considered in the future (and I'll hope to bring it up later on too since I really hope it can be better represented than it is in eu4 and whatnot):

California is a very culturally dense place in North America throughout the pre-colonial period (which itself I hope is shown through a number of tags, in eu4 the area feels very empty). And with that there are a quite a few religions that are quite different.
- The most major is Kuksu, which spread throughout central California (from like Pomo and Patwin (maybe Nomlaki too but I don't know them well) to Nisenan down to Miwok and over to Salinan, had a major focus on secret societies and underground dances.
- Much of the rest of the north, especially around the Klamath river has a form of World Renewal which involved a big annual ceremony. (I need to do more research into these guys I made a civ v mod for Californian religions but forgot them ;-; )
- In the south there was a lot based around the heavy use of hallucinegenics as means to connect to the spiritual world, notably present for the Chumash and other southern groups but it also was pretty prevelant outside of California such as with the Zuni or Comanche (though the more southwest ones used Datura mostly while the Comanche used Peyote). Not really a good single name, in earlier mentioned civ v mod I call it Datura Cult (but obviously that doesn't really get to the Comanche and whatnot) since that's what is often used when describing the Chumash.
- And also a little bit in the south, notably with the Mohave (but also iirc some other groups but I forget which) had a focus on Dreaming, and using dreams to connect spiritually. Though these peoples also used hallucinegetics for stuff as well I'm not entirely sure how separate the two are, but they seem to function a differently as far as I can tell.

I know this is probably all gonna just fall under an umbrella of Shamanism cause yeah, they all had shamans/shamanistic things, but I think it would be really cool to see the density and diversity of Indigenous California represented in its religions, and hopefully in other ways too! Like, there's a good chance that there was like a million people in the region before diseases hit which lead to the ~300-350k people at the beginning of the colonization period in the 1700s, sidenote I hope there is something in place to make Europeans not just settle the entire world before 1700 it is very unrealistic not just for the west of North America but also for Africa, can't have much scramble for africa when it's all like 4 nations and europeans owning the entire coast and colonizable land).

Also since I saw mention of holy sites and whatnot, there's a number of those in California such as Mount Diablo, Mount Tamalpais, and Mount Shasta (and probably a bunch of other mountains, they often featured heavily in local religions) along with places like Tolay Lake (which had a ton of charmstones found in it some even from as far away as Mexico cause people would go on pilgrimages to there to get healing and stuff).

Anyways yeah, I hope Indigenous California gets some nice representation, its a very under researched and under represented area (in basically everything, the vast majority of media about Indians are about stuff east of the Rockies) despite how cool and populated and interesting it is.
 
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I know it's WIP, but the wastelands in South America are really odd, specially in Brazil
Back on the religion topic, do you have something on the table regarding syncretism in Colonial Nations?
 
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Are those Holy Sites will be static like in CK3 or dynamic like in Imperator? Aka will we be able to create new Holy Sites? Or if we play as the religious head, will we be able to hange which place we consider a Holy Site?
They're currently scripted for the starting setup.
 
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"Important to know is that in Project Caesar, you just do not send missionaries to your locations and eventually they have changed religion. Here conversion is a slower process, which relies on government activities and infrastructure"

- We expect the Spanish inquisition ;)
- Also with no missionaries how will I be able to fulfill my fantasy of sending my Jesuit missions all around the world becoming the master at the center of a web, bringing tithes of gold back church?
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Johan can you say culture groups will change? Culture group of turks were wrong in the eu4. Whats the point of making belong the Turks in Anatolia as Levantine and those further east as Iranian. I'm sorry, but this just means that the creators of the game didnt care about these things. Turks should be belong to same culture group.
To be fair, at this time Azeris were still Iranic as Turks had only been in the area for ~200 years. They were not fully Iranic, but labelling them as an Iranic group is still accurate as they had not been fully assimilated into Turkic culture.
 
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Great work, I hope religions truely will have different mechanics, sets of challenges and things to worry about. Indeed seems to be WIP with ton of stuff to do.
From replies was glad to hear that more stuff is coming with maybe Uniate Church, and whatever Confucianism are going to be.

The map looks great, love seeing Solovetsky Islands as their own territory. But a bit scared of too much wastelands and too tiny passages across the world and in some siberian areas (understandable, but still scary though) maybe you would consider widen by few localities some of them in the future.
Ironically, on contrast, would add some mountain ranges/wastelands across Russian Far-East like Sikhote-Alin or some more.

And would love to see (Unrealistic probably, but still can be turned into similar to greenland challenge) Novaya Zemlya being not a full wasteland, which we didn't have in EU4. There since 15-16 centuries were smaller settlements, and Novgorod tried to get people there from 14th, but like Greenland ones, were abandoned later on. And later "early" restart of settling was canceled, in 1650th (Neplyuev expedition was send to "Research Stone, Copper, Silver, Pearls and arable land" on Novaya Zemlya) as the new troubles rose and in next attempt the crew didn't manage to return.

Anyway, thanks for DevDiary and will be looking forward to more information about the "Project Caesar"!
 
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Fortunately the African, Central and South American religions being lumped together under the "animist" label is a temporary thing. In anthropological terms, lots of cultures living in these areas were not animist. Some were, but others weren't.

Moreover, the Incas had a particular religious system of their own, as well as the Chibchan peoples of Central America and Northern South America, of which the Muisca and their legend/ritual of El Dorado are the most well known. The same can be said for the Arawak and Tupi peoples of South America. Saying they all were "animists" erases the cultural diversity of the region, especially considering that native religions in North America are having a better representation in this map.

I would at least have particular religions for the Inca/Central Andean nations and for the Chibcha, Arawak, Carib and Tupi peoples of South America.

I think that, due to the lack of historical information, they could represent historically known religions, such as Inti and Muisca in South America or Vudun in West Africa (and, for that matter, Voodoo in the New World, later in the game). For the rest, they could just make religions for each cultural/linguistic culture group. Have the Arawak peoples have an "Arawak religion", the Tupi a "Tupi religion", etc.

I believe that's what they did in North America already, giving a religion to the Algonquian culture group and another one for the Iroquoian culture group, etc. Or at least that seems to be what is going on in North America in this week's map.

(Btw, awesome map, love the fact that they decided to use Sunni and Catholic instead of Sunnism and Catholicism)
 
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So does that mean combat for Calvinism consists of entering battle, rolling a 1, and either retreating to try again or watching your troops die for the crime of being Swiss? Because that sounds like the most frustrating thing imaginable, at least with other religions you have a chance to roll better on the next tick.
And considering how important pops are in this game, it would make going to war an extremely punishing choice for Calvinist countries, since there would be a pretty considerable chance of at least one of your armies getting stackwiped by the enemy if you roll a 0, a 1 or a 2 at the start of the battle. Of course, you could potentially inflict similar levels of damage to the enemy if you roll a 9 for example, but is it really worth the risk? Furthermore, it would remove much of the strategy involved in preparing your country for war and engaging in nation-building during peace time, since the result of the war will mostly be decided by whether or not you were lucky (or unlucky) enough to get these incredibly lop-sided, initial dice rolls.
 
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