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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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There are two things notable about the religious map: poor choice of colours and too much animism.
I'm sure that Animism is just a placeholder for the WIP areas. Totemism has been split into multiple religions and we got representation of Sami and Siberian shamanism and Lithuanian paganism. There isn't much reason to assume that Africa and South America won't get the same treatment. Hopefully, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asian pagans and Aridoamerica will get their own unique religions and we will never have to see that boar statuette ever again.
In regards to map colour - it's, of course, a matter of taste, but my suggestions are as follows:
Shia and Sunni Islam should exchange colours. Green is a much more traditional colour for Islam, so it should logically belong to the largest branch - Sunnism. Meanwhile, cyan is a much more exotic colour, and so it should belong to the less widespread denomination - Shiism.
Hinduism should be orange and not whatever that is. The Theravada Buddhist denomination should be yellow - it just feels right. The Dreamtime religion of Aboriginal Australians should be dark brown instead of what I assume to be a placeholder colour.
Eastern Orthodox Christianity should get the more iconic purple colour. Miaphysites use a pinkish colour, but I think it would be better if they also used purple, but in a much darker shade than the colour of the Orthodoxy.
Those are all the suggestions I can think of. Maybe also change the colour of Sami shamanism to better distinguish it from Catholicism.
The end.
Oh wait, before I go: don't name your pagan religions after modern day neo-pagan movements. Romuva is not what Lithuanian pagans called their religion, instead, it's the name of the modern revivalist movement active in Lithuania. Just call it "Baltic paganism". It doesn't sound as cool but it's the much more accurate name.
 
Awesome!

Some suggestions:
- Anglicanism could have a sort of mechanic to represent the "via media" part of Anglican theology, where those sympathetic to the Catholic church and Protestant denominations struggled to formulate a middle way between Protestantism and Catholicism through Anglicanism. It could be like the Mystic/Legalist mechanic in EUIV, where events, decisions and individual rulers push the faith in different directions. Each side could have its own benefits or modifiers (maybe leaning more Anglo-Catholic could make it easier to convert Catholic recusants pops into the new church)

- I think it would be cool if there were more Protestant faiths in Project Caesar, I think some good contenders would be Anabaptists, Baptists and Methodists. I like these three because their origins are pretty spaced out, with them beginning in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries respectively. Hopefully, it would keep the religious dynamics of Europe (and North America) evolving throughout the game, though Methodism might be cutting it close to the end date. I might have thought for a unique Puritan faith but I think that could fit under the umbrella of Calvinism as well, though it could be represented with certain events in England and maybe tie into the Via Media mechanic I mentioned earlier. Perhaps Zwinglism as well, though that may also be too close to the Calvinist banner. Loving this all!
 
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At the start of the game, both Yuan Dynasty and Koryo are Mahayana and just fine, but Confucianism should also exist as a religion to replace Mahayana afterwards.
Johan has confirmed that there would not be a confucianism as a religion - with a completely different mechanic. I personally agree with this. There was a debate on whether Confucianism should be considered as a religion or not, and this is one the opinions that I prefer.
 
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Vajrayana was a minority in Tibet in 1337 compared with Mahayana? I am surprised.
I beliece that it is Bo.

Tinto clearly has Vajrayana integrated into Mahayana in PjCsr. Both Chinese Buddism and Tibetan Buddism is called Mahayana in PjCsr now.

Academically speaking, Both Chinese Buddism and Vajrayana are branches of Mahayana, while Mahayana is contrary to Theravāda, the successor of early Buddist schools.

My personally opinion is, that Tibetan Buddism should have its own feature comparing to Chinese Buddism. Note that I'm not using Vajrayana or Mahayana the terms, because these categories are used in different classification criterias.

EDIT: Pavia has confirmed in this thread that there would be a Vajrayana. This map is somewhat WIP.
 
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Chinese Folk Practice, Taoism, and Mahayana should all compete in every state and province for dominance. But realistically, Mahayana should be the majority in a fair few places.
That was a thing happened in around 10C. In 1337, Buddism, Taoism as religions, and Confucianism as a moral philosophy and political theory has been intergrated greatly.
 
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"Japanese animism" (kamiism?)
That is Shinto itself. I've never seen "kamiism" as a word. Perhaps it's made up. Kami the word is equal to God, gods or deity/deities.
 
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China's belief system is indeed quite different from the rest of the world, but the way Mahayana is the mainstream religion does not match historical China, and the huge Chinese population in history may not be a tenth or even less of the true faith in Mahayana.

I thought Project Caesar might be able to describe Chinese religion in terms of some of the Chinese local philosophical intentions that are common to Chinese religions. For example, "Tian(天)" or "Tiandao(天道)" represents both official, civil, and mainstream religion in China (Confucianism, Taoism, and Mahayana), and here are some explanations:

Tian(天):It means heaven, sky. Officially, another Chinese name for emperor (Huang Di,皇帝) is Tianzi (天子,the heir of heaven, expressing the legitimacy of the emperor's power). From a folk point of view, the common people generally believe in "Laotianye" (老天爷,meaning The Heaven's Lord), and in the respective philosophical concepts of Confucianism, Taoism, and Mahayana, Tian is also supreme.

Tiandao(天道):It means the rules of the world and the principle of the operation of the world. As a description of Confucianism, Taoism, Mahayana, and the supreme of Chinese various cultures.
We have no idea what's PjCsr's plan on Chinese religions. Pavia said in this thread that they have designed a mechanic for Japanese religion, and perhaps there are a unique one for confucianism and Chinese beliefs and religions.

But, at least visually speaking, a China filled completely with Buddist is not that good. There should be a significant number of Animist - while "Chinese Buddism" is a thing, which came from the integration of Mahayana and Chinese folk religion (animists).

I noticed that there are many opinion disagreeing the widely use of Animist the word, but both Shinto and Chinese fold religions are quite in consistence with its defination.
 
Mahayana was born as an oppsition against Hinduism, and came to China via Kashmir, Xinjiang and then China in 3C A.D.. In around 8C or 9C, it came to Tibet from China and Nepal.

Then, Mahayana started to integeate the local traditions - here comes the Chinese Buddism and TIbetan Buddism. These two concepts are not about specific religion. but common features in each regions. Using these to call them, is just like using Byzantine to call Eastern Roman Empire. Instead of doctrines, these two words are used to more related to Chinese and Tibetan nationalism in ordinary dialogs.

Some references said that Vajrayāna is a section of Mahayana, but getting its status because of Tibet and Mongolia. But I still do not suggest to have them integrated. I'm not very familar with Buddist doctrines actually, but a difference between Chinese and Tibetan Buddism should matter - unless there's some additional mechanic adjusting this. Hope there would be one.
 
Will it be possible to change the relations between religions?? For example, will it be possible for the relationship between christianity and islam to change from enemy to positive or neutral? Also, will these relations be religion or sect specific? Meaning; are the relations between christianity as a whole and islam as a whole, or is it between catholicism and sunniism or nestorianism and shiiism?

Also is it possible to merge religions, like Catholic and Orthodox, or to split off and create your own faith?
 
Pagsn all thrown into a single bag again. Will Animism have some mechanism this time?
 
Okay, I know this might be controversial, but I'm really, really, really not a fan of most of the subsaharan africa being made into non-wasteland provinces, and I suspect most players that actually play this game regularly/buy the DLCs wouldn't be fans as well

All this ends up doing is allowing players in multiplayer to ahistorically colonize large swaths of subsaharan malarial africa for that sweet sweet tax and manpower, something that would not have been possible IRL, OR allows the AI to gimp itself by similarly ahistorically expand into Africa because in my experience Paradox has never been able to teach the AI that free real estate isn't actually always worth taking
 
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We are portraying the internal sub-divisions of Hinduism
A proposal: can internal sub-divisions of a religion become a universal/general mechanic? That should make things interesting. xD

So that we could distinguish Mahyana into Chinese one and Tibetan one, instead of a whole.
 
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That depends on how you deal with the minorities of your country.
So it's broadly the same for all minorities? Because pre-partition Poland was notoriously intolerant of the Orthodox faith going so far as to forcefully integrate it into the Catholic world in several stages (incl. the Union of Brest) but then was fairly tolerant of Jews ironically incentivizing them to settle in orthodox-majority regions
 
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Mahayana was born as an oppsition against Hinduism
Rather nitpicky, but this is not exactly true. Buddhism (for it was non-sectarian then) arose mostly following the Sramana (wanderer, ascetic) traditions in Northeast India during the time period, not exactly in direct opposition to Brahminism (not Hinduism, which did not exist then). In fact Buddhism made use of a multitude of Vedic and Upashadinic motifs and symbols to explain its theology (and Brahminism later adopted Buddhist ideas). So not opposition, I would define it more as borne out of the religious furore that was occurring at the time.
 
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Rather nitpicky, but this is not exactly true. Buddhism (for it was non-sectarian then) arose mostly following the Sramana (wanderer, ascetic) traditions in Northeast India during the time period, not exactly in direct opposition to Brahminism (not Hinduism, which did not exist then). In fact Buddhism made use of a multitude of Vedic and Upashadinic motifs and symbols to explain its theology (and Brahminism later adopted Buddhist ideas). So not opposition, I would define it more as borne out of the religious furore that was occurring at the time.
It's my fault. I should have said Buddism and Brahminism but I did not carefully pick on my using terms.
 
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Hi guys

First of all, really Happy to see u are on this projekt Johan.. As player/fan since the first EU, then HOI games, i must say over the last years ive been pretty dissapointed with the direction of pdx grand strat games, with especially VIC3, as from my point of view a Big Big downfall . And i was starting to Lose hope.

But now i have read the tinto talks, im starting to feel positive again on this title, it sounds like you guys are on track with what i loved about your games back in the days.

To that i have a question, wich ive really felt have lacked in the last games..

Flavour, history, unique events and so on, is that a thing you guys are focusing on, by this title?

Regards René
 
No, those are Bön pops. But there will be Vajrayana features.
I missed this before. It seem that this is just highly WIP.