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Tinto Talks #58 - 9th of April 2025

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talk, the happy Wednesdays where we talk about our entirely super-top-secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today, I will be your host instead of Johan since we will be talking about the flavour mechanics. These will be basically IOs, Situations, and Religions, and we will be talking about a bunch of them for some weeks, although from time to time Johan will come back to present some other stuff. So, let’s start without further ado with the Holy Roman Empire, the most convoluted organization invented by mankind only Imperial polity that existed in Western Europe for most of the game period.

In 1337, it’s a very different beast compared to previous installments in other PDX GSGs. The Great Interregnum that started in 1254 after the deaths of Frederick II and Conrad IV of the House of Hohenstaufen, and the double election of two contenders (Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso X of Castile) in 1257 led to a period of weak and diminishing Imperial Authority. In the coming decades, the Houses of Habsburg, Luxembourg, and Wittelsbach would fight for the Imperial election, making the Electorates increasingly more important.

HRE Map.jpg

A beautiful beast! The color code for every country:
  • Yellow: Emperor
  • Light Blue: Prince-Elector
  • Middle Blue: Archbishop-Elector
  • Dark Blue: Imperial Prelates
  • Light Green: Free Imperial Cities
  • Middle Green: Republics
  • Pink/Brownish: Imperial Peasant Republics
  • Grey: Imperial Princes
  • Purple Stripes: Imperial Land not owned by an HRE member
  • Other stripes: Land owned by an HRE member not yet incorporated as Imperial land

Here is an overview of the HRE IO panel and all the different member types that you can find by scrolling down on it:

HRE Panel1.png

Prince-Elector.jpg

Archbishop-Elector.jpg

Free Imperial City.png

Imperial Prelate.jpg

Imperial Peasant Republic.jpg

And here is the sub-panel that show all its members:

HRE Members.png

The HRE comes with a bunch of mechanics and features, which you can easily grasp in the IO’s tooltip:

HRE Tooltip.jpg

HRE Tooltip2.jpg

Let’s start with the most important base feature, the Imperial Authority, which is the currency used by the Holy Roman Emperor to enact Imperial Laws. There are a few sources to either add or subtract Imperial Authority:

Imperial Authority.jpg

Note: the missing +0.01 comes from value rounding which is not reflected in the tooltip.

Imperial Laws create different effects that impact the members of the HRE. At the start, there are only two available:

Imperial Laws.jpg

You may notice that there’s a category, ‘Fundamental Laws’, with only one policy possible, the ‘Golden Bull’. This was the single most important law approved in the HRE, becoming its base political constitution up until its dissolution after being enacted in 1356. In Project Caesar, the Emperor has a very high incentive to pass it as soon as possible, as it unlocks additional laws and actions:

Golden Bull.png

When you have 35 Imperial Authority, you can try to enact it, and a Vote in the Imperial Diet will happen:
Golden Bull vote.jpg

That works quite similarly to country parliaments, as you have to secure a positive vote of the different HRE members:

Golden Bull Diet.png

And this would be the situation after the law passes, with 8 new Imperial Laws available:

Imperial Laws2.jpg

Imperial Laws3.jpg

In general terms, most of the laws have 5 policies available, with the starting ones usually being in the middle positions of the 5. This is how it works (these are 'instructions' in the script):

#With the enactment of the Golden Bull, most HRE laws are set to the 3rd policy which has limited or no modifiers active at all
#The HRE Emperor can try to change the policy to the next adjacent one (so from 3rd tier to 4th or 2nd tier)
#The left tier is the 4th and 5th and is more in favor of benefitting the HRE as a whole
#The right tier is the 2nd and 1st and is more in favor of benefitting the HRE Emperor first and foremost

#Some laws have only 3 policies in which cases there are not pro-Emperor vs pro-Member positions

#The only law which does not follow the rule is the power_of_the_emperor_law which starts at improved_imperial_authority_policy (4) policy.
#The reason for this is to delay the unification of the HRE + there is not much design space for an even further decentralized HRE.
#As such, having 2 policies for the decentralized HRE are not really doable.

# LAW
# Pol 5 Pol 4 Pol 3 Pol 2 Pol 1
# |--------------|--------------|--------------|--------------|

Let’s take as example the Imperial Voting Law:

Electorship Law1.jpg

Electorship Law2.jpg

The Imperial Election is then a key feature, since it elects the Holy Roman Emperor, who then sets all the Imperial Laws, Diets, etc. Here you can see an example of how it works:
Imperial Election.jpg

The King of Bohemia got backed by most of the Electors, and thus, became the Holy Roman Emperor after the death of Ludwig IV of Upper Bavaria.

This event will trigger if a different country gets its ruler elected as Emperor, as in this example:

Imperial Coronation1.jpg

Imperial Coronation2.jpg

One of the factors behind the election is the Dynastic Power, a new value that is currently only used for the HRE mechanics (although it could potentially be used for other IOs, as it’s a scriptable/moddable feature), which impacts the likelihood of a certain country from a powerful dynasty to be elected or re-elected as Emperor:
Dynastic Power1.jpg

Dynastic Power2.jpg

Dynastic Power3.jpg

Last but not least is the Imperial Contribution. It is an amount of money and manpower that any member of the HRE may contribute to the Emperor, who can later spend it in Imperial Actions, and also defending the Empire (in theory…):
Imperial Payments1.jpg

Imperial Payments2.jpg

… And that’s all for today, since it’s already a very long TT! Next week, we will be taking a look at the Catholic Religion and the Catholic Church IO. Cheers!
 
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In the PC period there were a lot of cases where the HRE ruler was "only" king and not emperor, or there were both emperor (father) and king (son) in the same time, where later the king was elected as emperor when the old emperor died. Also some kings were deposed by the electors. So how is the mechanics of the HRE ruler to be Roman King vs. Roman Emperor reflected please?

 
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This may not be popular, but if a nation become too big or powerful, can it be kicked out of the HRE? Forming Prussia, Netherlands, and sometimes Switzerland leaves in EU4. I always thought it was wierd that a nation getting above a certain threshold didn't warrant anything from the rest of the HRE.
 
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Imperial Laws create different effects that impact the members of the HRE. At the start, there are only two available:


You may notice that there’s a category, ‘Fundamental Laws’, with only one policy possible, the ‘Golden Bull’. This was the single most important law approved in the HRE, becoming its base political constitution up until its dissolution after being enacted in 1356. In Project Caesar, the Emperor has a very high incentive to pass it as soon as possible, as it unlocks additional laws and actions:
sound like a tutorial... Was that how it was planned?
 
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So, historically at one point King of Sweden was vassal under Holy Roman emperor because they had some land in HRE, but Sweden was independent and King of Sweden was thus also independent from HRE.

Is there anything reflecting this complicated situation?
 
So, historically at one point King of Sweden was vassal under Holy Roman emperor because they had some land in HRE, but Sweden was independent and King of Sweden was thus also independent from HRE.

Is there anything reflecting this complicated situation?
Would this be represented as Sweden having a vassal, perhaps fief,which is in the HRE while the Swedish tag isn’t? Otherwise I’m not sure how you’d represent that. Especially since other states which held territory in the HRE didn’t abide by any such arrangement.
 
So, historically at one point King of Sweden was vassal under Holy Roman emperor because they had some land in HRE, but Sweden was independent and King of Sweden was thus also independent from HRE.

Is there anything reflecting this complicated situation?
Given that none of the other members of the HRE are actually subjects of the Emperor (such a relationship is handled through membership in the IO), this would probably just be represented through Sweden ruling those territories as some sort of subject (fiefdom, dominion, etc.) which is in itself a member while Sweden itself isn't.
 
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Regarding the Color Scheme of the Empire:
HRE.png

Yellow and dark Blue seem most prominent on first sight.
So why are Imperial Prelates so prominently coloured? Are they more important then the Electors?

Wouldnt it be better if only emperor and electors have the intense colours , while the rest gets a less standing out colour?
The dark blue over dominates the electors right now if you ask me. :)
 
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May I ask, what is the reasoning in not giving Nordhausen and Mühlhausen the title of free imperial city, and that they are only portrayed as normal republics? They were the only free cities in Thuringia, and pretty much the only ones in the area of modern day east Germany. Nordhausen became a Free City in 1220, a fact that is through various symbols, like the Roland. Mühlhausen became a Free City in 1290, and was a very influential city in the Region for the next centuries, due to it's size. Both cities kept their Reichsunmittelbarkeit up until the HRE was dissolved, and they should be portrayed as such. As a born Nordhäuser, I'd really like to hear your reasoning on why they are not free cities, or, even better, that you just missed them and already corrected that oversight. ;)
 
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YET! Happy Charles V noises.
Will there be actually any flavour that makes the Habsburgs taking the Spanish throne more likely?

It always bugged me to no end that the event that gave you the Habsburg dynasty in Spain in EU4, was one of the rarest i've seen in 2k+ hours. It is a very important historical development for Europe and it's history, and i would really love to see it more often (which means more than basically never).
 
The Imperial Election is then a key feature, since it elects the Holy Roman Emperor, who then sets all the Imperial Laws, Diets, etc. Here you can see an example of how it works:
1314 Double Election in HRE

This was one of the most chaotic moments in the history of the HRE, no?

What happened?
In 1314, after the emperor died, the electors couldn’t agree on a single candidate. They split into two groups and actually held two separate elections on different sides of the Main River.

One group elected Louis IV of Wittelsbach, and the other chose Frederick the Fair of Habsburg.

Louis was crowned in Aachen, the traditional place—but without the imperial crown. Frederick, meanwhile, was crowned with the proper crown, but in Bonn instead of Aachen. So, neither had full legitimacy. This triggered a civil war that lasted for years, until Louis captured Frederick at the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. They briefly agreed to co-rule, but it didn’t last—Frederick eventually stepped aside, and Louis ruled alone.

With all the mechanics around Imperial Elections, Dynastic Power, and the Imperial Diet, I am wondering:
  • Could something like this actually happen in-game?
  • Will the system allow for a split vote and a double emperor situation?
  • Or maybe it could be a rare, scripted event that pops up once every century or so, just to add some spice?
If it were added, here are a few ideas:
  • A stalemate mechanic where a tied election leads to two rival emperors.
  • A follow-up where players can either negotiate through the Diet or let it turn into a civil war.
Would love to hear if anything like this is planned.
 
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  • Middle Blue: Archbishop-Elector
  • Dark Blue: Imperial Prelates

There's a policy that makes it possible for any religion in the Christian religious group.

Is Hussite HRE possible?

If the current HRE emperor were to convert to Hussitism—considering that the Hussite movement existed before the Reformation—how might that impact the HRE?

  • Could a Hussite member of the HRE ever be selected as emperor?
  • Would the emperor try to force the Catholic Archbishop-Electors and prelates to convert?
  • Might this even lead to a shift in the whole HRE’s existing religion mechanic?
 
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Will there be any special role for the Kingdoms of Germany, Italy, and Burgundy-Arles in the HRE?

In the official structure of the HRE, these are supposed to be the three kingdoms whose crowns are held by the emperor. Mainz, Cologne, and Trier are supposed to serve as the three archchancellors to these three kingdoms.
 
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1314 Double Election in HRE

This was one of the most chaotic moments in the history of the HRE, no?

What happened?
In 1314, after the emperor died, the electors couldn’t agree on a single candidate. They split into two groups and actually held two separate elections on different sides of the Main River.

One group elected Louis IV of Wittelsbach, and the other chose Frederick the Fair of Habsburg.

Louis was crowned in Aachen, the traditional place—but without the imperial crown. Frederick, meanwhile, was crowned with the proper crown, but in Bonn instead of Aachen. So, neither had full legitimacy. This triggered a civil war that lasted for years, until Louis captured Frederick at the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. They briefly agreed to co-rule, but it didn’t last—Frederick eventually stepped aside, and Louis ruled alone.

Well, after the Golden Bull passes a double Election should not really be possible anymore, you need at least 4 of the 7 electors to vote for you which makes a double vote impossible.

In 1314 this was only possible because the list of 7 Electors was already established, but that was just based on custom, not on written rules. This allowed the candidates some leeway, there were some titles where it was not quite clear who was the legitmate elector. In this case these were the titles of King of Bohemia and Duke of Saxony. For Bohemia there were two rival claimants, King John of Luxembourg who was widely acknowledged as King and Herny of Carinthia, who had been King before John, but had been deposed by the Bohemian nobilty. Saxony meanwhile had split up into several Duchies and they did not agree which one of them was the actual Elector.

This allowed both candidates to get a majority, because both of them got a King of Bohemia and a Duke of Saxony to vote for them. Golden Bull formalized the rules of the election which made it a lot more diffcult to manipulate the election in this way.

The strange thing about this double election is that while Louis won the war and imprisoned Frederick the two of them eventually reconciled and Louis even made Frederick his co-king for a while. That did not last long, though.
 
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This may not be popular, but if a nation become too big or powerful, can it be kicked out of the HRE? Forming Prussia, Netherlands, and sometimes Switzerland leaves in EU4. I always thought it was wierd that a nation getting above a certain threshold didn't warrant anything from the rest of the HRE.
There is no historical reason to implement this, Prussia never left, neither did Switserland officially (although de facto it did but not because of its size), same thing for Netherlands.
 
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