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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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Anyway, are there any big reforms possible to reshape how the HRE functions, like trying to make it a universal empire made of Frankia, Germania, Italia and Sclavinia like Otto III wanted, with large swaths of new lands being introduced at once, including some of them getting an elevated position straight away?
 
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This is far beyond what I was expecting, it's even bigger then EU4 with all HRE related DLC. I'm expecting to do a lot of HRE runs.

Still a bit worried about the Netherlands though. It would seem (on this map at least) there hasn't been much progress since the first rework, for instance the Lordship of Mechelen is still a part of Brabant instead of a Vassal of Flanders and Brabant.
 
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Wait, why isn't Dithmarschen a Peasant Republic?
We corrected the historical setup, there's an event turning into a Peasant Republic after 1350.
 
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In eu4 when we were emperor there were often internal wars between HRE members that we couldn't stop from breaking out, even though it always worked the other way around. Will it work properly this time?
 
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Will there be an imperial army that is controlled by either the emperor or marshal of the empire and switches from ownership when emperors change? Will there be imperial bans?

Also I am pleasantly surprised by the amount of content currently present for the HRE. Three of my main suggestions would be: add the possibility for members to support their dynasty to become a bishopric in a prince-bishopric (I also think renaming prelate to prince-bishop makes more sense). This could be similar to support heir from EU4.

The second suggestion is adding bribery and promises to the election in which someone who wants to become emperor can pay massive amounts of money to the electors in hopes of securing the vote and promises to enact certain laws in order to increase the likelihood of them voting for you.

And thirdly allow the emperor to raise the titles of members from for example county to duchy.

There are of course more fun mechanics to be added but I assume those would be reserved for a future dlc.

Lastly, as we now have claims belonging to the HRE, most of Italy in the hands of the papal states (except its core lands) should be claimed by the empire. Sources on this are amongst others Johann Jacob Moser's Teutsche Staatsrecht. I also believe Modena should become a tag in personal union with Ferrara as that would simulate the situation far better than it currently is: i.e. being both part of the empire and a vassal of the pope.
 
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Looks great! I have a small wish regarding flavour in generel, though.

Say France is eclipsed and annexed by a French minor. This minor does not reform France, but occupies the same territory, and is French culture. How much France-flavour does the minor take from France?

I'm really hoping for flavour dynamism like this. Dynamic but culture/region/language/religion specific.
Most of the flavour content for France is attached to the tag, so staying as a minor tag instead of reforming France after killing it would make it not have as much flavour content. We know that some people would prefer these events to be more dynamic, but there are a couple of architectural challenges regarding this that made us decide to go this way. In any case, a bunch of starting content (such as government reforms, policies, etc.) is already tied to culture groups, so the 'structural' flavour content is already available for those countries.
 
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1744204111982.png


If these are the rules, then how can the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Bavarian Duchies, etc. exist?

It would seem logical to me that states would not be able to change their rank on their own, but rather, once they met the conditions, they would ask the Emperor to grant them a rank increase. Then, depending on their attitude towards him, it would be granted or not.
 
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I saw catholicism is a religious law. Is it possible to switch it, or do we have to wait until the european wars of religion for that to become possible? Additionally, can you make hindu HRE?
 
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Can the emperor hand out duchy / kingdom titles? Is there also a possibility to request it? Several tags got elevated within the time frame like e.g. Württemberg.

Is there also a possibility to transfer electorates or increase the amount of electors?
 
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Very interesting, how will allowing both protestants and catholics work ? Will it have to be a really drawn out league war like it did irl(and in eu4) or can the victor just choose to accept both religions ? Also will there be a tinto talks on Building Based Countries ? We haven't seen anything regarding their mechanics other than banking.
 
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What are the requirements to wage justified wars within the HRE? With the addition of gavelkind succession it feels like the empire will be a lot less consolidated than it usually is in EU4
 
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What does forbidden unjustified wars cover? Just no cb? I think wars in the HRE should mostly be succession based because there wasn't really any time HRE princes attacked each other for land until the 18th century. It was always a claim on a title and seizing that title.
 
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Very meaty TT!

1. Can Imperial Authority be gained or lost via selecting options in events / situations?
2. If your country changes Dynasty, do you lose all Dynastic Power accumulated?
3. Will the option to disband HRE have its own requirments / flavor?
1. Yes.
2. You don't 'lose' it, your country is now ruled by a different dynasty, with a different Dynastic Power accumulated (which might be higher or lower).
3. Yes, there will be a way to disband it, as historically happened.
 
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Why does the Hansa have to pay so much manpower? Do they even have a lot of manpower as their type of country? I get that their taxes are high, being so wealthy, but I would have thought that more normal feudal realms would contribute more manpower.

Speaking of, is there any content regarding the struggle between the emperor and leagues of towns, such as the Hansa, in the HRE? Technically they were outlawed several times, but they were also powerful enough to still be able to exist or even get rights back temporarily.
 
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The Empire can still unite during late game, right?
 
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Also, if the Golden Bull gets passed and the Habsburgs forge Privilegium Maius because their tiny egos could not cope with not getting an electoral seat, can other countries expose the forgery and use it as a justification to depose them from their imperial possessions? And/or excommunicate them and/or impale all members of the family?
 
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