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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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maybe something like this?


Prince-Electors and Imperial Prince should have the same base color with the Elector being the bolder color
Archbishop-Electors and Imperial Prelates should have the same base color with the Elector being the bolder color
As there is a mechanical difference I would have Imperial land not owned by an HRE member inside Germany have a different coloration than outside. Maybe have a 'Germany' border indicated on the map

Mechanically inside the HRE is there a difference between Republics and Peasant Republics?
 
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Screenshot_20250411_201850_Chrome.jpg
I assume this sun is a WIP icon for the religion of the Holy Roman Emperor which cool but I wish that on this screen there was one or more additional religious icon that say which religion/s are official or accepted in the HRE without going having to go in the Imperial Laws tab
 
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V4.jpg


Hello,

The map looks great with all these members, however I feel like the colours could be improved - I don't feel it's very interesting to look at.
I have made a couple of variations (they're all inspired by 'HRE' colours).

I would also suggest a bombastic border to mark the de jure borders of the empire (unfortunately I have put it over lands that should be excluded as well but you get the idea). Perhaps it could appear in the normal mapmode, to show the presence of this IO and make Europe's map more interesting?

Here are some more variations:

V2.jpg
V3.jpg
 
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View attachment 1279902

Hello,

The map looks great with all these members, however I feel like the colours could be improved - I don't feel it's very interesting to look at.
I have made a couple of variations (they're all inspired by 'HRE' colours).

I would also suggest a bombastic border to mark the de jure borders of the empire (unfortunately I have put it over lands that should be excluded as well but you get the idea). Perhaps it could appear in the normal mapmode, to show the presence of this IO and make Europe's map more interesting?

Here are some more variations:

View attachment 1279903View attachment 1279904
I like the third version.
1744399401592.jpeg
 
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based on the positioning of the country names has there been any discussion internally of return to a Victoria 2 style map system where the overlord's name is displayed over the junior partner while the junior countries still have their normal map colors? This is a real issue with France where the names are quite long and the appenages are all the same color while possessing a lot of disconnected territories. It seems like a "worst of both worlds" situation right now - it's difficult to determine at a glance what you're looking at by color and also hard to figure out what you're looking at by trying to read the map.
 
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So will the Holy Roman Empire have the EU4 'events' that happens to it as situations/disasters?
And I assume the 'centralization' vs 'Decentralization' will happen with the Laws panel.
 
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I have a few questions:

1. How does replacing an elector work? Can an Archbishop-Elector only be replaced by an Imperial Prelate?

2. How do the religious laws work in the beginning of the game. Do I instantly leave the HRE if I switch to another religion? Or does it work more like in EU4 (not being able to become emperor; everybody hates me etc.)?

3. Is there a law (or another way) that enables the emperor to call in any HRE prince into a defensive war, against an attack from “the outside”?
Also is there another law (or any other way) regarding offensive wars against country’s holding HRE land without being part of the HRE?
 
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Is there any content around the election of Charles IV and the impending civil war that was only narrowly averted by the death of Louis IV? While the civil war itself would both require a situation and be a counterfactual, something the dev team seems uninterested in doing at least before release, the entire buildup to that conflict as well as a new emperor being elected while the reigning one was still alive and well seems like it warrants touching upon.
 
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Hello,

Metz was actually a republic, the city burghers kicked out the bishop in 1234 after a revolt, the bishop was relocated in Vic sur Seille 40km south !
So it would be nice to see Metz as an independant republic as it was in reality, the city was a big player in regional politics and conflicts and was the biggest city in all of the Lorraine (about 45/50k) region !
 
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So there are no mechanics for Imperial Circles (Reichskreis), Imperial wars (Reichskrieg), Imperial Army (Reichsarmee), Imperial Court (Reichskammergericht) or Aulic Council (Reichshofrat)?
 
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Screenshot_20250417_201450_Chrome.jpg
This flag here should be the flag of a Franconia formable rather than just Würzburg
Screenshot_20250417_201334_Chrome.jpg
This here is the Coa of the Prince-Bishopric of Würzburg and it should be used as a flag in game
 
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Czech Silesia wasnt part of HRE until 1348 when they got incorporated into Kingdom of Czechia. Duchies of Jawor and Swidnica werent even part of Czech crown untill 1360s. Pls correct that
 
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Screenshot_20250419_164245_Chrome.jpg

I feel like this screen doesn't deliver some important information, first off, the manpower pool of the Empire should have a counter right next to the gold, second, it's the country that realistically matters not the Emperor so the flag of the ruling tag should be bigger and displayed on the top left or right with a more ornamented frame than usual(like how in EU4 the Coa of the Emperor's country had an eagle) and third, there is nothing that tells me which branch of Christianity is the official religion of the Empire and if that's being contested at the moment(religious peace or league war)
 
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At the start of the game the Emperor should be able to remove Imperial land that's not owned by any HRE member from the Empire as well, he should also be the only one able to kick out(with a cost for balance purposes) and invite countries in the HRE rather than have members leave and join when they feel like it(if they want to they need to ask for his permission and decide to fight a war for it if he says no), this is to symbolyze the power that the Emperor officially still had as a liege in 1337 and there should be ways to change all of these things through imperial laws by the Emperor and/or by the members if through wars
 
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There should be a way for small HRE members to form leagues of cities like the Lombard or Swabian leagues to defend themselves from bigger members and/or the authority of the Emperor
 
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Could we please PLEASE get something similar to a diplomatic play when the emperor dies and a new one is supposed to be elected? (I would love the same thing for the pope). It is good to build up good will beforehand, but I never liked losing or even winning the election by a margin of 2 or 3 points just because the emperor died on Thursday instead of on Saturday.

Whether the actual election would just be a chain of events happening in one day or its own minimechanic that would take a few months is not my biggest concern, but I would really love to be able to lobby in the elections when they are actually happening. To support me or even to support a third party.
 
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