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Tinto Talks #59 - 16th of April 2025

Hello and welcome once again to our super secret Project Caesar Tinto Talks. I will be your host this time, where we will be talking about the mechanics of Catholicism and its associated Catholic Church International Organization.

Here’s an overview of the religion itself:
Catholicism Tooltip.png


One thing to highlight here besides all the other effects, is that Catholic countries are not able to tax their clergy at all by default, although there may be other things modifying this on top of it. However, the clergy won’t necessarily swim in money, as that has to be instead paid to the Papacy directly in the form of a tithe.
Tithe.png


Another key aspect of Catholicism is that all Catholic countries will belong to the Catholic Church IO:
Catholic Church Map.png

Catholic Church IO pannel.png


You can see here that there are quite many countries belonging to it (the total list is expandable and scrollable), with some of them having some special statuses. For Bishopric and Military Order these are self-explanatory, but the Curia and Cardinals need some more information.

The decisions concerning the Catholic Church are taken by the Curia, which is composed of Cardinals. In Project Caesar, Cardinals are represented by a special building, called Cardinal Seat, available to be built by Catholic countries higher than county rank in any location where they already own a large religious building. Each Cardinal Seat will grant its owner country a Cardinal, which the country can use to influence the decisions of the Curia (more on that later). Countries can have more than one Cardinal Seat and thus more than one Cardinal, that’s why in the panel you can see that there’s 7 countries in the Curia but a total of 16 Cardinals among them.
Cardinal Seat.png


Another aspect of the Catholic Church IO is its doctrines, represented by a set of laws. These laws are not something that’s easily changed, as it’s what defines the core values of Catholicism, but some important events will be able to shape them, like for example the Council of Trent (more on that in future Tinto Talks). Here are some of these laws effects:
Papal Authority.png

Purchase of Indulgence.png

Marriage of Priests.png

Persecution of Witchcraft.png


Next to the Doctrines, we have the Papal Bulls. These are actions that any Catholic country can choose to propose, but only those in the Curia can vote on whether to pass them or refuse them. Here are the possible bulls with some examples:
Papal Bulls.png

Illius Qui Se Pro Divini.png

In Coena Domini.png


When voting on a Papal Bull, the interface changes slightly to show how many cardinals support each option. It goes without saying that all the cardinals that a country has will be assigned to vote for the same option, so the amount of cardinals a country has is effectively its amount of votes.
Papal Bulls Vote.png


Besides the Papal Bulls, there’s also the action of Excommunication, available to all countries of the Curia, that if approved, will get the excommunicated country some very nasty modifiers and allow for a special casus belli.

Excommunication Effects.png


The Catholic Church also has some extra aspects in the form of Saints and Holy Sites. Saints are characters of a country that have been elevated to sainthood. A country can choose to canonize any of its previous rulers, and they will get benefits depending on the abilities of such character. Holy Sites are special locations to the Catholic faith, giving some extra income to their owner due to the affluence of faithful in them.
Saints.png

Holy Sites.png


Outside the Catholic Church per se and instead in the main religion panel, there are some extra religious actions available to certain countries, besides the already mentioned option to canonize a character.
Religious Actions.png


  • Demand Apostolic Tax is an action exclusive to the Papacy, in which they will demand extra payment from those countries with the Apostolic Tax privilege enabled.
  • Request Aid is an action exclusive to the military orders, in which they can ask to petition support to the Pope for their infrastructure, military, or coffers.
  • Placitum Regium is an action available to kingdoms or empires that gives them some extra crown power at the expense of relations with the Papacy.

One last thing to mention here is that, as you can see, Catholicism also has Reform Desire. However, in contrast to some other of our titles that also present this value, here it is not a ticking clock for the Reformation, but instead something that will come into play in the Council of Trent. As such, you will have to wait a bit for a further explanation on it.

And that is all for today, next week we will resolve these cliffhangers by taking a further look at what Catholicism has in store after the start of the game, including the situations of the Western Schism, Reformation, and the Council of Trent. On the other hand, in this week’s Tinto Flavor we will go directly to the head of Catholicism by taking a look at the flavor content for the Papal States. Also, remember that this week’s Tinto Flavour will be on Thursday, as this week is Good Friday and the Papal States would be too busy to attend their own Tinto Flavor then (oh, and it’s also a holiday).

See you next time!
 
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1. So there are around 480 catholic countries at game start. Sounds like a lot, but... how many of those are HRE members? Even with a fractured Ireland, feudal France and whatever happened to Poland, I guess the vast majority of catholic countries are really German minor nobles who decided that their private plantation is an independent country.
2. I see you've taken some inspiration from EU's religious tolerance and relation system (not that I'm suggesting Project Caesar has anything to do with Europa Universalis). Are those two systems completely decoupled? I find it somewhat annoying that, in EU4, you can buff tolerance for heretics and heathens to reasonable levels, but the opinion and diplomatic penalties for different religions are, with the exception of a small number of exclusive modifiers, static. I'd prefer it if, for example, the opinion penalty for different religions was 5*(religious tolerance towards that religion) or something like that, maybe with some caps.
 
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While I can kinda see why you would make them buildings, Cardinals shouldn’t be just buildings, they should be people. Regardless they are the ones who are voting for the next Pope and are in the running to become the next Pope when the current Pope dies. Honestly it should be like Crusader kings where you can have them in your cabinet. Not only that but if you have more than one cardinal seat it gives you more a chance to become the Papal controller and if you have a good relationship with them it should allow you to have some more control over the Papacy. I think having them as characters brings more to the game. If you want to have them in a Cathedral it needs to be a city of importance. They aren’t going to send a Cardinal to a small rural village anywhere. Look at Los Angeles it is the biggest city and the one with the most power funny enough. You know of that Cardinal rather than the one from Sacramento. I also agree that if someone is to become a Saint they probably should have the Pious trait or Zealot.
 
Papal ban on empires means that only the starting Catholic empires will be empire tier? So the HRE and none else.

How, then, will the Latin Emperor in Constantinople be represented if the polity is restored by a crusader state?
Probably as an Empire (tier 4) which is fine, historically the Latin Emperor title was kind of a big deal which the Pope let slide for political reasons with the excuse that they were taking over an Empire that already existed rather than creating a new one
Screenshot_20250416_174932_Chrome.jpg

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I suppose that you should be able to become a catholic Empire if you obtain the rank before becoming catholic as well, like if Japan becomes catholic they should remain an empire rather than downgrade to a kingdom
 
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Okay, how about this suggestion for the cardinal mechanic:

Each historical diocese starts with a "Bishop's Seat" building in its appropriate location. These buildings can only be destroyed if the location owner isn't Catholic.
Each of these buildings is always linked to a character, its bishop - if that character dies, a new one is spawned. In bishoprics and archbishopric countries, the leader is chosen from these bishop characters (typically there's only one to choose anyway).

The college of cardinals has a certain number of cardinals (which can change with different laws being passed, roughly between 20 and 70), which are made up of characters with the bishop tag. Whenever one dies, a new one is elected from all possible bishop characters by random chance, although countries can interact with the IO to pay money to increase the chance for bishops in their country to be elected cardinal.

If you have a cardinal in your country, you benefit - not sure exactly how, maybe the character's seat can provide better bonuses, maybe the character himself confers bonuses to the country he's in. You also get the votes of all your cardinals and your vassals' cardinals on your side, of course.
There's a plethora of potential flavor that can be added here, for example when using these bishop/cardinal characters in government.
 
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I feel like catholic countries should be able to spend 'religious power' to pick 'patron saints' or 'aspects of the virgin Mary', would given an interesting aspecto to the religion by giving some tiny bonuses based on which Saint you favour as a nation.
 
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While I can kinda see why you would make them buildings, Cardinals shouldn’t be just buildings, they should be people. Regardless they are the ones who are voting for the next Pope and are in the running to become the next Pope when the current Pope dies. Honestly it should be like Crusader kings where you can have them in your cabinet. Not only that but if you have more than one cardinal seat it gives you more a chance to become the Papal controller and if you have a good relationship with them it should allow you to have some more control over the Papacy. I think having them as characters brings more to the game. If you want to have them in a Cathedral it needs to be a city of importance. They aren’t going to send a Cardinal to a small rural village anywhere. Look at Los Angeles it is the biggest city and the one with the most power funny enough. You know of that Cardinal rather than the one from Sacramento. I also agree that if someone is to become a Saint they probably should have the Pious trait or Zealot.
The only reason I’m hung up on this and have much to say is I’m a Catholic myself so it’s super important to me. Especially getting something like this right and Accurately
 
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So far my main concerns are the empire restriction and the cardinals being buildings instead of characters. I'm not against the building, but I think the building should be more like a requirement to be able to appoint a cardinal character. This is also a bit problematic with the fact that any character can be canonized, except for cardinals.
 
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There's a cost for starting a debate and for losing one, so you wouldn't start a Bull debate if you want to vote no on it. Voting no is basically when another country has proposed something and you want to punish them by voting no.

...so why is there an option to start an election disagreeing? This still doesn't make sense to me.

And I gotta agree with the others that the current cardinal mechanic seems a bit backwards. I believe building a Cardinal Seat should be a diplomatic action you take directed at the Papal States, at a gold/favor/etc cost. And then the maintenance cost for a country should scale with the current number of local cardinals (maybe 1% per Seat).
 
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Maybe eventually you can also have Patron Saints of countries like how France has Jean Darc, or Hungary St Stephen, or the Virgin de Guadalupe the patron of the Americas? It would kind of work similar to orthodox icons?
 
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Perhaps the way to solve the cardinal issue, os that you would need explicit permission from the pope to build one (possibly bribe them for it), and the pope could have internal calculations that determine how likely he is to give your country the right to get a other cardinal (based on opinion, your power and how many percentage of cardinals you already control).
 
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In real life any member of the Church (usually a bishop or archbishop) can be granted the position of Cardinal on top of their existing position.

Ideally this would be a whole contest of jockeying for power and the like, but the base game doesn't operate at the level of bishops and archbishops (unless they're the land-owning kind).
A cathedral is always run by a bishop or archbishop, so requiring a cathedral already ensures that only a bishop can be made a cardinal.
 
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Wouldn't it be better to have a system with local and canon saints?

Hard-costing everything in regards to Catholicism is a dumb idea. The most important trait of the Catholic Church is how bureaucratically imposing it could be and to dumb cardinal selection down to a mere building is basically an insult.
 
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I took note of this for suggestions on improving the system, thank you.
Thank you! I understand that there may no longer be any leeway in the development cycle to include this expansion, and if that is indeed the case may I suggest another type of Tinto Talk?

Close to release, it would be really cool if you had a Tinto Talk about all the feedback/content that you just did not have time to include before release of 1.0 but would like to include at a later date.

That way, say for the Cardinal rework many rightfully want, we would know that something like that would come eventually.

Lastly, I just want to include my vote for Cardinals to be reworked such as:
  1. Countries may build seats, but the pope gets to decide when to fill it
  2. Cardinals are full characters, and can participate in the cabinet
  3. Countrie may bestow the Folk Saint trait to a dead character, but only the Pope can fully canonize a character
  4. Countries may spend some resource to convince the Pope to fill a Cardinal Seat or Canonize a character, but only if the Papacy has enough Opinion with the Country
    1. Other Countries may also spend resources to block a Cardinal Seat being filled by a rival Country
    2. This also means that when a Cardinal dies, Countries (including the Papacy) could try to spend resources to block that seat being filled by the original country, leaving it empty or filling it with their own new Cardinal. This could even model the Papacy trying to reign in the number of Cardinals and/or increase how many of their own Cardinals are in the Curia.
 
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A cathedral is always run by a bishop or archbishop, so requiring a cathedral already ensures that only a bishop can be made a cardinal.
Right, but can you freely build cathedrals then? The structure and organization of dioceses was also a Church matter; you can't just establish a bishopric willy-nilly.
 
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Love this DD and how it expands religion!

Not sure about cou tries having total control over who geta to be an archbishop or a saint, though. Shouldn't the pope/curia have a saying on that?
 
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