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Tinto Talks #60 - 23rd of April 2025

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Sant Jordi San Jorge Saint George’s Day Castile and León Day Wednesday where we talk about our entirely super-top-secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week, we will be talking about a trending topic: What happens if two (or more) Popes are elected in a Papal Conclave? What makes a man go neutral join the Dark Side nail Ninety-five Theses against indulgences on a church in Wittenberg? How does a general council of the Catholic Church react to this?

Or, in other words, we will be talking today about three historical Situations present in our game: the Western Schism, the Reformation, and the Council of Trent.



The Western Schism

When a Pope dies, some processes need to be started, leaning towards the most important one, the Papal Conclave, which will determine the election of a new Pope:

Papal Death.jpg

Papal Conclave.png

The Pope has died! As shown last week, the special Papal Heir Selection determines that a regency will start, with a clergyman becoming the Head of the Papal Conclave.

If it’s the year 1360 or later, a Schism might strike the Catholic Church, making for a divided election:

Western Schism1.jpg

The Western Schism may be managed in this panel:

Western Schism3.jpg

Where you might see a few things:
  • The contenders - the Papal States (the Pope residing either in Avignon or in Rome) on one side, and the country backing the second Pope on the other.
  • The support gathered by each Pope (which will slowly tick up, until one of them reaches 100% support).
  • The Reform Desire (more on this later).
  • The Curial countries that support each candidate.
  • The available actions.

This is the starting point of the Vote Progress hoverable tooltip (in the panel above, you see the numbers after some months/years have passed):
Vote Progress.jpg

The ‘Unity of Faith’ action:
Unity of Faith.jpg

And this is what happens because of the Curia Actions of the Catholic Church IO being blocked:
Blocked Papal Bulls.jpg

Finally, this is the situation map mode, showing the countries supporting each side:

Papal Contenders.jpg

The French candidate has more support than the current candidate, while Castile is sitting on the fence of the split election.

There will be some possible actions to gather support for each candidate, and some events may trigger randomly during the situation. And after a while, one of the candidates will gather enough support to reunite the Catholic Church again:

Catholic Church United Again.jpg

However, there are more perils for the Catholic Church…



The Reformation

After the year 1510, a certain Augustinian monk will protest against the uses of the Church, starting the Reformation:

The Lutheran Reformation.jpg

Reformation.jpg

The birthplace of the Reformation will be semi-dynamic, there are some weights in place, so it will usually trigger in a different place of the Catholic Christendom. In this case, Martin Luther was serving his duty in Perugia, Italy.

Lutheranism.jpg

The doctrine that a proper Catholic should follow!

This is the starting panel of the situation:
Reformation Panel.jpg

The elements that you can see are:
  • The Lutheran and Catholic pops at each moment.
  • The main active reformers (since all of them are characters that may spawn by event).
  • The Lutheran Preachers, which is a building that may spawn and spread throughout Catholic countries:
Lutheran Preachers.jpg

This might be a situation a year or so after the Reformation starts:
Zwingli.jpg

Ignore the weird graphical bug that we just found while writing this TT, each character has its own different portrait.

Reformation map mode.jpg

A second reformer, Zwingli, appeared in Switzerland, making the Free City of Bern a Lutheran bastion, and also 7 Lutheran Preachers buildings appeared. In the map mode, you can see the countries already converted to Lutheranism, the locations that already have Lutheran pops, and also other Protestant confessions present, such as some Hussites in Bohemia. Ignore the red borders, BTW; some countries decided that the start of the Reformation was a good moment to declare war on me, the Papal States, while preparing the screenshots for this Tinto Talks (traitors and heretics, they are!).

The Reformation may last for a while, because these are its ending triggers:

End Requirements.jpg

Which leads us to the third and final Situation for today:



The Council of Trent

If the Reformation is still active, and the Reform Desire (the modifier I mentioned in the Western Schism situation) is over 50%, the Council of Trent will trigger:

Council of Trent1.jpg

Council of Trent2.jpg

Council of Trent3.jpg

The main point of the Council of Trent is to debate, and eventually approve, some new Laws for the Catholic Church IO; When those Laws are voted and passed, it will end the Council:

Council of Trent4.jpg

Council of Trent5.jpg

And these are some examples of the Laws that are available for voting, each one having different policies that can be set:
Indulgences.jpg

Papal Authority.jpg

Veneration of Saints.jpg

Except for the Papal Authority doctrine, all the policies have proper Latin names, as they should be!


And that’s all for today! We hope that you enjoyed it and that your favourite cardinal becomes Pope. Next week, we will be taking a look at the final part of the Western Christian religious puzzle: the mechanics for the different Protestant confessions, and another situation, the War of Religion. And don’t forget that this Friday we will post the Tinto Flavour with the content for the Military Orders of the Teutonic & Livonian Orders and the Knights Hospitallers. Cheers!
 
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Is it completely of the table or just out of scope for the main release of the Super Secret Game?
Never say never, but completely off the table for the release of Project Caesar, since we want to make sure that it is as good as possible.
 
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Some of these questions might be more fitting for the next dev diary, but:

1. What branches of protestantism will be in the game? Will it be the same ones as in EU4, or will there be other ones like Anabaptists, Unitarians and Sabbatarians

2. Will it always be Martin Luther who starts the reformation? Would it for example be possible for Hussitism to be more popular, and not be considered "proto-protestant", but in fact the movement that kickstarts the reformation?

3. Related to the above question, will the protestant churches always be called lutheran/calvinist? Why not use the names they themselves used (evangelical/reformed), considering Lutheran (and I'm assuming calvinist, though I'm not sure) was used as a derogatory term? Catholics aren't called Papists, so unless the names are dynamic based on the player's country's religion, I think it would be more consistent to use the names they themselves preferred.

4. Will it be possible to make a "custom" protestant church, something akin to Anglicanism? If Anglicanism is in the game as a seperate religion, I don't see why only England would be able to split with the church to establish the king as it's head of faith, other countries should be able to do so as well should they become discontent with the catholic church, but not enough for them to go completely protestant.
 
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Yeah, and it was very related to the Hundred Years' War, with each side's allies supporting a different candidate. We'd love to have that, but you know, better make it kind of simple and working, than overcomplicating it too much from the start.
Catholic countries should be highly encouraged to pick a side both for politics and both for having legitimacy from their prefered pope.
 
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Can’t wait for the Schism DLC :p
"Buy our new Council of Constance DLC! Pick among 3 different popes which one will rule the Holy Roman Church, and decide if you want to burn Jan Hus, or make him a living saint!"
 
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Will Curia decisions be postponed or cancelled if Rome is sieged/occupied in a war while its ongoing? If Rome is annexed, will the Curia need to restart the discussion or will it continue where it left off in a new location (assuming the Papal States have more land left)?
 
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Nothing to see here folks, just a game with no relation to EU4 using EU4 assets as a placeholder, no significance to this whatsoever.
View attachment 1284680
Dude, you would be surprised by how many assets from other PDX GSGs we've had in this game, until being replaced by new ones. I think that we even had Stellaris ones!
 
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What's the point of making a "neutral vote" and "yet to vote" groups in the western schism, can you not change your vote after? If yes then just fuse the two
 
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Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Sant Jordi San Jorge Saint George’s Day Castile and León Day Wednesday where we talk about our entirely super-top-secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week, we will be talking about a trending topic: What happens if two (or more) Popes are elected in a Papal Conclave? What makes a man go neutral join the Dark Side nail Ninety-five Theses against indulgences on a church in Wittenberg? How does a general council of the Catholic Church react to this?

Or, in other words, we will be talking today about three historical Situations present in our game: the Western Schism, the Reformation, and the Council of Trent.



The Western Schism

When a Pope dies, some processes need to be started, leaning towards the most important one, the Papal Conclave, which will determine the election of a new Pope:

View attachment 1284610
View attachment 1284611
The Pope has died! As shown last week, the special Papal Heir Selection determines that a regency will start, with a clergyman becoming the Head of the Papal Conclave.

If it’s the year 1360 or later, a Schism might strike the Catholic Church, making for a divided election:


The Western Schism may be managed in this panel:


Where you might see a few things:
  • The contenders - the Papal States (the Pope residing either in Avignon or in Rome) on one side, and the country backing the second Pope on the other.
  • The support gathered by each Pope (which will slowly tick down, until one of them reaches 100% support).
  • The Reform Desire (more on this later).
  • The Curial countries that support each candidate.
  • The available actions.

This is the starting point of the Vote Progress hoverable tooltip (in the panel above, you see the numbers after some months/years have passed):

The ‘Unity of Faith’ action:

And this is what happens because of the Curia Actions of the Catholic Church IO being blocked:

Finally, this is the situation map mode, showing the countries supporting each side:

View attachment 1284617
The French candidate has more support than the current candidate, while Castile is sitting on the fence of the split election.

There will be some possible actions to gather support for each candidate, and some events may trigger randomly during the situation. And after a while, one of the candidates will gather enough support to reunite the Catholic Church again:


However, there are more perils for the Catholic Church…



The Reformation

After the year 1510, a certain Augustinian monk will protest against the uses of the Church, starting the Reformation:

View attachment 1284619
View attachment 1284620
The birthplace of the Reformation will be semi-dynamic, there are some weights in place, so it will usually trigger in a different place of the Catholic Christendom. In this case, Martin Luther was serving his duty in Perugia, Italy.

View attachment 1284621
The doctrine that a proper Catholic should follow!

This is the starting panel of the situation:

The elements that you can see are:
  • The Lutheran and Catholic pops at each moment.
  • The main active reformers (since all of them are characters that may spawn by event).
  • The Lutheran Preachers, which is a building that may spawn and spread throughout Catholic countries:

This might be a situation a year or so after the Reformation starts:
View attachment 1284625
Ignore the weird graphical bug that we just found while writing this TT, each character has its own different portrait.

View attachment 1284627
A second reformer, Zwingli, appeared in Switzerland, making the Free City of Bern a Lutheran bastion, and also 7 Lutheran Preachers buildings appeared. In the map mode, you can see the countries already converted to Lutheranism, the locations that already have Lutheran pops, and also other Protestant confessions present, such as some Hussites in Bohemia. Ignore the red borders, BTW; some countries decided that the start of the Reformation was a good moment to declare war on me, the Papal States, while preparing the screenshots for this Tinto Talks (traitors and heretics, they are!).

The Reformation may last for a while, because these are its ending triggers:


Which leads us to the third and final Situation for today:



The Council of Trent

If the Reformation is still active, and the Reform Desire (the modifier I mentioned in the Western Schism situation) is over 50%, the Council of Trent will trigger:


The main point of the Council of Trent is to debate, and eventually approve, some new Laws for the Catholic Church IO; When those Laws are voted and passed, it will end the Council:


And these are some examples of the Laws that are available for voting, each one having different policies that can be set:
View attachment 1284637
View attachment 1284638
View attachment 1284639
Except for the Papal Authority doctrine, all the policies have proper Latin names, as they should be!


And that’s all for today! We hope that you enjoyed it and that your favourite cardinal becomes Pope. Next week, we will be taking a look at the final part of the Western Christian religious puzzle: the mechanics for the different Protestant confessions, and another situation, the War of Religion. And don’t forget that this Friday we will post the Tinto Flavour with the content for the Military Orders of the Teutonic & Livonian Orders and the Knights Hospitallers. Cheers!
The promotion for this dev diary was crazy
 
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Yeah, and it was very related to the Hundred Years' War, with each side's allies supporting a different candidate. We'd love to have that, but you know, better make it kind of simple and working, than overcomplicating it too much from the start.
OK, this doesn't even follow the "no alt history" thing and just weirdly limits the historical scope of the whole situation. Does the "from the start" imply that it could be subject to further expansion in a DLC, at least?
 
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We discussed it extensively, and no, we always want the Reformation to spawn in the game, because we think it's a key historical element for the Age of Reformation, and thus, it grants a great deal of the historical immersion we want. It can be modded in very different ways, as the interplay of the 4 different situations among them and with the different religions.
Wait, what do you mean regarding the interplay? Do you mean that there already is interplay between this situation and other ones and that it is then subject to modding? Or that the interplay may be added by modding? If it's #1, what other situations interplay with this one? And what does that interplay actually entail, mechanically speaking?
 
The Western Schism doesn't seem very impactful. Why should I choose one side over the other? Can I try to stall it to get more reform desire for an early Council of Trent? Can I force people on my side through wars?
 
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We aren't considering a permanent division of the Catholic Church, because it would be the equivalent of the Great Schism, with two diverging Catholic religions, with several possible ramifications, that would also greatly impact the situations and content for the Age of Reformation. And, as we've already mentioned, we're right now mostly focusing on delivering the best possible historical content, without derailing too much into the alt-historical one.
I hope this is something that is somewhere in the office with a big note that says "CHANGE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!" because it would be a huge loss, if not. I'd actually say the church is more likely to split than not, given the specific sequence of events that had to take place to reconcile the two, then three papacies. I understand wanting to leave it out for the moment because it does have a lot of ripple effects, but I hope changes involving Catholicism are being programmed in such a way that they could be made to account for a Catholicism rather than the Catholicism in the future.

Yeah, and it was very related to the Hundred Years' War, with each side's allies supporting a different candidate. We'd love to have that, but you know, better make it kind of simple and working, than overcomplicating it too much from the start.
I totally missed that you're only making the countries with a cardinal pick a side. I hope you reconsider this. While not having the faith split yet makes sense due to stating you're focusing on historical realities first, this IS the historical reality which you are not portraying. The Western Schism is over-complicated, it is messy, and that makes it interesting. It may as well not be in the game if only the Curia (which you should be calling the college of cardinals, as the Curia is composed of more than cardinals...) controllers care which pope they support.

I'm also only now noticing that there's no mention of a third pope. Is there support for a Pisan pope, somewhere? There were initially two popes, then three, and I hope that's not something which cannot happen.
 
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Also have to say, perfect timing on the papal conclave TT, gonna start thinking that Francisc's death was just a part of Paradox marketing for the super secret new game :p.
 
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