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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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Are you going to have Transylvanian Unitarians or any of the old Unitarian churches in the Age of Reformations?
 
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Can the Catholic Church replace Latin as its liturgical language with each of the vernacular languages of each Catholic country?
I'm guessing the liturgical language is something that can be discussed at the various Councils? I know one of Luther's concerns was that Latin was used in place of the vernacular.
 
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Cant wait to replace the papal name list on release so I can laugh about:
Pope Cringus XII or Pope Deez Nuts VIII

Jokes aside, good stuff with peak relevance!
 
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I’m not sure if it’s good to call the building “Lutheran Preachers.” I think a better way to call the building would be “Lutheran Pulpits” because having missionaries be considered a building sounds weird just as it is with Bishops being buildings. It should be a building that houses the people/preachers not the people themselves. Or at the very least a Pulpit just sounds more in line with what you are going for.
 
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1745418847801.png

Does it just trigger with x% after a 1510 no matter what, or is it based on reform desire?

1745418815998.png

Does this modifier convert 1% of total location population or 1% of remaining catholic population? Like it's linear conversion rate, or it is diminishing?
 
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the Country is now ruled through a Papal Conclave
Gustav Wilhelm Seeland becomes our Head of the Papal Conclave
During Regency
There is currently no possible Heir, so this may last a while.

"the special Papal Heir Selection determines that a regency will start, with a clergyman becoming the Head of the Papal Conclave."

A lot of this is incorrect when referring to the Papal States, and I'd suggest

the Country is now in a state of Sede vacante, administered by our Camerlengo.
Gustav Wilhelm Seeland becomes our Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church
During Sede vacante
There is no clear frontrunner among the papabile, so the vacancy may continue for some time.

"the special Conclave/Papal Successor Selection determines that the Papacy has entered a state of sede vacante. The Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church will administer the Papal States while the College of Cardinals prepares for the Conclave."

First, the Conclave is the event where the new Pope is elected, not a body of people, so the Papal States* are not "ruled through a Papal Conclave". In contemporary usage, "the Conclave" can refer to the actual voting members of the College of Cardinals, but that reform came in 1970 when Cardinals over the age of 80 where no longer allowed to vote. But in Renaissance times, the College of Cardinals and the (voting members of) the Conclave are one and the same.

With that, “Head of the Papal Conclave” is not a good title. The Dean of the College of Cardinals only presides over the process of the Conclave. He does also serve as primus inter pares ("first among equals", so representative) for the College of Cardinals, which temporarily manages temporal and spiritual affairs of the Holy See* during a Sede vacante, but he's not the "head" of the College of Cardinals, and has no authority. I assume this wording was just a game-play abstraction, where even if a country is ruled by a body of people, Project Caesar still need a single character to act as the representative for that group (at least, that's how it worked in EU4, it would immediately generate a singular representative for governing councils like Fryske Frijheid in Friesland and Dithmarschen, or the Stadrat of Hamburg and Lubeck).

However, this all has an easy solution, and referring to the College of Cardinals as temporarily ruling the Papal States* would still be incorrect! Temporary governance of Church affairs/temporal affairs was only formally entrusted to the College of Cardinals in 1996 in the Universi Dominici gregis. During the renaissance era, the Papal States during a sede vacante would be ruled by the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. So this is the historical figure who should have been represented as the temporary authority of the Papal States.

Now, for the nitpicky stuff: as you've already seen throughout my post, the Papal States* wouldn't refer to themselves as "being in a Regency" (or pro tempore/"for the time being"), but as being in a state of Sede vacante (Seat vacant) - This matters because “Regency” might imply the Camerlengo is a stand-in for the Pope, which he is not.

Likewise, the Papacy has no concept of an "heir"; a better phrase would be “no clear candidate” or “no frontrunner among the papabile”. Thus, I'd also suggest renaming the "special Papal Heir Selection" feature to "Conclave", or "Papal successor selection".

*: There's a distinction between the Holy See, the Papacy, and the Papal States, and I tried to consistently reflect that. The Holy See and Papacy are vacant during a sede vacante, and are considered suspended, while the Papal States continue to function, under temporary civil administration by the Camerlengo. Thus, the Camerlengo should also never be refered to as a temporary ruler of the Holy See or Papacy, only as temporarily ruler of the Papal States.
 
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Screenshot_20250423_163554_Chrome.jpg

What happened to the catholic population, it used to be more than 85M in the catholic dev diary, is it because of the bubonic plague or a display bug?
 
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Building a university and not owning Rome.
why the "not owning Rome"? it make more sense to be "and not being the papal state".

in the scenario in which avignon wins and the italian possession win the revolt against the papal state (through one of the event we already know exist) it would make no sense for the new roman state to be forced to remain catholic, expecially because said republic would realistically hate the pope a lot and would be a prime candidate for protestantism (if not the one that would push for it the most out of any other country). the same could realistically happen for other countries too (florence and naples come to mind. naples in particular under federico II (during the 1250 so not long before the start date) was even accepting the muslims and were it to conquer rome in a game scenario it would make sense for them to move towards protestant.

finally, what probably is the most important. it's boring and not fun to force someone to not being able to change religion just because it own a location, if i own jerusalem i dont want to be forced into a religion, having benefit for being a certain religion can make sense but forcing it is just annoying, as it limits your decisions.
 
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How does the Council of Trent voting work? If any Catholic can propose a debate, is there something in place to show that a vote is underway? Maybe like HRE incidents work in EU4 where you get a notification and have a year to take a side? Otherwise the AI could just run through the votes and the council ends before the player can blink.

The rules are majority voting I presume, but can you do anything to influence another country to vote a certain way, or do they just pick a side based on their internal calculations? If the latter, could you describe a bit what makes a country support/oppose one of the sides?
It will show up in the panel for the Council of Trent, after being proposed:

Indulgences2.jpg

Indulgences3.jpg

Indulgences vote.jpg
 
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Will it be possible to mend?
 
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In the game could i end the great schisme ?
either as a orthidoxe by "convince " the pape he only one of the patriarch
or as catholique by make all patriarch agreed on the superiority of the pape ?

second question
could the prostestanime end peacefully ? aka either the catolique reform egnougt so the protestant give up to become a new faith
or that the protestant end up be allow to live in they way even if it a litle unorthodoxe
 
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View attachment 1284685
What do these icons mean?
Zwingli is a Cabinet Member in his country. A few more years into this game, there's a interesting one for Calvin:

Calvin.jpg

We have to correct Calvinist theocracies being Bishoprics, but well, we're halfway there!
 
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