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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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I hope the council of Trent policies will make it harder / easier for protestantisme to spread. After all it WAS an attempt at slowing down protestantism, and it'd make sense that depending of how Catholicism responds to protestants complaints, protestantism is more or less attractive to catholic pops
 
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Will non Curia countries be able to chose which pope they support?

And can the split become permanent?
Is there an option to permanently divide Catholics, with one Church following Rome and the other Avignion?
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.
 
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Right now, it only works for Curia countries, but since it's a scripted system, we could make it so any type of country in the IO is eligible, with different weights.
A lot of non Curia countries picked a side historically.

For example Scotland followed its French Ally into supporting Avignon. And a lot of other nations picked a side.
 
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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.
What do these weights look like? Is Luther more likely to show up in an especially wealthy bishoprics?
After all, it was Albert of Brandenburg, Elector of Mainz, who was the catalyst for Luther's protest. Albert funded his expensive outfits, patronage of the arts and generous donations by extensive sale of indulgences.
1745413856872.png
 
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1745413813874.jpeg


I know the UI is WIP, but some feedback: Feels like the character portrait could be a bit bigger here, and the spacing between buttons and the event text could be reduced. The text color’s contrast with the background could also be a bit more stark so its more visible esp to ppl with eyesight issues
 
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  • The Lutheran Preachers, which is a building that may spawn and spread throughout Catholic countries:
I noticed this before on another building - why does it only say "Monthly Religious Conversion", but doesn't mention what religion people are being converted to?
 
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Is there anything you can do as a player to try to spawn the reformation in your lands? Are there events and the like that will make it more likely to spawn in one place rather than another? (Outside of the predefined weights)
Building a university and not owning Rome.
 
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Screenshot_20250423_150359_Chrome.jpg

It should say rueler fo the Papal states to sound better also shouldn't the Pope be part of the crown(or whatever it's called for theocracies) estate?
 
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I'm curious if there will be any mechanics for trying characters as heritics in the reformation? Similarly, I'm wondering whether there will be specific mechanics for the counter reformation. Perhaps a cabinet action could be done by the papal state to root out heritics in a foreign country. Great TT though!
 
I feel like the Lutheran reformation should alway spawn in Germany or at least not in southern Europe, can you make a bunch of rules for that, including one that makes it spwan in Wittenberg?
 
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