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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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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 mean, there are various degrees to alt-history. "What if the Golden Horde suddenly converted to Nahuatl and then proceeded to conquer all of Africa" is not equal to one of the obvious possible outcomes for a situation already present in game that lasted nearly half a century (before counting the preceding 60+ years Avignon Papacy that directly led to the schism). By that logic, why allow Timur to fail in his situation? Why allow Hussites to win theirs? Or if we use them as the baseline, if unlike them the Western Schism has a set outcome, why not make it just an event chain?
 
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Was the look at the Western Schism just a surface-level showcase? Because as it is in the post, it looks rather inconsequential.
I hope the religious war will be deeper than the EU4 league war, which a strange fusion of the Schmalkalden War and the 30 Years War and happens way too early.
 
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Is there any possibility in the future to force the Papacy to move to one of your counties/locations, via a mechanic during the conclave? E.g. as England, force the conclave to elect the pope in one of your Cardinal locales. It could also lead to player-made schisms when the conclave happens again. Not sure on how alt-history that is.
 
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How is Zwingli a Lutheran preacher? He was the main philosopher behind Anabaptism, afaik.
There aren't only Lutheran Preachers and Reformers in the Situation, but more on this next week:

Reformers.jpg

The duplicate portraits' graphical bug has been quickly solved! Truly a miracle!
 
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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.
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.
 
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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.
Ehm...why not? It's a Paradox game after all!
 
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So from this post we know that we can expect to see some ecumenical councils. The Council of Trent, and a Council like the Council of Constance.
Are there events for councils similar to the other two major councils of the period?

The Council of Florence - Which famously 'ended' the East-West schism (It didn't) and where Conciliarism was a big topic of discussion
And The Fifth Council of the Lateran - which was a chance to reform, but where no major reform happened.
 
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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.
View attachment 1284674
Since we're looking for a somewhat historical outcome, the weights are per location, with regional weights, so it's more likely for the Reformation to appear in Germany than in any other region. But, again, the system is super flexible, so it can potentially be changed to be weighted on wealth, population, etc.

In any case, the seed is random, so it can happen as in my game, having it spawn in Italy, which has a negative regional modifier.
 
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We relied on one of our fellow devs, @jobarin94 , to deliver them; I hope he knows his Latin well, because I'm too used to the rusty, romanced Medieval variant of it!
I mean more like a UI question. I'm sure we (the forumites who play too much) will memorize them after a few hundred hours, but these names aren't useful "at a glance" because I don't know Latin.
 
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