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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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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.
Very disappointing. MEIOU & taxes was able to easily do it and it was just an EU4 mod with avignonist flipping to a avignonist faith. Couldn't you use the religious school system and have 2 temporaty catholic schools for this situation, Romanist and Avignionist?
 
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Screenshot_20250423_154932_Chrome.jpg
Can you change the colour of the Roman side ro red(like the one on the Papal States flag)? it would make a nice contrast with the French blue since that yellow is not really clear from afar and it would make more sense for neutral countries
 
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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.
I don't either, but my dog Latin knowledge at a first glance says this one allows you to buy handmade indulgences on Etsy, something Luther famously hated.
etsy.png
 
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My final question that comes to mind is what effect the laws for sainthood and indulgences are?

I'm particularly interested in the ones pertaining to sainthood. The names seem to allude to some possibilities, but it's hard to work out given that they're not the names of bulls or any official doctrine name to my knowledge (Not that that's an issue, it just means having to rely on the mouse-over tooltip). The second option pertains to the worship of saints, that much is clear, the third to raising people to holiness, but what effect they might have is not clear. I'd love to know if they have mechanical effects on things like how saints are canonized.

When it comes to indulgences the first two policies are actual bulls relating to enacting indulgences, though I'm not certain on what the difference will be between them. The third one is probably a dissolving of the practice, I'd guess, then?
 
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Very disappointing. MEIOU & taxes was able to easily do it and it was just an EU4 mod with avignonist flipping to a avignonist faith. Couldn't you use the religious school system and have 2 temporaty catholic schools for this situation, Romanist and Avignionist?
But eventually it would unite back one way or another right? So why dividing it in the first place?
 
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Does it really make a lot of sense for the reformation to spawn in Italy considering that protestantism had very few successes in this region ?
I don't know if this shouldn't happen at all but it should be at least extremely unlikely
 
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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.
I think it's more important for the legitimacy of the Pope to have more catholic countries recognizing him than to check only cardinals (Curia members).
 
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There aren't only Lutheran Preachers and Reformers in the Situation, but more on this next week:

View attachment 1284683
The duplicate portraits' graphical bug has been quickly solved! Truly a miracle!
Why does Ulrich seem to be Catholic? The others seem to be Lutheran sans Calvin, who obviously would be Calvinist, but Ulrich throws me off. There’s also the hat on the right instead of the man and woman.
 
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I think it's more important for the legitimacy of the Pope to have more catholic countries recognizing them than to check only cardinals (Curia members).
Maybe Curia members could provide more influence than regular countries

I think countries recognise one of the popes should still have an effect even if it’s small.
 
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Could the reformation be prevented? If it doesnt it look like this situation goes contrary to the concept of situations as a whole. If even unlikely situations like the prevention of the fall of Yuan could be done, i imagine the reformation would work the same.

If the reformation happens, could both sides reconcile? Like it was possible for some of the "protestant" faiths like the hussites.
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.
 
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Why does the game show the King of France? It should show the Pope in Avignon not Cahors, speaking of which Avignon should separate from the Papal States and be its own country(subject of France) while all of this happens and whoever wins becomes the new Papal States
 
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Why there is a requirement for age of revolutoins if there is already one for absolutism? Is it possible to skip an age?View attachment 1284677
Because it's reading a variable called current_age_or_later, which automatically takes any age after the one it is linked to. In some cases, it may be useful; in others, like this, not. Reporting it to our UI team, thanks.
 
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