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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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Okay, I just went to the Wikipedia page for the schism, to the section on which states supported which pope. 90% (I'm being charitable to the game, here) of the ones on the list did not have a cardinal from their country at this time, and - in this game - would not care about the schism despite many historically going to war over the issue. I was going to highlight all the ones that would not care about the schism in the game to prove my point, but gave up when most of the list was highlighted.

By not 'overcomplicating it' you've made most of the weight of this moment in history impossible to reproduce in game, and made the Schism only affect the countries with cardinals, when it affected the entirety of Catholicism.
yea, it really should be something that all countries can support and get involved in that are catholic. It is something that every catholic ruler would have opinions on. Having multiple popes is not a minor thing.
 
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Zwingli is a Cabinet Member in his country. A few more years into this game, there's a interesting one for Calvin:

View attachment 1284731
We have to correct Calvinist theocracies being Bishoprics, but well, we're halfway there!
Technically some Calvinist churches do have an episcopal structure with bishoprics, like the Reformed Church in Hungary (and Transylvania)
 
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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!
Stellaris 2 confirmed.

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.
Wouldn't it make more sense for Luther to speak Germanic language ? Or to at least give him an Italianised name, if there's a reason to keep Italy an option ?
 
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Wait there is no based Thomas Müntzer alternative to yucky Martin Luther?

Jokes aside, the reformation has a lot to do with the material conditions of germany, like the early transition towards capitalism, the destruction of older feudal systems and the increase of serfdom and roman civil law to strengthen states (and the western schism essentially destroying the image and power of the church).

So personally I do think that Martin Luther should spawn in germany, weighted towards wittenberg if that location has a university.
 
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Being unable to completely prevent the Reformation as a Catholic does make some sense, especially with the general heavy focus on historical outcomes.

But at a certain point, does it really make sense for Lutheranism to spawn if the Proto Protestants had been very successful? Historically the Hussites got absorbed into Lutheranism and the Waldensians got absorbed into the Reformed church, could that not go the other way?

And that's not even touching on England.
 
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What happens if the French candidate wins? Will the Papacy remain in Avignon ? Will France have significant influence over the entirety of the Catholic Church ?
 
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Is it possible to reform the Catholic Church preventing or delaying the Reformation? Like if I'm playing the Papal States and decide to curb some of the excesses of the Church?

Can there be a permanent schism, either moving the capital of the Papal States to Avignon or maybe even have France turn "Anglican" with its own version of Catholicsm based out of Avignon Papacy?

What if Rome is conquered by an outsider while the Western Schism is still present? Will the Papal States revert to Avignon? Or the other way, what if Avignon is annexed by France while the Schism is still present?

EDIT:

What if somebody conquers the Papal States before the Reformation? Will it still fire? Also what would happen to the Catholicism IO or Papal States IO if all their territories are occupied? Will the Papal State IO features still work if they're gone from the map?

Are there any prerequisites from the Reformation spawning? Can we in any way avoid or delay them?

EDIT:

Was really excited about the implications of a greater schism, but it seems that this is still super railroaded. The only thing I could expect from this now is for the entire schism to last for at the very least 40 years as it was historically. Sandbox can't be sandbox, I suppose.
 
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If it’s the year 1360 or later, a Schism might strike the Catholic Church, making for a divided election:

You're probably aware of this but there is a typo in that tooltip, the third line from the bottom should be "the Catholic world." The first line should also be "thrown the Curia into petty factionalism." And you're missing a comma in the second line of the big paragraph.

Also: my personal suggestion, I think "the French faction insists on the new Pope remaining under their control" is a little clumsy/redundant given the previous line and how many times the word 'control' appears in this tooltip. Maybe: "the French faction insists on the new Pope remaining in France"?
 
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Fully agreed, pulpit is a great word to represent preachers/preaching without referring to actual people which would be weird for a building.
Especially for the Reformation. The only other way I think they could actually do this is to actually make them characters or preachers then they would have to scrap the buildings and make a modifier. But I think the pulpit is a good middle ground and they just need to change one word. Though as I’m not Protestant myself I’m a filthy Papist I wouldn’t mind someone from a Protestant viewpoint to lend their hat into the ring.
 
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As long as the Council of Trent is nowhere near as annoyingly RNG as it is in EU4, I'll be... content. Mostly.