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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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Hmm, so Cardinals are buildings created ex nihilo from state fiat, whereas Lutheran preachers are buildings spawned by event.

Can the Devs please replace state-created Cardinal-buildings with event-spawned Cardinals buildings that will similarly be event-destroyed? The “workers” could represent the Cardinal plus his staff.

Seems like could be the simplest “fix” to replacing the simony of buying permanent cardinals with allowing for dynamic Cardinal creation without having to change too many things.
 
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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!
Pope Sigma X
 
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!
Tbh I really love the 3D characters; those are the best iteration of any PDX game until now. The only thing that bothers me personally, is that they are too blurry, I would like to see them more sharp.
 
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Why is Ulrich Zwingli labeled as a Lutheran?

Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers never considered themselves to be of the same exact sect as Luther. They certainly agreed with Luther's push for reform within the Catholic Church, and eventually that a clean break with the Church was necessary to engage in their reforms. However Zwingli's Reformed movement often sought to go further than Luther was. Most prominently regarding the Eucharist. While Luther criticized the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, because he believed that the pagan philosophy of Aristotle should not be used to explain the Eucharist, he still affirmed that the physical bread and wine were truly transformed into body and blood of Christ at the moment of Epiclesis, just as the Catholic and Orthodox Church taught. Luther's view was referred to as "Consubstantiation" as he still believed in the metaphysical transformation of the bread and wine at the moment of Epiclesis, but rejected that Catholic Church's adoption of Aristotelian metaphysics to explain this.

Zwingli on the other hand did not believe that the bread and wine transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ. Zwingli believed that it was purely symbolic, and therefore the Eucharist should not be worshipped. This is a major difference, as the Reformed Church viewed Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Lutheranism as having committed idolatry by worshipping the Eucharist as the physical incarnation of Christ.

Other differences include Luther taking a more accepting role of the veneration of Saints, while Zwingli saw this as idol worship. Reformed churches tend to be very iconoclast compared with Lutheran churches for this reason. Zwingli was also against the usage of instruments in worship, as he believed this was not found in the Scriptures, while Luther was okay with church organs, just as were present in the Catholic Mass.

There are many other differences, but the main point is that Zwingli should not be depicted as a Lutheran.

The Reformed Church was a separate entity from Luther's movement, though they were both parts of the larger Protestant sect.

In EU4 (not to suggest that Project Caesar has any relation to that game), Lutheranism is referred to as "Protestantism" while the Reformed movement of Zwingli, and later John Calvin, are referred to as "Reformed."

They should definitely be depicted separately, and occasionally have religious disputes about doctrine, given that Lutherans tended to be more traditional by Protestant standards, while Reformed churches tended to be more anti-traditional.
 
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Why is Ulrich Zwingli labeled as a Lutheran?

Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers never considered themselves to be of the same exact sect as Luther. They certainly agreed with Luther's push for reform within the Catholic Church, and eventually that a clean break with the Church was necessary to engage in their reforms. However Zwingli's Reformed movement often sought to go further than Luther was. Most prominently regarding the Eucharist. While Luther criticized the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, because he believed that the pagan philosophy of Aristotle should not be used to explain the Eucharist, he still affirmed that the physical bread and wine were truly transformed into body and blood of Christ at the moment of Epiclesis, just as the Catholic and Orthodox Church taught. Luther's view was referred to as "Consubstantiation" as he still believed in the metaphysical transformation of the bread and wine at the moment of Epiclesis, but rejected that Catholic Church's adoption of Aristotelian metaphysics to explain this.

Zwingli on the other hand did not believe that the bread and wine transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ. Zwingli believed that it was purely symbolic, and therefore the Eucharist should not be worshipped. This is a major difference, as the Reformed Church viewed Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Lutheranism as having committed idolatry by worshipping the Eucharist as the physical incarnation of Christ.

Other differences include Luther taking a more accepting role of the veneration of Saints, while Zwingli saw this as idol worship. Reformed churches tend to be very iconoclast compared with Lutheran churches for this reason. Zwingli was also against the usage of instruments in worship, as he believed this was not found in the Scriptures, while Luther was okay with church organs, just as were present in the Catholic Mass.

There are many other differences, but the main point is that Zwingli should not be depicted as a Lutheran.

The Reformed Church was a separate entity from Luther's movement, though they were both parts of the larger Protestant sect.

In EU4 (not to suggest that Project Caesar has any relation to that game), Lutheranism is referred to as "Protestantism" while the Reformed movement of Zwingli, and later John Calvin, are referred to as "Reformed."

They should definitely be depicted separately, and occasionally have religious disputes about doctrine, given that Lutherans tended to be more traditional by Protestant standards, while Reformed churches tended to be more anti-traditional.
Because different schools of Protestantism came only later. At first, protestants and Lutherans were used interchangeably. So, depending on whatever other schools, or splits .... denominations, if you will, determines how they are called. Just like they were Christian before Catholics and Orthodox became a thing, or like how Jesus was jew before his baptism..... and that's why Hussites are called Hussites and not protestants or Lutherans because they predate them......
.... and lets be honest, unlike pretentious and sadomasochistic theology of different Protestant schools, Hussites were the best, because all they wanted was wine.... I mean eucharist for the lay people as well. ;)

that makes me think.... Hussite religion should probably boost pops/church building's need for wine consumption, while on the other hand, Calvinist churches & pops should have less luxury consumption needs.....
 
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Has anyone seen The Tudors TV series? I am reminded of Thomas More who was executed for failing to renounce his catholic beliefs to the very last.
Check out the European adaptation mini-series of Eco's: The Name of the Rose (2019). Awesome stuff
 
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I want, no I *NEED* to know more!
Obviously, they took the whole library of assets and uploaded them to the AI for an update & refinement to meet the contemporary AAA standards. That way, we will get the old classics we all know and enjoy, but improved in every aspect that matters and counts.

all been confirmed over here:
 
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Obviously, they took the whole library of assets and uploaded them to the AI for an update & refinement to meet the contemporary AAA standards. That way, we will get the old classics we all know and enjoy, but improved in every aspect that matters and counts.

all been confirmed over here:
i dont see anything that confirms it on that thread
 
Why is Ulrich Zwingli labeled as a Lutheran?

Zwingli and the Swiss Reformers never considered themselves to be of the same exact sect as Luther. They certainly agreed with Luther's push for reform within the Catholic Church, and eventually that a clean break with the Church was necessary to engage in their reforms. However Zwingli's Reformed movement often sought to go further than Luther was. Most prominently regarding the Eucharist. While Luther criticized the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, because he believed that the pagan philosophy of Aristotle should not be used to explain the Eucharist, he still affirmed that the physical bread and wine were truly transformed into body and blood of Christ at the moment of Epiclesis, just as the Catholic and Orthodox Church taught. Luther's view was referred to as "Consubstantiation" as he still believed in the metaphysical transformation of the bread and wine at the moment of Epiclesis, but rejected that Catholic Church's adoption of Aristotelian metaphysics to explain this.

Zwingli on the other hand did not believe that the bread and wine transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ. Zwingli believed that it was purely symbolic, and therefore the Eucharist should not be worshipped. This is a major difference, as the Reformed Church viewed Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Lutheranism as having committed idolatry by worshipping the Eucharist as the physical incarnation of Christ.

Other differences include Luther taking a more accepting role of the veneration of Saints, while Zwingli saw this as idol worship. Reformed churches tend to be very iconoclast compared with Lutheran churches for this reason. Zwingli was also against the usage of instruments in worship, as he believed this was not found in the Scriptures, while Luther was okay with church organs, just as were present in the Catholic Mass.

There are many other differences, but the main point is that Zwingli should not be depicted as a Lutheran.

The Reformed Church was a separate entity from Luther's movement, though they were both parts of the larger Protestant sect.

In EU4 (not to suggest that Project Caesar has any relation to that game), Lutheranism is referred to as "Protestantism" while the Reformed movement of Zwingli, and later John Calvin, are referred to as "Reformed."

They should definitely be depicted separately, and occasionally have religious disputes about doctrine, given that Lutherans tended to be more traditional by Protestant standards, while Reformed churches tended to be more anti-traditional.
I expect with the expanded religious mechanics each protestant church will be implemented, with the ability to create brand new, even custom churches. I imagine historic protestant denominations will be prompted when you break with the Catholics (like playing as England, you'll have the option to be Anglican, or create your own Super-Anglicanism). That said, I hope that in terms of mechanics (which buttons you push and the like) I hope we just get mechanics similar to EUIV, with one set for the protestant churches and one set for the reformed. The main thing is I hope in terms of opinion that protestant churches understand they are protestant togther and dislike the catholics more than each-other. Maybe not to the extent they fully treat other protestant churches as equal, but much less religious friction than they'd have with catholics.