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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 wanted to ask about a thing I have seen in a few places in these Talks regarding Characters.

1745593537982.png

In this screenshot we can see that if a character name get's shortened the first name is displayed.
To me it would make more sense if it was the last, usually people say "luther's 95 theses" and not "Martin's 95 theses"
or they talk about Mozart, Bach, Goethe etc.

As ever an interesting talk, even with interesting timing
 
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If there are 7 laws but the Counsel of Trent is a success after passing 5, does that mean it will always be impossible to change those last two laws? If Trent is the only time you can change Catholic doctrine not being able to change all the laws during it seems frustrating.
 
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If there are 7 laws but the Counsel of Trent is a success after passing 5, does that mean it will always be impossible to change those last two laws? If Trent is the only time you can change Catholic doctrine not being able to change all the laws during it seems frustrating.
It appears to be the 7 laws that the Curia can advise on (read: vote). During the Counsel all members can vote.

My question is can we have more than one vote per law? If so, is it limited to only ones that previously failed or can I bounce an easy law between passable choices? or is it the point when you get to 3 passed and 3 failed you are doomed to wait for the timeout?
 
It appears to be the 7 laws that the Curia can advise on (read: vote). During the Counsel all members can vote.

My question is can we have more than one vote per law? If so, is it limited to only ones that previously failed or can I bounce an easy law between passable choices? or is it the point when you get to 3 passed and 3 failed you are doomed to wait for the timeout?
Based on the last TT it seems like you can only bring these laws to vote during the Council of Trent, even if you are the papacy. Which doesn’t seem quite right given that at minimum Summis desiderantes affectibus was issued decades prior to the council, meaning it and any similar changes would have to be depicted with scripted events exclusively, as opposed to any dynamic systems.
 
Based on the last TT it seems like you can only bring these laws to vote during the Council of Trent, even if you are the papacy. Which doesn’t seem quite right given that at minimum Summis desiderantes affectibus was issued decades prior to the council, meaning it and any similar changes would have to be depicted with scripted events exclusively, as opposed to any dynamic systems.

I went back and reread and it does seem like the doctrine is locked.

A further note is that the requirements for the situation to end is 5 passed. It doesn't state what actually ends it, i.e. when the conditions are met or when something else occurs (button press) when the conditions are met.

There are a lot of thing vague about the Trent situation.
 
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!
I noticed that John Calvin's name is wrong, you used middle French for John(Jehan) but modern French for Calvin rather than middle French(Cauvin)
 
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