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Tinto Talks #61 - 30th of April 2025

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Wednesdays where we talk about our entirely super-top-secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week, we will examine the mechanics of Protestant religions and the final situation involving all Western Christian confessions, the War of Religions.

First is first, we differentiate the 3 main Protestant religions: Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. All the different branches of Protestantism, more or less strictly covered under these wide denominations, are later represented through Church Aspects, a mechanism we’ll describe now. The underlying system here is for every player to be able to customize their own Protestant Church. As an example, the early Anglican Church funded by Henry VIII was very different from the Anglican Church that developed in times of James I, and the further division that then happened with the Puritans; we aim to portray dynamically these theological aspects with Church Aspects, therefore.

Let’s take a look at a Lutheran country first:

Early Reformation.jpg
I’m using the same save as last week’s TT. The Reformation was born in Perugia, and after a couple of years, it has already spread to some countries, of which Denmark is the biggest.

Here is the overview of Lutheranism and its religious panel:
Lutheranism tooltip.jpg

Lutheranism panel.jpg

Similarly to Catholicism, and other religions, it also uses Religious Influence as a currency:
Religious Influence.jpg

This currency is used to add or change Religious Aspects to your Church, and it also allows us to perform Religious Actions (of which we can’t currently perform any, as we don’t fulfill any of their triggers).

Let’s take a look now at the Religious Aspects, which define each Protestant Church:
Religious Aspect.jpg

There are plenty of Aspects, that can be either shared between the different Protestant religions, or be unique to them. This is the list of all the aspects available to Lutheran churches:
Religious Aspect2.jpg

Religious Aspect3.jpg

Religious Aspect4.jpg

Religious Aspect5.jpg

And this is what it looks like when you decide to pick one of them:
Translated Bibles.jpg

The base number of Religious Aspects that define each Church is 3, although this is subject to review, as usual. And it is possible to have entirely different and unique aspects per religion, since it’s a scriptable/moddable feature. Furthermore, Religious Aspects can have an impact on the relations a country has with others who use Religious Aspects. Since the aspects are partially shared between the faiths, this could lead to unlikely friendships… and hostilities.

Let’s now move on to the next religion, Calvinism, which is quite similar in structure to Lutheranism. It also spawns during the Reformation situation, it also has Calvinist Preachers that spread it, and it also uses Religious Aspects and Actions:
Calvinist Preachers.png

Calvinism tooltip.jpg

Calvinist panel.jpg

Calvin.jpg

Fun fact, Calvin has ended up being the Bishop (=ruler) of Basel in our save game!

Finally, we have Anglicanism. This Protestant religion doesn’t trigger through the situation, but as an event for England that may trigger after the Reformation is active:
Act of Supremacy.jpg

Ignore the broken loc, it appears like that because I used a console command to trigger it.

If we decided to Take command of the Church, a new religion will be created:
Take command of the Church.jpg

Anglicanism2.jpg

This is its overview and panel; Anglicanism starts with some more Religious Actions available:
Anglicanism.jpg

Anglican Religious Actions.jpg

Last, but not least, we have a couple of religions that also share the religious aspects, but are not necessarily tied to the Reformation situation. This includes Lollardy and Hussitism, which will be created together with their corresponding reformer, and the earlier catholic heresies of Bogomilism, Catharism, Paulicianism, and Waldensian.

The last feature we’re going to take a look at today is another situation, the War of Religions. This is the ending to all the narratives related to the Catholic and Protestant Churches, a fight for the religious supremacy over Europe, centered over the Holy Roman Empire, with the Thirty Years' War as inspiration:
War of Religion1.jpg

War of Religion2.jpg

War of Religion3.jpg

Two International Organizations will be created, the Protestant Union and the Catholic League:
Protestant Union.jpg

Catholic League.jpg

And this is the panel for the situation, which both sides, their relative strengths, the possibility to join one side or the other, etc.:
War of Religion4.jpg

An inconclusive result may lead to the negotiation of the Peace of Westphalia between the members of both Leagues and will alter the religious laws of the Holy Roman Empire.

… And that’s all for today! Next week, @Johan will come back once again to show more of the most recent changes and tweaks in the game. Cheers!
 
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GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, LIBERA ET IMPERA! Looking forward to seeing the 30-years war in action. Hoping switching sides will be possible as it historically happened.
 
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Do doctrinal differences between different churches effect their relationship at all? IRL the main fissure between Calvinism and Lutheranism was over communion, but it would be cool if they could dynamically split over another issue like adult baptism. (More differences, worse relations with other churches)
 
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Is the League War still hardcoded around what will now be Lutheranism, or can the other post-1054 faiths win out if you cultivate enough influence or military power? I'm just thinking of how painful that Hussite HRE achievement was.
 
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And this is the panel for the situation, which both sides, their relative strengths, the possibility to join one side or the other, etc.:
Why does it say "Protestant Pops" and "Catholic Pops"? A pop is just an in-game unit that can have any number of people, there aren't actually 48 million different pops. Shouldn't it be "Protestant Population" and "Catholic Population"?
 
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I'm not a huge fan of using "Lutheran" and "Calvinist" when those were labels applied to the reformist movements by the Catholic church, and were even disliked by Martin Luther and John Calvin, themselves. While the terms are more readily accepted by some members of said denominations today, it would be far better to use the terms they preferred, that being Evangelical and Reformed, respectively (Continental Reformed to be specific, as Anglicanism is also a Reformed denomination).

You might get away with it for Lutheran as it describes the denomination only. Calvinism, however, is not a denomination, it's more specifically a particular Soterial view which is a part of some Reformist denominations. It'd also be wrong not to show that the Reformist denomination was already separate under Huldrych Zwingli before Calvin became a prominent Reformed theologian.

As for the content, I was wondering if some of the major events of the reformation are present, like the Marburg Colloquy? Another question, which I'd asked in the Military Order TT is whether the Teutonic Order and Knights Hospitaller have mechanics to represent their historical splits during the reformation, creating protestant (More specifically Evangelical) military orders?

Other than Evangelical and Reformed, are other early protestant divisions present? The Swiss brethren and Anabaptism, in particular? Currently you're portraying two Reformed denominations, one Evangelical, and all of these are from what's called the Magisterial Reformation, meaning you have no representation of any denominations from the Radical Reformation.
 
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Do you have to be a member of the empire to join the religious leagues? What about all the other countries?

Also, is there any practical difference/unique feature at this stage between the protestant and protestant-adjacent faiths? (Other than Anglicanism?)
 
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