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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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Could you please share some unique Hussite Aspects?

A war of Religions situation must, can and will end only once domination/p.o.Westphalia is reached? Are there any possible temporary halts to full-on war, like a truce or something akin to myriad treaties & peaces that either got broken or were just between junior participants...
 
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Anabaptists and Unitarians should be considered separate religions; Anabaptists, especially, were simultaneously persecuted both by Catholics and other Protestants (!!!), they definitely were not the same as Lutherans; in fact, the reason so many of them ended up in the Americas was this universal persecution they faced from both sides. In fact, Anabaptism was never embraced by any country as a state religion in history.

Unitarians were also recognized as a fourth party in addition to Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics, especially in Transylvania, where they (specifically the preacher Dávid Ferenc) had a key role in mediating between the different faiths, and establishing the Edict of Torda, which is a very big and important event towards religious freedom in Europe.

Transylvania gameplay without Unitarians is like eating soup without salt.
Agreed. I imagine that the pacifist leanings of a lot of Anabaptist movements should also slow the recruitment of them to soldier pops?
 
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Are the religions balanced or are we going to have a situation at release, where some religions are inherently better (gameplay-wise, as in it is much more interesting and offers much more)?
 
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How does the game handle a denomination like Methodism, which split off from Anglicanism? Would it be handled by a special event, or would England have to 'create' a new church in some way?
 
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On the flavour text for the Anglican faith - Henry VIII didn’t execute Wolsey - although he did play a role in Wolsey’s downfall and death from ill health (Wolf Hall enjoyers know what’s up)
 
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So yeah, completely ignoring two entirely separate branches of the Reformation is sort of sad. I wish you allowed for an alternative historical scenario when Baptists and Unitarians were the most successful Protestant branches
 
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Well, I think the Germans that lived between 1618 and 1648 would beg to differ...
Can the War of Religions be even nearly as impactful for the population of the HRE in-game as IRL?
The population drop was comparable to the Black Death, and surely wars can't normally be balanced to be this destructive?
 
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Do you have to be a part of the HRE to join the different leagues?

Can you join the Protestant League without being protestant, or vice versa? For example, Catholic France siding against Catholic Austria.

If not, would there be any diplomatic weight calculations for France (or any other country) to not join the Catholic League, if the leader of the league is their rival?


 
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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)
Yes:
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.
 
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Also I kindly request... If Anglican is somehow a dominate force in the HRE, plz allow the League to swap to/allow to join with Anglican. I know historically Anglican wasn't large in the Empire, but if England+France unite and become proselytizers of it in Europe for their faith it would be nice to have a chance to become an Emperor of the HRE.
 
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Also, what is “everything is preordained: yes”? I feel like that is an important thing we should know about
Someone might have answered this, but Calvinists don't reroll the combat dice after battle start.
 
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1) Just so we're clear - this means only England will be able to start their own church due to wanting a divorce?
If so, will it be possible for mods to make this possible for any country?

2) Would you consider a game design principle that every choice should make trade-offs that isn't just opportunity cost? I would think that have religious aspect should have a negative trade-off.
 
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