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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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1. So aspects are per country, and that's what separates the different branches of protestantism, how does that work for countries that historically had multiple different branches? I think Transylvania is the best example for this, because it (by it, I mean Prince John Sigismund) went from catholic to lutheran to calvinist to unitarian to switching between these constantly (except for unitarianism, that was a one time thing), but not everyone converted to the new branch. Just because John Sigismund becomes Unitarian, doesn't mean Bocskai does as well, he remained Calvinist. Tranylvania at times had catholics, lutherans, calvinists, unitarians, anabaptists and sabbatarians. How would this religious disunity be represented?

2. Why not use the names the protestant churches used (evangelical/reformed), considering Lutheran and Calvinist were used as a derogatory term? Catholics aren't called Papists, so unless the names are dynamic based on the player's country's religion, I think it would be more consistent to use the names they themselves preferred.

3. Why is Anglicanism then represented by a different religion, how is it different from a lutheran or calvinist church with different aspects? Why would the English be the only one to create their seperate church? Now that we know that new cultures can be created, why can't everyone get their own "Anglican" church?

EDIT:
4. Always forget this last question, but is there anything for Greek Catholics or Sabbatarians?
 
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Will there be more protestant denominations in the future? Anglicanism, Lutheranism and Calvinism are the original three but what about the ones that emerged centuries later, such as baptists and methodists? First and Second Great Awakenings?
 
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Quite subjective, imo this sunny religion icon is really great for Imperator:Rome, but I find it quite odd for PC time frame (if it is not a placeholder).
EU4-ish icon seems better me.
Or maybe each religion can have its own icon in this window and in modifier icons.

1746019009182.png
 
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doesn't the "everything is preordained" modifier for calvinists encourage similar gameplay to imperator where you're incentivised to toss a few troops into a battle to gauge what the diceroll is like, and have the rest of your army only join once you've rolled a 9?
 
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Does Anabaptism/other forms of Radical Protestantism exist as well? These beliefs found conflict with Mainstream/Magisterial Protestantism as well, and were some of the larger groups attracted to migration to North America due to those conflicts.

Also, I hope there are better notifications about the League War - in EU4 not getting notifications for it means I usually miss it even when I want to participate.
 
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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.
Yes, that's the purpose of the 'Negotiate Member Removal' action, to be able to make other countries leave a Union/League.
 
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Will certain tags be more likely to convert to Lutheran or Calvinist

For example Scotland and Netherlands for Calvinist

And Scandinavian tags for Lutheran
No, although we'll put some AI weights to get a somewhat more historical result for AI countries. For the player, there will be additional flavour content related to those countries that went Lutheran/Calvinist/Anglican, but it's something up to the player to discover if role-playing the historical way.

PS: Oh, I was just also reminded by one of my coworkers that some regions already have a kind of 'historical kick start' with the historical reformers spawning together with the Lutheran/Calvinist preachers, which we already covered last week.
 
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Cool. A couple of questions:
1.) I could be wrong but my understanding of Lutheranism is that many of those church aspects are baked into the religion itself, like Sola Fide and sola scriptura? Am I wrong or could you be a lutheran church that breaks from the others, and at that point are you not your own movement instead of Lutheranism?
2.) What aspects do calvanist get that are unique?
3.) Do other breakway movements from the catholic church get church aspects?
I believe that they're using Lutheranism as a "building block" to represent the different sects of Protestantism through the different church aspects.
 
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I understand this would have been done for game mechanics reasons, but I find the idea that allowing usury would cause your interest rates to go down pretty funny.
 
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LEAGUE WAR!!! One of the mechanics I most dearly hoped would remain in the game! It is good to see that it's still here!!

That said, every single screen that we've seen is SLIM, THIN, NARROW, and lacks MEAT!!! These unrealistic expectations for screen shapes, which require everything to conform to a standard, are not good!!! Make the screens thick, curvy, shapely, and unique!!! Please!!!

EVERY. SINGLE. SCREEN. looks like it was designed to be seen in a mobile phone rather than a computer monitor!!

IWANTTHICK.jpg
 
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When does the religious war happen? I hope it's a 1620s thing, not a 1550 thing like in EU4
It can't trigger before 1590, so there's a good pacing with both the Reformation and the Council of Trent.
 
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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.
 
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Wolsey looks too miserly to be Cardinal-Archishop and Primate of England.

Also, Anglicanism is intrinsically tied to the Book of Common Prayer, and by extension (through its ordinals) to the Episcopacy. Anglicanism was not like Lutheranism where some polities retained bishops (Scandinavia) and some did not (some German princes, and the Pietistic German diaspora). If historically the Church in England had done away with bishops, we would probably not be using "Anglican" to describe it, and English Christianity would just be another kind of Calvinism or Presbyterianism. And this exact thing happened during the Commonwealth with the reforms of the Westminster Assembly, where they did away with the Book of Common Prayer and instituted just another type of Reformed, non-episcopal church very close to the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Scholars refer to the theology of this period Reformed/Presbyterian and influencing Congregationalist and Baptist churches. When the monarchy was restored, Prayer Book worship and the episcopacy was reinstated: true Anglicanism.

All this to say, Anglicanism and bishops go hand and hand and should not be optional. And yes, I know Anglicanism as a term was not in use until the 19th century but it's used retroactively to describe this more traditional, not as radical, state-church, episcopal, Prayer Book form of Protestantism.
 
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