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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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No, it works if there's any country professing a Protestant religion - and we have defined as 'Protestants' the following: Lollardism, Hussitism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism.
What about Cathars, Waldensians and Krjstiani? Aren't they considered protestant faiths, I thought they used the same mrchanics? Please add them!
 
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The spread of the reformation follows a very basic pattern seen throughout most of europe: the cities and their burghers go lutheran, germans tended to go lutheran wherever they were from transylvania to scotland because the church became a proxy for their national identity, the peasants stay the old faith be it catholic or orthodox unless forced to change by the local authorities which they obey sheepishly as long as times are good, the clergy is split, the nobles prefer calvinism and the rulers can consult their conscious or political realities depending on personalities. In Hungary the nobility was calvinist, the cities lutheran, the peasants largely orthodox and all their enemies catholic and muslim. Bad place to be in.
This is heavy generalisation by the way; a lot of the peasants and nobility stayed Catholic, while a big portion of the peasantry and Hungarian townsfolk also adopted Calvinism. I don't know where you took that the "peasants were largely Orthodox". But yes, Calvinism's quick spread was due to it being less of a "German religion" than Lutheranism, while Lutheranism spread in the German cities, and it would make sense if religions spread quicker between pops of the same dialect and language if "Bible Translations" is an active aspect.
 
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Considering how PDX has widely expanded on "pagan" religions (ethnic religions, mainly in some way naturalistic and then outside of Europe) and has even expanded on pre-Reformation schisms, just plainly copying over the EU4 Reformation seems very much like a lazy job to me. On further reflection, it even seems to turn into a obvious area where PDX is holding back on a feature to then make DLC in the future. I'll admit that that is a deliberately negative reading of the situation but still, adding the Radical Reformation and allowing multiple religious league wars in the HRE would much help immersion. The scale of the Reformation should be defining for the mid-game of any European game of PC!
 
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This is heavy generalisation by the way; a lot of the peasants and nobility stayed Catholic, while a big portion of the peasantry and Hungarian townsfolk also adopted Calvinism. I don't know where you took that the "peasants were largely Orthodox". But yes, Calvinism's quick spread was due to it being less of a "German religion" than Lutheranism, while Lutheranism spread in the German cities, and it would make sense if religions spread quicker between pops of the same dialect and language if "Bible Translations" is an active aspect.
I was generalizing yes, pointing to exceptions to the rule however does not disprove the rule. Im laying out broadstroke generalizations to work as pointers for gameplay modifiers which push pops in one direction or another.

The point of contention is specifically that lower literacy was a great indicator that an area would not be touched by the reformation, Luthers ideas spread extremely rapidly to Spain and Scandinavia within a year of his controversy and were read in latin and translated quickly yet only really took root among the substrata of the population who were literarily inclined.

The peasants in Hungary refer to the orthodox population in its eastern parts, this was to highlight the sconfessional heterdoxy within the kingdom. The Hungarians specifically claimed that the germaness of lutheranism influenced their particular choice for calvinism. Maybe I wasnt clear and I need to state things more clearly in the future but I hope you can read my messages in more good faith going forward.
 
But if Hussites win their war and entrench themselves, by the time Luther comes around it'd be him looking up to Hussites as a possible partner as an already established major movement, not the other way around. And if anything, it should allow the Hussites to take a leading role in the reformation if they so wanted.
Exactly, I'm pretty sure I have a comment on the previous tinto talk saying this exact thing.
I don't actually want Hussites to be removed and simulated with Lutherans, I want there to be a way for Protestant faiths to join together. For that matter, there should be a way for the Reformation to merge with the Catholic Church and, you know, reform it. Please let us heal schisms Tinto, all of the schisms.
 
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Exactly, I'm pretty sure I have a comment on the previous tinto talk saying this exact thing.
I don't actually want Hussites to be removed and simulated with Lutherans, I want there to be a way for Protestant faiths to join together. For that matter, there should be a way for the Reformation to merge with the Catholic Church and, you know, reform it. Please let us heal schisms Tinto, all of the schisms.
Man, each and every time people just keep touching upon the work that M&T did in EU4. A big dissapointment for me seems to be the lack of Catholic Ecumenical Councils before the Council of Trent. One is implied through the Great Western Schism being healed, but not explicitly named. M&T used these as oppertunities where a ambitious player could try to tackle institutional problems within the Church and thus prevent the Reformation from spawning. Again, whilst the starting conditions of different Christian branches seem much better (even if that guy and his thread about how they should represent liturgical reality and not communion status makes a really convincing point) what is presented in the talks isn't much more than a copy and paste job of what was in EU4 plus what is needed to minimally fill the extra century before 1444
 
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The Protestantism mechanics feels a bit out of place with the general design of the game. The churches are being represented as state entities that only impact relations with other state entities, and ignores the social impact the the Protestant Reformation unleashed. There is a part of me that is disappointed that the pops seemingly won't care about the religious differences between the various churches, and part that understands that the demands for properly breaking up Protestantism are too much.

The DD mentions the Puritans, but I don't see how the Puritans can even be represented by Anglicanism? They were Anglicans only in that they had to be to legally stay in England. The Pilgrims to Plymouth Plantation were the Puritans that wanted to separate from the Anglican Church rather than reform it. So if the Puritans win the English Civil War, and manage to maintain control, do they switch the country to Calvinism with congregationalist aspects? Its a shame because things like the general tolerance of Protestants born out of the English Civil War can't be modeled as, well, there are only three types of Protestants.
 
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I think there should be a religion or some mechanic to represent the 'radical reformation'. Considering they played a somewhat important role for places like munster and more.

It would be hard to emulate radical denominations like anabaptist so on through the lenses of reformed or lutheran denomination, since the radical reformation is a general rebellion against the protestants as well as the catholics. They were also persecuted by both protestants and catholics.
there is also a lack of shared doctrine between the radical.
 
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As an American I may be biased, but there really ought to be a least one faith for all the English Dissatents, primarily to simulate Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers. By the end date, Baptists and Methodists made up the majority of the USA's population, explicitly at the expense of Reformed and Anglican churches.
How does Paradox plan to simulate this? At the state level? Because if so that's a completely different can of worms because I really don't like the idea of the USA having a state religion at all!
 
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This is the point when things get tricky, because of having so many different Protestant denominations, so we'd need to add dozens of confessions (take also into account the different sovereign Lutheran churches...) to be completely accurate, and why we decided for functionality over complete accuracy. It would eventually be cool to add more flavour, including unique naming, to the different branches and churches... But gameplay and functionality always come first (and I'm telling you as the Content Design Lead of the project, meaning that I'm always pushing to get more historically accurate flavour content in the game). ;)

I think also there should be anababtists, anababtists with violent, babtists, socinians, unitarians, spiritualist, and other radical reformation groups in game. This should not be problem with gameplay. There is still hundreds of native religions in game. Also game date katharism and meandeans was very little religion, but are in game. Those radical reformation group could have potential to grow if some rules have assist it, and I think EU5 should habe potenty to change history.
 
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If we have Lollards, Bogomils, and Cathars, I don't see why we can't also have anabaptists, unitarians, and Great Awakening Denominations/English Dissenters spawn in the game. I think it would make flavor better to add these specific groups. I also see why Paradox is reluctant to actually depict every distinct denomination. Ultimately, I don't think it would have a big impact on the game either way. We can do without Transylvanian Unitarians, and America isn't even guaranteed to form.

Still, it would be really odd having the USA remain majority Anglican after revolutionary independence, considering the head of the church is the king they just rebelled against. I hope there will at least be an event regarding independence of rebelling Anglican subjects, should that happen.
 
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If we have Lollards, Bogomils, and Cathars, I don't see why we can't also have anabaptists, unitarians, and Great Awakening Denominations/English Dissenters spawn in the game. I think it would make flavor better to add these specific groups. I also see why Paradox is reluctant to actually depict every distinct denomination. Ultimately, I don't think it would have a big impact on the game either way. We can do without Transylvanian Unitarians, and America isn't even guaranteed to form.

Still, it would be really odd having the USA remain majority Anglican after revolutionary independence, considering the head of the church is the king they just rebelled against. I hope there will at least be an event regarding independence of rebelling Anglican subjects, should that happen.
I think the guy above hit the nail - they don't do anything about reformation, because they will sell us the content later in DLC.
 
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It's a colored hat, with a couple of hands praying; it is way more clear in-game, sorry.
What size/resolution monitors do you use to judge how clear things are? I'm wondering about minimum/recommended specs and while I know things like RAM and CPU are set late on in the piece, monitor size might be based on whatever your UI devs/testers use.
 
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I'm quite late to the party for providing feedback, but I hope this gets noticed because I think it would be a welcome improvement over the three random aspects formula taken from EU4. I am a fan of the modular nature of the Aspects providing a sense of unique denominations which wouldn't be reasonable to represent as distinct religions, and I also appreciate friendliness and hostility between Protestant Churches being determined in part by similarities and differences in Aspect selection. However, selecting three random aspects which don't necessarily relate to each other is an unsatisfying way to go about it. Is my Lutheran Church at odds with my neighbor's because I chose War Sermons and he chose Bread and Wine? It's not intuitive which Aspects would result in antagonism. Moreover, on the historical simulation side of things, many Churches would and do exhibit far more than three of these Aspects. Can I really call my in-game Church properly Lutheran without all three Sola?

Therefore, I think Protestant Churches should have an Aspect Menu like the beautiful example I spent hours creating in MS Paint. Each selection would come with a much smaller bonus than the Aspects shown in this Tinto Talk as there would be significantly more than three. The example below is just 4 Aspects for illustration.
The positions for each Aspect would be arranged from "more Catholic-like" on the left to "totally un-Catholic" on the right, and hostility would scale the further one Church is from another. For example, if Brandenburg's Lutheranism takes Sacred Rites (which for this example means Baptism and Communion are sacraments with other acts such as Confession holding an elevated role but below that of a sacrament) and Sweden takes Baptism and Communion Only, there would only be minor hostility impact whereas Ordinances (not having sacraments proper) would have a larger hostility impact. The hostility impact wouldn't have to be identical per distance, nor should it imo as the difference between Sacred Rites and B&C is much smaller than the difference between B&C and Ordinances, but having an arrangement like this would provide an intuitive relationship between Aspect selection and hostility.
On the historical simulation side of things, this would feel much more like a Church being reformed than picking three Reformation flavored magic buffing spell. To maintain coherence, some Aspects would need to be mutually exclusive such as Ordinances in Sacraments being mutually exclusive with Consubstantiation and Pneumatic in Real Presence.
Representing Church Aspects in this manner could also provide an organic in-game reason for recreating history. For example, the Anglican Church of Henry VIII vs the Anglican Church of James I was brought up in the TT. Wouldn't it be interesting if selecting the more Catholic-like Aspects had a lower impact on Catholic pop unrest than selecting the Aspects further to the right of the menu, even if ultimately the player wants their Church to look less Catholic? Conversely, selecting the more Catholic-like Aspects would have a higher impact on the "Radical Reformation" pops' unrest therefore deviating further from Rome could be a matter of political expedience.

To conclude, I believe an approach like this would be more satisfying from both a gameplay and historical immersion perspective. It would put Portestantism on a more equal footing with Catholicism in terms of mechanical robustness. Protestnatism as it is being pitched currently doesn't improve much on previous games' iterations, which is a shame because almost everything else we've been shown in PC takes bold steps forward.

Aspects.png
 
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We haven't defined any (yet), so we're open to suggestions about any (if considered a good idea by the community).

Maybe they can be dynamically generated?
I'm not sure how historical it would be, but at least it could lead to yet more replayability.
Places like where M.L. nails his theses, places connected to martyrdom (death/conversions after conquest), sites of "lucky/miraculous" battle outcomesm and other typical religious stuff, as potential triggers for new Holy Sites. Generally, places where something interesting happened, and where someone powerful/rich enough to market it, decides to do so.
 
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Maybe they can be dynamically generated?
I'm not sure how historical it would be, but at least it could lead to yet more replayability.
Places like where M.L. nails his theses, places connected to martyrdom (death/conversions after conquest), sites of "lucky/miraculous" battle outcomesm and other typical religious stuff, as potential triggers for new Holy Sites. Generally, places where something interesting happened, and where someone powerful/rich enough to market it, decides to do so.
Personally I am against the notion of Holy Sites for Protestants. The Reformers railed on against Popish superstition, and especially in a time where pilgrimages to Holy Sites were seen as a means to obtain a plenary indulgences to remit and forgive sins, there is no Protestant equivalent to this kind of purgatorial theology that would merit "Holy" Sites.

Not to mention the Calvinists were notoriously iconoclastic, so I find it hard that they would ever claim any site to be any more holy than any other (with perhaps with the exception of Jerusalem itself)
 
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I was generalizing yes, pointing to exceptions to the rule however does not disprove the rule. Im laying out broadstroke generalizations to work as pointers for gameplay modifiers which push pops in one direction or another.
It is not a "rule" at all, though. It is more like a "trend", which was also not very universal to Europe.

The point of contention is specifically that lower literacy was a great indicator that an area would not be touched by the reformation, Luthers ideas spread extremely rapidly to Spain and Scandinavia within a year of his controversy and were read in latin and translated quickly yet only really took root among the substrata of the population who were literarily inclined.

The peasants in Hungary refer to the orthodox population in its eastern parts, this was to highlight the sconfessional heterdoxy within the kingdom. The Hungarians specifically claimed that the germaness of lutheranism influenced their particular choice for calvinism. Maybe I wasnt clear and I need to state things more clearly in the future but I hope you can read my messages in more good faith going forward.
And yes this is true. I don't think came off as reading it in bad faith, at all, sorry if it looked like that, I was just pointing out how radical this generalisation is.

Nevertheless, we agree that Protestantisms with Bible translations should spread quicker among literate people and between people who speak the same language.
 
Personally I am against the notion of Holy Sites for Protestants. The Reformers railed on against Popish superstition, and especially in a time where pilgrimages to Holy Sites were seen as a means to obtain a plenary indulgences to remit and forgive sins, there is no Protestant equivalent to this kind of purgatorial theology that would merit "Holy" Sites.

Not to mention the Calvinists were notoriously iconoclastic, so I find it hard that they would ever claim any site to be any more holy than any other (with perhaps with the exception of Jerusalem itself)
What about an Aspect that toggles the veneration of Holy Sites on and off @Pavía.
 
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