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Tinto Talks #59 - 16th of April 2025

Hello and welcome once again to our super secret Project Caesar Tinto Talks. I will be your host this time, where we will be talking about the mechanics of Catholicism and its associated Catholic Church International Organization.

Here’s an overview of the religion itself:
Catholicism Tooltip.png


One thing to highlight here besides all the other effects, is that Catholic countries are not able to tax their clergy at all by default, although there may be other things modifying this on top of it. However, the clergy won’t necessarily swim in money, as that has to be instead paid to the Papacy directly in the form of a tithe.
Tithe.png


Another key aspect of Catholicism is that all Catholic countries will belong to the Catholic Church IO:
Catholic Church Map.png

Catholic Church IO pannel.png


You can see here that there are quite many countries belonging to it (the total list is expandable and scrollable), with some of them having some special statuses. For Bishopric and Military Order these are self-explanatory, but the Curia and Cardinals need some more information.

The decisions concerning the Catholic Church are taken by the Curia, which is composed of Cardinals. In Project Caesar, Cardinals are represented by a special building, called Cardinal Seat, available to be built by Catholic countries higher than county rank in any location where they already own a large religious building. Each Cardinal Seat will grant its owner country a Cardinal, which the country can use to influence the decisions of the Curia (more on that later). Countries can have more than one Cardinal Seat and thus more than one Cardinal, that’s why in the panel you can see that there’s 7 countries in the Curia but a total of 16 Cardinals among them.
Cardinal Seat.png


Another aspect of the Catholic Church IO is its doctrines, represented by a set of laws. These laws are not something that’s easily changed, as it’s what defines the core values of Catholicism, but some important events will be able to shape them, like for example the Council of Trent (more on that in future Tinto Talks). Here are some of these laws effects:
Papal Authority.png

Purchase of Indulgence.png

Marriage of Priests.png

Persecution of Witchcraft.png


Next to the Doctrines, we have the Papal Bulls. These are actions that any Catholic country can choose to propose, but only those in the Curia can vote on whether to pass them or refuse them. Here are the possible bulls with some examples:
Papal Bulls.png

Illius Qui Se Pro Divini.png

In Coena Domini.png


When voting on a Papal Bull, the interface changes slightly to show how many cardinals support each option. It goes without saying that all the cardinals that a country has will be assigned to vote for the same option, so the amount of cardinals a country has is effectively its amount of votes.
Papal Bulls Vote.png


Besides the Papal Bulls, there’s also the action of Excommunication, available to all countries of the Curia, that if approved, will get the excommunicated country some very nasty modifiers and allow for a special casus belli.

Excommunication Effects.png


The Catholic Church also has some extra aspects in the form of Saints and Holy Sites. Saints are characters of a country that have been elevated to sainthood. A country can choose to canonize any of its previous rulers, and they will get benefits depending on the abilities of such character. Holy Sites are special locations to the Catholic faith, giving some extra income to their owner due to the affluence of faithful in them.
Saints.png

Holy Sites.png


Outside the Catholic Church per se and instead in the main religion panel, there are some extra religious actions available to certain countries, besides the already mentioned option to canonize a character.
Religious Actions.png


  • Demand Apostolic Tax is an action exclusive to the Papacy, in which they will demand extra payment from those countries with the Apostolic Tax privilege enabled.
  • Request Aid is an action exclusive to the military orders, in which they can ask to petition support to the Pope for their infrastructure, military, or coffers.
  • Placitum Regium is an action available to kingdoms or empires that gives them some extra crown power at the expense of relations with the Papacy.

One last thing to mention here is that, as you can see, Catholicism also has Reform Desire. However, in contrast to some other of our titles that also present this value, here it is not a ticking clock for the Reformation, but instead something that will come into play in the Council of Trent. As such, you will have to wait a bit for a further explanation on it.

And that is all for today, next week we will resolve these cliffhangers by taking a further look at what Catholicism has in store after the start of the game, including the situations of the Western Schism, Reformation, and the Council of Trent. On the other hand, in this week’s Tinto Flavor we will go directly to the head of Catholicism by taking a look at the flavor content for the Papal States. Also, remember that this week’s Tinto Flavour will be on Thursday, as this week is Good Friday and the Papal States would be too busy to attend their own Tinto Flavor then (oh, and it’s also a holiday).

See you next time!
 
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While bishops are present in the HRE, there are plenty more there than what you see on the map; not all bishops in the HRE are prince-bishops!

Actually, in the German part of the HRE, pretty much every Bishop was also a Prince-Bishop, and the map looks like it shows them all. There were around 50 bishops in the HRE at game start (Wikipedia states there were 53 at the start of the Reformation), and given there were only a few outside the HRE, It looks like they are all pretty much included given the total of Prince-Bishoprics at 76
 
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Rome is... well, Rome; for the dev's intents that is the Papal State.
Carthage was never a patriarchate; it had informal primacy as an archdiocese but was only ever just an archdiocese (that in 1337 had no bishop).
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1337 was residing in Cyprus, but yes, they did exist.
The Latin Patriarch of Constantinople in 1314 was unified with Negroponte with Athens made suffragan; it existed still in 1337.
The Latin Patriarch of Antioch was titular in 1337 (not to be confused with the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, which was in communion with Rome)
The Latin Patriarch of Alexandria was titular in 1337 as well as vacant (though only for 3 years, and historically filled again in 1342). Notably the Greek Patriarch of Alexandria had been in communion with Rome up to about 1310 (if we interpret the creation of the Latin Patriarch of Alexandria as indicating the communion breaking).
Grado was a patriarch at this time, yes.
Aquileia is also a patriarch which, given its landed holdings, no doubt exists present on the map already.
Lisbon is only a diocese in 1337; it'll be elevated to metropolitan a bit after the start date and only to patriarch much later.

Given that most of these aren't actually landed, I doubt the devs will do much in the way of representing them. Now, I have plans...

Aquileia is definitely on the map - it's the blue area in northeastern Italy, and its CoA is the last one in the last column (the gold eagle on blue) in the Bishoprics list.
 
Hey Roger,
Great Post, Can we add a crusade feature that includes Byzantium and other Orthodox statees to the crusader coaltions even though they arent Catholic.
Historically the Cathloic Crusader armies helped the eastern romans on nurmerous times even later after the start date at the battle of Varna.
 
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Just get rid of the country rank thing and we don't have to deal with any of this 'can form empires' stuff. It's totally gamey abstract nonsense, causes issues, and makes the game exactly 0% more interesting.
 
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Nice to see that you guys relented and put the Prince-Bishopric of Durham on the map! Armagh was a nice surprise as well.
 
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What about forming Spain? Will it always be a kingdom? Also, if the Papal states are conquered, is it possible for them to appear in the New World?
Hopefully Spain is refered to as a 'Monarchy' rather than a kingdom, at least while having their values in decentralized. It will be a tad cringe to see 'Kingdom of Spain' in the XVI century rather than 'Hispanic Monarchy' (or at least 'spanish monarchy').
 
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Well the Patriarch of rome is as I think most people know Mr 3 crowns head honcho which I think makes things kind of interesting in the regards of representation, The rest however tended to be really quite important, albeit mostly in exile I'd say calling them titular over landed is over simplification considering that they would very quickly become landed should the area be under catholic control.

For most of the historic period having your pocket patriarch (titular or landed) especially pre-reformation is such an important thing in negotiating with the church considering their position within the church that really doesn't seem to be represented from what I'd consider any other game. I know I originally made a very brief and now edited post with a couple of errors but I'd love to see something played with more seriously than "Cardinals" considering the sway that in theory Patriarchs should have over Cardinals of a region for example?

I'm not entirely sure what I'd suggest but in my mind there should be something a little bit special with them even if it comes down to having something as simple as 3 votes in the elections and moving around a little, for example The Patriarch of Jerusalem being in Cyprus then moving to Rome/Avignon or potentially being attracted to major courts in Europe in some kind of little semi alt history path for a certain benefit of some kind

I'm also thinking, if we are able to play as banks and company buildings as they have told us, playing as seats such as patriarchal seats landed or not doesn't seem to feel out of this world to me and perhaps the idea to play as a religious seat feels fairly normalised in that what do you think? The idea of being able to play as essentially semi failed theocracies would be brilliant if you ask me

I just think it makes things more interesting to throw ideas out and see what sticks but I definitely think they should be represented although I feel like I may be in the minority it could throw out some hugely interesting gameplay

I'd love to hear your thoughts!!
Would they be given jurisdiction, or outright land, though? Like... this game isn't really handling the cases of non-landed bishops/archbishops/patriarchs. I've got my own plans (as I've mentioned time and time again whenever given the occasion), but I don't think the base game has any interest in representing the actual ecclesiastical hierarchy in any substantial way.
 
1、Can not Italy totally annex Papal States? That is what happened in history. And then Papal States will be on Mars and hold no more lands.
2、Really hoping that other catholic countries except HRE have some special ways to become empires, because this connects to Unifying culture group and some other thing. Especially it is very cool to be called as empire. There was one guy advance that we can let the catholic country we control be able to become an empire by destroying HRE, which is a good idea.
 
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Regarding the issue of the Catholic Church losing the Papal States, would it not make sense in such a situation to have the Catholic Church to become an Extraterritorial Country instead of having the Papal States pop up somewhere again?

One whose buildings are the various religious structures in catholic lands?
 
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There are currently no requirements, as we decided to abstract the process. Countries didn't always follow the papal procedures before they started venerating their past rulers as saints, and saints are not exclusive to Catholicism (and thus tied to the Pope) anyway.
Shouldn't there at least be a relations penalty if the pope doesn't like the person you're turning into a saint?
 
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honestly I don't really mind the way Cardinals are abstracted, or the empire restriction.

No, what I am concerned about is that it presently doesn't look like Eastern Catholics are being simulated. Or at least, we have heard nothing about them.
 
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honestly I don't really mind the way Cardinals are abstracted, or the empire restriction.

No, what I am concerned about is that it presently doesn't look like Eastern Catholics are being simulated. Or at least, we have heard nothing about them.
I think they're being simulated as just some Catholic minorities in places and that's about it.
 
Are there possible exceptions to the fact that only the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire could be considered an emperor? For example, if my Byzantium becomes a Catholic country, then why should it cease to be considered an empire, since it directly inherits Rome, and there were two emperors - one in the east and one in the west.
 
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Since Pope hates other empires, what happens if Byzantium converts into catholicism? Will it be demoted from empire to kingdom?
 
I would have thought the same as EU4? Through events or forced conversion through war. It would be cool if there were a few more way though.

I wonder how you enter and leave the Church. I guess it happens automatically once you join/leave it.
Logically the best you should be able to hope for is an event that sort of creates a 'crisis of faith' where each nation of the opposing side is given a chance to convert or not. If the Byzantines take Rome that could definitely be seen as a divine omen, but also a bellweather of oncoming politics. But despite that, you're still gonna have a lot of holdouts who decide to keep on as they have been keeping on, it'd be impossible to get the monarchs/leaders of several nations to uniformly agree to something. Hell- that didn't even happen for the formation of Chalcedonian Christianity at the Council of Nicaea, whose intent was to create a unified church of Christ.

Otherwise, I say such an event maybe turns Rome into an Orthodox 'Center of Reformation' for a few decades and that's it.
 
Revolutionary empires should be an exception to the usual rules around becoming an empire. Napolion was very much doing his own thing there. Actually a revolutionary empire should probably remove the catholic and HRE restrictions on declaring yourself an empire, since Austria declared itself an empire before the HRE was dissolved.
I don't know if that coincided with Frances 'Church of Reason' but it certainly makes sense than enlightenment-era republic can no-sale all their religious restrictions. Like it doesn't make sense for the US to engage in Protestantism mechanics as there is no 'Church of America', and in fact Freedom of Religion was enacted in the constitution because picking such a church from the many that existed would have bene a political NIGHTMARE. Now this might be mechanically boring, but there should be the upswing of not getting to care about religious tolerance if everyone has their rights guaranteed by the state, and not having to deal with the pope's nonsense and all that.