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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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Can you elaborate on the everything is preordained mechanic? How does it actually work? If it really changes how combat works by changing dice logic then I don't like it.
 
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In religious war have you also considered adding an option to join the league as a support member who is not involved in the war and instead gives gold to the members involved in the war or spams espionage on opposing side? This could be favored by rulers who have cowardly traits and allows building based countries to get involved.
 
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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?


Screenshot 2025-04-30 075137.png
 
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You havent explained anything about the wars of religion? How does the war trigger? Who can initiate it? Who can negotiate and end it? Will it have stages? Can there be multiple wars waged at different stages? What does it mean that a member desires peace how is that manifested in the game???
 
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Could be cool once the Religious War situation starts to have HRE countries, that are protestant/with large protestant population and also in a PU led by a Catholic ruler, declare an independence war and choose a protestant elector as the new PU partner. Basically the Bohemian Revolt but generic so it can happen to anyone if the circumstances are right.
its a bit too specific, i myself would like to see a "building up league war" like historically maybe if the emperor is at war with a strong protestant state , the protestant can request help from other protestant and slowly during the war the leagues form
 
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"?
Just changed it to use our game concept for 'Population'.
 
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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).
Apart from the "historical" holy sites, I'd say that one holy site should be the location where the religion was founded in game. As the first location following the "right doctrine", for sure it should be important for the religion as a whole. Probably Jerusalem should be a common holy site for all or almost all western schisms too.
If you need more, many holy sites are related to holy people. So, you could have a holy site where the corresponding Martin Luther of the religion died/was buried. Or if it was burned/killed then wherever it got killed.
 
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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.

Well they *tried* to make it the official religion in Münster, but that uh, didn’t end well…

(I’ll be very sad if there isn’t flavour events for this in the game)
 
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Can someone explain to me what the icon of war sermons depicts? I see a yellow fish with red fins and goggles.
It's a colored hat, with a couple of hands praying; it is way more clear in-game, sorry.
 
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"Everything is Preordained" and how it applies to dice rolls I originally thought was a joke. Turns out it's not and it's not only meme-level history but it is super goofy for gameplay. Please remove it.
 
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View attachment 1287635
Just wanted to point out Hegemony is misspelled

View attachment 1287637
This reads weird "the only truth is the *Catholicism faith", Would it not be more accurate to read "the only truth is the Catholic faith"

Also sorry I don't know how to insert unclickable screenshots or pictures which somehow everyone else seems to know :confused:
The same issue is visible here:
1746021226435.png

And they actually have "Catholic" as a highlightable word:
1746021315882.png

Those texts read quite jarring with the -isms in there instead of proper adjectives.

Edit: this was also visible in the TT about the papacy / catholicism.
 
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Are the religious aspects still a free to mix and match and replace, or are you stuck with them once you've reached whatever maximum possible you'll decide upon?
You can replace them. As I mentioned, the Anglican doctrine was not the same in 1630 as in 1530.
 
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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.

View attachment 1287615

I said this and I got downvoted. People...
 
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Wouldn't it be better to have religious aspect scale with religious influence ? Eventually getting rid of most of its use as "mana" ? It could be imo more immersive and "emergent" to have your religious influence something you carefully monitor to get as much benefit as possible, rather than a currency you accumulate and spend for all your aspect and then stays mostly idle barring some emergency use. Ofc that would require to rebalance all the ways you can get it, but that would still be worthwhile. You could also avoid arbitrary limit of a number of X (currently, 3) religious aspect and instead have the benefits they provide be scaled depending of the number of active religious aspects you have. (so the more religious influence you have, the stronger your religion effect, AND the more aspect you have, the weaker each individual effect is)
 
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Do Protestant faiths get religious laws like Catholicism or just a couple doctrines they can pick through? I worry it’s going to be like CK3 where your locked into a set few tenets that give you some bonuses, so you end up with Christian faiths lacking monasticism even if they practiced it historically. It would be pretty disappointing if Protestantism ends up being less modular and granular than Catholicism
IMG_0766.jpeg


IMG_0764.png
IMG_0761.jpeg
 
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Since Anglicanism is sort of a national church, is there something to slow down non-english/non-british culture pops from converting to Anglicanism? I always thought it was weird when in EU4 the Mayans converted to Anglicanism.
I disagree. The Book of Common Prayer has been translated into many languages and with each translation Anglican theology is thereby given to the different peoples of these numerous cultures and languages. Just a few different versions and languages: the 1637 Scottish Wee Bookie, 1645 Dutch BCP, 1662 English BCP, 1712 Irish BCP, 1789 American BCP, 1852 Spanish BCP, etc. The Book of Common Prayer, which is the sum of Anglican theology in practice, is not bound by language or culture.
 
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You can pick the Religious Aspects that fit them better, dynamically.
If a player is not involved, would Anabaptists arise naturally, or would they always require human intervention to appear? If the latter, an event should be added, at the absolute least.
 
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