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

I think the idea of a holy site goes against the very core of what protestant heresy is. They would call that idolatry and you dont need holy sites you only need the Bible and Jesus. So I would remove them altogether.
 
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Alright, I am making a second, more formal request to the Paradox Development Team directly and pray you see it.

Please add more Protestant denominations, I would personally far rather have the branches of Anabaptists, Unitarians, Presbyterians, Puritans (Congressionalist?), Methodists and Greek Catholic than the Religious Aspect mechanics. As much as I understand one of your pillars for this game is about creating a more dynamic game, it feels like certain flavor is being sacrificed on the alter of realism here. If you all would really rather die on the hill of three Protestant faiths, then please, at the very least can you rename them Evangelical and Reformed instead of 'Lutherans' and 'Calvinists'? For the sake of respecting the wishes of John Calvin and Martin Luther?

I am personally a Roman Catholic myself but have deep respect for the Protestant churches, and though I really do enjoy the flavor for the Catholic Church you have given us, I feel like the Protestants have been given the short end of the stick.

Also screw it, I'm being greedy and asking for some Baptist and Quaker representation too, why not?
 
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I have to agree with the general sentiment that it's weird to be locked into Lutheranism, Calvinism and Anglican as options during the reformation when the system is supposed to let you customize your religion. Why not add the other major Protestant faiths as base religion options to choose from?
Or make each Protestant faith entirely customized, with the name being just a historical flavor name (and historical templates with pre-selected aspects being offered).
 
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Little correction on the descriptor for Lutheranism as basing itself on the authority of the New and Old Testament. Actually it was a fundamental difference between Luther and Calvin that Luther emphasised the differences in coontents and importance between both testaments and saw Christ's work of redemption at the heart of Christianity. In the Lutheran view, the New Testament superseded the Old. For Calvin both scriptures are almost of equal standing, both depicting God's character accurately. In consequence, Lutheranism was more based on the merciful God of the New Testament, while for Calvinists the vengeful and stern God of the Old Testament was more important than in either Catholicism or Lutheranism. Precepts from the Old Testament were in fact a much more important frame of reference for Calvinists than elsewhere in Christianity.

So I would suggest rephrasing the description in order to state Lutheranism's focus on the New Testament. Or just name the solus-principles: Sola fide (only belief), sola scriptura (only scripture), sola gratia (only God's clemency), solus Christus (only Christ) can guarantee salvation.

Absolutely amazing work on the aspects, I am utterly in love with this. I think somewhat more than three aspect slots might be a good idea to flesh out individual churches more and allow for a greater number of possible combinations.
I was going to blame our Lutheran content designer, but it was actually written by a Catholic one. :D
 
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If Scotland is in a personal union with England there could maybe be an event for England to enforce Anglicanism on Scotland.

This didn’t succeed historically and contributed to the war of the three kingdoms.
 
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I find this quite interesting, but hope it's not gamable by having a "false army" that just ensure the D6 is the expected one, and then having the real army. A simple fix would be that each combat is a new one as soon as a new army join, but that would also be gamable by having a real army and several false armies... So I hope something was thought of to avoid the exploit...
 
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I find this quite interesting, but hope it's not gamable by having a "false army" that just ensure the D6 is the expected one, and then having the real army. A simple fix would be that each combat is a new one as soon as a new army join, but that would also be gamable by having a real army and several false armies... So I hope something was thought of to avoid the exploit...
It could still re-roll whenever a new army joins, so you can't hold back a main force for when you get a good roll, as it would just re-roll it.
 
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It could still reroll whenever a new army joins, so you can't hold back a main force for when you get a good roll, as it would just re-roll it.
yes, but the meta would then become "real army, then false armies to re roll as needed". A bit less OP than the opposite, but still not so fun imo.
 
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It could still re-roll whenever a new army joins, so you can't hold back a main force for when you get a good roll, as it would just re-roll it.
That sounds like a good incentive to have a few tiny stacks outside of the battle, waiting to join in if there's a bad roll, so it can be rerolled. Perhaps it should only re-roll if the army joining is a certain percentage size of the force already in combat, at least.
 
yes, but the meta would then become "real army, then false armies to re roll as needed". A bit less OP than the opposite, but still not so fun imo.
Well, if you're going to hold back parts of your army in order to keep re-rolling, then you're going to be weaker than a different faith that will just be sending their full army from the start and naturally keep re-rolling throughout the battle.
 
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