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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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To my knowledge he only allowed it for Henry VIII and Phillip of Hesse, and only after much arguing. It was very much a political decision.

Considering that there were Radical Reformers that supported polygamy, as well as a bare handful of Lutherans, it would make sense for that to be an aspect
It being an aspect would be good to reflect these sorts of things.
 
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The Enlightenment? Yes, that happened exactly after those 400 years of recovery for France.
Wait! You are correct. 1000 years after the rise of Charlemage and in another 100 The French Revolution happened, and it was 2000 after the birth of Christ when the Paris fell to he Nazi Germany..... yes, it's all clear now. I can finally see the pattern in the numbers...
 
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Wait! You are correct. 1000 years after the rise of Charlemage and in another 100 The French Revolution happened, and it was 2000 after the birth of Christ when the Paris fell to he Nazi Germany..... yes, it's all clear now. I can finally see the pattern in the numbers...
My point is that the Enlightenment most definitely wasn't a result of the Black Death...
 
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We have only designed for Catholic and Protestant countries to be sponsors of the Union/Leagues.
I Can see excluding non Catholic/Protestants to limit the WW2-like scale of league wars seen in eu4, but France should absolutely be able to support the protestant league even if they stay Catholic themselves because historically France was the biggest sponsor of almost all protestant leagues.
 
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I have not read through everything yet as I don't quite have the time yet, so forgive me if it is something that is mentioned. From what I skimmed through I saw the take command of the church, that gives you a bunch of negatives and you form/become the new religion.
I don't know if other nations did it similarly but I do know that as for Sweden a big reason why they left the catholic church was the amount of wealth they could sieze from the very rich churches.
So I was just wondering if instead of only flat negative modifiers, what people would feel about you being able to steal the wealth of the churches, the money taken would scale with amount of churches or land controlled by clergy or the wealth of the clergy. Negative modifiers would scale with amount of churches or clergy influence.
Or something similar. Could also make the time the modifiers stay depend on clergy opinion and religious unity

I personally feel that the flat modifiers and only negative + religion swap is not really that interesting but I'm curious what others think. Would also be fun if you could somehow depict the struggle the religion could take as the religion did in cases swap back and forth when a new monarch rose to power, but Im not sure how to implement that at all. Religion swapping is far too forgiving in games like eu4 with no lasting effects imo

Looking forward to reading through the dev diary properly later tonight, thanks for your time!
 
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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.

Will most historical/flavor content still be available for such nations if you choose to RP as a Catholic? For example, I was always frustrated about the arbitrary roadblock to forming/remaining Prussia as a Catholic in eu4.
 
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So while most people here mainly want some Radical Reformed faith(s) (which I totally agree with, I think in general order of priority a general Radical Reformed faith, a Unitarian faith, and perhaps a Anglo Radical Reformed faith should be added) my biggest concern is how the proto Protestants fit into the Reformation.
Historically, the Waldensians became Reformed, the Hussites became Lutheran, and the Lollards died. Probably, the English Reformation gets more complicated each time I look at it.
I really want this to be implemented, at bare minimum give us Eu4's "click a button and now all the Hussites are Lutheran" for all three proto Protestant faiths. And while realistically not all should convert instantly, most should. And others should become Catholic in response.
Although, if the devs truly believe that they can simulate the Radical Reformation without a Radical Reformed faith, I have a controversial opinion. Why shouldn't the Proto-Protestants start as their respective Protestant faiths? Have the Waldensians as a particular kind of Calvinist, have Hussites as a kind of Lutheran, have Lollards as a kind of Anglican.
It sure would make more sense than having Unitarians as a kind of Calvinist!
 
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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.
Does it mean they could remain catholic almost every game?
 
Calvinism, however, is not a denomination, it's more specifically a particular Soterial view which is a part of some Reformist denominations. It'd also be wrong not to show that the Reformist denomination was already separate under Huldrych Zwingli before Calvin became a prominent Reformed theologian.
I think that the term Calvinism could get a pass too since the term Reformation is already used for both the situation and the age, so using it for the religion too may create some confusion especially during event descriptions
 
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So while most people here mainly want some Radical Reformed faith(s) (which I totally agree with, I think in general order of priority a general Radical Reformed faith, a Unitarian faith, and perhaps a Anglo Radical Reformed faith should be added) my biggest concern is how the proto Protestants fit into the Reformation.
Historically, the Waldensians became Reformed, the Hussites became Lutheran, and the Lollards died. Probably, the English Reformation gets more complicated each time I look at it.
I really want this to be implemented, at bare minimum give us Eu4's "click a button and now all the Hussites are Lutheran" for all three proto Protestant faiths. And while realistically not all should convert instantly, most should. And others should become Catholic in response.
Although, if the devs truly believe that they can simulate the Radical Reformation without a Radical Reformed faith, I have a controversial opinion. Why shouldn't the Proto-Protestants start as their respective Protestant faiths? Have the Waldensians as a particular kind of Calvinist, have Hussites as a kind of Lutheran, have Lollards as a kind of Anglican.
It sure would make more sense than having Unitarians as a kind of Calvinist!
The Hussites as a movement did not become Lutheran, however. The Moravian Church was formed from most of the remnants of the Hussite movement. The modern church is part of Lutheran federations, but that's not the same thing as being Lutheran.

The Waldensians did not become reformed, either, though some joined the Reformed churches, they are still seen as distinct to this day, and there are still Waldensian communities.

These movements are called proto-protestant because they were seen to have espoused some similar views, or more generally because they disagreed with the Catholic Church. They are not called that because they formed some part of other protestant movements. Two out of three of the examples you gave are still extant in some way, and have not folded into other denominations, still holding some beliefs from before the Diet of Worms.

They are more different than any of the denominations you encourage merging them into than any of the ones we'd like created. I really don't think it's necessary to do, either. Only a faith to represent radical reformation needs to be added with some doctrines to represent anabaptist and unitarian doctrines, and if they absolutely need to remove a faith to do it, the obvious answer is Anglicanism, already - though really I'm not sure why people seem to have taken Pavia saying they can't add more than a dozen denominations of Protestantism to mean they can't add one or two faiths and that we need to start thinking what should be cut.

I think that the term Calvinism could get a pass too since the term Reformation is already used for both the situation and the age, so using it for the religion too may create some confusion especially during event descriptions
The name is explicitly linked to the same calls for reform of the church that the reformation itself is named for, it's intentional. I think people are too willing to doubt the intelligence of the audience to differentiate terms based on context, look them up for themselves or even just look at the in-game description if unfamiliar.
 
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Where do hussites belong? They were a sort of reformation before reformation. Later, most of them got aligned with either lutherans or catholics again, so I would guess they would be put under lutherans for these purposes, but I am still curious.

ALSO, I like that you used some of the historic points of the fate (sola fide etc.) but also some that both catholics and most protestants were against (adult baptism - anabaptists were persecuted all over the continent). I was about to say I do not see the fate predetermination, but I noticed "everything is preordained", so that is cool.

I do miss 2 things from the lists. One of them is iconoclasm - big part of calvinism. Everybody else - hussites, catholics, lutherans - were in the other boat, but not so calvinists. Another thing I would love to see is the choice between transubstantiation, consubstantiation and remanence as those were also very important to the Christians.

EDIT: Somebody also mentioned Greek catholics and that got me thinking some more. The potential for a union between the catholics and the orthodox (or perhaps between any two christian denominations - that would be COOL AF) should be a possibility. It is literally within the timeframe of the game, most notably during the concil of Florenz in the early 15th century - sure, those talks were made because Byzantines were at the brink of death, but hey, ever since the great schism appeared in the 11th century, there have been talks between the churches about a potential for mending it. The 4th crusade is what truly killed the relations, but as the Ottoman menace approached, the talks became real again.

And it is not like there are not cases of at least talks of other merges like that. Hussites at one point wanted to negotiate with the Byzantines with the idea that maybe they could merge their churches as the hussites were looking for a way to legitimize their faith within the European politics. Again, this fell through, because Constantinople fell in the meantime, but the ideas WERE there historically, so I feel like they should be explored in the game as well. Even if it was just both sides negotiating about the things which are already in the game, it would be cool. If there were a few bonus options and points of talk, even better, but I would take anything dealing with christian unions tbh, as it is something that I have always missed.
 
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Martin Luther also allowed for polygyny
He did not forbid it, but it was not a core aspect of Lutheranism. But yes, it could be some exotic aspect (for a higher cost and to the detriment of opinion with other churches)
 
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If it is not already an aspect, Presbyterian vs Episcopal vs Congregational polity (mutually exclusive)?

I see "Appointment of Bishops"... would that be for episcopal protestants? What about the other two approaches?
 
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