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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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Since this game starts before the Hussite reformation, I wonder if Paradox accounted for the possibility of that being more successful and kicking off the HRE religious tension much earlier.
 
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It costs stability, besides Religious Influence, to change the existing ones. And we could add an implementation time for them, if it's something the community wants.
Implementation time is welcomed. I think it will prevent a lot of game systems abuse. And will not be detrimental to the game.
 
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I'd say adding them the first time (or at least the very first aspect) could be instant to represent the fact that the reformation movement in a given country appears with already preexisting ideas. But yes, changing them afterwards should definitely require implementation time afterwards.
 
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You can pick the Religious Aspects that fit them better, dynamically.
Huh, i thought Johan said Tinto Talks are here to listen to community. I must have been mistaken and that was actually not a case. With 4x amount of provinces there is a perfect opportuinity to make reformation more interesting, but i guess modders will do the job you folks should.
 
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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!
That depends on the situation. The reason things went that way (and as @LordThanatos mentioned, it was just some denominations of respective proto-reformation movements) is because pre-reformation movements happened before the dissatisfaction with the church reached the boiling point for large scale movements and were consequently smaller and more local. And then thoroughly squashed, even if it took some time for the Hussites. Once reformation hit the fan and going against Rome was in fashion, they joined with the larger movements to use the momentum of the reformation and gain strength in numbers in case of Catholic reactionary outbursts.

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.
 
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It would be cool if there were internal pressures to which church aspects the player should choose. Maybe, estates could sometimes favor certain aspects. Or, perhaps, characters could be aligned to an aspect. When my country reform to a protestant faith, I want there to be theological debate that I have to quell. Make me work to centralise the church!
 
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It would be nice to have more, but that should about cover most situations. Quite honestly cutting out Anglicanism as a unique faith and portraying it as Reformist, with unique aspects to show its unique doctrines would be a better solution, anyway. It's strange that the church of England is getting special treatment on the matter when the evolution of the Anglican church could just be portrayed with the mechanics shown in this post, and no other nation's church is getting a unique faith.
Gotta agree with this. Changing triggers around to checking for both reformed religion and England/GB tag should still allow for historical Anglicanism flavor in terms of events and whatnot, while at the same time allowing other nations to create a branch of reformation that takes the role of their national church.
 
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I know I mentioned this with the last TT but I think Calvinist Pulpits would be a way better name for the building. Not sure if you already are looking into the name changes or anything but it’s never a bad thing to make sure it’s seen. xP
Maybe just name them Calvinist Hedges ;)
Who wants to join me in advocating for a DLC that fleshes out what happens if the Reformation either never happens or is crushed? Because that totally redirects the philosophy that lead to the Enlightenment.
No. And I'm frankly sick of the PDX fanbase begging for PDX to take more of their money by argueing for DLC. This game isn't even out yet and you're already begging for daddy Paradox to take more of your money!
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 this is a strawman. Whilst I personally would indeed love for national churches that unify two or more confessions underneath them, that is not the argument being made. The gap between the mainstream Reformation and the Radical Reformation is too big to be shown by a mere 3 church aspects. Especially because church aspects are decided on a tag basis and not a pop basis. Which means that only countries can ever embrace the Radical Reformation and not a subsection of the pops of a country, be it Catholic or Protestant. And whilst you could make a argument that Catholic countries dealing with Protestant pops is them dealing with the Radical Reformation, for Protestant countries it's only possible if another Protestant religion is present. Ofcourse, I understand the need for compromise as a perfect simulation isn't possible, so I'd like to make the same reccomendation as somebody did before me: make the Radical Reformation a branch in its own right. Not perfect, but better than nothing. It's church aspects should be highly divisive and the penalties for having different church aspects from another country should be higher than for Lutheran and Calvinist. And I do think it's a rather odd choice not to try to represent the divisive and violent religious differences in Europe during the timeframe better than EU4, but then give each tribe in Australia its own religion, where it'll never matter for the sake of gameplay
 
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Hmm, that does feel a bit too broad. Apologies if it's already been mentioned, of course, but what about Wesleyan theology (Methodism)? It may have started as a movement within Anglicanism, but it has significant differences that can't entirely be covered by the existing aspects - no saints, for starters - though perhaps new ones.
 
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Screenshot_20250501_111555_Chrome.jpg

It's just nitpicking but could you put the catholic leader(the Emperor) on the left and the protesatnt on the right? Right now it's weird considering the painting in the background has the catholic soldiers on the left and the protestant on the right
 
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You can pick the Religious Aspects that fit them better, dynamically.
It's understandable if Anabaptism and Unitarianism are not present in Project Caesar at launch, since there's already a lot of content in the game and inevitably some things will be left out, but I really hope they eventually get added as unique Christian denominations as part of post-release content. Representing them as variations of Lutheranism and Calvinism is quite jarring and not really something that should remain in the game for long.
 
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Somehow despite having many relatives and friends who are devote Lutherans I've never heard of "single-predestination", although looking up the term I do know the theology around it.
Still, am I the only one that feels weird saying Lutherans (and I'm pretty sure most Protestants? I thought that "by faith alone" was a pretty universal Protestant belief) believe in predestination?

I already critisized this when Johan first annouced it. Predestination is not a calvinist doctrine, its a catholic one held today still. St Augustine formulated it and calvinist took it from him and twisted it introducing double predestination, as in predestination by direct gods punishment rather than it being part of gods plan but actively chosen by the creature and simply allowed by God.

In this sense all battles are predetermined and it is a stupid mechanic for calvinist to have since the phyisical world does not stop for Calvinists, they are subject to "randomness" in battle just like anyone else.

When Johan announced it I thought it was a meme, but no...
 
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Strictly speaking the kingdom of Prussia wasn’t really reformist. The population was overwhelmingly Lutheran and this was respected, but the Hohenzollerns personally practiced Calvinism, so I’d represent them as having a state religion of Lutheranism but The royals are all Calvinists.

Isnt that the case with Hungary today? Pretty sure President Orban is calvinist but Hungary is overwhelmingly catholic? Does not mean that the religion of Hungary is calvinism, that is just Erdogans personal faith
 
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Isnt that the case with Hungary today? Pretty sure President Erdogan is calvinist but Hungary is overwhelmingly catholic? Does not mean that the religion of Hungary is calvinism, that is just Erdogans personal faith

I think you mean President Viktor Orbán???

By the way I noticed you disliked my comment condemning the vile antisemite Kr4mpus and his incendiary rhetoric. Is this because you secretly sympathize with his hateful ideology? That wouldn't surprise me because the paradox community is unfortunately chock full of racist incels, like Kr4mpus, who have nothing better to do than spew bigoted nonsense. Blaming Jews for their problems is their way of coping with being lonely virgins. If you do not subscribe to white supremacist ideology you should state clearly that you disavow Adolf Hitler and fascism in all of its forms.

Of course, If you're actually a racist bigot I suggest you log off and touch grass. If you meet jews and black people irl you will realize that they actually are really cool people.
 
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Strictly speaking the kingdom of Prussia wasn’t really reformist. The population was overwhelmingly Lutheran and this was respected, but the Hohenzollerns personally practiced Calvinism, so I’d represent them as having a state religion of Lutheranism but The royals are all Calvinists.
Shouldn't it be the other way around, though, with Calvinism as state religion but with a majority Lutheran population that is perfectly tolerated by the state? Consider that, when Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg officially converted from Lutheranism to Calvinism in 1613, he did initially expect that most of his Lutheran subjects would follow suit, and his Calvinist officials and advisers even drew up a proposal outlining several measures to be carried out by the state in order to convert the populace (stocking the universities with Calvinist appointees, reforming the Liturgy in order to purge it from Lutheran customs, obliging priests to comply with these reforms...). But when he tried to implement these measures, unrest and resistance followed and he had to back off, leading to Branderburg (and then Prussia's) rather unique historical situation of being a Lutheran-majority country ruled by a Calvinist non-proselythising court.
 
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Don't forget to also switch the catholic and protestant pop counts
Speaking of counting, I feel like that beside population this screen should also tell the total amout of standing units(and maybe lavies too) that each side has since it's a military situation, it would facilitate to know when it's a good moment to attack and take away the need to count the soldiers of each country
 
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I think you mean President Viktor Orbán???

By the way I noticed you disliked my comment condemning the vile antisemite Kr4mpus and his incendiary rhetoric. Is this because you secretly sympathize with his hateful ideology? That wouldn't surprise me because the paradox community is unfortunately chock full of racist incels, like Kr4mpus, who have nothing better to do than spew bigoted nonsense. Blaming Jews for their problems is their way of coping with being lonely virgins. If you do not subscribe to white supremacist ideology you should state clearly that you disavow Adolf Hitler and fascism in all of its forms.

Of course, If you're actually a racist bigot I suggest you log off and touch grass. If you meet jews and black people irl you will realize that they actually are really cool people.

What the actual f*ck? Friend. Are you okay? Do you need me to call someone? DM if you need something please.
 
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