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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).
Debrecen was nicknamed the "Calvinist Rome". If you are against dynamic holy sites and want something interesting, it is a great choice.
 
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Personally I am against the notion of Holy Sites for Protestants. The Reformers railed on against Popish superstition, and especially in a time where pilgrimages to Holy Sites were seen as a means to obtain a plenary indulgences to remit and forgive sins, there is no Protestant equivalent to this kind of purgatorial theology that would merit "Holy" Sites.

Not to mention the Calvinists were notoriously iconoclastic, so I find it hard that they would ever claim any site to be any more holy than any other (with perhaps with the exception of Jerusalem itself)
Having been atheist my whole life, the concept of religion is alien enough for me that I struggle to see the differences between the various types. So I'll certainly concede on this, just thought up a decent way to add more fun randomness to history. Scandinavian protestants crusading for Perugia against the Papists would be kinda fun. :p
 
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Personally I am against the notion of Holy Sites for Protestants. The Reformers railed on against Popish superstition, and especially in a time where pilgrimages to Holy Sites were seen as a means to obtain a plenary indulgences to remit and forgive sins, there is no Protestant equivalent to this kind of purgatorial theology that would merit "Holy" Sites.

Not to mention the Calvinists were notoriously iconoclastic, so I find it hard that they would ever claim any site to be any more holy than any other (with perhaps with the exception of Jerusalem itself)
On the topic of Calvinist Iconoclasm: I get where Paradox gets the idea for the modifier from (famous example being the Beeldenstorm), but the Dutch Republic was a powerhouse when it came to cultural outptut. Connecting a religious dislike or religious images, and then only really limited to religious depictions in churches, to a wider cultural dislike of art seems very one note and inaccurate.
 
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On the topic of Calvinist Iconoclasm: I get where Paradox gets the idea for the modifier from (famous example being the Beeldenstorm), but the Dutch Republic was a powerhouse when it came to cultural outptut. Connecting a religious dislike or religious images, and then only really limited to religious depictions in churches, to a wider cultural dislike of art seems very one note and inaccurate.
It's particularly amusing when you consider Dutch Golden Age art, generally depicting secular scenes, blossomed in part because of the aversion to religious iconography rather than in spite of it.
 
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It's particularly amusing when you consider Dutch Golden Age art, generally depicting secular scenes, blossomed in part because of the aversion to religious iconography rather than in spite of it.
The good folks in the Republic loved themselves some religious art, but you're just not gonna find it in a church.
 
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Given how much more mechanics there will be around individual Pops and the influence of Pops on the power structure of your country and the influence of your estates, I would absolutely love to see more in-depth mechanics around the internal "groundwork" for a ruler to switch to a new denomination.

For example: a ruler can "support" preachers around his realm, before actually converting himself, thereby waiting for a moment in which the populace is (converted and) more accepting of the switch. A good mechanic would be that converting to a denomination sets your stability to "0 + % of populace following the new religion + 5 for every neighbour of the target denomination". In EU4, there was absolutely no reason to not try to be a trailblazer in the religious schism: only suckers didn't get that Center of Reformation. It would make sense to have more upsides to waiting (and jumping the bandwagon when Protestantism becomes popular), and it should very much destabilize your country and greatly upset your clergy if you're one of the first to go against the Roman Catholic Church.

This also creates a window for lots of flavourful events, before an actual "official" conversion as a ruler or as a state has to take place. As a catholic ruler you could set "stances" toward this new faith, for example:
- 1) prosecuting preachers mercilessly (giving a penalty to conversion and the spread of preachers and occassionally allowing you to destroy a preachers' building while granting bonuses to clergy loyalty and influence (depending inversely on % of clergy converted)),
- 2) remaining obtuse (trying to keep the crown out of the religious dissent, granting bonuses to stability, maluses to clergy loyalty and influence, with a focus on trying to navigate through the different factions. Events can give options that keep stability high at the cost of loyalty as you scramble to keep different denominations and estates content/at bay)
- 3) secretly or openly encouraging theological debate (lose stability, clergy loyalty and reputation loss with catholic rulers who do not take the same stance, but grants bonuses to conversion and the appearance of Preachers' buildings, or even giving you the ability to actively build them yourself. Events can focus on giving you the possibility to increase conversion rates, while estranging yourself from different estates, costing you loyalty for clergy, burghers and nobles alike)

These could segue into opening different avenues in terms of how a ruler converts. For example, lots of clergical property was appropriated during the protestant reformation, so maybe only a ruler who followed stance 3 could be able to take a severe stability hit to drastically lower clergy loyalty and influence (for a while) to gain one ungodly ton of cash when he converts. A ruler who managed to convert his clergy first, while remaining very obtuse, might be able to persuade the clergy to officially ask the ruler to convert, thereby severely lowering any stability impact you would otherwise get from a conversion. Also special mention to Brandenburg/Teutonic Order, where converting uprooted the power balance of the Order to be able to be follow suit in standard noble succession laws, drastically changing the power balance for not only regarding crown and the Clergy, but also the crown and the Nobility/Junkers.*

The devs here are doing amazing work giving us a system that's way more in-depth than anything that came before, and I would love to see it used to its absolute fullest, offering us tons of difficult choices that reflect (and are reflected by) internal power balance. A Clergy estate needs to be a part of (and eventually, a partner or an enemy) in the Schism. Now that priests are actual pops, they shouldn't sit idly by while their ruler decides he wants to burn in hell for all eternity convert.*2


*I would also love to see the possibility for a diverging Junker estate (in Prussia) with regular nobility (in other German states) following the dissolution of the Teutonic Order, whereby Prussia can choose to rely on the Junkers mainly for manpower at the cost of giving the Junkers tons of influence and tax exemptions, wielding this power to be able to centralize other German States (stripping nobility of privileges..), but I'm guessing that can't be anything but DLC content.
*2: I wanted that to be a compliment, though it may not have sounded as such. I'm very, very excited about every new TT that's coming out, you guys are doing amazing work!
 
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On the topic of Calvinist Iconoclasm: I get where Paradox gets the idea for the modifier from (famous example being the Beeldenstorm), but the Dutch Republic was a powerhouse when it came to cultural outptut. Connecting a religious dislike or religious images, and then only really limited to religious depictions in churches, to a wider cultural dislike of art seems very one note and inaccurate.
I agree, though if you remove that penalty Calvinism seems strictly superior to Lutheranism to me, unless predestination sucks as a mechanic and is effectively a penalty. I suspect it's there mostly because the devs needed something to offset the discipline and clergy equilibrium advantages and thought this was reasonably thematic, even if it's rather silly that the most famous Calvinist country suffers a penalty to it's historically prolific artistic output if you play historically.
 
Guess I should have clarified, but I meant the pops. How do they convert to any of the new denominations? EU4 had the Centers of Reformation which converted your provinces, based on last week's TT I presumed the Preachers have the same function, but it'd be nice if you could confirm/infirm that, and explain how conversions work in PC. I am sure the player/AI can flip religions and use the cabinet to promote the new official faith, but do pops convert independently? There must be some outside of player control mechanism to create religious divide within your country, or does the Reformation happen solely through countries flipping randomly/with their weights and 'manually' converting their population?
@Pavía Could you please answer this? I didn't want to tag you over the long weekend and kinda forgot about it since then, but with a new TT coming today and the announcement tomorrow, all attention will shift to those. Could you clarify/sum up shortly how pop coversion works in the game? It hasn't been really explained in either of the recent TTs nor in the initial religious TT from nearly a year ago. Back then we were shown a madrasa with a flat pop conversion value which Johan said meant that that amount of pops convert monthly. The preachers building adds a percentage value and the religion overview screens shows an also percentage based 'Conversion rate' value. Are both still in the game or did the flat value approach change into a percentage based conversion? I'm sure I'm not the only one curious to see how exactly pop conversion happens, so if you have the time to explain this it'd be very much appreciated!
 
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Just suqesting I know this will be hard and this is not connected with this can you add when army enters in teretory (whit who are war with) then there is posibilyty to make same cultur group pesents rise up.For exsmple Serbians where under ottomans and then when Russians army entered in ottomans teretory there revolted which was Frst serbian revolt.
And if its posibil try to remake big migratons (Like First serbian in Austria-Hungary and Second serbian in Russian Empire).Sorry for bad made sentces.
On this, I think you make like the emperor of Serbs and Greeks (maybe even Albanians)on the Dušan silni