Tinto Talks #5 - March 27th, 2024

[EmpireMagnis]

The only drawback I can see is the coexistence on the map of two similar names, the “eastern” Roman Empire and the reformable tag of the (Western) Roman Empire, which was still very present in the European culture of the time even until Napoleon
That could totally be manage with the decision to restore Rome as changing the name of the eastern portion to Byzantine Empire

Or have a dynamic naming system where if a Western European tag forms the Roman Empire, the eastern half will have "Eastern" stitched onto their name and "Western" for the European one. If one of these tags are annexed then the Western/Eastern dichotomy will be removed for the survivor half.

 

[Kimudena]

We want crownlands privileges for sure!

 

[Arizal]

I'm glad to see estates return in an improved way.

A quick look at the UI : Instead of having pie charts for happiness, I would prefer a unique pie chart showing the amount of power each estate has, with maybe the crownland more in evidence.

Otherwise, while that's not a big issue for me, I think the UI would need a bit more polish.

The equilibirum being shown directly is very welcome, as that was a value I was constantly in the tooltip to check, since it's arguably as important as the current happiness of each estate.

That being all said, I hope the cultural and religious mechanics allow us to see multicultural and confessionnal countries. One thing that would have been neat would have been to divide the clergy estate in the numerous recognized religious structures of the country.

I shouldn't be too demanding, though. This is already a clear upgrade over EUIV, especially taking into account that estates, based on pops, can do things on their own.

 

[agent_45]

@Johan how does this estate system work with competing religious and cultural groups within the same country? How would the singular clergy estate represent both Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation, etc.?

 

[DeLii]

I have few thoughts and questions about Project Ceaser.

T1-) My first thought is that Anatolian Beyliks need to have special system or army. This is because their conquest of Anatolia and raids based on Akinjis after 1071 (Battle of Manzikert). And also it contiuned to Balkan and Carpathia Region with Ottomans until beginning of1600.
T2-) Secondly, you mentioned power of nobilities and estates so, I think we need to be able seeing noble families or choosing duties like Imperator Rome or CK3.
T3-) My last thought is that some countries or goverment types need to special migration abilities. For example Hordes can force to migrate population when they razed or even their own population. Maybe Beyliks or Spanish nation can have special ability to increase their own population or assimilation.

Q1-) How many languages will be suppporting language in this Project Ceaser?
Q2-) Can you produce more music for gameplay ?
Q3-) You said we will see location and region and non all them are urban so can we expect to city security system?

 

[ImperatorRoman]

@Johan how does this estate system work with competing religious and cultural groups within the same country? How would the singular clergy estate represent both Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation, etc.?

My guess would be that wrong religion/culture pops either don't contribute any power to their respective estate, or contribute a reduced amount of power. This can then be modified by laws, reforms, and privileges. For example, a nation that has embraced religious pluralism would have all clergy pops contribute fully to the clergy estate power calculations.

 

[Arizal]

A quick look at the UI : Instead of having pie charts for happiness, I would prefer a unique pie chart showing the amount of power each estate has, with maybe the crownland more in evidence.

By the way, that's how I would see the crownland being represented in that hypothetical power donut-chart. The crownland would be in place of the 20%. I would like that because it would give you at a glance how you "dominate" the estates.

 

[sr999]

there is a chance for those yes.

Crown privileges arguably were the very first privileges. Perhaps they should better be regarded as "immunities"? Under weak monarchs crown privileges were eroded; under strong monarchs crown privileges were restored. In England the mechanism for the latter, and sometimes the former, were usually parliaments. An example is the back-and-forth battles between the jurisdiction of seigneurial courts run by the nobles in their demesnes, and the jurisdiction of the royal "common law" courts run by the monarch always trying to expand toward monopoly. Another is the "anti-noble" alliance between the monarchy and the towns given "royal charters" to economically separate them from the noble families that founded or controlled them. The privileges ("liberties") of such towns are given special mention in the 1215 Runnymede peace treaty; and the 1217 (and subsequent re-enactments of) "Magna Carta".

Alternatively, perhaps current crown power could act as some kind of negative modifier against the prospects of other estates trying to expand their own? Just a thought.

Anecdote: one interesting outcome of the privileges struggle was the AngloSaxon common law concept of "time immemorial", which came to mean (and still does mean) the year 1189. That was due to Edward I's aggressive late-13th century attempts to eliminate most noble privileges, i.e. claims by nobles that their privileges had existed since time immemorial, by saying "prove it or lose it, with documents". After a few years of serious noble revolts over this absurdly recursive proposition, and tsunamis of forged documents, the parties compromised with the more relaxed proposition "if you can prove simply that your family has exercised the privilege since the first year of Richard I's reign, 1189, then the Crown will accept that as evidence that the privilege has existed since time immemorial".

Finally, it's amusing that just three sections of Magna Carta 1297 have not been repealed and are still good law (though too vague now to be justiciable). Every single one of them confirms privileges: Section I for the clergy and non-serfs; IX, for the burghers; and XXIX, intended for the nobles (noting that "free men" meant essentially the Norman aristocracy: the English at the time mostly being serfs and thus not included). Check it out here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Edw1cc1929/25/9/data.xht?view=snippet&wrap=true

 

[tommassi]

Since @Johan was playing Aragón, I was wondering how situations such as Sardinia (a papal fief given to the king of Aragón, but still controled by Pisa and Genoa and which Aragón would have to conquest, and it took a century) will be represented in the game.

 

[grommile]

2nd post asking for a formable Minoan civilization with flavor

This is fantasy-tier althist.

It's safe to say that literally nobody on Earth knew anything about Minoan society in 1337 AD, since it vanished into total obscurity fairly soon after meeting its demise.

Even the finest of modern archaeology has been unable to tell us what language they spoke or how their society was structured.

It might be quite a fun mod, but it's really not suitable subject matter for official game content.

 

[Aramenian]

@Johan Could you show the political map of the Caucasus, because you have already shown the provinces. I would like to see a screenshot of it, please.

 

[AlphaSonic]

@Johan Could you show the political map of the Caucasus, because you have already shown the provinces. I would like to see a screenshot of it, please.

I believe in another thread there's a map without the fog of war and it shows the Caucasus also.

 

[KIngMoose303]

Albanians gonna be mad that they’re not red anymore. You guys might want to just put that back

 

[DangerousAvocado]

I have an idea for something I would love to see in this game, which I have not seen done well anywhere before. I have 1500+ hours in EU4 and I find it silly that my nation is willing to fight just as hard on the offense as on the defense, for a cleansing of heresy as for a trade conflict, or against the one province minor next to me or the entirety of Europe in a coalition war. I want to introduce the ideas of War Expectations and Existential Threat.

Existential Threat:
Existential Threat should produce bonuses for defending countries. Nations should generally fight harder on the defense than on the offense. As an example, in the systems used in EU4 this could manifest in more manpower recovery speed [from a pop more willing to enlist], lower army maintenance [from a pop willing to be paid less to defend their homeland], or even higher supply limit [from a pop more willing to share with local soldiers]. But different war goals will also differently effect the willingness of the population to fight. A population may not be as enthusiastic in its defense of the conquest of a province of a non-accepted culture group whose pops aren't in the cabinet/leadership of the nation. Meanwhile, a theocracy with a powerful Clergy estate may have a population that regards a "cleansing of heresy" CB as an existential threat, allowing rapid mobilization. In another scenario, the population of a country with a nobility estate at odds with its peasantry/countrymen may regard an attack from a member of the same culture group as more of a "change of management" rather than an existential threat to its existence. I think that defenders should always get some bonus, nations when attacked often rally to the flag, but the degree of this bonus should be modified by the attitudes of the population towards their government, the CB, the opposing nation's culture/religion, etc. There is historical precedent for the perception of existential threat being important to defenders, just look at Ukraine for a modern example.

Existential Threat perception also provides a fantastic opportunity to tie in with Aggressive Expansion. In EU4, AE either matters a lot (Ottomans join your coalition with -51 AE) or not at all (Ottomans don't join your coalition at -49 AE). Players who aggressively expand accumulate much more AE, which would bump up the existential threat calculation of defenders. This provides a mechanism to slow down the feed-forward loop of conquest and expansion. This could be supplemented by feeding in other systems, like making it so taking non-claimed land in a peace deal gives more AE (in addition to current rules about co-belligerents), or how taking land from a nation's primary or accepted cultures dramatically increases their threat perception of your nation in future conflicts.

War Expectations:
Whereas existential threat perception is mainly about buffing the defenders, war expectations can provide a scaling debuff to the attackers over time. There have been many times when more powerful nations have considered the act of enforcing their will on a weaker neighbour to be a "mere matter of marching". Whether it was the Americans in the War of 1812, or again Russia in its war on Ukraine. I would like to see the rate at which a "call for peace"-like mechanic accrues to be far greater when declaring war on a tiny nation than when fighting giga Spain. Pops would reasonably have different expectations of how these two conflicts should progress. This also creates an opportunity for skill expression, as experienced players are able to fight wars more efficiently and more in line with the expectations of their populations, thus suffering fewer of the penalties of a call-for-peace-type mechanic.

Playing into other systems:
I think that the twin systems of Existential Threat and War Expectations would increase the immersion of players into the game. Pops would feel like real things that have opinions based on their values and what matters to them (culture, religion, nationalism, etc.). The added benefit is that rapid expansion would become more challenging, especially as players accumulate AE, slowing down snowballing and extending the interesting part of the game. Obviously this system would need to be tuned so that, no matter how threatening the two province minor on your border considers you to be, you can still crush them when you control the whole subcontinent, I'm not suggesting that every war should become the defense of Helm's deep. However, this system would provide interesting opportunities for players to make strategic decisions about which CBs they use against which nations, or which provinces they take in a peace deal. Furthermore, you could give players tools to mitigate their perceived threat level. Maybe if you keep your peasantry super happy, when you invade a country where the peasantry is powerful but unhappy then the defenders get fewer bonuses because actually their peasants are convinced they'd be better off if you won. Threat level could even play into a nations' willingness to sign peace. I don't think threat level should affect warscore costs, but to use the EU4 analogy, it should affect the time until a combatant flips to 'low' attitude and is willing to give you 20 more warscore worth of land than you have actually earned.

Anyway, I think these systems would add to the realism of the game and fill a void that exists in EU4 where going to war is completely disconnected from what your people or your enemies' people think of you and your nation and want for themselves and their country. In EU4, war is completely a top-down decision, and all wars are the same, simply being modified by "75% cost" or "25% AE" for a reconquest. In EU "Project Ceasar", where it seems that the devs are trying to make the wishes of the population manifest throughout the games systems, I would like to see systems like what I have described integrated into warfare beyond the simple ability to levy troops, which is all that has been mentioned thus far.

 

[NetFoley]

Loving the weekly diaries.

With so many big empires like Byz and the hordes ready to fall will there be some kind of "Rise and fall" mechanic to make it work or will it all be scripted events ?

 

[hi9ld]

Speed 5 in all current PDX games unlocks the game to run as fast as your computer can process it

fairly certain that in EU4 the game speed is still limited by the game engine itself when considering newer CPUs

like i have a 7800X3D and yet on speed 5 the game is as fast as my old CPU, although the 7800X3D is faster than that one

 

[Abnormalmind]

Gommunism confirmed??

*lol* Wow, let me tell you something exciting! Communism, in its pure form, is simply an economic system, not a political structure.

 

[Canadaball2]

Will the game end in an earlier date since we're beginning a century or so before the Eu4 start date? Or will we still make it to the early 19th century?

 

[grommile]

fairly certain that in EU4 the game speed is still limited by the game engine itself when considering newer CPUs

Speed 5 turns off the in-engine tick rate limiter.

What remains, then, is "the game has more serialism in its design than we would like and so as long as you've got at least four cores then the main driver of tick rate is single-core performance".

 

[AleixASV]

Since @Johan was playing Aragón, I was wondering how situations such as Sardinia (a papal fief given to the king of Aragón, but still controled by Pisa and Genoa and which Aragón would have to conquest, and it took a century) will be represented in the game.

Sadinia mostly fell to Aragon following the Siege of Genoa that happened a couple of years prior to the new starting date, though of course it wasn't smooth sailing.