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Tinto Talks # 7 -10th of April

Welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Talks, where we talk about really super secret stuff, that is hidden behind the code name of ‘Project Caesar’.

Today we’ll look into what makes up the economy in Project Caesar. Obviously, we’ll go into much more detail on some of these aspects in later Tinto Talks. Right now though, we’ll go through the incomes and expenses of a country in the game.

Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.

And with balancing incomes and expenses, of course there are sliders. Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.

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Incomes

If we start with income, you have trade-related incomes, which is a system we will delve deep into in early May, as well as diplomatically related income. You also gain gold from provinces (not locations) that sell surplus food they can not store in their local market. Neither of these you directly control with any slider though.

The bulk of most countries' income will come from taxes though, and taxes in Project Caesar are really different than before. First of all, every estate has a possible tax base, a concept we will delve into much more detail next week. This you can attempt tax from them, but every estate has a maximum tax you can take from them, which depends on your laws and their privileges, and how much power they have in your country. The higher the tax you take from them, the lower their satisfaction equilibrium becomes. Some examples of tax affecting things include the Catholic religion which limits the taxes on Clergy, and also the ‘Auxilium et Consilium’ estate privilege for the nobles, which reduces the tax they pay.

Finally, for something that has existed in some older of our games, we have minting. Now what is that you may ask? Minting is the possibility to get more money by printing more coins. It just has the slight drawback of increasing your inflation the more you do it.

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Here we have the possibility to tax the commoners a fair bit more…


Expenses
We all do love gaining gold, but sadly we also have to spend it, and while we can reduce some of the spending, we can not completely avoid all of it.

First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

Then we have the cost for your standing army and navy, where spending less reduces their fighting capability. This is nothing new to our GSG games, so I am not sure why I need to mention this here.

Fort Maintenance is another common economic expense from our games, which is here as well. If you don’t pay, garrisons don’t tend to stick around.

Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.

You can also decide how much you wish to spend on your colonial charters, which is a new system we will talk about later this year.

Finally, the last thing you can impact with a slider is your investment in stability. The cost for how much your investments are needed depends on the size of your country, with different laws and societal values impacting it as well. Stability in itself ranges from +100 to -100, and will decay towards 0 on its own. There are two other ways to impact your stability gain, besides investing gold as mentioned here. One of them relates to the cabinet system, but another is a more long-term impact from how your country is built up, as it is based upon how many clergy pops you have of your state religion compared to the total population.

There are other expenses as you can see below, but one important thing to mention is that provinces that lack food will try to buy it from the local market.
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Maybe maybe we should cut down on our fleet, and maybe we don’t need ALL those forts. Our standing army of 200 brave footmen is enough!

Next week we’ll talk more in depth about how the tax base functions, how the food system works, and some other related issues.
 
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Hello Johan, I am seriously sick and according to my doctor, the only thing that can save me is seeing the map of Carpathia in Project Caesar. Thanks you for your consideration.

Have you tried to look at a google map? Might alleviate the symptoms?
 
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Hello Johan, I am seriously sick and according to my doctor, the only thing that can save me is seeing the map of Carpathia in Project Caesar. Thanks you for your consideration.
 
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Will there be more sophisticated dependencies in the economy relating access to various trade goods and production?

For example, the Low Countries relied on getting wool from England to supply its weaving industry. So in game this could mean something like having a plentiful supply of wool boosts your ability to produce cloth, etc. And not getting the raw supplies you need could lead to serious penalties.

We have 3 more weeks of purely economic development diaries after this one, so stay tuned.
 
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Will there be better flags/coats of arms in Project Caesar? One of my biggest nitpicks of EU4 is seeing Somalia use the flag of the modern day country of Somalia or Illinois use a flag that was designed in the 1900s and never even used anyway.

We are using a similar system to CK3/V3 which has dynamic flags/coa.
 
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Really excited about that expensive standing army being 200. Seems like how stacks work has been overhauled! FINALLY! No more deathstacks of thousands of units of 1 thousand.

Please Johan, can you confirm whether the estate pays for levies or the state does? I assume for most of the game the bulk of your army will be levies.

The state will not pay for the levies. Unless you count lots of pops not contributing to the economy anymore.
 
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Are Mercenaries getting a rework? Because in eu4 they are (combined with loans and debase) effectively free troops.

hell yes
 
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Will costs of buying and selling food be naturally summed up over your whole country, since it seems to be on a province base right now?
If yes, what is the difference to making a whole country-wide food pool?

Not sure porting food instantly from vladivostok to st.petersburg feels realistic.
 
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Will the game distinguish between crown-owned ventures and private ventures? In EU4, trade income was treated as a strange blend of the two.

yes
 
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Will high taxation do more than only reducing how much a faction likes you? Could it reduce their influence (since they got no money), reduce the amount of pos, etc?

it reduced their influence longterm, by being poorer
 
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So if an island nation decides to only import food and not produce themselves, they would starve to death eventually if 100% blockaded?

would take a while, but yeah.
 
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