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Tinto Talks #5 - March 27th, 2024

Welcome to the fifth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design for our upcoming top secret game with the codename ‘Project Caesar.’


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The state is me! Oh, you meant E-state, sorry.. not me ..

Today we will go into detail about one of the core systems in the game, and talk about how estates work.

First of all, there are four estates in Project Caesar, which mostly map 1 to 1 with a social class: Nobility, Clergy, Burghers and the Commoners. There is also the Crown, which represents the state itself.

Each estate gains power based on the amount of population belonging to the estate, which is also modifiable by local attributes of where the population is, where some nobles may have very high power in a certain area, or whether a specific city has entrenched burgher rights there.

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This is the estates part of the government view, where you can see their power, current satisfaction, the equilibrium its trending toward, and what privileges it currently has.

Every 1,000 nobles gives +50 estate power to their estate, while 1,000 peasants merely give +0.05 estate power as default. Then these are modified locally in every location, as mentioned above, and then in the entire country by laws, reforms and most notably the privileges that you have given the estates.

The total power of all the 4 estates and the crown then together all add up to 100%, which is the effective power they have.

Depending on your crown power, you either get a scaling penalty or scaling bonus, on aspects like the cost of revoking estate privileges, the cost of changing policies in laws, the efficiency of the cabinet, the expected costs of the court, and other things. If your crown power is weak, you need to have the estates really satisfied, or you will not get much out of any parliament you try to call.

Each of the four estates has a current satisfaction and an equilibrium it will move towards. Some estates, and some countries, will have the estate satisfaction moving quicker to the equilibrium than others. Each estate has 2 factors per type of estate in which their satisfaction impacts the entire country, where satisfaction above 50% gives a scaling bonus, and below, a scaling penalty.

If the satisfaction is below 25%, this estate will not provide any levies. Most importantly, the estate satisfaction also impacts the satisfaction of the pops that belong to that estate, possibly creating rebel factions or even civil wars.
  • Nobility impacts your prestige gain and your counterespionage.
  • Clergy impacts your research speed and your diplomatic reputation.
  • Burghers impact your merchant power and the production efficiency.
  • Commoner impacts your food production and your stability costs.

So what impacts the satisfaction equilibrium of an estate? The privileges they get, the current stability, some reforms may impact them, some laws may, how you tax them, and much more. Some examples include clergy being happier with higher religious unity or burghers liking having more market centers in your country.

# estate privileges
Estate Privileges then? You may feel forced to grant privileges to estates to be able to tax them more, and you may be forced to grant privileges to get their support in parliament. All privileges impact the power of their estate, and many also increase their satisfaction equilibrium. They all have some impact on gameplay fitting the privilege, and often they also impact a societal value of their country.

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WiP ui, temporary graphics and no icons etc.

There are many different privileges, and many unique ones depending on where and what type of country you play.

We mentioned taxes before, and while this is not the development diary where we go into details about the economic system, it is important to mention that the estates of a country have wealth that is increased by the amount of money that you have not taken from them in taxes. Rich estates will use their wealth on many things, primarily to invest into things that benefit them, but will often also build things that also benefit the country.

Next week we will talk about a few new concepts that are rather new to this game that have not been present in previous games, as we will talk about proximity, control and maritime presence, all concepts that need to be talked about in detail, before we go into the economy system.
 
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@Johan
Prompted by a youtube video I watched, where numerous Johan's post were being commented, I thought I should come here to repeat a longtime gripe I've had with EUIV. It's summed up as "total wars in the 15th-18th century are not fun gameplay, and definetly not historical".

I'd appreciate mechanics that encourage limited wars, where the player/AI chooses the war theather, same as he can choose which claims to press or which provinces to set as war goals in other games. This choice could be directed by some sort of values, resources, "claims" (CK-style), etc.
 
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@Johan So again, I know you probably can't quite say anything concrete yet, but will Project Caesar have any sort of Cultural bonuses either in a revamped idea system or like the cultures in CK3?
 
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@Johan
Prompted by a youtube video I watched, where numerous Johan's post were being commented, I thought I should come here to repeat a longtime gripe I've had with EUIV. It's summed up as "total wars in the 15th-18th century are not fun gameplay, and definetly not historical".

I'd appreciate mechanics that encourage limited wars, where the player/AI chooses the war theather, same as he can choose which claims to press or which provinces to set as war goals in other games. This choice could be directed by some sort of values, resources, "claims" (CK-style), etc.
which video is it
 
I hope we will really strugle to keep our contry all togther in early game, deal with estates and hopfully a really slow centralisation AT LEAST the first 100 years

I really don't want to be able to posess half of europe after 100 years after the starting date like in EUIV. Some exeptions like ottomans/nomads should but not european feodal contries

Can't wait to read the next Tinto Talk and play the new version on my favorite game ever !!
 
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This is far more indicative of the perpetual continuation of using archaic historian lingo for the Roman medieval period which enforces the disconnect between the "Byzantines" & the Romans -- causing the supposed confusion you speak of. Rectifying the accuracy shouldn't be swept under because of an irrational concern over confusing players. Nothing will fix this vacuous convention unless PDX takes the plunge and starts accurately calling the Roman Empire the "Roman Empire".
Exactly, this is a stance that PDX can totally endorse or not.
I would be so bold as to say EU4 games and alike have helped spreading a general knowledge of some regions we are not necessarily accustomed to know.

Through events, missions, the diversity of countries, people can feel immersed in one country history and decide to dig deeper in books of encyclopedias.
In the same way that some games like AC : Origins generated an interest to learn about Egyptian antiquity, so can a game like EU/CK/VIC/HOI.

It could not be wrong then, to take the stance of vulgarization and to restore the contemporary image of the “Roman Empire” to players, as it was commonly known back then.

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

Im not worried if PDX de idea against it though. We will see localization mod from Day 1
 
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This is great stuff! I have two questions:

1) How modable is this?

I'd love to change the estates so that differing religious groups get their own, unique estate, which would better represent the chaos caused by religious dissent.

2) Do the estates have some sort of modifier or building that show their presence in certain territories? A massive cathedral, for example, or a castle.
 
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i know, but the more the better lel. for the real time problem so that a complete game doesnt take like 1 year to complete we could make a higher speed limit than what was available. ofc this would require a decent CPU
As Eruth said, Paradox games have a full speed step (the fifth). So this won't change anything. They can't make a higher speed limit that unlimited. And I don't know anyone who has a CPU powerful enough to make the game fast enough (partly because you can't go full speed all the time).
 
My only concern here is that "estate power" scales linearly with the size of the estate. I don't think this really makes sense, and it would make more sense if estate power scaled with the wealth or privileges of a given estate.

In the case of nobles, their power should not be scaled with their population numbers, but with their land ownership. Likewise the clergy. Burgers should get power from trade, manufactories and to a lesser degree population size.

This is something I think Victoria 3 does well.
 
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Will naval passages like the Bosporus, Dardanelles, Danish Belts, etc. be controllable? If Denmark can control the Danish Belts (at least later in the game) it gives some incentive for a country like Germany to build the Kiel Canal. It would also give some more benefits to controlling things like the Panama canal, and the Suez, and would give Russia a reason to want the Bosporus under its control, or any black sea power for that matter.

It could also work off of tech levels, to use Eu4 terms. For example, having a certain "diplo tech" allows you to control the Bosporus. Some straits might need higher tech, as controlling the Danish belts would be much harder than controlling the Dardanelles. Having access to the oceans is a major aspect of why many countries did what they did. Most notably Russia, of course, but being able to freely traverse the Black/Baltic sea has been an important geopolitical issue for centuries.

During a late game war, assuming Project Caesar goes this far, it would be an interesting dynamic to see an attacking army (for this example ottoman) occupying the (British) Suez, blocking British travel & isolating their colonies by requiring the British to go around Africa or through the pacific. It would certainly add an interesting dynamic to war, as it's advantageous to control these during wartime and could be used to create some interesting scenarios. For example, a Crimean War scenario. The British and Ottomans are at war with the Russians, and the British player boldly sails his whole fleet into the Black Sea. The Russian player can then march down, contest/occupy the entrance to the Black Sea, and possibly trap the British navy there.

Perhaps this system would work on a tiered format, so you can
-deny enemy ships
-deny all warships
-deny all ships

ALSO, assuming the trade is less rigid than Eu4, it would be interesting to see how that could be influenced by your connection to the oceans being severed. This last part might be a bit ambitious, but just a thought.

Using the tiers, it could change who gets affected and how. If France is trading with Russia and the Bosporus is blocked by the Byzantines, will French ships be allowed through? They aren't an enemy but they are trading with an enemy. This would give a third party (in this example France) incentive to either join on Russia's side to re-open trade, or try and enforce a peace to save their trade routes. It makes the politics and diplomacy more dynamic (especially for MP unless the AI is smart enough to comprehend it). Similar to how there is a "trade dispute" CB in eu4, there could be a "reopen trade" cb available when your trade line gets cut off by a war you're not in.

Furthermore, it's even possible for your "country" to be severed by such a thing. Using the 1337 start date, I believe Genoa controls parts of the inner Black Sea coast. If Byzantium/Ottomans want to seize that territory, they could simply close off the entrance into the sea and take it without any ability for the Genoese navy to intervene (Unless they want to do a Gallipoli but let's not be silly now)


This is VERY ROUGH mock-up to visualize the idea, I whipped it up very quickly so it looks terrible, but you get the idea:
View attachment 1103838

Amazing write up. Awesome idea. I just finished the History of the Russian revolution podcast (Mike Duncan) and the access and blockading stuff of a navy was such a big part of the Russian - Japanese war.

But even before, like with the destruction of the Spanish Armada by the british in 1588. These were such integral parts of the whole war. It would be very cool to have navies and wresting control of the seas be an actual part of the game without making it tedious like Empire Total War did.
 
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As a guy from Barcelona, it's really endearing that you put so much focus on Aragon, which has always been put aside in favor of the great empires of modernity. Maybe you can confirm, but it does seem that this country makes up for a great testing country, since it has a very balanced mix of estates, it's a mid-big sized tier country, etc. (Apart from the fact that Tinto is located here and the studio probably has quite a few of experts in Aragon's history).

I'm hoping for a detailed zoomed in image of catalan-aragonese lands soon!
 
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Is there a chance of us getting a tribes/nomads class?
In EU4, there was a distinct lack of expression on the part of the tribes/nomads. They don't be part of a state, it's just a matter of loyalty and respect for the king, and at any moment the tribes/nomads do whatever they want.
Also making a tribe loyal to the crown makes another tribe angry.
 
How about Crusade mechanics ? It's frustrating if its like ck3. Like you raise up all of your armies and try to angage war to other side of continent... So if i send a part of my army and give it to ai control and just wait for the news about crusade if we win or lose... Haha uuh anyway but im really curious how its gonna be. Especially '' Crusade '' mechanics.
 
My only concern here is that "estate power" scales linearly with the size of the estate. I don't think this really makes sense, and it would make more sense if estate power scaled with the wealth or privileges of a given estate.

In the case of nobles, their power should not be scaled with their population numbers, but with their land ownership. Likewise the clergy. Burgers should get power from trade, manufactories and to a lesser degree population size.

This is something I think Victoria 3 does well.
Not exactly. Actually johan said that it scaled with the population of the estate for sure, but also was modified locally or globally (we can imagine some estate privileges as well)

The main difference here is that estate power actually splits between all the estates and the crown up to 100%, unlike in EUIV where land ownership was split in shares of 100%, but power was unrelated (so total power could go up to 100% for each estate).
Now, if one estate becomes powerful, that will be detrimental to the others (which actually makes sense).

As Johan stated, it means that you could totally play either equilibrium OR full support to one estate (ie burghers or commoners as a revolutionary republic)

Then, I guess absolutism, if it’s back, will also be tied to state power, and not another unrelated value
 
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I'd have to believe Andorra will be big enough to appear, going by the location sizes. Liechtenstein didn't exist until 1719 though, so it's really a question if the map will show the County of Vaduz.

EDIT. Johan later confirmed Andorra on the map. I wonder how the condominium of the co-princes will be handled, as the system was already in place in 1337?
I was unaware Liechtenstein didn’t exist at that time, however looking at what “historic” Vaduz was it’s roughly 75% of Liechtenstein, and Liechtenstein is bigger then San Marino but smaller then Andorra, based off this since Andorra seems to be like the base we’re going off of, there probably wouldn’t be a Vaduz, though it would be cool to Vaduz and a Liechtenstein formable.


Edit: Vaduz was made in 1342, I guess before that it was apart of Werdenberg or something