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Tinto Flavour #2 - 17th of January 2025 - Florence

Hello, and welcome for the second week to Tinto Flavour, the new series in which we will show the flavour content of the latest super secret Project Caesar!

Today we will be taking a look at Florence! I hope you get visually stunned by what you see, but not a rapid heartbeat, fainting, confusion, or hallucinations, as it happened to Stendhal when he visited the city in 1817. So, let’s start!



The Florentine domain stands strong at the cusp of a new age! Our republic has stood the test of time and is located in a prime position to take advantage of our region's prosperity and affluence. Around us, rivaling states and potential allies all make their moves in a bid to influence and expand their territory in Italy. \n\nHowever, few are as well known for their aptitude in arts and cultural influence as our forums of thought in Florence. Under the guidance of a capable administration and an educated people, the coming century will elevate our people and have us shine brightly as pioneering innovators during a time of great enlightening.

Country Selection.png

As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.

We have two elements here that appear in the Country Selection screen, AKA the Lobby. The first is the flavour immersion text that countries with unique content have. They have dynamic localization keys, which are the two words in bold that appear in the text, and which while hovered, allow to check a game concept. The second is a screenshot of the country name, flag, ruler, and the three main elements that define the country - Government Type (Republic), Country Type (Settled Country), and Country Rank (County). The courtroom illustration is the generic one for European countries, but it can potentially be unique.

Let’s jump into the country itself...
Florence.png

Tuscany is a lovely place, isn’t it?

The Republic of Florence is a Signoria, which is a unique, major Government Reform for Italian countries:
Signoria.png
Signoria Description.png

This reform unlocks a Succession Law, the Elective Potestate:
Elective Potestate.png

Florence also has a unique Estate Privilege for its ‘Senate’ (the flavour name of ‘Nobility’ for Republics, the ‘Signoria Council’:
Signoria Council.png

And a unique Estate Privilege for the Burghers, ‘Florence Guilds’:
Florence Guilds.png

This unlocks a unique Socioeconomic Law, the ‘Primacy of Florentine Guilds’, in which you can pick one of three different policies to embrace, promoting one of the three different types of Guilds:
Primacy of Florentine Guilds.png

Primacy of Florentine Guilds 2.png

Florence has another unique policy for the Legal Code Law, which is the 'Consiglio Maggiore':
Consiglio Maggiore.png

Florence also has unique advances, 13 in total, spread among the different Ages, of which I’m going to show a few selected ones:
Arte della Lana.png

Fiorino d'Oro.png

Florentine City Militia.png

Uffizi.png

You might notice that 3 of them have unique icons/illustrations, while the one for the Florentine Citizen Militia still uses a generic one.

Speaking of the Florentine Citizen Militia, it unlocks a unique type of Army Levy Unit:
Florentine City Militia 2.png

Florentine City Militia 3.png

And the Uffizi unlock a unique building:
Uffizi 2.png



All that I’ve shown you so far is what we internally consider ‘structural content’, that is, the type of content that would show up and could be (mostly) checked when starting a new game and digging and hovering over the different panels in the game. Let’s now start with the ‘narrative content’, the one that appears dynamically as you play the game. Oh, and one comment: although we usually have a minimum amount of 'structural content' and 'narrative content' for each country with unique flavour, it's widely diverse, so some countries have more 'structural ones' than others that have more 'narrative content', and vice versa, with others having a balanced amount of each type.

Florence can suffer two disasters during the game, an outlier in the game. You may see that they have some associated effects as long as they’re active, and that they also have associated events that may also trigger (8 for the Ciompi, 13 for Savonarola). Here you have the first one, the 'Ciompi Revolt':
Ciompi Revolt.png

Ciompi Revolt.png

And here the second one, 'The Rise of Savonarola':
Savonarola 1.png

Savonarola 2.png

Savonarola 3.png

Savonarola 4.png

The background illustration is the generic one, but it will receive a unique one. Oh, also, inviting Savonarola to Florence might not be a wise decision…

Besides disasters, there are a bunch of interesting flavour DHEs (‘dynamic historical events’) that can happen to Florence, of which I’m going to show you a selection.

The first is the creation of the Medici bank, in the form of a Building Based Country, ruled by a member of the Medici family, of course:
Medici Bank.png

If you select the first option, you will continue playing as Florence, while the second makes you to continue playing as the Bank of Medici! This is not a common type of content, at all, but a very special one, worth showing.

The event creates a building in the location of Florence, a Bank, and also an independent BBC, the Bank of Medici:
Bank.png

Bank of Medici.png

Two more banking countries are starting in Florence in 1337, the Banks of Peruzzi and Bardi:
Peruzzi, Bardi, Medici.png

It also showcases the Medici, after triggering the event.

There are more events related to the Medici's rise of power in Florence, but let me not reveal all the interesting content today, so let’s continue with other events…

An interesting historical character in Florence’s 14th century is Sir John Hawkwood, an infamous condottiere:
John Hawkwood.png

If you decide to hire him, you will be able to hire a unique mercenary company, the ‘White Company’, led by Hawkwood as general:
White Company.png

We also have some famous artists from the Florentine Renaissance, such as:
Leonardo Bruni.png

Da Vinci.png

Donatello.png

Do we have here two of the Ninja Turtles, maybe?

But besides characters, you also have events that may be related to buildings, such as the construction of the Duomo of Florence, that may end up with a unique Work of Art:
Event Florence Cathedral.png

Duomo.png



… And much more Florence-related content, as there are dozens of unique flavour events! But I think that this is enough showcase for today, as we don’t want to spoil the fun of starting a game for the first time! Next week we will be taking a look at the unique flavour content for Novgorod, cheers!
 

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True, changing!
one thing you could do and i think it would make it a lot more interesting and flavourful is that when the male figure leave the signoria (often because of war) it is the female the rules, this could be shown as a "if you deploy the king the queen will be the ruler" for the moment. also i am sure you know already but female in italy where treated very valuably compared to the rest of the world at the time, it wasn't weird for a woman to study and know how to rule a country (at times even better than the male counterpart) and this was a thing that was true only in italy (for sure in europe not sure if the whole world)
 
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Not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet, but BBC has a VERY different meaning that's well known in the U.S. Unless you realize and think it's funny go ahead, but otherwise it's NSFW if you wanna look up the meaning.
Oh, come on now.
Maybe the quality standards have gone down in recent years, but I'm sure that the British Broadcasting Company ain't that bad!
 
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I know you are probably very proud of whatever it is you've used to generate the characters, but I cannot stress enough how pointless a 3-D model is, and how uninspiring they look. If you must use the feature, just make it be a picture of the model you've generated, made on a Paradox supercomputer (so it looks better than what you've got) and then shuffle the rulers into a deck. Get someone to do a once-over on the picture, or better yet, just have someone draw the pictures using period-style. You keep saying it will get better, but we've seen nothing of that.
 
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Not, scripted. From the Italian Wiki:
@Pavía
The matter of Arezzo



My proposal is the following - I'll post this both in the Florence TF and in the Flavour proposal thread:

If - Year is 1347; Florence still owns Arezzo location; Control is less than 90;

an event fires: The matter of Arezzo or Arezzo seeks its independence back

giving Florence three options:

- release them, as promised (historical path, AI should be a little biased towards this, let's say 60% of the times)

Arezzo becomes independent, guaranteed by Florence, steering trade for 10 years; Florence gains an amount of republican tradition and diplomatic reputation

- let them have their own ruler, but keep them into the fold (plausible path, AI should consider this as viable, let's say 30%)

Arezzo gets released as a vassal of Florence; Florence loses a small amount of republican tradition, diplomatic reputation and nobles satisfaction

- Arezzo is ours now, deny their requests (AI should be less likely to choose this, let's say 10%, unless they already have unrest problems)

Arezzo location gets a large amount of unrest and a penalty on productivity for 10 years; Florence loses a large amount of republican tradition and diplomatic reputation; Florence gains a small amount of nobles satisfaction
 
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I don't know how "elections" are handled, but if it's as simple as "the best score becomes ruler", I'd say the relations between Florence (or any country having similar reform) and the candidate country should have some sort of impact: it'd be quite immersion breaking to have you be in a personal union with I.e the country you were in the middle of an all out war only because "your ruler died and their ruler was the best so... guess you're in a PU despite being at war for several years right before"
 
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It has a positive effect (our Senate is slightly happier), so not purely evil. Is more of a matter of improving its gameplay balance, I think.
I mean that privilege seems massively penalising for Florence, but I for one enjoy having some reforms that are overall "more evil than beneficial". And while it should be a rare occurrence that your estates force you to adapt these during the game, I think it'd be good to have it appear occasionally. And it makes sense lots of countries will start with reforms similar to these, it was a rather big tendency in that time to have the appearance of bigger and stronger states that managed to reduce the influence of their estates a lot.
 
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One thing I kinda dislike in EU4 is how some countries have those evil privileges at the start. In EUIV, the player never gives any of this kind of privileges and they are something that only appear at the start. It makes it weird. It gives the impression that the rulers before the game starts were very stupid. Somewhat similar to the situation of Poland in EUIV.

It would make sense to give this privileges under harsh conditions, like "give this privilege or have huge revolt while you are at an important war". But, if it were to be that way, I would expect to have similar situations during the gameplay. Instead we have various situations starting with evil privileges but hardly any situation were we want/have to to give evil privileges. For me is way to gamey, like, the country is a puzzle to solve but once you solved everything is perfect. I'm of the opinion that it should be more of a continuous struggle of power.

That being said, I thing this is solved by making the player give (or be forced to give) this privileges so that the rulers before the game start do not sound so stupid. Possible ways:
1) have evil privileges be enforced during the game by the nobility in exchange for support in hard times.
2) Have some positive aspect of the privilege, even if very situational.

In summary: less strictly evil privileges and more trade offs with hard and lasting effects.
View attachment 1244372
Maybe this privilege can give more satisfaction for the nobility estate considering that they form the government. This will make privilege more neutral rather than purely early-game "remove as fast as possible" thing
I double-checked this with the CDs in charge of the Florentine content, and it's a bug, as it should give a positive stability decay, not a negative one. Just fixed it, so it's now more the trade-off it was originally conceived as: It gives more power to your nobles and you can tax them less, but they are happier and the entire political system is more stable.
 
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This getting to play a formable bank got me thinking... If we play as frankfurt we could potentially get to play as Rothschilds? Could be a great achievement, control the world from shadows as a Rothschild bbc.
 
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View attachment 1244331

Shouldn't it be Improve relations with an S?

For the unique advances, could other Italian tags get them if they control Florence, or are they fully unique to Florence?

Are there any unique events related to the special advisors, like for Da Vinci's paintings or inventions?
S?
 
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With 3D characters, you can create much more unique characters and actually much more similar to real personalities, whereas with 2D you are limited in this area or they can be repetitive.
Sorry for taking a little while but just to ask. You don't think the 3d characters are distracting and somewhat ugly?
 
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Sorry for taking a little while but just to ask. You don't think the 3d characters are distracting and somewhat ugly?
It is not said that these are finally designed. As for distraction, it depends on the individual, some will want to have the most beautiful lineages, as in CK3, and for others it will be important to get as much territory as possible through them. This is all subjective and individual preference. If you're bothered by the visuals of your characters while you're interested in playing the country, then that's a bit of a personal problem.
 
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It is not said that these are finally designed. As for distraction, it depends on the individual, some will want to have the most beautiful lineages, as in CK3, and for others it will be important to get as much territory as possible through them. This is all subjective and individual preference. If you're bothered by the visuals of your characters while you're interested in playing the country, then that's a bit of a personal problem.
Sure. I don't know if I'm bothered by it, but I just wanted to point out the possibility that maybe having the characters in 2d would be visually more fitting especially since there are no other 3d or moving elements in the character tab (to my knowledge). I suggest it would blend the characters into the background—creating a painting rather then a "VTuber Avatar" with a green screen.
 
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Hello, love the work. Just a question. Are you guys still taking feedback on oceania? I just have two suggestions about locations in the Turrbal area. I'm only asking so that I know whether its worth grabbing the sources and putting the effort into it. Also, should I post that feedback in the latest DD, or will you guys check the Oceania thread if I post it there?
 
Hello, love the work. Just a question. Are you guys still taking feedback on oceania? I just have two suggestions about locations in the Turrbal area. I'm only asking so that I know whether its worth grabbing the sources and putting the effort into it. Also, should I post that feedback in the latest DD, or will you guys check the Oceania thread if I post it there?
Always post feedback on a region in the relevant Tinto Maps thread for that region. They're always taking feedback, even after a feedback thread is posted (though once a feedback thread is posted, you should post there instead of the original).
 
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