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Tinto Flavour #3 - 24th of January 2025 - Novgorod

Hello, and welcome to the third installment of Tinto Flavour, the happy Fridays in which we look at the flavour content of the super secret Project Caesar! This week we will be traveling to the cold north, where the Sovereign Lord Republic of Velikiy Novgorod lies beside Lake Ilmen:

"Originally founded by Slav and Norse people as Holmgård, the 'new city' of Novgorod became the main political and economic center in the north of the lands inhabited by the Russian people. Fiercely independent, the Novgorodian council elects its Prince among neighboring rulers, although the true power is held by its people, who thrive thanks to the commercial routes linking the rich inland resource-gathering outposts with the Baltic and White Seas.

However, in recent decades, the war with Sweden has been almost a constant, nowadays halted after the creation of the buffer state of Oreshek. Meanwhile, to the south, Muscovy has become a dominant power, with the backing of the Golden Horde. The proud inhabitants of Novgorod may have to face difficult decisions at these crossroads."

Country Selection.jpg

Grand Prince Ivan Rurikovich I ‘Kalita’ of Muscovy is the Prince elected by the Council of Novgorod. As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.

And here are the lands of Veliky Novgorod:
Novgorod.jpg

Today with a different camera angle!

This is the starting situation of Novgorod:
Diplomacy.jpg

Subjects.jpg

Pskov and Oreshek, the two first shown in the subject list, are vassals. The other subjects are pop-based tributaries; we need some work to make them visible on this screen. Besides that, Muscovy and the other countries with a similar color share a PU with Novgorod throughout their ruler, Ivan I.

Let’s now take a look at Novgorod itself. The first thing is the country's government type, which is a Republic. As per that, and Novgorod’s main culture belonging to the Russian culture group, two different things get unlocked. The first is a major government reform, the Veche Republic:
Veche Republic.jpg

The second is this Age of Traditions advance:
Veche Advance.jpg

This in turn unlocks the Veche Selection, a succession law that allows your country to select the ruler among neighboring countries:
Veche Selection.jpg

You might have noticed that Estates are important and powerful in the governance of Novgorod. This is also reflected in the unique privileges it starts with, with 3 unique privileges for Nobility:
Kormlenije.jpg

Ryad.jpg

Tysiatskii.jpg

And one for Burghers:
Ivan's Hundred.jpg

There are also some unique policies. The first is for the Legal Code law:
Russkaya Pravda.jpg

And the second is for the Administrative System Law:
Pyatina Policy.jpg

Novgorod also has some unique works of art, such as:
House of Holy Wisdom.jpg

This will reappear later in this Tinto Flavour, keep an eye on it!

And a type of work of art that is unique to Orthodox and Miaphysite countries, the Icon:
Saint George in Yuriev.jpg

Speaking of Orthodoxy, there’s some Orthodox-related stuff that I’m just going to tease, as we will talk in detail about this in a future Tinto Talks, like this Law available to all Orthodox countries:
Role of the Patriarchate.jpg

Patriarchates, a concept that you will either love or hate as an Orthodox country!

Now let’s move into taking a look at some of the unique advances that are available to Novgorod:
Birch Bark.jpg

Novgorod First Chronicle.jpg

Funding Ushkuyniks.jpg

Northern Center of Arts.jpg

Posadnichestvo.jpg

The last one unlocks another unique government reform, after it has been researched during the Age of Renaissance:
Posadnichestvo Office.jpg

Finally, let’s take a look at some of the events that Novgorod may get. The first appears early in the campaign, after an event that triggers to Sweden:
Theological Debate.jpg

Shall we debate with Swedish about theology, or just forward them for a Byzantine debate?

Another one that may trigger early on is this one:
Karelian Rebellion.jpg

These Swedes are troublemakers!

This is an event you will get to expand the Cathedral of St. Sophia, with an option to start constructing a building on top of the WoA:
Cathedral St. Sophia.jpg

This is another event that you can get after 1400:
Sovet Gospod.jpg

That will unlock a new government reform, that will replace the Veche Republic as your main government reform:
Sovet Gospod2.jpg

…And much more content will be available for Novgorod, but that’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed today’s Tinto Flavour, next week we will be taking a look at Mali, the land of Mansa Musa! Cheers!
 

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Is that some deliberate convention to distinguish it from the later Soviets? Because it's the exact same word in Russian as far as I can tell - Совет - 'е' being pronoucned ye/je, hence the usual transliteration into Latin script, English usage, as Soviet.
It's a difference between transliteration and transcription.
Word "Soviet" in relation to anything involving Soviet Union became commonly used in English during the 20th century, so it uses transcription as more user-friendly.
"Sovet" in relation to various medieval/early modern institutions in English language is used nearly exclusively by scholars, so it uses transliteration as more precise.
 
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Thanks for an interesting TF!

1. I think Posadnik office would sound much better:
View attachment 1246805
Posadnichestvo Office feels a bit weird to me.
Feel the difference: general’s office vs. generalty office.

OR it could be just Expanded Posadnichestvo, it feels ok to me.

2. You use Kyiv name in the game, so it would make sense to write Kyivan Rus for consistensy:
View attachment 1246804

3. Also, if you use British English standard, it should be Centre, I think :D :
View attachment 1246819
1. Just changed it to 'Expanded Posadnichestvo', as it reads better, yeah.
2. Checking with our language expert.
3. We use American English standard (except for Tinto Flavour, that's our only exception :D).
4. Fixing. We have a pending task to unify Slavic spelling, yeah.
 
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1737730337995.png

Flags and the round part where the coin and vassal icons are located don't seem to be centered! A little too far to the right
 
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View attachment 1246774
Grand Prince Ivan Rurikovich I ‘Kalita’ of Muscovy is the Prince elected by the Council of Novgorod. As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.
I hope Eastern and Western Europe will get different gfx in the final version! Also, is the Grand Prince wearing a crown accurate?

yarrrr

View attachment 1246775
Shall we debate with Swedish about theology, or just forward them for a Byzantine debate?
EPIC RAP BATTLES OF HISTORY

This is another event that you can get after 1400:
It seems that you have been slightly inconsistent with the spelling of Tysyatsky/Tisyatskii

That will unlock a new government reform, that will replace the Veche Republic as your main government reform:
I might be alone with this, but I'd rather prefer to have translatable terms like this (Council of Lords) in English, and only keep the concepts that are hard to translate (such as Posadnik) in Russian; to me, it is a bit distracting to read texts of mixed languages like this, primarily because I automatically code switch between them while reading and then back, which for me just breaks the flow and immersion of descriptions and in-game texts like this.

Also, there is a typo in Gospo(n)d

…And much more content will be available for Novgorod, but that’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed today’s Tinto Flavour, next week we will be taking a look at Mali, the land of Mansa Musa! Cheers!
Hell yeaa
 
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Cool art, but very catholic/western, orthodox churches (including the Cathedral of St. Sophia) usually don't have colored glass and their walls are painted in icons, not in white.
This is generic Catholic/Western art, yes. Orthodox wouldn't have cardinal discussing, either. ;)
 
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By the way, in World map shown recently Pskov was shown as monarchy, shouldn't it be a Republic instead?
Yes, it's a bug, lol, fixing.
 
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In building based maps it looked like there is some red in Novgorod. Is there building based country in Novgorod?
The Hanseatic League has some outposts there:
Hansa.jpg
 
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To the question whether another monarch can become the ruler of Novgorod, all Russian principalities must have a requirement to accept Orthodoxy, the Russians simply will not accept a non-Orthodox ruler, the situation with one Pole showed this...
 
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I don't doubt your flag artist's skills or something but are you sure this is the correct Novgorodian flag? Any sources?
This is from our discussion:
The design is a cross patriarchal cavalry (on steps) which is used on one of the only known iconographic testimonies (15th c banners of novgorod cavalry). The modern flag of city dates from the 18th c and is an adaptation of the same design (you can recognize the attributes of power on each side of the throne) with additional symbolism thrown into the design. There are also some drawings of intermediate designs from the 16th c with the steps represented from a kind of isometric perspective and a simple cross on top.
To make things more complicated. The castle is known only by portolans (libro del conocimiento and another one I think) and the late medieval seals used by the city featured a panther of sorts (often called novgorod beast)
In truth the panther is the only sure thing. But is it a panther, a lion, a horse, or a unique kind of chimera ? How to interpret those seals is not an easy task, and thats not even considering the artistic side of it. The seal I was speaking about showing the cross on top of steps (looks like walls but it's a throne already which is the symbolism of the cavalry cross).
 
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Would it be possible to get a more orthodox style art for orthodox events like this?
Eventually (pun intended), yes, we'd like more event illustration styles.
 
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About unique advances:
  1. How impactful will these be? Maximum Literacy e. g. seems quite powerful.
  2. Will it be a strictly bad choice to play as a tag without special advances?
  3. Wouldn't it make more sense to lock them behind culture and/or location instead of tag, to make historically less important tags more viable for the player? (E. g. another (Russian) tag conquers the city of Novgorod and thereby gain access to the "Northern Center of Art" advance?)
 
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Why do you use word Russian, instead of Rus, in context of post Kievan Rus states? 1. All Belarus, Ukraine and Russia evolved from Kievan Rus so using 'Russian' is as big of a mistake as calling it 'ukrainian'/'belarussian'. 2. Russia(country) didn't exist yet in 1337. What you did here is Russia's propaganda used in late 18th century to justify their land grabs of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's land which they never owned at any point in history. Why it's called Kievan Rus instead of Russia?

It's misleading and confusing.

edit: read this to understand the topic I'm writing about.

if you would like to be stubborn you could call Everything since 800-2025 RUS/RUSSIAN.

edit2
“The Russians like to label everything Russian as Slavic, so that later they can label everything Slavic as “Russian,”
~Czech writer Karl Havlíček 1844
 
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