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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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It looks so much...medieval Victoria, not like EU. I mean, its not bad for me, but lets be honest, Victoria is not most popular game of Paradox thx to all those excel numbers everywhere. I'm afraid this may not repeat EU4 success.
 
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someone suggested rounding the estate satisfaction number to the lower integer. I think this is a great way of dividing the amount of numbers by 2 without losing much info. Could also have the value with decimals appear when you hover over, as sometimes it is important to know the exact value of the satisfaction.
 
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For those people who asked about clothes, these are the images I found on the Internet of Ivan Kalita. The Catholic Crown instead of a hat on the Russian prince looks unusual...
View attachment 1246834
The great Vereshchagin has drawn this album but when you flip through you will notice that he has purposefully put Monomachus' Crown throughout. He even has a scene of Vladimir Monomachus receiving the regalia. This is a XIX century Romanticist work of fiction. Victorian Age imagery is a major contributor to modern perception but it's not necessarily "the correct one".
Kievan/Kyivan Rus is a modern term, so to avoid controversy and endless debate about it, it might be best to use the historically used ”Rus’ land”

View attachment 1246856
Russland. Let's ditch the idea of using English in favour of German!
 
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Did you just tease an Orthodox Sweden path?
not to forget Novgorod "kalmar path".. ruled from some 300 years early st Petersburg version. New Holmgård?
From which Sweden can rebel as usually. Unless of course taxes are really low and maybe new world opened up. Maybe. Lots of goods flowing in from a chain of markets from china might help as well.

Then again that is a bit screwy as going to america was all about "become muslim or no more china goods" & some chose the highway instead of the Turkway.
 
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Why does Kormlenije increase centralization? The description seemed unclear about what the practice actually was, so I looked it up. Machine-translated Russian Wikipedia supposedly says it was a system where local officials could levy taxes-in-kind directly from the local population, under the guise of "supporting themselves" but in reality it often looked like corruption and self-enrichment.
This seems like a variant of tax farming. The local governors are the ones who collect all the normal taxes and fees to be sent to the central authority, and in exchange for executing their duties, they get free reign to collect a little extra for own pockets. Or in some cases, a lot extra.

But centralization would look more like what came after this system, where taxes go straight to the treasury and officials are paid by the central government instead. If I'm understanding Kormlenije right, it lets local officials decide their own tax policies and ensures their personal wealth doesn't depend on the ruler's whims. It devolves power to local officials in order to buy their loyalty. That's textbook decentralization, right? So it should probably have the opposite modifier. A strong ruler would want to get rid of this privilege, so they can impose tighter control and centralize tax collection. It should pull away from centralized authority, not toward it.
 
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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.
Why the choice to use American English standard rather than the proper spelling? :)
 
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Sure, but I don't believe this changes the tendency that we rarely see any solid arguments for Russian essentialism.
There's a big difference between "rarely" and "always", sometimes people disagree not with the argument, but with the way it is said.
Calling the developers bigots like the one who was disliked did surely isn't a respectful way of arguing for your cause.
Personally I think it is fine to use the Novgorodian dialect in the flavor of, well, Novgorod.
 
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Since we cover every culture in the world, our direction for clothing on release is 'broad strokes' so Russians will be wearing European clothing.
Which would be quite inaccurate. Russians began to wear European clothes only when Peter I came back from his Grand Embassy and changed how Russia looks. Before him Russia had it's own fashion. From the dresses to common usage of beards. And Peter in attempts to get rid of old fashion and modernise Russia made the beard tax.

I understand that 3D assets are expensive to make, but are you reall gonna make such broad strokes that don't make sence? It'll be kinda ridiculous if there's gonna be a character from Streltsy Corps and he wears Western European armor of Arquebusiers.
 
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Which would be quite inaccurate. Russians began to wear European clothes only when Peter I came back from his Grand Embassy and changed how Russia looks. Before him Russia had it's own fashion. From the dresses to common usage of beards. And Peter in attempts to get rid of old fashion and modernise Russia made the beard tax.

I understand that 3D assets are expensive to make, but are you reall gonna make such broad strokes that don't make sence? It'll be kinda ridiculous if there's gonna be a character from Streltsy Corps and he wears Western European armor of Arquebusiers.
Ultimately id rather fleshed out events flavour for nations and cultures and mechanics be amazing on day 1 release than specific European clothing be prioritised. Like it would look ridiculous if Mansu musa was wearing a 3 piece victorian suit but if he is in generic african garb who cares.
 
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The flavor text for the "Birch Bark Manuscript" advance is too generic. Is that intentional or just a case of "no one has written something for it yet so here is some placeholder text"?
 
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Why do you expect any argument for any essentialism at all?
Because essentialism has been the topic in other threads on how to represent Eastern Europe, like the Russia Tinto Maps.
There's a big difference between "rarely" and "always", sometimes people disagree not with the argument, but with the way it is said.
Calling the developers bigots like the one who was disliked did surely isn't a respectful way of arguing for your cause.
Personally I think it is fine to use the Novgorodian dialect in the flavor of, well, Novgorod.

Sure, and there's a big difference between the two postulates from me in this thread. One addresses reactions towards certain opinions, the other adresses the actual (lack of) counter arguments.

As to calling the developers bigots, I've expressed no such thing, or anything like it.

I should've probably been more clear that I was referring to earlier threads, including the latest Russia update in EU4, as that's not exactly clear in my post.
 
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Эх.. не успел попросить скриншот доходов/расходов бюджета.

Интересно на сколько Новгород зависим от торговли :/
 
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Can you provide examples, please? I struggle to recall philosophical debates in any of these.


There's plenty of other posts on the matter than these two, but as I'm finding them by looking through my own postings, you'll just get the earliest entries from me in the threads.

My point is that there's plenty of disagreement, but no actual argument as to why we should look at Russian culture as primeval and not (also) the outcome of nationbuilding and repression. The two links are the beginning of a wider discussion.

There was similar discussion in at least one EU4 thread, but I struggle to find it.
 
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