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Tinto Flavour #5 - 7th of February 2025 - Aragon

Hello, and welcome to one more Tinto Flavour, the happy Friday in which we take a look at the content of the new, super-secret Project Caesar. This week we will take a look at the Crown of Aragon, the lands where, centuries later, a certain video-game studio would be situated… But, in 1337, its situation is different:

The Crown of Aragon stands proudly as a significant power in the western Mediterranean region thanks to its maritime prowess, diplomatic weight, and flourishing trade networks.

The stabilization of the Kingdom of Valencia and the ongoing conquest of the newly-created Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica might ensure it a dominant position in the seas. However, despite its relative stability, challenges loom on the horizon. To the East, the Kingdom of Mallorca faces economic difficulties and its ruler's animosity towards King Pere IV ‘the Ceremonious’ might convince him to act foolishly. In the peninsula, the threat of the Crown of Castile is more and more real as the Reconquista comes to an end. To the north, the Kingdom of France has consolidated its domain over the Languedoc in the last century.

How would the young King Pere IV face the challenges to come? Will he focus on the Mediterranean Sea and rule the waves from Barcelona to the Holy Land? Will he turn around and claim dominance over Iberia? Or will he try to get revenge from the Battle of Muret in 1213, and recover its ancient holdings north of the Pyrenees?


Country Selection.png

The young King Pere IV ascended to the throne in 1336. As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.

These are the lands of Aragon:
Aragon.png

And this is the starting diplomatic situation, the Kingdom of Mallorca being a vassal, and the Military Order of Montesa being sponsored by Aragon (something we will talk about in a future Tinto Flavour, with other Catholic Military Orders):
Diplomacy.png

These are the lands of the Order of Montesa, which is a Building Based Country; the first screenshot is what you see when you hover over the country flag in any panel (such as the Diplomatic one shown just above), while the second is the BBC map mode - both show in which locations is the Order present through a building:
Montesa1.png

Montesa2.png

Oh, yes, and there are also some Florentine bankers present in Barcelona and Palma…

The Crown of Aragon starts with a major government reform of the same name:
Crown of Aragon.png

And also another unique one, that portrays the traditional fueros used in most of the Pyrenean towns and cities for their government; it is unlocked by a functional Culture Group called ‘Pyrenean’, shared by Aragonese, Basque and Gascon cultures (because, as we mentioned in a past Tinto Talks, a culture may belong to multiple culture groups, which are fully scriptable, and thus, moddable, so they can be created and used for multiple purposes):
Pyrenean Fueros.png

Beside these reforms, the Nobility of Aragon starts with this unique privilege, which is one of the most important cornerstones of the realm:
General Privilege of Aragon.png

This privilege may be relevant in the future…

Aragon also has a unique Maritime policy, the Consulate of the Sea:
Consulate of the Sea.png

And starts with some Works of Art, of which I’m going to show a couple, the Virgin of Montserrat, most widely known as ‘La Moreneta’:
La Moreneta.png

La Moreneta2.png

And the Basilica del Pilar of Zaragoza:
Basilica del Pilar1.png

Basilica del Pilar2.png

There are some unique advances for Aragon, so let’s show some of them:

The Almogavars is a unique Levy unit unlocked through an advance:
Almogavars.png

Almogavars2.png

Almogavars3.png

Related to the former:
Desperta Ferro!.png

Aragon has another unique land unit, the Catalan Crossbowmen:
Catalan Crossbowmen.png

Catalan Crossbowmen2.png

And also a unique naval unit, the Catalan Galley:
Catalan Galley.png

Catalan Galley2.png

There’s also a couple some more advances related to the Maritime prowess of Aragon, as this one:
Fleet Ordinances.png

And a couple more advances from the Age of Discovery:
Remença.png

It might be dangerous to oppress the remenças, though…

Valencian Golden Age.png

There are some events related to Joanot Martorell and Ausiàs March, so you might be able to hire them as artists, and also sponsor the famous novel, Tirant lo Blanch!:


Ausias March.png

Tirant lo Blanch.png

About the narrative content for Aragon, there’s an event chain that can trigger early on, about the fate of the Kingdom of Mallorca:

The Mallorcan Issue.png

There’s also a unique disaster, the War of the Aragonese Union, that may trigger in the case that Jaume, Peter’s younger brother, is no longer the heir:

The Union Reignites.png

War of the Union.png

The purple section in the disaster tooltip is from the debug mode, so it wouldn’t be present in a regular game; I added it to show that there’s a chance for some additional events to trigger.

There’s also some regional content. The first is an event that may trigger a chain about the most important institution in the Kingdom of Aragon, the Justicia (‘Chief Justiciar’):
Justicia de Aragón1.png

Justicia de Aragón2.png

Justicia de Aragón3.png

Not all are troublesome, as some more pleasant may trigger, this also related to Valencia:
Llotja Seda.png

Llotja Seda2.png

And much more, but that’s all for today! Next week we will travel to the Holy Roman Empire, to take a look at the Kingdom of Bohemia! Cheers!
 
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The 3D models are looking slowly but surely better as time goes on. The painted backdrops are beautiful, so the more painterly the 3D model textures are, the better they look.

Still wondering if they should have animation or not, cause if they are still, you might end up with a really dumb generated expression on a character you can't get away from lol
I don't know about animation, but they are definitely starting to look like they've solved the "head looks unattached to the body" problem that some of the early pictures we saw were plagued with.
 
Those do sound like reasonable numbers, by the way. War should be expensive, and and each soldier's maintenance should be backed up by 20 more men's work. I think these numbers are more or less balanced well.

The broken link points to a comment by Johan on the "Military Matters" TT, by the way

So lets take these Almogavars and go down the rabbit hole
  • 100 Almogovars
    • 3 units of Leather (Tannery)
      • 600 Burghers
      • 3 livestock (RGO)
        • 3000 Peasants
      • 2.25 salt (RGO)
        • 2250 peasants
      • 0.45 tools (Tools Workshop)
        • 112.5 Burghers
        • 0.36 copper
          • 360 peasants
    • 5 units of Weapons (I didn't find the building)
Each Almogavars need 7.125 Burghers and 56.1 Peasant for leather alone.

Just to get numbers is we set the same nubers to produce weapons (doubt it would be less) then for material upkeep it is taking ~19 burghers and ~150 peasants per Almogavar. This is an order of magnitude different from your statement of "each soldier's maintenance should be backed up by 20 more men's work"

This also left off the 2 manpower maintenance.
 
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En 1285, Bernat Desclot escribía en su crónica aquello de «No pienso que galera o bajel o barco alguno intente navegar por el mar sin salvoconducto del rey de Aragon, sino que tampoco creo que pez alguno pueda surcar las aguas marinas si no lleva en su cola un escudo con la enseña del rey de Aragón».

In 1285, Bernat Desclot wrote in his chronicle that “I do not think that any galley or vessel or ship would attempt to sail the sea without the safe conduct of the King of Aragon, nor do I think that any fish could sail the sea unless it carried on its tail a shield with the ensign of the King of Aragon”.
 
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(They did, it is in the end of the TF. Pavía literally says "and much more, but that's it for today"; in fact, they have explained this in pretty much every previous TF)
Some people obviously don't get it, or don't read every dev diary, hence my suggestion. They think presented content is all there is.
 
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Not really, sincr it's not historical; but it's a hint for the player to immerse them, and maybe set some off-road objectives for their gameplay.
Is there anything o show a player who isn't well-read in Aragoneses histry what the old northern Aragonese holdings were?
 
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It depends on how each unit is scripted, but in general, we favor unique special units over 'pokémon-hunting'.

But it is possible in mods for special units to be accessible if someone has pops of the relevant cultures? It might not be that important for the base game, but there are some mods that would benefit a lot from it.
 
Please dont us RGO use words that mean somthing on their own please
Using RGO makes sense IMO as it's a name for a specific mechanical thing, but ideally the word in that advance would be linked to a tooltip explaining the game concept, as is the case with much of the mechanical jargon in other places in the UI.
 
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My guess is that it's the minimum size required in order to keep power projection/prestige.
Well then it would be a negativ modifier. While I think it could come at a prestige hit to be far below that number, I think it will be some sort of soft Navy cap... going far below it will make you look weak (negativ prestige, potentialy drift towards Land?) going far above could be seen as warmongering giving things like AE or lowerd Diplomatic Abilitys... maybe a drift towards Navy.
 
You should add Aljafería Palace as a special building/works of art in Aragon. It's already a monument in EUIV.

Also nice, next week is Bohemia! Today I bought a Golden Circle ticket for AC/DC concert in Prague!
 
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Shouldn't fueros give monthly progress towards free subjects? Given that they are granting rights and limiting the crown power it feels like that should be the case.
 
Barcelona, as it was the main residence of the royal court since the reign of King James I. But please note that the Iberian royal courts were still mainly itinerant, which is something that we can't really portray with the current game mechanics.

PS: And we have not stolen that CK3 mechanic (yet)... :p
Could itinerant court be made into a goverment reforms that Castile and Aragon could start with? You would still have a capital for in-game purposes but It could give certain modifiers to better represent that your capital isn't really a capital.
 
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So, the Almogavars use leather as they're one of the rare examples in European history of people actually using leather armour, but why do the Catalan Crossbowmen? Shouldn't they use cloth or wool instead, as they used gambeson?
 
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It might be dangerous to oppress the remenças, though…
In the paragraph describing this advance, there seems to be a section missing which would further explain what the Remença system actually is? Specifically "bears resemblance [...] in other territories of the Crown." As, as it stands, the description gives little explanation as to what the system actually entails that makes it a superior system of organization. Sorry if I've missed a relevant bit that answers this already!