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Tinto Talks #10 - 1st of May 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the final of four on the economy system for our secret game with the code name “Project Caesar”.

Today we will talk about all the things related to trade, including markets, merchants and trades. This talk is heavy on tooltip screenshots, and a lot of concepts to digest, so I recommend checking it through multiple times.

Markets
Let's start with the markets themselves. These are dynamic and will change through the playthrough, as countries can create new markets and disband their old if they so desire.

Each market has a center in a location, and the owner of that location is in control over that market.

Every location and coastal seazone will belong to the most fitting market, which depends on the market attraction of the market, the distance between the location and the market center, diplomatic factors, and more.

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The Riga market has control over much of the Baltic region in the start..

A market has merchants, who have a power depending on buildings and maritime presence in the market, and a merchant capacity which depends on the infrastructure for trade that country has in that market. The Merchant Power impacts in which order exports from a market are executed, as there is not an endless supply of goods in a market. The Merchant Capacity impacts how much goods the merchants can ship.

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This is the source of the Hanseatic League’s merchant capacity in Riga.



As you can see in the market screenshot, every good has a local price, and a supply vs demand value as well, let's take a look at the beer price in the next tooltip.

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Cheap beer, must be paradise…

Prices change every month towards the Target Price, which depends on the supply and demand of the goods in the market, and the current price stability. Price stability can change through the ages as well.

Supply & Demand
The supply of each good in a market depends on several factors.
  • The output from RGO’s
  • The output from buildings
  • Base Production
  • Burgher Trades

So what is ‘Base Production’? Some goods like clay, lumber, sand and stone are produced in every market, without the need for specific RGO’s, even if an RGO with that raw material can produce much more, and there are buildings that can be built to provide these as well.

Also, your burghers will trade on their own, if they have the capacity for it. They will attempt to address needs within the market, and can trade in a slightly shorter range, thus enriching their estate. There are laws and privileges that impact them, like the “Trade Monopolies” estate privilege that the Hanseatic League has granted in the earlier screenshot, which reduces their own merchant capacity by 25% to increase the capacity of the burghers by 100%

So what about demand? This is primarily from the maintenance, input, and construction of buildings, recruiting and maintaining armies and navies, and the demands of the population, but there are more sources as well.

Of course, trades themselves impact supply and demand as well.

Trade
You can use your merchant capacity in a market to either export a good from that market, or import a good from another market. Of course that market needs to be within your trade range, which is not world-spanning in 1337.

A trade is a variable amount of goods shipped from one market to another market, purchasing it for the local price in the exporting market. The longer the distance between the markets, the more capacity each good will require to ship, and higher the maintenance costs will be.

Trades have an impact on the last land location they are in before leaving the market, and the first one they enter in the importing market, giving boosts in development to them over time. A trade always has to trace a path on the map.

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Our merchant power makes us get the amount of goods we want in Riga.

There are also the Sound Tolls, if you pass through Öresund or the Bosphorus to consider.

Diplomacy and Trade
There are many diplomatic factors that impact the trade and market mechanics of Project Caesar.

First of all, you can “Deny Market Access” to a nation owning a market, which will reduce the attraction of their markets on your locations, but also make anyone with merchants in those markets upset with you.

You can also request and/or offer market access preference making it likelier for a country’s locations to belong in a certain market.

If you dislike paying Sound Tolls, you can always try to ask for exemption for it through diplomacy with the country controlling the strait.

Some countries have isolated themselves completely, so you need to negotiate a specific exception to allow you to export or import from their markets.

There is also the possibility to embargo a country, which would block the merchants from that country to trade in your markets, and also to not be allowed to move through your country. Of course, this a legit casus belli, so use with care.

Other aspects to Trade
Each market can have specific goods banned for export or import, with one common example being that muslim markets will ban import and export of wine, beer and liquor.

We mentioned in an earlier Tinto Talks that Markets will have stockpiles, so that surplus can be stored for a rainy day. There are buildings that will increase the amount that can be stored.

There is also food in the markets, with prices adapting to the supply and demand of food as well.

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Västra Götaland är Sveriges Kornbod!

There are also automation options where you can assign trading completely to the AI. You can also lock some trades so that the AI will not interfere with them.

Stay tuned, next week we’ll be talking about mercenaries, levies and regulars!
 
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Given that there are a bunch of tiny opms in the HRE, will countries in Project Caesar have the base tax, manpower, and force limit? Because if they do vassal swarms will be insane.
There is a TT that shows all the types of income and base income is not part of it.
We don't know how armies work yet.
 
@Johan

First of all, hats down to all the great work on this super secret game of yours. If you and your team succeed in your attempt of making this game what we all hope for, this would be by far the best strategy game ever.

Regarding this week TT, I have some question, some of which were already asked, but I didn't see an answer, and I read all the comments (if I have missed it somehow, I apologize for asking again):

1. What is a difference between food, like fish, sturdy grain etc with which you make trade and profit just as any other trade goods, and food as a resource required for feeding the pops? Does certain amount count as a "regular" trading goods, and rest will be used for feeding the people?
Does similar mechanics apply for slaves too, by them being one of the pops, and a trade good?

2. Does the shortest route means literally the shortes, or it means the shortest under certain conditions, like sea route before land, city with more developed port infrastructure than one without, city/country with lower tariffs comparing to others, etc?

3. If the trade is conducted between Tabriz and Paris, and Persian rugs being the goods traded, shouldn't at least the market cities on the route between those two cities have certain benefit, just like in reality?

4. If having enough supply of all goods to fulfill everyone needs, even where market access is 0%, is a game mechanic, does it mean, that, in theory, there could be only one european market, and if so, would it be more benefitial than having 10-20 od them?

5. If the goods distribution is based on merchant power and capacity in a way that first the strongest one are having all their needs fullfiled, does it mean, that, the poorer one, could be queued indefinitely, and, in theory, the players could abuse it, by spaming certain building orders, just to prevent competition from finishing their buildings?

I know it's much, but those things seems really important. I have other questions, but those are the main ones. Thx.
 
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Will we get more dynamic wars, in the sense of being able to drop in and out of wars. For example, in the thirty years war many nations would make peace early on only to join again later. Also It would be nice to see better coalitions generally, not only forming due to AE but simply due to a nations threat level to that region.
 
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With that mindset you make deterministic history again instead of creating a sandbox.
If not having a perfect sandbox is the price to pay for flavour, immersion and replayability, then yes, please give me "deterministic history".
However, I also disagree that all unique mechanisms for different parts of the world are necessarily deterministic and detrimental to a believable simulation.
Yes, some tag-specific features that we know from EU4 tend to force or nudge the player and the game world into a certain direction - mission trees with the way the work in EU4 do come to mind, or also some events. As someone who loved EU2 - probably the most deterministic game of the franchise with its relatively rigid events - and who spent a relatively large part of his late teenage years contributing to a mod that explicitly tried to make the game even more "deterministic" (i.e. make historical outcomes more likely and the world more recognizable), I do not really mind these parts of EU4 that much, but I understand why others do. In fact I also agree that is desirable to make this kind of features more flexible and more reactive to what actually happens in the game. As an obvious example, it is good that EU4-style mission trees, which do force you into a very specific way of playing the game, are going to be replaced by something more flexible.

The specific mechanics for French vassals hinted at by Johan as part of Project Caesar are not necessarily something like that at all. It is not "deterministic" to recognize that even a very good simulation cannot organically represent all the particular intricacies of France's feudal system, and that these pecularities should therefore be represented by some special mechanics.

I'd like to quote Johan from the first Tinto talks, where he talked about the vision for the game that is very much unchangeable at this point:

Johan said:
Replayability

There should be many ways to play different starts and reasons to replay them. Different mechanics in different parts of the world create a unique experience depending on what you choose to play. With a deep and complex game, there should be so many choices and paths that the player should feel they can always come back to get a new story with the same start.
If you consider anything tag- or region-specific to be an abomination - or "unique bullshit", as the post I originally replied to so elegantly put it -, the game might not be entirely for you.
 
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I assume you want to have one in Lisboa. Well, as Portugal is in my top 5 of countries I play, I'm not sure really about whether I want my own market or not. If I can buddy up with Castille I want to keep it for longer.. and also, as soon as I start getting things imported from africa, their pops and buildings helps keeping the demands high..
This is interesting. At first read, it sounded like getting your own market - even if small - would be optimal as it would naturally create development from trades. Since then though I have seen you sort of discourage that thinking.

Leads to two questions -

1. Is the development gain from trades in and out insignificant relative to all sources of development growth?

2. In this scenario wouldn't the demand, unmet from Sevilla market, naturally cause them to trade with your Lisboa market, thus generating development and profit? Or is the idea that the friction of your import (Africa - Lisboa- Sevilla) would be higher than direct themselves (Africa - Sevilla) even though the distance of direct trade is longer?
 
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Do uncolonized provinces belong to a market? If not, what happens when they are colonized? Do they get assigned to the closest market? What if you haven't discovered that market yet?
 
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If these codename Ceasar resemble a possible upcoming EU5 im at least glad that Trade (part of mantle Economics) gets more attention.
Its better to release late im in dire need of a challenging, complex, wel crafted gui etc, mostly realistic grand strategy game.
 
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This is interesting. At first read, it sounded like getting your own market - even if small - would be optimal as it would naturally create development from trades. Since then though I have seen you sort of discourage that thinking.

Leads to two questions -

1. Is the development gain from trades in and out insignificant relative to all sources of development growth?

2. In this scenario wouldn't the demand, unmet from Sevilla market, naturally cause them to trade with your Lisboa market, thus generating development and profit? Or is the idea that the friction of your import (Africa - Lisboa- Sevilla) would be higher than direct themselves (Africa - Sevilla) even though the distance of direct trade is longer?

This is great thinking, i would abandon creating fixed hex trade zones and let trade power and trade value determine who owns it or where it can be reduced to eg. london trade market. But if its scotland than the automatically the name changes as well as the size of the influence.
Development and trade and all other values should best be separated and not easily being able to get to 100. Its here complex formulas can be made how its correlation is, also related to population/amount of trade good / amount of tax invested in region possibly measuered against its size.
 
Will it be possible to have the situation with, say, Constantinople, where Genoa effectively controlled the tolls in the straight (and collected most of the revenue) despite not owning the location?
 
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In addition to pirates and privateers, will there be smugglers? Controllable (or not) entities that ignore embargoes, tariffs and tolls?

How does a country (ex Portugal) take control of markets elsewhere (ex all of south Asia)? A mix of sending trade ships and owning specific trade ports?

Will season impact the connectivity between markets? (like the winds and currents blowing in one direction in summer and the opposite in winter around the Western Indian Ocean), or will this effect be averaged over the year?

If my fief is between two others that trade together, will I be able to extract tariffs? Like the Japanese local lords (not sure if daimyos or lower in the hierarchy) abusing tolls everywhere.

Can all goods be stored? Would storing goods, blocading coastlines and aiming for the enemy's production centers become crucial parts of every war?

As they are now paralleled, will the pops and trade computations be able to run on GPU? Or is this not worth given the current performances?

Very excited for this game! Especially the economy so far!
 
Hi @Johan

Great DD. I am wondering - Eastern Europe was mostly known throughout the ages for its grain and timber. Will I be able to alter this? For instance, mimic the Lowlands and produce "high-quality, processed goods", such as cloth, expensive furniture etc. ? And ofc - still make a profit from this endeavour?
 
Great DD. I am wondering - Eastern Europe was mostly known throughout the ages for its grain and timber. Will I be able to alter this? For instance, mimic the Lowlands and produce "high-quality, processed goods", such as cloth, expensive furniture etc. ? And ofc - still make a profit from this endeavour?

While it looks like RGOs are set in stone per location (something that could be a problem for market balance, but it depends on how important base production is compared to expanded production) other than special cases like the Columbian Exchange bringing new goods, the processed goods that you talked about are all produced in buildings staffed by burghers, according to everything that Johan has posted so far.

So yes, you can have an Eastern European country with big cities full of burghers making manufactured goods, as long as you focus on building those buildings - and have both the raw materials and the customers to sell them to, of course.
 
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