Tinto Talks #14 - 29th of May 2024

[Fehervari]

There will be up to six different leagues that will fight over control of Italy. There is a French league, an Iberian league, the Emperor's league, and up to 3 Italian leagues. The first two will dynamically select their leaders based on strength calculations.

It seems a bit arbitrary to exclude other potential parties. Why couldn't Byzantium and even Hungary have their own leagues, should the ingame situation develop like so? Louis I of Hungary did occupy Naples briefly (not so long after the start date), after all. Meanwhile, a strong Byzantium having some interest in the region would also make quite a lot of sense.

 

[Mr_Vojtik]

What does it mean to win a situation? Will it be the same as a normal peace deal?

Don't think about situations as one big war.

From how it's described, it sounds similar to the Struggle mechanic in CK3.
Smaller wars, diplomacy, the whole shebang.

 

[Cigan1330]

This happened in 1340, when Dusan was gravely ill and it seemed as he was going to pass away. Hrelja only menaged to do this because he possessed holdings near the border with Byzantium. It is worth nothing that Dusan initialy started as what seemed as a puppet of a nobility in his first years until he effectively overpowered the nobility. And yes Dusan's code did value decentralization, as in the Serbian situation (which was not limited to Serbia, Hungary is a great example as it couldnt control or tax whole state for most of it's medieval history, and ironicaly identical situation happened to Hungary when Arpad dynasty died out in 1301)

It was decentralized enough during Dušan's ruler that you can have Hrelja secede from Serbia to the Byzantines and no one do anything about it. In general, though:

View attachment 1140360

 

[Samuelovich]

So what is a “Situation” then? Good question. You could describe it as content that involves multiple countries over a period of time. In Project Caesar, we are using this feature to create a historical narrative that creates different experiences, as our goal is to have an immersive and varied experience for the player.

What about the European Inquisitions? Many countries had inquisitions happen before the start date but many had to go through them at different times with their own lengths, the most obvious being the Spanish Inquisitions that lasted centuries. Will they be simply a part of the religion mechanics or have its own system?

 

[Ispil]

This happened in 1340, when Dusan was gravely ill and it seemed as he was going to pass away. Hrelja only menaged to do this because he possessed holdings near the border with Byzantium. It is worth nothing that Dusan initialy started as what seemed as a puppet of a nobility in his first years until he effectively overpowered the nobility. And yes Dusan's code did value decentralization, as in the Serbian situation (which was not limited to Serbia, Hungary is a great example as it couldnt control or tax whole state for most of it's medieval history, and ironicaly identical situation happened to Hungary when Arpad dynasty died out in 1301)

Yeah, that's my point really. Making a solid effort to properly institutionalize and centralize the realm before succession should allow for staving off the collapse of the empire.

 

[JediClemente]

What about the Thirty Years' War? Is it a situation?

I guess it could be said it's a war of religion, but that would be overly simplistic and reductive. There were several wars of religion in the XVI and XVIIth centuries, while the TYW was the focal point of its century. It went through very different stages with several countries joining or leaving it.

Different question now. Having played Stellaris and seen the great idea that was the Crisis mechanic, I guess Project Caesar will be nothing similar but... could we think of the "French Revolution" situation as something similar in scope to that? It makes complete sense as a "Crisis", at all levels - it completely changed the course of history and basically saw Revolutionary France fighting all of Europe.

 

[Mister X]

After Emperor Dusans death irl his son was a weak ruler and incapable of holding the Serbian Empire together leading to it fracturing into a dozen states, maybe this could be a situation too ?

I think that entire period could be a giant situation re: the decline of Byzantium

Post-Dušan collapse is where the control mechanic would come in - the real reason wasn't as much that Uroš was incompetent as much as the fact that infrastructure in the region was nearly nonexistent, resulting in basically 0% control. The second aspect was that Dušan was very much the nobility's guy who couped his father and basically let them do whatever they want as long as they don't go fully treasonous. So the collapse wasn't as much as an actual collapse/civil war/anarchy as much as these magnates just kept doing what they did and decided not to listen to the kid anyway and keep their money. It was a very fragile state, and had Dušan lived longer, he'd probably start seeing the same. I'm not sure it should even be presented as breakaway tags as much as it would be nobility estate power going hitting 100%, bar some exceptions like Simeon's Epirus

 

[poloport]

I kind of get the point of these "situations" in the sense that they are intended to provide a way to have some historical events with some flavor rather than bland flavourless mechanics.

That being said I think it's a bit of a mistake to effectively hard code these situations in this way, rather than simply giving flavor to the mechanics directly.

Let's take the red turban rebellion as an example here:

Effectively what it's representing is the collapse of a large and powerful unitary state into a set of warlord states, some of which are fighting for the central government, some of which are fighting for independence, and some of which are fighting to take over the entire thing.

This to me doesn't exactly seem to be something particularly unique to this particular event in china, but more of a recurring thing that happens not just once in Yuan china, but in other periods in china, and in other countries as well. You could arguably classify the collapse of the ummayad caliphate, the mongol empire, the ming-Qing transition, and any number of other large empire collapse/replacements into this category.

In this case then, does it really make sense to hardcode this type of mechanic to just "the red turban rebellion in the 1300s in the Yuan empire" situation? Particularly with the:

While the situation is going on, events will pop up that force Yuán to release historical Chinese tags in their historical order (so the first Sòng is released, then Wú, then Tiānwán, etc.), which join the IO and immediately declare their own, independent war on Yuan.

This whole "keep the historical tags released in the historical order" thing really rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

I'm not sure this is the right way of doing this, over the separating the "situation" system into a mechanical system and a thematic system.

By all means have flavor! Have historical references! But don't do it at the expense of hard coding things creating more technical debt that will have to be maintained in the future and will be more difficult to expand in future DLCs...

I would suggest the following things:

1 - Separate the situation system into a mechanical system and a thematic system

2 - The mechanical system deals primarily with the fundamental mechanics that are underlying these situations, and should be country agnostic. That means no hard coding, and should be able to be triggered by any tag that meets the conditions. In this talk we have 3 general types of situations that fundamentally reflect 3 separate mechanical systems:
- A rebellion and collapse system
- A geopolitical competition system
- A plague system

Each of these are fundamentally different, and should have different requirements to trigger, different events, different participants, etc... and so they should each be their own mechanical situation system.

3 - The Thematic system deals primarily with the flavor of a given situation, and should be aligned with the tag/region/mechanic/period. For example a rebellion and collapse system happening in a "leading chinese" country (a simple check for the mandate of heaven if you have such a modifier) in a specific age, would trigger this thematic system, and essentially replace the "procedurally generated" events, etc... with ones that are relevant for the red turban rebellion.

The fundamental mechanics of the situation would be the same as in any other rebellion and collapse situation, but you could have flavorful events that are historically relevant for such a situation that matches the relevant characteristics.

4 - This would provide an easy, maintainable and relevant DLC content for years and regions to come. Want to have a portugal focused DLC? Why not create a new mechanical highlighting the Galician rebellions and attempts to join portugal during the early period? You can make a "cultural unification" mechanical system that can go in the free update, with the flavourful galician, portuguese and castillian events highlighting the brief period where ferdinand of portugal became king of galicia being a selling point for the paid DLC portion.


So how would this look like for these situations you're mentioning here?

Again, let's take the Red Turban rebellion, you would have the following things:

Mechanical System:

• Type:
  1. Rebellion and Collapse
• Trigger Conditions:
  1. Tag Size > 500 Locations
  2. At least 1 estate is not satisfied
  3. Stability < -25
  4. Number of available tags for release > 5
• Effect:
  1. An international organization is created and the Tag joins it as the leader
  2. The international organization has 3 groups:
     1. Pro-Leader - Released tags "loyal" to the leader go here
     2. Anti-Leader - Released tags seeking to take over the empire go here
     3. Pro-Independence - Released tags seeking to attain independence go here
  3. A timer is started.
  4. 3 largest releaseable tags become independent and join the international organization. The largest on the Anti-Leader side, the other 2 on the Pro-independence side
  5. As long as the leader has possible releaseable tags, events appear that cause them to be released, and join the organization on either the Anti-Leader or the Pro-independence groups
  6. Leader tag may choose to release possible releaseable tags:
     1. Conditions:
        1. Releaseable tag locations have control < 50%
     2. Outcome:
        1. Releaseable tags become part of IO and join Proleader side
        2. Leader gains 25 stability
  7. All tags are at war with leader
  8. All tags in the IO have the following diplomatic options:
     1. Declare war on any tag in the IO for full annexation
     2. Request tag other than leader to join their IO group (May need to pay)
     3. Request tag to join their war against leader
     4. Change IO group
  9. Leader tag has the following diplomatic options:
     1. Annex pro-leader tags (may result in them joining other groups)
     2. Force peace between pro-leader tags (may result in them joining other groups)
• End Trigger:
  1. End type: Recovery
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years AND
     2. Leader tag exists AND
     3. Leader tag stability > 50 AND
     4. Leader tag owns > 70% of starting territory
     5. OUTCOME:
        1. Leader tag annexes all tags in the Pro-Leader group
        2. All independent tags in the Anti-Leader and Pro-Independence war groups have their wars end with them becoming subjects of leader
        3. International Organization ends and Situation ends
  2. End type: Overthrow
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years OR Leader Tag does not exist AND
     2. One Tag in the Anti-Leader Group owns > 70% of Leader Tags starting territory
     3. OUTCOME:
        1. Leading Anti-Leader tag annexes all tags in the Anti-Leader group
        2. All independent tags in the Pro-Leader and Pro-Independence war groups have their wars end with them becoming subjects of the leading Anti-Leader tag
        3. International Organization ends and Situation ends
  3. End type: Stalemate
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years AND neither End Type "Recovery" or "Overthrow" were triggered
     2. OUTCOME:
        1. All wars between participants end with currently occupied Provinces becoming owned by the occupying tag
        2. International Organization ends and Situation ends
• You can adjust the willingness to accept certain diplomatic offers based on the loyalty available, and similar for the outcomes.

Thematic System:

• Type:
  1. Red Turban Rebellion
• Trigger Mechanical Situation Type:
  1. Rebellion and Collapse
• Trigger Conditions:
  • Leader tag has modifier "Mandate of Heaven" AND
  • Date < 1450
• Effects:
  • IO Name = "Red Turban Rebellion"
  • Custom events:
    • flavorful event 1
    • flavorful event 2
    • etc...

You get the general picture.

The fundamental idea here is to cleanly separate the thematic and mechanical, allowing future expansion in both sides without creating a bunch of technical debt, and hardcoding of things that fundamentally do not need to be hardcoded.

I like the flavor, i like the historicity, but this type of rebellion that happened in china could have easily happened in the persian empire, or in a united russia, or in a united france, etc... By making this separation you can have it happen there, while maintaining the flavorful historical content in the exact same way. The bonus is that its a great jumping off point for future DLCs where you may want to create new mechanical situations that reflect certain historical events in some countries, allowing for the flavor and history in the DLC, while being relatively easy to create, maintain and adjust.


Maybe this is too much, but I would really appreciate it if you took it into consideration!

 

[Thavis]

It seems a bit arbitrary to exclude other potential parties. Why couldn't Byzantium and even Hungary have their own leagues, should the ingame situation develop like so? Louis I of Hungary did occupy Naples briefly (not so long after the start date), after all. Meanwhile, a strong Byzantium having some interest in the region would also make quite a lot of sense.

From what I did understand, everyone can join a league as long as they have a province in Italy

Sorry, I don't know how to directly quote the original message, so I just copy paste x)

"Leagues can be abandoned and anyone owning locations in Italy can join one of them.

The situation allows enemies and rivals of foreign league leaders to intervene and assist the defending Italians and it also grants access to unique interactions in order to send aid of any kind, attract cheaper condottieri and even create a new Italian league."

Since they said "even create a new Italian league", then that does mean it is dynamic, and not like only for the 6 they talked about.
I guess that they just said which leagues exist from the get go

 

[Cigan1330]

Yeah, that's my point really. Making a solid effort to properly institutionalize and centralize the realm before succession should allow for staving off the collapse of the empire.

Yeah but I think that disaster shouldnt fire immidiately, I would probably make so If Uros doesnt have enough prestige or stability drops bellow 25 that disaster should fire several years after emperor Dusan dies. And disaster would not be possible if player centrilized the state.

 

[Balovanka]

Will the War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1714 be considered a situation? Although, of course, Spain may not exist by 1700.

 

[Cigan1330]

I think that entire period could be a giant situation re: the decline of Byzantium

Post-Dušan collapse is where the control mechanic would come in - the real reason wasn't as much that Uroš was incompetent as much as the fact that infrastructure in the region was nearly nonexistent, resulting in basically 0% control. The second aspect was that Dušan was very much the nobility's guy who couped his father and basically let them do whatever they want as long as they don't go fully treasonous. So the collapse wasn't as much as an actual collapse/civil war/anarchy as much as these magnates just kept doing what they did and decided not to listen to the kid anyway and keep their money. It was a very fragile state, and had Dušan lived longer, he'd probably start seeing the same. I'm not sure it should even be presented as breakaway tags as much as it would be nobility estate power going hitting 100%, bar some exceptions like Simeon's Epirus

Uros' incopintence was vital for collapse of the state. Infrastructure was not non exsitent, Serbia controlled half of Via Ignatia and Dusan built bridges during his rule. Dusan was nobility's guy in his earlier years, but he undeniably overpowered them and kept them in check later on. Nobility was loyal to him and his son until they died out and were replaced by their successors after 1363 which is when state decentilized to the extent that you are talking about. If Dusan lived longer state would be stable. Serbian Empire wasnt fragile, as it (under Uros) menaged to defeat 5,000 Ottoman mercaries in 1357, Simeon Uros in Zeta in 1358, and repel full scale Hungarian invasion in 1359. So most of what you wrote was wrong.

 

[Focus my son]

that would be a normal civil war

Is it also possible for foreign countries to intervene in certain ways in the civil war of a neighbouring country?

 

[Thavis]

I kind of get the point of these "situations" in the sense that they are intended to provide a way to have some historical events with some flavor rather than bland flavourless mechanics.

That being said I think it's a bit of a mistake to effectively hard code these situations in this way, rather than simply giving flavor to the mechanics directly.

Let's take the red turban rebellion as an example here:

Effectively what it's representing is the collapse of a large and powerful unitary state into a set of warlord states, some of which are fighting for the central government, some of which are fighting for independence, and some of which are fighting to take over the entire thing.

This to me doesn't exactly seem to be something particularly unique to this particular event in china, but more of a recurring thing that happens not just once in Yuan china, but in other periods in china, and in other countries as well. You could arguably classify the collapse of the ummayad caliphate, the mongol empire, the ming-Qing transition, and any number of other large empire collapse/replacements into this category.

In this case then, does it really make sense to hardcode this type of mechanic to just "the red turban rebellion in the 1300s in the Yuan empire" situation? Particularly with the:


This whole "keep the historical tags released in the historical order" thing really rubs me the wrong way for some reason.

I'm not sure this is the right way of doing this, over the separating the "situation" system into a mechanical system and a thematic system.

By all means have flavor! Have historical references! But don't do it at the expense of hard coding things creating more technical debt that will have to be maintained in the future and will be more difficult to expand in future DLCs...

I would suggest the following things:

1 - Separate the situation system into a mechanical system and a thematic system

2 - The mechanical system deals primarily with the fundamental mechanics that are underlying these situations, and should be country agnostic. That means no hard coding, and should be able to be triggered by any tag that meets the conditions. In this talk we have 3 general types of situations that fundamentally reflect 3 separate mechanical systems:
- A rebellion and collapse system
- A geopolitical competition system
- A plague system

Each of these are fundamentally different, and should have different requirements to trigger, different events, different participants, etc... and so they should each be their own mechanical situation system.

3 - The Thematic system deals primarily with the flavor of a given situation, and should be aligned with the tag/region/mechanic/period. For example a rebellion and collapse system happening in a "leading chinese" country (a simple check for the mandate of heaven if you have such a modifier) in a specific age, would trigger this thematic system, and essentially replace the "procedurally generated" events, etc... with ones that are relevant for the red turban rebellion.

The fundamental mechanics of the situation would be the same as in any other rebellion and collapse situation, but you could have flavorful events that are historically relevant for such a situation that matches the relevant characteristics.

4 - This would provide an easy, maintainable and relevant DLC content for years and regions to come. Want to have a portugal focused DLC? Why not create a new mechanical highlighting the Galician rebellions and attempts to join portugal during the early period? You can make a "cultural unification" mechanical system that can go in the free update, with the flavourful galician, portuguese and castillian events highlighting the brief period where ferdinand of portugal became king of galicia being a selling point for the paid DLC portion.


So how would this look like for these situations you're mentioning here?

Again, let's take the Red Turban rebellion, you would have the following things:

Mechanical System:

• Type:
  1. Rebellion and Collapse
• Trigger Conditions:
  1. Tag Size > 500 Locations
  2. At least 1 estate is not satisfied
  3. Stability < -25
  4. Number of available tags for release > 5
• Effect:
  1. An international organization is created and the Tag joins it as the leader
  2. The international organization has 3 groups:
     1. Pro-Leader - Released tags "loyal" to the leader go here
     2. Anti-Leader - Released tags seeking to take over the empire go here
     3. Pro-Independence - Released tags seeking to attain independence go here
  3. A timer is started.
  4. 3 largest releaseable tags become independent and join the international organization. The largest on the Anti-Leader side, the other 2 on the Pro-independence side
  5. As long as the leader has possible releaseable tags, events appear that cause them to be released, and join the organization on either the Anti-Leader or the Pro-independence groups
  6. Leader tag may choose to release possible releaseable tags:
     1. Conditions:
        1. Releaseable tag locations have control < 50%
     2. Outcome:
        1. Releaseable tags become part of IO and join Proleader side
        2. Leader gains 25 stability
  7. All tags are at war with leader
  8. All tags in the IO have the following diplomatic options:
     1. Declare war on any tag in the IO for full annexation
     2. Request tag other than leader to join their IO group (May need to pay)
     3. Request tag to join their war against leader
     4. Change IO group
  9. Leader tag has the following diplomatic options:
     1. Annex pro-leader tags (may result in them joining other groups)
     2. Force peace between pro-leader tags (may result in them joining other groups)
• End Trigger:
  1. End type: Recovery
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years AND
     2. Leader tag exists AND
     3. Leader tag stability > 50 AND
     4. Leader tag owns > 70% of starting territory
     5. OUTCOME:
        1. Leader tag annexes all tags in the Pro-Leader group
        2. All independent tags in the Anti-Leader and Pro-Independence war groups have their wars end with them becoming subjects of leader
        3. International Organization ends and Situation ends
  2. End type: Overthrow
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years OR Leader Tag does not exist AND
     2. One Tag in the Anti-Leader Group owns > 70% of Leader Tags starting territory
     3. OUTCOME:
        1. Leading Anti-Leader tag annexes all tags in the Anti-Leader group
        2. All independent tags in the Pro-Leader and Pro-Independence war groups have their wars end with them becoming subjects of the leading Anti-Leader tag
        3. International Organization ends and Situation ends
  3. End type: Stalemate
     1. The Timer has passed 20 years AND neither End Type "Recovery" or "Overthrow" were triggered
     2. OUTCOME:
        1. All wars between participants end with currently occupied Provinces becoming owned by the occupying tag
        2. International Organization ends and Situation ends
• You can adjust the willingness to accept certain diplomatic offers based on the loyalty available, and similar for the outcomes.

Thematic System:

• Type:
  1. Red Turban Rebellion
• Trigger Mechanical Situation Type:
  1. Rebellion and Collapse
• Trigger Conditions:
  • Leader tag has modifier "Mandate of Heaven" AND
  • Date < 1450
• Effects:
  • IO Name = "Red Turban Rebellion"
  • Custom events:
    • flavorful event 1
    • flavorful event 2
    • etc...

You get the general picture.

The fundamental idea here is to cleanly separate the thematic and mechanical, allowing future expansion in both sides without creating a bunch of technical debt, and hardcoding of things that fundamentally do not need to be hardcoded.

I like the flavor, i like the historicity, but this type of rebellion that happened in china could have easily happened in the persian empire, or in a united russia, or in a united france, etc... By making this separation you can have it happen there, while maintaining the flavorful historical content in the exact same way. The bonus is that its a great jumping off point for future DLCs where you may want to create new mechanical situations that reflect certain historical events in some countries, allowing for the flavor and history in the DLC, while being relatively easy to create, maintain and adjust.


Maybe this is too much, but I would really appreciate it if you took it into consideration!

I personnaly get your point, and I very much agree with it. But by doing that, wouldn't it be taking the risk that the AI ALWAYS fall in rebellion at a certain point, and will never be able to expand further than the limit of the rebellion ? Kinda like in Victoria 3, AI had sooo much revolution, everytime. I am not a developer and I have absolutely no idea how to handle those type of things, I am just talking by taking into account my experience in other games.
And while I would absolutely be for a punishment for big empire that are not stable, I don't want to see a map where AI would not be able to expand further than a certain point because they would fall in rebellion over and over

 

[Mekatrele2]

Hello, this is pretty interesting topic. I would like to suggest to you that you could make Hussites situation too! It is interesting period of early reformation and it was a very long period in which this was happening (from 1400 till 1437 - ended by Basil Compacts which ended Hussite wars). Will there be anything with hussites?

 

[RohenTahir]

Will Poland be spared from Black Death?

 

[Moocow123450]

I'm looking forward to how this mechanic can be utilized for project Ceaser!

With the collapse of the Yuan dynasty being represented through situatios, will the collapse of any other country be represented through the same way? The ones that come to mind are Mali, Majapahit, and the Aztec (particularly the Aztec). Would these be represented by situations (due to the number of tributaries that sought full independence), disasters (similar to EU4 for Manapahit and Mali), or different gameplay mechanics?

 

[Durkmenistan]

This concerns me the most, as it seems like a huge missed opportunity.

No.

A player is likely to create an empire that is larger than Yuan at start date, and to cause complicated wars over regions larger than just Italy, etc. When the player has created an empire whose size precludes the very possibility of historical "Situations", I would want the game to be able to create dynamic new ones that reflect the world the player has created. And this is ignoring the fact that if you're restricting Situations to historical events, the Delhi Sultanate cannot trigger a situation if it forms India because it wouldn't be the "Collapse of the Delhi Sultanate". What if the tags of Europe fight over France for more than a century, but because it's not Italy (Italian Wars) or Germany (30 Yrs War), no Situation occurs?

Of course historical events should take place if they possibly can, but there should be room for the player to cause exciting big events in their own timeline if their empire or world is sufficiently ahistorical. Isn't that literally the reason we play EU4? If we can't cause Situations to occur, it's like telling us that our choices aren't important enough to cause them, when players are usually the #1 world power.

 

[hibojor]

With a situation for the fall of Yuan and (presumably including) the rise of Ming, can I assume there will be one for the fall of Ming and the rise of Qing?

 

[Cry_Havok]

I think we are very far away from a situation in which muslims and catholics are even. Granada should just fall. No need for a Situation for that to happen.

Granada lasted more than a century past the start of Tinto. It thriving (and the survival of Paganism) are an unlikely counter-historical, but not a foregone conclusion nor does the starting situation have to be even. Just like Yuan is "supposed" to fail its situation the Pagans and the Iberian muslims should be in a situation where they "should" lose, but not that they have "have to" lose.