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Tinto Talks #15 - June 5th 2024

Welcome to the 15th Tinto Talks, where we ask for feedback on our extremely crazily top secret game which has the codename Project Caesar.

One thing that many have asked for has been a more in-depth dynastical gameplay, so here it is.

Characters
Before we delve into the dynamics of dynastic gameplay, we must first talk about their building blocks, the characters.

european (1).jpg


Here is a European King with an early 18th century background.

While not copying the Crusader Kings mechanics, a Character in Project Caesar is a bit more alive than in let's say EU4. A character is born, lives, and eventually dies.

Every character has Administrative, Diplomatic and Military Attributes ranging from 0-100. Of course, these attributes will not add any sort of mana, but they will impact how well the character will perform certain roles. One example is that the diplomatic ability of an admiral impacts the morale of the navy he leads.

Newborn characters start with 0, but that grows until they are adults depending on what childhood trait they have. You can also assign your rulers’ children and grandchildren a specific education during their childhood

gifted.png

This is a trait that when on the heir of the player it increases the chance of hunting accidents by 200%.

Characters ruling a country will gain up to 3 traits, depending on how long they have ruled.
They are gained while ruling a country. Characters that are generals or admirals will also get traits after combat. There are also unique traits for characters that are REDACTED or OTHER_SECRET_THING.

Characters also have a culture they come from, a religion they follow, they keep track of where they were born, and where they currently are living. They belong to an estate, which for most characters tends to be the nobles estate.

Many characters will have a father and/or a mother as well. For some historical characters at the start of the game that will not necessarily be true.

The number of spouse(s) a character can have depends on religions and laws, but the number of children they get depends more on the fertility of the parents.

So what can you do with characters? Well, this is not Crusader Kings, so the characters themselves are not as important, and there are no character specific events like in Imperator either. In this game, characters are tools to be used for the greater good. If that means marrying off your daughter to secure an alliance with France, then that's what you have to do. You can arrange marriages in your country, send less useful characters into convents, ennoble great people, and much more.
ashanti (1).jpg


This is an African ruler, in his throne room, which while beautiful, is just a background image…


Speaking of marriages, royal marriages in Project Caesar are not just sending a diplomat, here it is far more limited, as you have to actually marry real characters, and often this is a vital action. If you can’t arrange a royal marriage with a country of enough prestige, that has a young consort, you may be forced to marry a local noble from your country, or worse, even a lowborn.

A Royal Marriage between two rulers will immediately form a union between those two countries. Every country has its own inheritance laws, which if they differ, may cause a Union to break, as the rulers would be different. This is probably not the audience where I need to explain the difference between Salic Law and Semi-Salic Law right?


bjälbo.png

And who was the founder of this dynasty?

Dynasties are important, as they impact diplomacy in direct and indirect ways. As some inheritance laws prefer their own dynasty, and having the same dynasty can improve opinions between countries.


As in almost all previous GSG, the game will keep track of who has ruled that country before, just so you can go back and admire them. We have tried to get in as much history as possible here, even if my heathen content designers refuse to have Odin as the original King of Sweden!

ruler_history.png

Of course regnal numbering and actual names depend on many different things..


Stay tuned, next week we’ll be back and we will then talk about how the cabinet will work.
 

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Regarding the dynasties map mode, I can't say for other countries, but in Portugal it's called "Casa de Borgonha", not "Casa da Borgonha", so it shouldn't be "da Burgundy", but instead "de Burgundy". Second, it also looks really weird and out of place "de Burgundy". I would go with either "of Burgundy" in english or "de Borgonha" in portuguese, both are good choices. It is really weird seeing this hybrid "de Burgundy".
 
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Does this mean that there are many different succession laws in Project Caesar, also, can we entice union members to change their succession laws, so the union doesn't break?

We will talk about Unions work in detail later on
 
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I'm not sure how to feel about the 3D portraits. On the one side, I do not think anyone can objectively claim CK2 portraits are some lost ideal that must be returned to. Go back and look. They are janky as hell. Jawbones all over the place or not even there. Face proportions are weird in many instances.

But CK3 portraits are not the end-all-be-all either. What I think CK3s characters lack that CK2s had is distinctiveness. Many portraits (not talking about the clothes, those are well researched and executed for the most part) feel too polished or "contemporary Western", and there is not close to as much variety in face shapes as one can see in the real world (yes, the DNA system allows for that, but what you actually in a playthrough is completely different). There is a certain smoothed over, streamlined look to all of them. Technically I think both the lighting, face shaders and antialiasing techniques are overdone and needs a rethink. My favorite examples of portraits atm are those from Gilded Destiny.

I get that this is royalty or high nobility, but not all of them led modern Western life of leisure 24/7. Most of them were on the move constantly until courts became stationary and power more centralized. And even then, conventions of beauty and usage of makeup+remedies+other decoration varied wildly around the globe. To be fair to CK3, it has been getting better in this regard, but censoring face masks and perfect hair and manicured faces for 70 year olds are still a thing.

Obviously this is very much WIP so I have hopes for improvement. For me the best case scenario is that the portraits look plausible and fit in seamlessly with the world, in a way that we can feel a deep sense of immersion into the life and times of "our" Heads of State.
 
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Fantastic! I know some people will bellyache about 3d characters but as long as the model graphics are up to the CK3 standards and not the abominations of Imperator or Victoria 3 then I'm more than happy with that.

tell me you didnt play imperator since release without telling me.
abomination 3d you say ?
whats next ? you gonna call the map there an abomination too ?
1717593766931.png


1717593873389.png
 
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Also, with regards to children.

Is there anything you can do as a ruler to boost the number of children, or is it sort of random? (based on fertility)

not in the game no.
 
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You might have 0 immersion in eu4 because it's a glorified boardgame
Which PDX game isn't a glorified boardgame? HoI4 is effectively The Campaign for North Africa Lite(tm)
If somebody does not know, in 1515 during First Congress of Vienna Jagiellons have guaranteed that if Vladislaus II's descendants die ou,t Habsburgs will be successors of Hungary and Bohemia. Habsburgs have also guaranteed that if descendants of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor die out then Jagiellons will get HRE.
Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau included the same stipulation in his will regarding his personal properties and the Hohenzollerns
 
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Would it be possible to change "de Burgundy" to "de Borgonha" for the Portuguese ruling dynasty? Or at least "de Bourgogne", no reason for them to have Burgundy's name in English
 
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1. Since rulers must belong to an estate, Peasant Republics will have rulers from commoners and trade republics from burghers, right?

most likely yes
 
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You've pasted couple of DNA strings, instead of images. My guess is that you use CK3 character base model and blendshapes so these strings are compatible with CK3?

EDIT: Also, just a personal question - will there be an Immortal trait? Inaccessable in normal gameplay, but a possibility for modders? Cuz, you know, there're plenty of Fnatasy settings that will be ported into this game. So having a code for immortality and no appearence aging would be pretty nifty.
 
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Welcome to the 15th Tinto Talks, where we ask for feedback on our extremely crazily top secret game which has the codename Project Caesar.

One thing that many have asked for has been a more in-depth dynastical gameplay, so here it is.

Characters
Before we delve into the dynamics of dynastic gameplay, we must first talk about their building blocks, the characters.


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Here is a European King with an early 18th century background.

While not copying the Crusader Kings mechanics, a Character in Project Caesar is a bit more alive than in let's say EU4. A character is born, lives, and eventually dies.

Every character has Administrative, Diplomatic and Military Attributes ranging from 0-100. Of course, these attributes will not add any sort of mana, but they will impact how well the character will perform certain roles. One example is that the diplomatic ability of an admiral impacts the morale of the navy he leads.

Newborn characters start with 0, but that grows until they are adults depending on what childhood trait they have. You can also assign your rulers’ children and grandchildren a specific education during their childhood

AD_4nXe1Xb4f1nwyZMYnuN0dIn-wuTquiK6o60zjDZPZqWjrM93v-v3PTQbLOzPeXt2_99OqvmUm3DRjYhdOzSffQoqHc0rhFeU0_zWFv_oFSlkJrcyFBDr4NCcRt9SDabZ6FiZe4QOItAvqKKVTvrN3vQAsrbg

This is a trait that when on the heir of the player it increases the chance of hunting accidents by 200%.

Characters ruling a country will gain up to 3 traits, depending on how long they have ruled.
They are gained while ruling a country. Characters that are generals or admirals will also get traits after combat. There are also unique traits for characters that are REDACTED or OTHER_SECRET_THING.

Characters also have a culture they come from, a religion they follow, they keep track of where they were born, and where they currently are living. They belong to an estate, which for most characters tends to be the nobles estate.

Many characters will have a father and/or a mother as well. For some historical characters at the start of the game that will not necessarily be true.

The number of spouse(s) a character can have depends on religions and laws, but the number of children they get depends more on the fertility of the parents.

So what can you do with characters? Well, this is not Crusader Kings, so the characters themselves are not as important, and there are no character specific events like in Imperator either. In this game, characters are tools to be used for the greater good. If that means marrying off your daughter to secure an alliance with France, then that's what you have to do. You can arrange marriages in your country, send less useful characters into convents, ennoble great people, and much more.

AD_4nXdPBFc4Gcv-KCRUo6vj0tfQ8Hzsat0wbcgPmYHeCCXbAd-4fDTZcZ6P390NVq6v69DD_nMJ1_WD8FnE9M7iJxQjFoo7GIugVMuq9gSN11Y0S7So_dy1g8sR5jVC-ROF45jYpdAu3A98YJxY4YDdM4ejyVrG

This is an African ruler, in his throne room, which while beautiful, is just a background image…


Speaking of marriages, royal marriages in Project Caesar are not just sending a diplomat, here it is far more limited, as you have to actually marry real characters, and often this is a vital action. If you can’t arrange a royal marriage with a country of enough prestige, that has a young consort, you may be forced to marry a local noble from your country, or worse, even a lowborn.

A Royal Marriage between two rulers will immediately form a union between those two countries. Every country has its own inheritance laws, which if they differ, may cause a Union to break, as the rulers would be different. This is probably not the audience where I need to explain the difference between Salic Law and Semi-Salic Law right?


AD_4nXdm4b4es01KV0xGWh2Jjr-I3IYcXbJMq-2rKUYif8wQORRIxuo76J71bQqkiRc0G76_2z51bypX8u43c2iwFl-mtfDnxZJ5e4eVywNnWf1lgxgkwr_sfU9IYiqXyc0LkKIwkKBNAJAugp6q7g60r7XyQQg

And who was the founder of this dynasty?

Dynasties are important, as they impact diplomacy in direct and indirect ways. As some inheritance laws prefer their own dynasty, and having the same dynasty can improve opinions between countries.


As in almost all previous GSG, the game will keep track of who has ruled that country before, just so you can go back and admire them. We have tried to get in as much history as possible here, even if my heathen content designers refuse to have Odin as the original King of Sweden!

AD_4nXdxNhoDLyKvjxEC-Rhqkw7O0iM-y4BWgaWMC7nQSeG8Du-edbu42SiWHxbUAuwHmmSVG6jiSF913ZV51A819o1B5vjOFhTgG-fr05bGY-qhR_vMu2uhz9pFKXnP-uUPdIDxcNqjEePikU8x2zQTRAmkK9H9

Of course regnal numbering and actual names depend on many different things..


Stay tuned, next week we’ll be back and we will then talk about how the cabinet will work.
Can you please edit the original post and re-upload the pictures.
It seems that they are not hosted on paradoxplaza.
 
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