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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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Me, totally not an immortal Vampire, trying to fool my subjects over centuries by pretrending im a different guy by changing my hat, my hair color and my beard.

1717622786749.png
 
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This might be more appropriate to ask when discussing diplomatic and/or dynastic interactions, but is it possible to invite a prince from another dynasty if ours has no heir and the ruler is at the end of their rope?

For instance I play as ERE and the Palaiologos dynasty has no heir for whatever reason. Can I just invite a Georgian Bagrationi or Bulgarian prince as heir (thus making diplomacy easier between the two powers, at the cost of immediate stability and/or legitimacy due to the ERE succession being a pit of vipers)?
 
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@Comrade746 Or, can, you, hypothetically, invite your Lithuanian husband to take the throne after the death of your queen?
 
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Don't think it's been answered yet, can we forcefully partition nations we have PUs on? (thinking of Charles V von Habsberg or Alfonso V of Aragon)

Also, does this mean we get partitioning in the HRE? After all, only the electors had the privilege of indivisibility, all other realms had to partition their lands on succession. I get that this might be a little hard to code, but IMO it would be well worth the effort. It would make electorship more impactful to gameplay and something that you actively want to pursue, as well as giving you reasons to send your children off to take the vows.

I would ideally want a system whereby if you inherit from another extinct male line in the HRE, it instantly integrates as long as you have a land border, but that might not be feasible.

EDIT: The Privilegium Maius did confer the inpartitionability of Austria when it was eventually confirmed by the Habsburgs, so maybe we could have various privilages as part of the HRE IO, and that is one of them?
 
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There are also unique traits for characters that are REDACTED or OTHER_SECRET_THING.
Pretenders?
In the cabinet (though we will learn about it next week, not so secret, as secret as the project)?
 
I love how this project increase a lot interaction between country with International organisation, situation for historical event and now this character and dynasty. looking forward to see more about diplomcy. Perhabs this game will not be only about painting map
 
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Read in a darlek voice: "There are also unique traits for characters that are REDACTED or OTHER_SECRET_THING."
 
Can characters go into exile, and if so can we host them?

For example, what if my neighbor has a revolution or coup d'état? Could their monarch go into exile in my country, allowing me the option to try and restore them to their throne? Probably most applicable during the 1780's/1790's, where this is what Louis XVI tried to do.
 
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Will there be more attributes other than Administrative, Diplomatic and Military? I would love if you guys made another for naval attributes instead for naval being connected to diplomacy.
 
I noticed with the family tree map that the founder and the head of the dynasty are the same and should be two different entities. Yes, It would be cool to see who founded the dynasty, but having the head as its entity would play a pivotal role in the game as it would influence other ruling dynasties worldwide. For instance, the head of the household would come from the most powerful and stable nation (probably where the dynasty originated). Still, events or diplomatic paths can allow for various reasons for one family to lose the title of head of the household, allowing inter-political affairs to occur within the family. Also, all for additional living members of dynasty to show up from sub-families.

At another glance, this may not be the case but make it more defined who the active head of the house is.

Will there be grandchildren?
 
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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.

View attachment 1144136

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

View attachment 1144137
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.
View attachment 1144138

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?


View attachment 1144139
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!

View attachment 1144142
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.
This is so good
 
slight correction, but it should be da Burgonha if yuo want say the dynasty from Burgundy, but other wise de Burgonha would also be correct if yuo wan to emphasize that it's the burgundian dynasty
 
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As much as I'm all for depth of gameplay, I'm a slightly wary of a character system going too deep for a game in the EU series. So far, vs eu4, you've discussed; over 100 years longer campaign, many many more nations and locations, trade in particular seems much more involved, so many other things, and now a pretty developed character system.
While all these individually are great, the prospect of completing a whole campaign starts to feel pretty daunting. I feel you are striking a good balance overall but just hope I can play faster than 1 year/15 mins and certain things can be automated.
Love the work either way!
 
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Will dynasty names be dynamic ? For example, "von Habsburg" is obviously the German name for the dynasty, but would they be called "of Hapsburg" in English, "de Habsbourg" in French, "d'Absborg" in Occitan, "d'Asburgo" in Italian (yes, really) and "de Habsburgo" in Castilian (and so and so forth) and yet be considered as the same dynasty ? This is very restrictive in EU4, where the game considers rulers of sharing the same dynasty if and only if their surnames are exactly and completely the same.

It'd be very strange and sad if, for instance, the rulers of Aurenja (Orange) was from the dynasty of "van Oranje" at game start.
 
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GUYS! GUYS! YOU SEE THIS "ANJOU-NAPLES DYNASTY" ?
THATS RIGHT GUYS ITS OUR GOOD OLD FREIND RENÉ COMING IN HOT!
PROVENCE IS GONNA BE THE STRONGEST NATION IN EUROPE AT THE START MARK MY WORDS!View attachment 1144127
I am sorry to inform you about this, but our beloved René belongs to the second Capetian house of Anjou while the dynasty of Anjou-Sicily is the first.
(Provence is still in a PU with Sicilly at game starts so all hail King Robert)
 
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