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Tinto Talks #16 - 12th of June 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, you know, the happy Wednesday, where we talk about the top secret and very much unannounced game we refer to as Project Caesar. Today we’ll talk about another rather new, and more or less, unique system.

The Cabinet is one of the core functionalities in the game, covering areas which in previous games have been handled by envoys or mana, or may not have scaled nicely. The Cabinet in Project Caesar is a core part of many aspects of the game.


Last week we talked about characters, and we inferred roles like generals, admirals, rulers and regents. We also mentioned two roles we were not ready to talk about as well. Being in a cabinet, while being a good use of a character is NOT one of those roles, so you still have two other things to look forward to regarding characters.

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Can you trust Sir Robert???

The size of your cabinet varies depending on several factors, the most important though, is how advanced your country is. At the start of the game, most countries will have a cabinet size of two, while every age will add at least one. Some government reforms or laws may also grant a bigger cabinet size, for some other drawbacks.

Who you pick for your cabinet matters as well, as each cabinet member from an estate gives +10% power to that estate. And it may not always be ideal to have a cabinet member of the wrong religion or bad culture, no matter how great they are. One example, includes the fact that the Pope might be upset if you employ an heretic as a Catholic ruler.

There are currently 45 different actions that can be assigned to a cabinet position, and more are added as the game develops. Some of these are always available, some require more advances, and some are unique that only a few have access to. Each action belongs to one of three categories, administrative, diplomatic or military, which determines which attribute is used for it.

Some actions impact the entire country, and some impact a province.

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Increasing control in a single province may be good, but it's but a single province…



How efficient is a cabinet action then? The relevant attribute from the ruler and the cabinet member has a big impact, but your societal values, laws, reforms and even some estate privileges can affect it. Not to mention your crown power.


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If you want people to leave Stockholm, winter is not enough.

Speaking of migration, next week we will talk more in detail about how the pops function when it comes to migration, growth, how they change, and what they need.
 
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Yes. There is a Head of Cabinet title, that can be given to a character, who will then get +25% efficiency to his actions. This cost money, and while making the estate he belongs to more happy, it also empowers them.
Will that title get some localised flavour? For example the title given to the Head of Cabinet could be the "Grand Vizier" for the Ottomans, "Palatine/Nádor(ispán) of Hungary" for Hungary, etc.
 
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You pick from any eligible character (if busy with other things they can't, and some estates may be blocked from cabinet depending on X or Y)
In Imperator you cannot choose characters that are already employed and this is frustating as you might want someone else to switch jobs.

This forces you to dismiss that character from its current job to be able to select it for the other job. Wouldn't be better to allow the player pick any eligible character even if they are busy with other things by implementing a job switching/replace option? This way the player has all the available choices at a glance.

Thank you!
 
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Do members of the cabinet have physical locations on the map? If so, can they be captured/killed if, say, an enemy army sieges down their location?
It was said in TT15 that "Characters keep track of where they were born, and where they currently are living." but I couldn´t find any information on what happens to the character when the Location they are currently living at gets captured.
Edit: That being said, I can´t imagine they would implement characters keeping track of where they live, whithout it being relevant for gamplay. Especially since there are Plagues in the game.
 
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Last week we talked about characters, and we inferred roles like generals, admirals, rulers and regents. We also mentioned two roles we were not ready to talk about as well.
Regarding the latter two roles, I am guessing missionaries and spies
 
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I know UI is still being worked on and you can totally ignore me until the UI diary, but it drives me craaaaazy when elements overlap and blend and get lost in other things

ok bai


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You pick from any eligible character (if busy with other things they can't, and some estates may be blocked from cabinet depending on X or Y)
One small QoL feature I'd like to see is any characters ineligible because of holding another position still showing up in the list of options, albeit greyed out, like EU4 generals.

Say I want to hire an advisor with a high ADM skill, but those with the highest are already assigned to other roles. My mediocre general might make a fine administrator, and I'd like to be able to see him in the list to be able to give him a horizontal promotion. I don't want to have to go to my military tab, fire him, and then go back to my cabinet and find him again.
character stats tend to be a bell curve yes.
I don't know if this is just a problem I have in Imperator, but I never seem to have enough useful characters to staff my empire, especially later in the game. The characters I do end up with are dumb as rocks, and I don't like appointing a 2 skill buffoon in charge of a province.

What kind of control will the player have in PC over the number of employable characters that can be chosen from? Can we search the cities and villages for bright young minds? Will universities and monasteries help churn out more qualified candidates? Can I poach intellectuals from a rival court?
 
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Can you trust Sir Robert???

LOL. Anyone who has read/watched Maurice Druon's Les Rois maudits/The Accursed Kings knows that answer is a big "NO!"

(Granted, his rival, and aunt, Countess Mahaut of Artois is certainly no better!)
 
How does the DNA/genetics mechanic work for 3d portraits? Is it more similar to ck3 where we can eventually get mix race characters, or ck2 where each character can visually only belong to one"culture" or the other?
 
Maybe it's me getting older. But the UI is not very intuitive or user friendly. The colour choices sometimes blend, there's not enough contrast sometimes and some of the numbers shown don't give any information related to it.

These are my comments related to it.

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Can't wait to hire and fire Sir Robert 20 times to trigger the revolution

You don't want to make Robert of Artois angry. He'll just add you to the list of people he is actively attempting to overthrow/murder. He's only at Edward's court at this point since he had to leave France after attempting to overthrow/murder too many powerful figures there, most notably the king.
 
I am dissapointed that nobody has figured out the reference yet.
I caught it immediately, but unfortunately can't read the DDs until later in the day...
 
First of all, I have been reading these TT since the launch of the first one back in March. Thank you for showing us this game, and I also think that getting feedback for a game that has yet to be announced is a step in the right direction.

I would like to give some suggestions to make about the cabinet:

1- In the big picture where the King is shown there should appear more characters according to the state government type. For example, in your usual monarchy in the time period, I should expect to see both the consort and the primary heir, unless the king is unmarried and has no successor. For other governments, such as constitutional monarchies, the characters I would like to see in this menu are the prime minister and the king (without his heir and consort, as they are not as important in that kind of monarchy); and so on for other government types. This would make the screen with the throne room less empty, and in any case there should not be more than three characters to not make that screen too bloated.

2- For cabinet members, I think that loyalty should be added alongside administrative, diplomatic and military attributes. Not as a mechanic to please characters (e.g.: not giving free hand a la imperator to solve disloyalty), but to give the player some choices and more information, for instance:
· Should I invite to the cabinet a loyal character with bad attributes? And what about including a loyal heathen with good attributes as a catholic country (this may anger the pope)?
· In case of civil war o major disaster, I should expect disloyal characters in your cabinet to join the rebellious faction.
· Some events may deal with some cabinet member asking the player to change its action to another one. Accepting or not this request should impact the member loyalty.

3- I think the head of state (king, prime minister, etc) should be an additional cabinet member. To make the head of state more strategic, I think his actions should be (a bit) more powerful and/or have extra actions reserved for his position (e.g.: try to improve loyalty alongside cabinet members, try to convert that heathen in his cabinet, finding spouse...).

4- I agree that actions should be automated if player desires so. Maybe as those actions reserved to the head of state? What about actions like ‘focus on administrative matters’ to let the AI choose the best administrative action for one cabinet member? (Same for military and diplomatic).

5- Finally, I think that cabinet members UI contains too little information for its size. At minimum, member’s faith and culture should be shown in the same manner it is displayed for the king in the screenshot. I would like to suggest (in addition to loyalty) to add a title to each cabinet member, that the player can rename at will. This suggestion is just for immersion and to have roles organized: in the late game, with 8-10 cabinet members, I would like to rename titles to ‘ministry of foreign affairs’, for instance, and so on.

All in all, you are doing a great work showing contents about this project and reading all comments.
 
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