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Tinto Talks #17 - 19th of June 2024

Welcome everyone to the 17th Tinto Talks, in this Happy Wednesday, we will give you further information about the most secret game you could ever think of, the one with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will delve into the depths and mechanics of how the population system of the game actually works.

As a recap, we have 6 different social classes, with Nobles, Clergy & Burghers viewed as upper class, while Peasants, Tribesmen & Slaves make up the other three. Every location has a population, and each combination of social class, culture and religion creates a unique “pop” in the game. That Pop may contain 1 person, or 250 Million, but it is still referred to as a “pop”.


pop_browser.png

Design copied from an old game I made a decade or two ago… UI is a bit placeholdery, but i like the browsing capabilities..


Population Capacity
Each location has a population capacity which depends on quite a lot of factors. The core of it is vegetation, topography and climate, while the amount of buildings and development increases it as well. If your population is higher than its current capacity, then there is a very large impact on its migration attraction and population growth.

While there are no restrictions on how many peasants, slaves or tribesmen there can be in a single location, the amount of upper class pops there can be is limited, and depends on what infrastructure there exists for that type of pop. Of course, if their estates have money, they tend to want to construct buildings that increase how many they are to further increase their power in the country.

There are reasons why you want upper class pops, and not just always creating an egalitarian “all are peasants” society, and that is when the capital economy developing during this era depends heavily on burghers, so you want to have a fair amount of those. You also want clergy of your national religion as they will help with stability, and having nobles of proper culture will help with your diplomacy and warfare.


burgher_capacity.png

Having levies raised from a specific class, reduces the maximum population there can be for that certain class.


Promotion & Demotion
If there can be more pops of a certain social class, pops will promote to become that class over time. While there is a base value, promoting to some classes like nobles will just be a fraction of that each month. If you wish to speed this up in your country, you can use a cabinet member to increase it. There are many factors that impact how quickly pops can be promoted, some are affecting your entire country, some others are more local, like during Devastation or a Lack of Control. Demotion happens when you have pops over your capacity, and will happen much, much quicker than promotion.

promotion.png

16 peasants will be promoted every month to become what is needed in Kalmar...


Population Growth
Only peasants and tribesmen grow organically on their own, but all types of pops can die off from negative growth.

Overpopulation, Lack of food, War exhaustion and Devastation have a significant negative impact on population growth, while having access to free land & lots of food increases the growth.

Not to forget, the population can die directly from diseases and warfare as well.

pop_growth.png

Peaceful and nice, the population should grow nicely here…


Assimilation
Assimilation is a very slow process, and pops will assimilate to the primary culture in core locations if they belong to a culture that your country does not appreciate. Societal Values and Lack of Control have a significant impact on this, but there are buildings and other things that can impact it. In most majorly populated areas the natural growth of pops will outpace the assimilation. However, there is a cabinet action where you can increase assimilation in a specific province.

monthly_assimilation.png

Sadly this is a slow process in this location, 3 pops will assimilate next month..

Conversion
Converting pops works similarly to assimilation, but there are two major differences. First of all, there are mechanics and systems that sometimes change the religion of pops from what your country may desire. Secondly, there is normally no conversion, but you have to actively enforce religious conversion in a province by using a cabinet. The amount of the population that convert each month depends on what type of buildings you may have, your societal values, laws you can enact, or the privileges given to the clergy. If your clergy is very powerful as well, conversion is quicker.

monthly_conversion.png

103,26% of 0 base conversion is still going to be 0 pops.

Migration
There are several ways for pops to migrate, multiple ones regarding the colonization aspect of the game will be talked about in a later Tinto Talks. There is also content that does migration, where events, disasters or other scripted content will set up specific migration from one place to another.

However, there is also a natural migration mechanic, where the population will move between locations. Pops will move away from locations that have a negative migration attraction, and will go to one with higher migration attraction in the same market. Upper class pops are usually allowed to migrate, while not many countries allow their peasants to move freely.

As for other things, you can use your cabinet to control this, where you can have one member of the cabinet leading an effort to expel people from one province, severely reducing their migration attraction, while another one could attract people to another province. You can also construct buildings in lowly populated locations to attract pops to move there.

migration_attraction.png

The price of stone in Kalmar is not inviting, but it's calm and plenty of land is available..


Literacy
Each pop keeps track of its own literacy as well, and there are buildings, advances, laws and other things that impact how quickly it can grow and how high it can be. The average literacy of a country has an impact on the research speed of that country, and the literacy of a pop has some impact on its satisfaction. However, there is also an immediate impact on the location of the average literacy of all of the same social class. Amongst other things, the average literacy of the nobles in a location has an impact on how quickly control can increase there, and the average literacy of slaves in a location increases the unrest of the location.

literacy.png

Literate Burghers will definitely make you richer over the long term..


Population Needs
Each pop has its own needs for goods, and if they can’t get all of those goods, their satisfaction will be lower. The goods that a pop requires depend on their social class, their culture, their religion and where they live. They also may start caring about goods when they know about them, as the demand for tobacco will only appear in Europe when the pops actually know about it. Obviously people in colder climates want more lumber or coal, while a Jain pop is not wanting any fur at all.

pop_needs.png

I am not entirely sure why these burghers want mercury…

Satisfaction
The population needs impact their satisfaction in two ways. If they can't get the goods that they want, it's a penalty to their satisfaction. However, the prices of the goods also affect their satisfaction, as if the prices are high, then satisfaction drops, but if you can get the goods they require cheaper in the market they live in, their satisfaction will increase, but their literacy impacts how much they understand the price impact though.

Satisfaction also depends heavily on the status of their culture in the country, the religion they belong to, and how satisfied their estate currently is. There are other ways to make pops more satisfied like certain buildings, or the good old method of stationing armies.

Pops with low satisfaction will join and start supporting a rebel faction.


satisfaction.png

Of course, these poor pops lack one of the most important things in life.

Even though pops may not be upset enough to rebel, their satisfaction has other impacts, as the average satisfaction of all pops in a location has an impact on prosperity and control.


average_satisfaction.png

Here even the paradox maths check out!


Stick around, as next week we’ll be talking a bit about laws!
 

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Sweden should have some German (Low German?) pops to represent the urban dwelling merchants, artisans, and artists the came from the Hansa. Check these random sources out:


Some claim that many of the port towns established around the 14th century were built and originally inhabited by the German merchants, others that Stockholm had up to 50% of its original population around the same century being ethnic Germans.
 
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serfs could basically pick and choose who will be their liege
That was also the case in the HRE, especially after the Black Death. Serfdom wasn't slavery. The contract included rights and duties on both sides. The reason that serfdom became so common in the first place was that it was often quite convenient for a free farmer to look for a lord who could offer protection and stability.
In the Late Middle Ages, you could run away to some other lord's protection if they gave you a better deal. Alternatively, you could just buy your permission to leave. This was relatively common among the wealthier serfs.

I hope the "Serfdom vs Free Peasants" slider can model this correctly.
 
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I would at least differentiate geographically: indian spices (pepper and cinnamon), central american spices (chili and vanilla), indonesian spices (cloves and nutmeg), middle eastern spices (cumin and saffron), chinese spices (cassia and sichuan pepper), maybe other classifications like east/west african or mediterranean
 
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Great Tinto talk! I have some questions:
  • I can't help but notice that the conversion/assimilation rates are really low. In the pic we saw 3 pop assimilations/month, but even if we manage to bump it up to 20/mo it's still gonna take 167 years to assimilate 40k pops (and the pops of the wrong culture will outgrow the assimilation rate). Will it literally be impossible to do a one faith and/or one culture run?
  • EU4 had systems to avoid too much expansion (amongst others, governing capacity). How do you prevent uncontrolled expansion in this game? Is it going to be constant revolts in wrong faith/culture provinces with low control?
  • I hate to be the one bringing up the war crimes question, but history showed us that there are more "expedient" and active ways to solve the different faith/culture problems. Some of the examples include the turco-mongol invasions (that killed around 11% of the world's population, 37-60 million people in eurasia), the extermination of the Cathars in southern France (1209–1229), Timur in today's Iraq (1393-4, killed all the christians he could find including everyone in the christian city of Tikrit), the european colonization of the americas (there is evidence that shows that the first 100 years from 1492 caused so much death that it contributed to climate change) etc. Are there some "active" ways to deal with wrong faith/culture pops, other than the ones we've been shown?
 
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not beyond 2 kids.
In PLC nobles were much greater % of population then in other European countries. I am sure there are more examples like that. What about it then? Will they not have pop growth or the % of the nobles will be just lower to allow the game to function by losing flavor
 
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Really excited to see how pops plays into warfare, control, and colonization. I just have a quick suggestion/clarification.

1. You've spoken before how religions will have a base attitude towards each other, i.e., kindred, neutral, negative, etc. Is this similar to how cultures will be treated? And is this mainly related to conversion rates and diplomacy between countries? Because I think that having an almost opinion like mechanic between cultures would be a great way to simulate historical grudges that are not entirely captured by their level of similarity/acceptance. For example, would it be possible for Scottish pops in english territory to be more likely to rebel because of a negative opinion/relation they hold of the english. Rather than, lets say, the French population in historically English controlled provinces. Or have it so that in a Scottish majority provinces, with very low levels of English control, might flip ownership if they border Scotland, that being a country with the same primary culture. You could simulate it by wars between cultures reducing their opinion of each other. Which in turn, would mean that pops in a country unified through a personal union would not view the new primary culture with the same malice as they would a foreign conqueror. I understand that this might be represented by other penalties associated with conquering a new province, but it would allow a more nuanced approach to generational strife and cultural relations, and the actual real world affect of having pops in your country belonging to the primary culture of another state.

2. You've spoken before how language will play apart in the game. Is this also tied to culture, or just diplomacy/trade? For example, would a cultures with a shared/similar language assimilate faster. Or how certain laws could ban the use of a language and somehow affect the culture associated with it?
 
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That was also the case in the HRE, especially after the Black Death. Serfdom wasn't slavery. The contract included rights and duties on both sides. The reason that serfdom became so common in the first place was that it was often quite convenient for a free farmer to look for a lord who could offer protection and stability.
In the Late Middle Ages, you could run away to some other lord's protection if they gave you a better deal. Alternatively, you could just buy your permission to leave. This was relatively common among the wealthier serfs.

I hope the "Serfdom vs Free Peasants" slider can model this correctly.
The mechanism is completely different, but it have similar consequences. PLC was big and underpopulated and law enforcement of peasant rely on nobles, so only noble could punish his serfs, but another noble had no jurisdiction on his neighbour land. So while Europe West of Elbe evolved into Free Peasantry, the East of Elbe was completely different because it became more and more exploitative of serfs. So while PLC had Serfdom slider like one or two ticks away from the maximum serfdom, it was the lack of law enforcement that made serfs somewhat content (but this they had far less rights than peasant west of Elbe). When law enforcement appeared (Russian troops) peasant became really unhappy.
 
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There is no substitution, as I can't think of an algoritm that is not going to get performance problems for it.
What about just grouping goods together and give only a reduced satisfaction penalty if at least one in the group is available?

No beer? -3%, Also no wine? Total is -6%. No beer, no wine AND no liquor? -18%, impossible to live this way!
 
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Is there really no other way to convert people other than sending a single cabinet member into one province (I assume you mean province as in collection of locations, not individual location?) one at a time? Seens even more tediousthan EU4.
I assume the main source of conversion will be buildings such as missionaries or this:
madrasa.png

i guess you can influence the conversion speed with certain Laws, societal values etc.
 
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Yeah, but well.. there are other cases it makes sense... its hard.
maybe make it the different religion a malus to culture conversion depending on religious dissimilarity and the current era? E.g. Greek pops would just not convert to the turkish primary culture at all if the primary faith of the country is islam, neither in 1337 nor in 1836, so they'd have to be converted to Islam first. But greeks could, in small numbers, assimilate into Italians without taking up catholicism first, in smaller numbers in the 1337 age and in somewhat larger numbers by the 1836 age (though, probably, still with some malus)?
 
In PLC nobles were much greater % of population then in other European countries. I am sure there are more examples like that. What about it then? Will they not have pop growth or the % of the nobles will be just lower to allow the game to function by losing flavor

Yes. In PLC, accordingly to source between 6% and 10% of all people were nobles. In Masovia and Podlasia it was around 23%. But there were location with ridiculous amount of nobles, like Zambrów (up to 60%), Łomża (up to 47%) or Wizna (up to 45%). While provited screenshots shows values like... 0.03%...
 
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Every location is populated? Some locations in northern Québec, Labrador, and Canadian territories are - to this day - devoid of population with small distant pockets of Innu or Inuits inhabitants.

Can’t wait for the colonization DD.
I wonder how they'll model migratory tribes. It's not like they're sitting in one location. Things change by the season
 
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While this happened historically, I'm a bit ambivalent about portraying "culture x is better at Y than Z"
Couldn't this be tied to the technology of the country the pops are coming from, instead of a culture? So if Brabant was ahead technologically, Sweden could do a "Invite craftsmen from Brabant" to get skilled craftsmen to move, thus tieing the tech-bonus to the game fact that Brabant is more advanced than Sweden rather any inherent superiority of flemish or wallonian craftsmen
 
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amount of pops vs population capacity
Does population capacity solely depend on the actual geographical features of the province (e.g. province size, climate, terrain type, soil productivity, etc. Or is it like vicky 3 where the "arable land" is mostly an arbitrary figure that largerly depends on the actual population of the province had IRL at the start date, and the population the developers would like it to have by the end date
 
How are eunuchs/bureaucrats going to be represented? In western nations you can lump them with burghers I suppose but China should have eunuchs as their own pop type I would assume. Or are they going to be clergy?
 
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