Tinto Talks #17 - 19th of June 2024

[Antor Seax]

How is a tribesman different to a peasant?

 

[etwhal]

I actually like how the assimilation works. It should not be easy and quick. And to top it off, i think doing a world conquest or blobbing like crazy will be really hard in Ceasar and I like that as well. It never should be easy to conquer the whole world.

 

[SavvySnake]

Pop browser looks awesome!!

 

[eddin2]

Really great post. I'm sceptical of the emphasis on literacy increasing prosperity. In the Mali Empire, writing wasn't really used even by Burghers, the constitution was never written down and was memorised by clerks/archivists, along w court proceedings, and some passed down via oral tradition, along with most of the state apparatus, and Mali was incredibly prosperous due to controlling the Bambuk and Bure goldfields and most of the key Saharan trading cities of Aoudaghost, Oualata, Gao, Timbuktu. This was the case for almost all sub-Saharan African kingdoms/empires.

I think it might be good to have another mechanic to partly replace literacy in oral civilisations (in non Muslim/Arabic, Ethiopia, Calabar completely replace as they didn't have a script) that represents the efficiency and efficacity of a society's recording of information via oral tradition, as this differed greatly, and depended on the procedures around the practice (such as the number of recordings within a generation and how rigorous/perfectionist collaboration was, the climate of the performance, and the frequency of recitation/performance). In Burundi, traditions were informal and short performances with no specified roles, whereas in Rwanda traditions were formal, professional performances to entertain a noble. In Dogon society in West Africa, some traditions were only recited in public once every 60 years. Vansina, 1971

Those societies pops should be illiterate at the game start, since they remained tribal and/or feudal societies until 20th century.

 

[Pls fix HRE]

Guess the one culture meta will be to expel everyone in the land you conquer and stack as many ways to assimilate as possible.

 

[ReadDeng]

why? we use that mostly inside europe.

I suppose a reason to avoid the word is that it isn't very precise. Tribe is not really used in social sciences much anymore, since academics couldn't come up with what the word actually means. You can read more about it here from the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. A more precise term would probably be something like "Forager"/"Hunter-Gatherer" which is often what people usually mean when call someone tribal. Forager would also be more consistently an economic social class as the other terms used are, whereas attempts at defining tribesmen tend to be more purely political. For instance, the Salish peoples are often called "tribal" in governance but their society had noble, commoner (forager), and slave economic classes (a book was recently published on this topic here if you'd be interested).

Tribe is also often used for "Nomadic Pastoralist", and there isn't really another term that covers both foragers and nomadic pastoralists, aside from something clunky like "nonagriculturalists". I suppose the lazy solution would be to have the flavor text for Tribesmen say something like "Tribesmen represent a diverse range of social classes commonly found in nonagricultral societies such as hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists" if it's meant to be used for both Bedouins and the Salish. Otherwise, I'd try to rename tribesmen to what you mean specifically (e.g. just call them nomadic pastoralists if they're only meant to represent groups like the Bedouins).

 

[Krajzen]

One question which I have to the devs: how have you estimated the precise amount of people to put in every parcel of the world in the 14th century, and their class, ethnic and cultural divisions? It sounds like an insane task for Europe and straight up impossible for many less documented parts of the world.
I assume a lot of it was heuristics "eh it seems to make sense" but I also see that you have a lot of sensible numbers.

If you have used any scholarly websites or literature, could you recommend some of it? I am very interested in historical demographics.

 

[Mef]

Ministeriales, as you yourself pointed out, are UNFREE. They are not nobles in the 'strict' sense.

They were considered nobles.
Free or unfree is a completely different characteristic. Peasants could be free, and they'd still be clearly below unfree nobles in rank.

 

[DSet]

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

And please, pretty please, keep it that way. Victoria 2's pop browser was amazing. No need to innovate in this department.

 

[honkajoki]

maybe you can lock assimilation behind the pop being an accepted religion? Like, you cannot become French if you aren't an accepted religion in France.

Like in EU4, not possible to culture convert if not accepted religion.

How about the other way? Can a pop reasonably become Anglican if not English, or Shinto if not Japanese?

 

[RohenTahir]

Sorry byt litteracy level of pesants on level 20+%? Guys this is crazy, probably 99% of pops cant ready and write in XV century.

 

[Mef]

I suppose a reason to avoid the word is that it isn't very precise. Tribe is not really used in social sciences much anymore, since academics couldn't come up with what the word actually means.

Standards are always going to be way more strict if you're talking about academic environments.

Project Caesar is a video game aimed at a general audience, not an academic paper. Tribesmen is a much better word in this context than something like "nomadic pastoralist".

Sorry byt litteracy level of pesants on level 20+%? Guys this is crazy, probably 99% of pops cant ready and write in XV century.

You're wrong. Do you think the printing press would have been such a massive success if only 1% of the population had been able to read?

 

[Bosschurchill]

This DD gives me significant concerns about performance.

 

[Mef]

Probably because the location/province would be rich from high prices of the raw goods production.

In that case, I see no reason to tie migration attraction to the price of the raw material instead of tax base per capita, as that would take other factors into account as well.

 

[alexkowal123]

Those societies pops should be illiterate at the game start, since they remained tribal and/or feudal societies until 20th century.

Of course they should be illiterate, I'm not proposing that? I'm saying their lack of a writing script was largely a cultural choice, especially when Arabic was available. Them being illiterate didn't hamper their prosperity enough to be represented like this in the game, without a mechanism for the efficacity of their oral tradition.

"Most precolonial African civilizations were "oral civilizations." Our own European or American contemporary societies are "literate civilizations." Inevitably, the attitudes of two such different societies towards words and speech differ radically"
This is summarised by "What's in a name? To these people, everything. All oral cultures distinguish between important words and banale speech"
"What's in a name?" is a proverb in english used to dismiss a word's sentiment.
"The attitude of members of an oral society toward speech is similar to the reverence members of a literate society attach to the written word" Vansina, 1971

 

[endersaim]

The problem I see with 'available land' and 'population capacity' is that historically, the availability of fertile land wasn't necessarily linked to how people migrated. That was mostly something for larger migrations, like to the New World, but when we're talking about small scale migration within a market, then opportunities for social mobility should be a lot more important than available land.

This system also makes me worry that locations will be set to 'farmland' just to give them a high population capacity, no matter if historically they actually had particularly good farmland or not. Northern Flanders is a good example for this, where people turned to manufacturing in cities exactly because the land wasn't that good, and food was imported from fertile areas to the south. If urbanized areas are given 'farmland' just so they can have higher population capacity, that feels like history/geography being twisted for the sake of game mechanics, and I think that, especially at this stage, game mechanics should be tweaked so this doesn't have to be done.

Every piece of land is an opportunity for social advancement. One advances from having no land to having land.

 

[betahash]

I really like the UI that is shown here, however i have one issue which is that the font or color that is used to describe estate, religion or location blends quite badly with the background. Or maybe it is just not really well visible on this photo.

 

[Mef]

Every piece of land is an opportunity for social advancement. One advances from having no land to having land.

That is true if it's land that is just being settled. But that has nothing to do with the fact that vegetation gives a bonus to population capacity.

 

[endersaim]

And who is twice as expensive to kill in an "accident"! Many manslaughter laws (not murder) at the time specified a fine based on the dead person's status.

Takes time to promote another, you know. These nobles aren’t free!

 

[Atromb]

I suppose a reason to avoid the word is that it isn't very precise. Tribe is not really used in social sciences much anymore, since academics couldn't come up with what the word actually means. You can read more about it here from the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. A more precise term would probably be something like "Forager"/"Hunter-Gatherer" which is often what people usually mean when call someone tribal. Forager would also be more consistently an economic social class as the other terms used are, whereas attempts at defining tribesmen tend to be more purely political. For instance, the Salish peoples are often called "tribal" in governance but their society had noble, commoner (forager), and slave economic classes (a book was recently published on this topic here if you'd be interested).

Tribe is also often used for "Nomadic Pastoralist", and there isn't really another term that covers both foragers and nomadic pastoralists, aside from something clunky like "nonagriculturalists". I suppose the lazy solution would be to have the flavor text for Tribesmen say something like "Tribesmen represent a diverse range of social classes commonly found in nonagricultral societies such as hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists" if it's meant to be used for both Bedouins and the Salish. Otherwise, I'd try to rename tribesmen to what you mean, like calling them foragers or pastoralists.

I'd wager highlanders are also going to be clasified as tribesmen.