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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”.


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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.


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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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One question: What is "prosperity"? Is it another aggregate of many things too minute to model, like how Development represents local infrastructure?

If there is no base conversion unless enforced by a cabinet in a single province how difficult is it going to be to convert colonies in the Americas or Africa?
Presumably those colonies will get flooded by True Faith pops from your homeland that drown out the native you don't kill. But there should still be SOME passive conversion: No doubt local pastors and missionaries would work to "enlighten" the natives even when the crown is not directly backing them.

by one of the X other migration systems :)

I'll talk about colonisation in august
Looking forwards to it. I admit I find the concept questionable, and hope that migration outside of the home market is not arbitrarily restricted to places uncolonized in 1337. If say 90% of Lithuania dies from some plague and then Denmark conquers it, I see no reason why a Danish homesteader would be eager to go all the way to the Americas but not to the nearby free land in Europe.

Maybe colonial ideas or whatever's needed to unlock colonization allows POPs to be transferred between markets by the player? That would have the desired effect while being a generalizable mechanic.
 
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It's a bit weird describing Nobles, Burghers and Clergy all as "Upper Class" when for example the French First Estate of Clergy was largely split into Mostly Noble Family/Second Estate Bishops and Third Estate priests. You wouldn't call those priests "Upper Class"

Joining the clergy was the only major path for social mobility in the Middle Ages - even sons of peasants could become popes - so I do think it makes sense to view clergy as Upper Class compared to peasants.

Slave pops should be able to grow naturally in game, it was very common for slave populations in Europe (Mostly Roma slaves) and in the New World to increase due to slaves having kids amongst themselves, or being raped by their enslavers. I would much rather if slave pops were able to grow naturally, but this would be affected by several laws around slave growth, such as banning the practice of raping slaves or banning slaves from having children. Many of these laws should also effect the satisfaction and output of these pops. Such as banning rape reducing slave pop growth, increasing slave output and satisfaction, but decreasing the satisfaction of their enslavers. I do hope that Project Caesar doesn't tone done how important and how cruel slavery was, it's a sensitive topic, but I hope it gets addressed properly in game.

You're out of your mind if you think it's possible that the game could have a "slave rape law".
 
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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.
How do you intend to balance provinces producing food vs provinces producing non-food goods?
Shouldn't all provinces inherently produce *some* level of local food?

I can imagine some population growth limits in hilly mining areas, which in reality also produced a lot of food.
For example Wallonia had plenty of provinces with both fertile land for agriculture, yet had intensive mining industries (e.g. coal mining in Liege, iron mining and stone quarying in Namur, yet plenty of wheat produced locally)

Population Needs
[...] Obviously people in colder climates want more lumber or coal, while a Jain pop is not wanting any fur at all.
If lumber and coal are fuel needs, please consider adding peat as a resource for heating in the Low Countries, NW Germany, Scotland and Ireland.
As forests were cleared through the Early Modern period, this became a very important trade good for fuel!


Thanks for the great Tinto Talks yet again!
 
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Is Pop Assimilation also an active decision like Pop Conversion? For cases in which we want to create a Multicultural nation rather than spreading our Culture everywhere?
 
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Since assimilation rate is linear (X per month) but population growth is exponential (Y percent per month), this creates an organic situation where regional minorities generally don't get assimilated away... UNLESS their province are severely depopulated by something that totally isn't your fault, in which case assimilation (plus migration, since there's so much free land) takes over. VERY COOL.
Thats the idea!

Also very happy to see that having a "Written Alphabet" is a mechanic.

Its a basic technology that MOST have, but not all.


"Obviously people in colder climates want more lumber or coal, while a Jain pop is not wanting any fur at all." SHOTS FIRED AT VICTORIA III!
i don't get it
 
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.

How is it decided which location is depleted and which one is filled ?

Something like a migrating pool, where each pop moving from locations is added to the pool relative to how negative the attraction is, and then the pool distributes the pops in locations with positive attraction relatively to how positive it is ?

Or each full pop leaving a location already knows where it goes ?
 
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Have you considered multiplying all the values for good consumption by 100 or something? The decimals really make it hard to discern orders of magnitude at a glance.
 
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Does being demoted lower satisfaction? I dont think nobles would be happy with being bumped down to peasants.

yeah, but not really. 1 angry pop amongst 25,000 peasants its just 1 angry peasant nobody gives a fuck about.
 
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Does the culture or religion of a pop affect it's assimilation or conversion rate,
for example would a non-orthodox greek pop more readily convert to orthodoxy than to islam or catholicism?
and the same with culture, would a turkish, or venetian pop more readily assimilate into the greek culture if they were orthodox?

There are some factors on this yes.
 
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Very nice, I like what im seeing for 95% already! Heres the other 5%:

Population Capacity is a difficult point for me. Ive seen population capacity implemented in so many bad ways I dont like.

In Victoria 3 for example they had the idea to tie the carrying capacity to arable land. (With arable land being a semi magic balance number)
Below a certain number, growth gets a huge buff (50%) and after a certain number gets a nerf (-25%).
For example in V3 the DC state has 1 arable land aka after 7,500 ppl its overcroweded. Today that state has 700,000 people.

I agree that empty land should get a population growth buff! All the wild game and free real estate helps a lot!
But I would discourage nerfs/caps after a certain point as villages or urbanizing regions should not have their population equibrilibrium dictated by natural land but how many goods they have access to and can pay for. This is what makes these places especially terrible in times of crisis as they are most vulnerable to supply disruptions.

I love that you calculate the baseline for the pop capacity from natural factors such as vegetation, climate etc.

I just hope that you are able to differentiate between natural population capacity and actual population capacity and apply the respective modifiers where it makes sense to apply. (Like free land scarcity majorly affecting peasant growth or empty burgher capacity promoting burher growth and thereby pulling pops from the land capacity and increasing their peasant growth). Most often population capacity sadly is handled as one uniform stat.

Are there any things planned to accomodate such a two part population capacity?
 
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It's a bit weird describing Nobles, Burghers and Clergy all as "Upper Class" when for example the French First Estate of Clergy was largely split into Mostly Noble Family/Second Estate Bishops and Third Estate priests. You wouldn't call those priests "Upper Class"

Its a nice abstraction to seperate them from peasants etc.
 
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How do you intend to balance provinces producing food vs provinces producing non-food goods?
Shouldn't all provinces inherently produce *some* level of local food?

I can imagine some population growth limits in hilly mining areas, which in reality also produced a lot of food.
For example Wallonia had plenty of provinces with both fertile land for agriculture, yet had intensive mining industries (e.g. coal mining in Liege, iron mining and stone quarying in Namur, yet plenty of wheat produced locally)
All locations produce food, or rather, all peasants and slaves that don't work on raw material production or in buildings just produce food instead.
 
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Do pops assimilate to your country's primary culture or the biggest accepted culture in that location, or can you choose?

in most cases primary culture
 
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