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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.

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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.

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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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This. I'm very confused by this.

Also, a few things:
-does it really make sense that lower classes can "promote" to nobles? That's somewhat ahistorical, and ennobling was rather rare/done explicitly by the government. It would be interesting to see laws that limit the promotion to nobility, especially earlier on in the game.
-I wish that "peasants" were more differentiated, namely, that you had 1) peasants (essentially a farming class) 2) serfs (peasants tied to the land under feudalism, not allowed to migrate, etc) and 3) commoners (urban lower classes)

For nobles max-cap is "government says we want 10 nobles here"
 
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1. You said that the only class that normally increases are peasants and tribesmen, does that mean that nobility, burghers and clergy could only decrease if not for promotion? I.e nobles have no children

they don't die off normally, as we expect everyone to have "2 barn, Volvo, Villa och Vovve" like a proper swede.
 
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Can you invite certain peoples for advances in technology/skilled craftsmen?

While this happened historically, I'm a bit ambivalent about portraying "culture x is better at Y than Z"
 
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If I wanted to extend game by 100 years, then how I could make peasants buy as much high end goods as nobles?
Can we simulate rising incomes of peasants, meaning rising consumption of all goods from peasants?

I want them consume computers, tourism, finances and stuff after extending game by 200 years :D
 
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This dev diary increased the satisfaction level of the me pop by a flat 50 (scaled with other modifiers)

nice. do you lack any good to make it 100? :p
 
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Are there ways to influence which demographic of pops migrate? E.g.,
1) Culture
2) Religion
3) Pop type

Thinking about expel minorities to colonies in EU4 as an example. Presumably if an province is at noble capacity it's less likely to encourage nobles to migrate into unemployment

There are ways for that, but not the cabinet action.
 
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It seems a bit strange if assimilation and conversion are separate. They should be related, if they aren't already. For example, it would be strange for a Sami pop to assimilate to Norwegian culture, but then they keep their Sami religion if you don't do conversion.

Yeah, but well.. there are other cases it makes sense... its hard.
 
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That looks strange, I would expect the majority of burghers to be literate, not just 13%?
Burgher children usually learned to read and write at a young age at home...
What johan said, plus in Paradox tradition "Literacy" is not just literal ability to read but also represents the general level of education among the population.
So what happens if you got a Polish majority in Gdansk (an example) and a bunch of Polish people migrate to other provinces in Berlin and other exclusively German provinces in the same market. Because growth rate is exponential, does this mean that suddenly your entire country will have Polish minorities all around in every province?
A good point. If a Pop is outside of its homeland AND they are a small minority, assimilation rate should go way up so natural growth doesn't outpace it. That would stop little weird performance-sucking minorities from popping up everywhere.
 
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If a province has 25% of culture A (not accepted) and another 25% of culture B (not accepted), will the rebels unite against you in a single army or will they have different revolts?
 
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Don't worry, someone WILL find a way to get these 38 brave people to become the majority religion.

Knowing our playerbase, I expect to see a "Norse one-religion WC by 1355" thread eventually.
 
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1) Will slave pops grow in those locations where slaves were encouraged to do so? Like North American plantations.
2) Will there be high attrition for slaves in places like Caribbean sugar plantations?
3) Will tribesmen ‘promote’ laterally to peasants?
4) In societies with few/no nobility, what happens? The United States, for example (particularly one in which there is no planter class to take on that role). Or particular versions of a revolutionary state. Do they just have to suffer from a diplomatic and military penalty?
 
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I'm curious, what is the reason for only having natural growth for Peasants and Tribesmen? I can see why Slaves would not necessarily have natural growth depending on how a given region handles slavery, say the children being born free, similar for Clergy where one would not be born into it in many regions. Nobles and Burghers meanwhile seem like they really should have natural growth, Nobility being all about bloodlines and not known for promoting peasants into their ranks, and Burghers having children that would take over the family business as well.

I could also see there being an issue with literacy connected to this, if illiterate Peasants promote into Nobles and Burghers, regularly thinning out the literate population and having to learn reading again. This could very easily not be an issue if pops promoting into upper class doesn't (majorly) affect literacy, though maybe a minor "issue" on its own.

Maybe having natural growth for all pops as a default, with conditions to turn it off would be a possibility? Slaves populations would have natural growth (and decline), unless rules such as Freedom of Wombs are in place. Clergy would have natural growth in societies where spiritual leadership roles are passed on to offspring, while they would be made up of promoted peasants in for example Christian countries.

All in all, this seems like a system with quite a lot of levers to pull, with upper limits set by buildings and I assume other factors if one was to mod it that way. Very much looking forward to getting my hands on the mystery game. Hog Bless.
 
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-does it really make sense that lower classes can "promote" to nobles? That's somewhat ahistorical, and ennobling was rather rare/done explicitly by the government. It would be interesting to see laws that limit the promotion to nobility, especially earlier on in the game.
How is that ahistorical? Where do you think nobles came from? At least in the German speaking areas, there were lots of serfs that were raised up to the rank of noble, while still being unfree, i.e. the ministeriales.
 
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So I assume the events that happen like 'Byzantium refugees' and such will actually have an injection of the said population physically happen now? Or the religious wars happening and religious population migrating because of persecution etc.
 
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How does good substitution work? Do pops always get upset if they don't have certain goods, or will other goods appease them?

There is no substitution, as I can't think of an algoritm that is not going to get performance problems for it.
 
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