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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.

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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Does satisfaction have weightrd averages by pop class like in Imperator where Citizens and nobles contributed more to unrest and were harder to please? I hope so!

unrest work differently here.
 
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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

If you mod those things, you can mod demands like you want.
 
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If you mod those things, you can mod demands like you want.
Ah so I would have to mod mechanic of rising wages to simulate industrial and modern day economies.
That is currently poor people don't get richer, and even nobles don't get richer from buildings with better PMs - some of that money should go to consumption.
 
So perhaps this is more suited for the talks on revolts, but here's a hypothetical scenario on my mind: Suppose southern France gets almost depopulated by plague, conquest whatever. I as Castille conquer the area and flood it with Castillian pops, to the point where Spaniards are a large majority. But then I lose a war with a resurgent france and they reconquer the region. What happens if unrest gets very high in now-Castillian-cultured southern france? Will they spawn secessionist rebels that will make the provinces defect to Castille, or would they create a Castillian-cultured version of whatever tag has cores on the region such as Occitania?
 
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Is it possible to completely wipe out a location of its inhabitants then replace it with my own people? You know, not assimilation but the other kind of wiping out.
Can we form a slave army and use them as cannon fodder while the nobility sit on their comfy chairs drinking tea?
 
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Ah so I would have to mod mechanic of rising wages to simulate industrial and modern day economies.
I don't think the game can simulate wages? You'd probably have to add more poptypes for industrial era middle-class pops like clerks. And those would have more demands compared to simple workers.
 
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?

probably likely to be allied in a revolt yes
 
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Pretty great TT, enjoyed it a lot.

I only have a few questions mostly regarding assimilation and migration.

Okay so from what I understand unless you actively "make unfortunate geopolitical accidents happen" in a specific region , you wont be able to completely "delete" a culture because population growth will simply be faster than assimilation. My question here is that, does assimilation only lead to pops accepting the primary culture, or can they simply assimilate into another present culture, if that culture has generally considerably more literacy ? Also can we have more than one primary cultures ?

I also understand that other migration mechanics will be talked about later, but I just wanna ask if we can target specific cultures and religions with expulsion, for example I want to get rid of Protestants as France, but assuming a similar logic as with population growth being faster than assimilation applies here, Id assume they would just outgrow any conversion methods. Will there be mechanics to "deal with" unwanted cultures and religions in a less destructive way ? I also do hope there will be laws allowing people to migrate out of your country/market.

And lastly I hope the estates will be expanded on later, perhaps in the form of a DLC or an update as even though I am very happy to see them hold real power and build their own buildings, I still think a lot more can be done with them, including adding more "subgroups" of estates such as Higher / Lower Nobles and Serf / Commoner Peasants. Perhaps adding specific noble families for Higher Nobles that you could keep track of (they wouldnt really need portraits or family trees, but It would be nice to have some internal structure of influencial nobility that might want to take the crown or rebel, should it fall into foreign hands, example Kuruc Wars of Hungarian nobility against the Austrians, and for a country trying to keep a PU to have someone to negotiate with)

Again amazing TT, cant wait for the next one.
 
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How does the game prevent the meta of just desolate your whole country and go for mega cities like in IR? it was horrible and unrealistic gameplay. Is there some sort of soft caps? I hope food really limits it (and I really mean "really", not like in IR where you just had to keep importing food and there was no limit.
 
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I'm curious, what is the reason for only having natural growth for Peasants and Tribesmen? I

Makes it easier on performance other logics rather than calculating every month that 20 nobles MIGHT get another noble
 
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less centralised kingdoms/empires with notably less institutions than others
About centralisation, HRE should be a tribe then, and France as well : the chief of the clan of burgundy decided to rebel against the chief of the french confederation and joined the side of the tribe of england during the 100 years war, the english tribe was well know for having a strong council of elders to take decisions, sometimes against their own military leader they chose beforehand.

I do consider that institutions are sign of developement (central bank, police force, judiciary system, etc.) but in 1337, how different was the ruling from a nomad horde compared to a european kingdom ?

Is the swiss conferedation a tribe ? They are heavily decentralised but have european institutions.

Is the empire of Ethiopa a tribe ? They are absolutist but don't have the institutions of Europe.
 
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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.

A noble is just a peasant with a sword that others acknowledge as legal.
 
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I don't think the game can simulate wages? You'd probably have to add more poptypes for industrial era middle-class pops like clerks. And those would have more demands compared to simple workers.
So not even quadrupling tea drinking when double British population by 1836, as my buildings have better PMs meaning better profits, that could go to consumption.