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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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Are some Pops harder to convert then others?
Or will some pops "flee" from when you start converting their area?
I just wonder how Jews and other organised minority Religions keep staying in the game, or if they all disappear within the first 50 years.
 
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Yeah, but well.. there are other cases it makes sense... its hard.
Yeah, true. Not saying it never makes sense, just saying that there are lots of cases where it does make sense and where it doesn't make sense. I have a suggestion:

Maybe have a special attribute for religions that make them either "ethnic religions", i.e. tied to the culture, vs. religions that aren't tied to the culture. An "ethnic religion" could be reformed by the player/AI to not be tied to the culture anymore to allow for alt history scenarios. For example, Inti could start out as an "ethnic religion" for the various Andean cultures, but then be turned into one that can resist assimilation.

When a religion is categorized as "ethnic", then whenever assimilation happens to a pop with such a religion, they also switch their religion (to the primary religion of the state perhaps?). When it is not "ethnic", then you have to separately convert them. Vice versa, if pop X assimilates to a pop Y with an ethnic religion, then pop X also gets that religion without conversion. There probably are situations where a culture might be considered to have multiple ethnic religions though... you could prioritize the state "ethnic" religion in that case maybe, or have a weighted system for which one gets picked.

There are lots of ways you could go about doing this, but I think it would be worth making some kind of system for this aspect of religion.
 
While this happened historically, I'm a bit ambivalent about portraying "culture x is better at Y than Z"
Immigrants from places that have certain techs/institutions could promote growth of these in their new home. Emigrating burghers could be especially promote dip or an apropriate institution, for example. (Speaking in EU4 terms) A general mechanic like this that is not tied to culture should be uncontentious.
 
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Can I change the primary culture and primary religion of my country?
I'm sure that it's possible to convert my country from Catholic to Protestant, for example, but can I theoretically convert England to Greek culture and Hindu religion?
 
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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.
Tribe also refers to social organisation and the level of stratification in a society. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elman_Service and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribe Tbf:
"The term "tribe" was in common use in the field of anthropology until the late 1950s and 1960s. The continued use of the term has attracted controversy among anthropologists and other academics active in the social sciences with scholars of anthropological and ethnohistorical research challenging the utility of the concept. In 1970, anthropologist J. Clyde Mitchell wrote:

The tribe, a long respected category of analysis in anthropology, has recently been the object of some scrutiny by anthropologists ... Doubts about the utility of the tribe as an analytical category have almost certainly arisen out of the rapid involvement of peoples, even in the remotest parts of the globe, in political, economic and sometimes direct social relationship with industrial nations. The doubts, however, are based ultimately on the definition and meaning which different scholars give to the term 'tribe', its adjective 'tribal', and its abstract form 'tribalism'.[6]
Despite the membership boundaries for a tribe being conceptually simple, in reality they are often vague and subject to change over time. In his 1975 study, The Notion of the Tribe, Fried provided numerous examples of tribes that encompassed members who spoke different languages and practiced different rituals, or who shared languages and rituals with members of other tribes. Similarly, he provided examples of tribes in which people followed different political leaders, or followed the same leaders as members of other tribes. He concluded that tribes in general are characterized by fluid boundaries, heterogeneity and dynamism, and are not parochial.[7]

Part of the difficulty with the term is that it seeks to construct and apply a common conceptual framework across diverse cultures and peoples. Different anthropologists studying different peoples therefore draw conflicting conclusions about the nature, structure and practices of tribes."

I think its use in the game is completely fine though
 
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Will Poland / Commonwealth later have some bonuses regarding the promotion of pops to Nobility? Historically Nobles made 10% of Commonwealth's population

It was because polish noble class was established fairly late into the game, thanks to the reforms of Kazimierz Jagielonczyk. The high percentages of nobles were in the provinces incorporated later like Mazowsze, were in some places nobility was almost 50% of the population. In other places like in Lower Poland nobility was only a little more than in other European countries (around 2,5%).

I really hope this would be possible to recreate in game and also fix Jagielończyk mistake to not include cities into Sejm!
 
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Fantastic dev diary! Project [redacted] has me very excited for its future.

I am very interested in the simulation of culture, religion and pops; it’s what got me into paradox games, and I’m so happy there is a pop system in project caesar. I do have some thoughts:

I think flat-rate/percentage culture conversion to the primary culture makes sense for upper class pops, due to education. However, I think lower-class pops should only assimilate to larger or accepted culture pops of their same type in their location or province. This could be modified by societal values or laws on intermarriage and cultural tolerance, of course. I believe this is most faithful to what happened in the period, as I understand it. Let migration, cabinet-driven and natural, spread primary-culture pops throughout the empire, and then local assimilation spread culture beyond that, slowly.

I do think it makes sense that peasants don’t migrate much, but I expect tribal pops especially would migrate significantly within any territory they are allowed to. This was significant on the central asian steppe, for example. I know we don’t know how colonization works in this game, but I imagine that the same system could move pops of all classes to the new world or to far-flung territory of the empire. More work for the cabinet!

As for religion, it makes sense to use cabinet ministers to encourage conversion, but it should also be possible to happen naturally based on country laws or societal values. Tolerance causes no conversion, religious enforcement can cause a lower or higher rate, especially among the upper classes. I’ve frankly never been a fan of the EUIV missionary system (not that that game is related to project caesar in any direct way). The pop-based system seen here is certainly an improvement, but I hope that having high control and the certain laws would be enough to spread religion within an empire.

Perhaps the abstractions in this diary are necessary for the game to run at speed, of course. I enjoy reading the discussions in the dev diary comments, so I thought I’d share my thoughts. Everything I’ve seen has me excited for Project Caesar as a longtime fan of EUIV. Thanks for sharing insights into the game’s design!
 
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It was because polish noble class was established fairly late into the game, thanks to the reforms of Kazimierz Jagielonczyk. The high percentages of nobles were in the provinces incorporated later like Mazowsze, were in some places nobility was almost 50% of the population. In other places like in Lower Poland nobility was only a little more than in other European countries (around 2,5%).

I really hope this would be possible to recreate in game and also fix Jagielończyk mistake to not include cities into Sejm!
That's what I'm talking about
 
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Hello!
Very solid TT, however upon seeing the Kalmar population diagrams I thought I'd ask whether Finnish culture is going to presented as uniform or not.
I think there is room for an 'Eastern Finnish' culture, which would encompass the Finnish Karelian tribe (not to be confused with Karelians) and Finns from the modern-day Kainuu and Savo regions.

for now we got finnish and karelian.
 
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With conversion being linear and population growth being exponential, it feels like for a player that wants to map paint their culture and religion, it would be in their best interest to intentionally devastate locations as much as possible. For everything else, it's going to be neat to simulate historic demographic changes that happened as a result of plagues like in the New World. In that case, do plagues also create devastation? I believe it's also a given that they will decrease prosperity.
 
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So is there no way to Assimilate minority cultures into the Accepted culture of the Area or Region rather than the Countries Primary Culture?

What if I want to Assimilate Highlanders into Scots culture rather than English? I can’t do that?

yes, there are different ways to achieve that.
 
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Potential corrections or concerns:

I like seeing the administration's approach to population growth and decline, class structures, and how they interact. However, it may become too complex or challenging for players to navigate the demand (primary focus) regarding province mechanics.

I do not know how I feel about population needs because I am still determining how the trading system will operate. Is a province going to be able to produce a quantity of a good every year for trade purposes?

Ideas:

  1. Will a progress map for population growth, decline, and literacy exist?

  1. Will you introduce émigré, famously the French and Russian nobility that fled their country during war and turmoil in their homeland? Will this increase the country's ability for technology growth or other needs?

  1. Will we be able to see maps of immigration flow from different countries into different parts of the world? Also, will we see population movements within countries?

  1. Will we be able to see the expolish or dysphoria of ethnic groups?

  1. I think it is a good idea to be able to control who can go to places when it comes to immigration.

  1. Regarding literacy, can we create education systems or school types? Also, will a building type for a military academy allow troops to gain experience and knowledge before the battlefield?
 
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I really dislike the existence of a "population capacity". Famine and disease should provide the natural population capacity for a region. Unlike this artificial ceiling, famine and disease are mechanics the player may interact and try to alleviate. I don't get why you would introduce disease, food requirement and pop growth, only to do something so arcady.
 
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Does this mean that nobles assimilate as slow as the peasants? Wouldn't they convert both religiously and culturally to keep their position in society

well.. technically far slower.

currently for 50 peasant convering there is like 1 noble.

which for an average location with 50 nobles and 20,000 peasants means maybe 2.5k peasants have assimiliated when the nobles have.
 
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