• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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”.


pop_browser.png

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.


burgher_capacity.png

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!
 

Attachments

  • monthly_conversion.png
    monthly_conversion.png
    118,2 KB · Views: 0
  • 190Love
  • 174Like
  • 8
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions:
If ‘available free land’ and ‘food storage’ are large contributors to population growth, then is ‘development’ alone enough to simulate the growth of cities, or are there other factors that will promote natural migration to cities?
Similarly, what is in place to simulate the lack of growth in fertile regions plagued by political instability/raiding? Will Crimean raids sufficiently decrease the population of Ukraine, or will the naturally excellent geography lead to Ukraine’s farmland outpopulating ‘worse’ locations like Germany or France?
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Very nice to read about this mechanic! Many thanks. Two questions though:

1. If control is such a big factor in assimilation, won’t this make the capital the most assimillated place in the country? That doesnt seem right. I know capitals are melting pots, but they are not exactly know for lack of diversity.

2. If nobles have no pop growth (only have two childeren per couple), how wil they recover from battle losses? It would force the player to keep nobles out of battles, which, again, they are not exactly known for.
 
Hope that historical research of literacy rates and population ratios will factor into the setup, and we don't have a situation like in 1444 where Europe just arbitrarily has higher dev on average even where it doesn't quite make any sense (rural German swamp villages like Dithmarschen having the same dev as Chinese and Indian cities still haunts me)
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
That's what I'm talking about

Incidentally, for example Spain in the early modern period also has large percentage or nobles (in I remember well - around 10%). France was the worst offender here with around 1% or nobility.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Catholic clergy are not allowed to get married, there is no birth population, so the death population cannot be replaced. need new people to join. Maybe growth rate of these pop need -1%?
 
  • 2
Reactions:
How do you balance places like China with a gorillion million of POPs. You have the Red Turban rebellion to weaken it at first, but at the end it will re-unify again sooner or later, right?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Good DD, but, the banner for it looks suspiciously ai generated, please don't have this be the flashbang incident that every recent pdx game has had.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Could I suggest making the wax of the symbol for the noble pop type a little bit less square shaped? As it currently stands it makes the seal look to much like a condom in my opinion.

now I can't unsee it
 
  • 88Haha
  • 4Like
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
If ‘available free land’ and ‘food storage’ are large contributors to population growth, then is ‘development’ alone enough to simulate the growth of cities, or are there other factors that will promote natural migration to cities?
Similarly, what is in place to simulate the lack of growth in fertile regions plagued by political instability/raiding? Will Crimean raids sufficiently decrease the population of Ukraine, or will the naturally excellent geography lead to Ukraine’s farmland outpopulating ‘worse’ locations like Germany or France?
In the part of Ukraine that we've seen in the Baltics map thread, there was only single farmland location (Kyiv), and most of Galicia and Volhynia was thick forest.

That's exactly what I meant with game mechanics twisting actual geography or history if farmlands vegetation is directly associated with population capacity. Farmlands end up being placed on big cities, even if they didn't have particularly good farmland like Ghent, while large areas that actually had good farmland are ignored.
 
  • 5Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I would like to see the primary culture accepted by the discriminated culture.
This is when they accept the language and laws of the primary culture because they don't want to be treated unfavourably, but the people of the primary culture will never recognise them as equals.
 
While this happened historically, I'm a bit ambivalent about portraying "culture x is better at Y than Z"
Respectfully, that seems like an odd concern considering what we have seen from Project Ceasar and what is in other GS you guys have made.

In PC there will be plagues, famines (which it looks like can be man-made), religious violence, etc. In Crusader Kings you can make babies with your own children, and then make babies with that child. In Victoria, China is shown to be far below the western powers and then need to modernize by copying what the west is doing. The west is shown to be more effective than China, straight up. Hell, in Stellaris you can enslave entire alien races or wipe them out completely.

If that mechanic isn't in PC, I'd respect it, if you feel that it's best to not include it it is ultimately down to you. But I don't feel it makes sense to exclude it because the portrayal might be seen as offensive to some, which is how I interpret your response, when you look at the list of all the other things you can do in other Paradox titles.
 
How do food and food-related raw materials interact?
Is food entirely just for population growth/starvation? And raw materials like wheat are consumed for satisfaction? Why can't pops just consume more generic food for satisfaction instead of needing specific goods like wheat or livestock?

food = survive

different food types = happy
 
  • 49Like
  • 8Love
  • 6
  • 5Haha
  • 3
Reactions:
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.
I'm assuming tribes will refer to nomad/seminomadic groups and to groups organized around clan structures that paid little care to the "proper" "royal" institutions and instead had some in-group method of conflict resolution. Not to mention not taking part (or very little part) in the general economy.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
How does goods discovery work? Pops don't want tobacco initially because they don't know about it, but what happens once a European in the New World decides to try to smoke it? Will the whole continent back home suddenly have nicotine cravings like there's no tomorrow, or will it permeate slowly?

Its a threshold before it grows
 
  • 31
  • 14Like
Reactions: