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Tinto Talks #18 - 26th of June 2024

Welcome everyone to another Tinto Talks. This is the time of the week where we will be focusing on gathering your helpful feedback on how to shape this secret game with the code name of Project Ceasar together.

Today we will get back into politics, and discuss how Laws function in this game. Sadly, when this is going live, I’m technically on vacation, so might not be able to reply. The good news for you though, is that @SaintDaveUK and @Pavía are more than happy to reply.

We have had various forms of laws in previous grand strategy games, everything from deciding how the Upper House in Victoria 2 is composed to simpler things like decisions “The Education Act” in EU3 that gave you a permanent bonus. In Project Caesar what we define as a Law is something that has 2 or more policies to choose from, and where you can change the policy for a cost.

Many Laws have lots of unique policies that are available for certain tags, religions, cultures or other unique restrictions.

Currently most countries start with about 12-15 laws that they have policies on from the start, and there are about 40 more laws that appear over the ages.

law_categories.png

Four different administrative laws here, all for the ideal way to run our country.

Enacting a policy for a new law is merely a cost in gold, but changing a policy is far more costly. At a base cost of 100 stability, it's rather costly, and while a high crown power reduces it, having low crown power, which would be very common in the early part of the game, would increase that cost further.

So how do you pass a law then without plunging your country into chaos? Call in the Parliament and convince them to approve law changes! How that works in detail we will talk about when we talk about parliaments.

Also to take into account is that while you immediately will lose the benefits of the previous policy, enacting a new policy takes time. Depending on your administrative efficiency it can take several years until you reap the full benefits of a +1% Tax Efficiency, just like in real life..

Not only countries have laws, many international organizations have laws as well, where in some of them it's something the leader like The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire could enact on their own, in some there are specific countries that can vote on the policy being approved or not, and many more options possible. We will go into details about those when we talk about specific International Organizations.

So what type of policies do we have in the laws? Well, they are not just modifier-stacks like many things in previous games, but they enable and disable mechanics, they make estates happy or unhappy, and have impact on your societal values.

Here are a few examples of laws.

The Levy Law here is an interesting choice. 2% more of the peasants is a fair bit more than 20% of the nobles, but over time it has an impact over what your military focuses on.

levy_law.png

Or is it a way to kill nobles more efficiently?

Naval Doctrines was a concept in EU4, and here it is a law with lots of different options depending on who you play as.
naval_doctrine.png

Wooden Wall, the best for England right?

Your Legal Code has many different options depending on who you play, but as England you definitely have the important choice.

common_law.png

More efficient government or more happy estates? or just the traditions?

In the later part of the game, the Press Laws is something you have to decide upon..

press_laws.png

This is a tough choice, isn't it?

If you go with free press, the burghers might start building these in different towns and cities.
local_newspaper.png

There should be no drawbacks to this... right? right???

Here is an example of a religious law, about what religion your heirs can belong to.
heir_laws.png

Clearly the clergy are not as tolerant as they need to be.



Speaking of Heirs, the “Succession Law” mechanic is not technically a law, but uses another mechanic, primarily because we want to always ensure that it's valid, and enforcing a country to always have one. This Special Law is very much dependent on government type.

We have lots of unique ones, like the Papal Conclave, where when the pope dies, the cardinals gather to debate who will be the new pope. This can be quick, but sometimes it may take several years. We have different election methods for republics, and of course the old classic Salic and Semi-Salic Laws as some of the options for Monarchies.
salic_law.png

A difference on view of this will never cause any wars I'm sure..

For all of you that like to modify games, all of these are 100% controlled from textfiles.

Stay tuned, because next week we will finally talk about ages and institutions, which is something we have hinted at for many weeks.
 
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Is there a way to distinguish between different Heathen groups? Like tolerating Dharmic Religions more than Islamic ones or vice versa.
Or is it just a flat modifier for all Heathens?
I would love an Imperator culture system redressed for both cultures and religions. Let me micromanage everything demographically please!
 
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How does gradual change towards a changed policy work?do we get like 10% of its desired effects and it gets to full bonuses over time,or is it related to sliders?if its the former, shouldn't we keep a x% of the previous policy and lose it over time too?

if its +0.1 and it takes 2 years for it to be effective, then

1st month it will be like +0.1 * 1/24
2nd month it will be like +0.2 * 2/24
etc..
 
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In elective monarchies, will there be laws for who votes and how? For example, it starts as all nobles in Poland, but might transition to the Parliament later on. Will there be for example Kurultai for the Golden Horde and Yuan (maybe less accurate but I'm not sure)?
 
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So vic3 still doesn’t have proper 3D models for underage rulers, but Caesar has models for babies this early on in development? lol

I also find it funny how it is written that policies won’t just be a bunch of modifiers and then almost all shown policies are just numerous modifiers.

>For all of you that like to modify games, all of these are 100% controlled from

controlled from what?

textfiles
 
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How much of an abstraction are Parliaments? If I'm playing as the Emperor of China, the son of heaven certainly doesn't bow to any legislative body. Is Parliament just representing "approval of the elites" since of course realistically he'd still need/want to get his government officials and/or eunuchs on board. Still, calling it Parliament when I presume actual parliaments will be a thing for certain countries seems odd.

not all countries have parliaments
 
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I noticed the "Allowed Estates: Nobility" under the succession law. Does that mean characters belong to specific estates? I would love to know much more about how that works!

yes. each character belongs to an estate
 
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I wonder how special succession laws would work, like Ottoman one. From my lackluster knowledge of their system, it was that all heirs that declared their right to the throne of their father, would that be of wife or concubine, would declare war on each other and it always resulted in one of the heirs suriving, thus becoming the Ottoman Sultan. Well, at least that what happened during Suleiman's rule, again I'm not really familiar with their succession.

So based on that, how this would work? Would Sons of the Sultan be spawned as armies on a map and figth each other until one triumphs? Or would that be handled through events, even though it was stated that there would be little to no character-specific events?
 
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Yeah. Especially the Naval Doctrines are disappointing. At least the others nudge your national values or impact estate relations, but all these are JUST naval combat modifiers that will be lost with all the other naval combat modifiers you stack. Many of these don't make sense to be mutually exclusive anyway.

We used to have naval doctrines as their own feature, but got merged into the law system about a year ago.. they are a bit lackluster and could use some estate & society impact as well.
 
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why should Common law give more Estate Happyness then traditional Law?
I d think that with traditional law estates should be more happy, as they whield more power as they have local juristiction.
.. especially tribesmen and nobles.
 
I wonder how special succession laws would work, like Ottoman one. From my lackluster knowledge of their system, it was that all heirs that declared their right to the throne of their father, would that be of wife or concubine, would declare war on each other and it always resulted in one of the heirs suriving, thus becoming the Ottoman Sultan. Well, at least that what happened during Suleiman's rule, again I'm not really familiar with their succession.

So based on that, how this would work? Would Sons of the Sultan be spawned as armies on a map and figth each other until one triumphs? Or would that be handled through events, even though it was stated that there would be little to no character-specific events?
I'll just say that Turkish successions will be... bloody...
 
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Will galleys recruit from our slave population if we don't have Free Oarsmen? The Maltese navy would have struggled for manpower without the thousands of (mostly) heathen slave oarsmen. 12k slaves were freed upon the Holy League's victory at Lepanto 1571, so it's not like we're talking insignificant numbers.

And saying that you have a Fleet in Being doesn't magically reduce costs, keeping your ships in port does.
 
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Is there a way to distinguish between different Heathen groups? Like tolerating Dharmic Religions more than Islamic ones or vice versa.
Or is it just a flat modifier for all Heathens?
The base is using the Heathen group, but we're planning to have some more granularity about this.
 
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