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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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Question:

Will we be able to see how far back a succession line goes, and will we be able to see heirs of foreign households claims in succession? Will we be able to choose an heir from another country or kingdom?

Will estates start to build their own building types without the player’s assistance?
 
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Will there be laws determining what kinds of things the state will tax and at what rates?

Things like sales taxes hit different groups of the population in different ways, and this nuanced impact can be modeled by modifiers from laws levying this or that tax.

Now that we have so many trade goods and a more complicated trade system, it would be shame not to be able to pass laws which, say, give control of the wine trade completely to the clergy, etc.
There are some policies that may affect your taxing capacity, yes, although on a country and estate level, not so granular as you mention.
 
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not all countries have parliaments
Does that mean countries without them have to eat the massive stab hit every time they want to change laws?
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.
If laws could alter what pops a building (e.g. those making sailors or the ships themselves) can employ or what production methods it uses, that would really increase the depth of things.
 
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What does the eligibility mean for succession laws? Why does how many points you have matter?
It is a generic system used by the different succession laws, which makes it much easier for us (and, potentially, modders) to portray very different types of succession without requiring completely different succession-related coded features.
 
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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?
From what I remember, their succession law was that every son of the sultan had the same claim legitimacy to the throne, being the chosen one the first that arrived first at court. Said this, the heirs were also all trained for governing by being assigned to the administration of provinces. Now, the preferred heir would usually be assigned the nearest province to the one of Constantinople, so they were almost always the first ones to arrive.
 
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While I'm not personally against (some) tag specific content, I'm thrilled to see that Project Caesar will have culture and religion specific laws!

Is having region/culture/religion specific content a part of the design philosophy for PC in general?
It's a pillar of the game, yes!
 
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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.
Safe to assume there will be a certain degree of variation in internal adminstration mechanics throughout different regions and countries. Certainly for the Celestial Empire which will probably have its own government type.
 
You said in the HRE it's the emperor who can enact laws but wouldn't the imperial diet play a role?
We'd like to have an Imperial Diet for the HRE, yes, although it's not yet an implemented feature.
 
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Oh interesting, when Jean inherits France does Normandy etc get absorbed into France or do they have laws preventing that?
It's the idea, yes.
 
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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.

View attachment 1151302
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.

View attachment 1151297
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.View attachment 1151298
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.

View attachment 1151303
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..

View attachment 1151304
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.
View attachment 1151307
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.
View attachment 1151309
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.
View attachment 1151310
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.
can the International Organisation forbid you from passing some laws? Or force you to pass them?
 
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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.
It will be possible for countries with specific policies, yes.
 
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So, next week is Ages, AND Institutions. Interesting and unexpected combo. My prediction is that the presence or absence of institutions is what determines what "age" a country is in.
 
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Will there be possible to depict enaction of the Dusan's Code? Could be done as an event and could it be considered in game as early constitucion or code of laws which can be expended upon (since it historicaly regulated all parts of one's life and it had some interesting articles like article 172 (in which it is mentioned that court should rule based on law and not on fear of the emperor)?
sdfs.png
 

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Very solid and fascinating TT, at a pair with the granularity of the rest of what we've seen so far. I have a few questions if they can be answered.

Can a country have more than one parliament, i.e., "Cortes" of the Crown of Aragon for example?

And for laws, can each historic territory/state within the country have its own laws?

If true any of the above, can these parliaments and laws be merged into one instead, if there is enough centralization and right conditions?
 
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Wonderful so much engagement, im getting hyped for EU 5! Would be nice to see besides maps and game mechanics also some graphical features like mini videos as in sega shogun when you could build a new unit, some more voice acting :p Besides that the current gui style looks good, clean- clear