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Johan

Studio Manager Paradox Tinto
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Welcome to another Happy Wednesday, for the 20th Tinto Talks, where we give out a lot of secret information about our absolutely 100% super-secret game Project Caesar.

First of all, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your great feedback, which is helping us shape this into an even better game.

Today we talk about what will replace the Technology Levels and National Ideas of EU4. While some aspects of the Idea system are covered by the Societal Values and/or the Laws of a country, this new system will cover the rest.

advances.png

Maybe these advances are good for us?


What were different effects from the Technology Levels and Ideas are now something we call “Advances”. Advances can unlock new diplomacy, new units, new abilities for units, new character actions, new subject interactions, new estate privileges, new laws, new policies in laws, new inheritance systems, new casus belli, new government reforms, new cabinet actions, new buildings, additional levels for buildings and new production methods. An Advance can also unlock mechanics like investing in stability, building roads, collecting taxes and much more. Last but not least, advances can also give you important stats like more literacy for your nobles, or better military tactics.

At the start of each age, each country will get a new Advances Tree, which will be unique to that country. A tree usually contains about 100 advances, some which are common, and some that are specific to who you are playing. Every tree, except the Age of Tradition, has 4 different starting points, a common one, and one from each institution. The ones from an institution tend to unlock relevant advances to that institution.


tree-png.1161612

Eventually all advances will have fitting and often unique icons, but for now, the sickle is good!

About 70% of all advances in a tree tend to be common for every country, but the rest depends entirely on which country you are playing. Over one third of the advances in a tree in Age of Renaissance and Age of Discovery does not require any institutions to research.

meritocracy.png

This is part of the tree unlocked by the Meritocracy Institution..

We also took the national ideas and adapted to advances. Some of them made no sense and were lost, but in general the starting bonuses ended up as two Age of Traditions advances you start with already researched, and the rest is spread over the rest of the ages, with what was the finishing bonus as an advance in Age of Revolutions. In many cases they have been moved to the appropriate time as well, so currently many unique and powerful Swedish advances are in the Age of Absolutism. We have also heavily revised those whose names survived, and when we work in making unique content for a country, we aim to add more advances as well.

polish.png

Poland currently has 16 unique advances...

We also have a lot of unique advances for what culture you are playing, or what religion you are playing, if you are a country that can own locations or not, and for what type of government you have.

Some of the ideas from the idea groups ended up directly as advances unique for certain types of countries, like the Horde Government ones were converted to unique advances for Steppe Hordes, and the Divine Ideas as unique advances for Theocracies.

However most of the ideas ended up being sorted into an administrative, diplomatic or military focus, with at least 10 in each category for every age, starting with the Age of Renaissance?

Why 3 categories? Well, at the start of each age, you will pick one focus, which will add those advances to your tree for that age. Now you may think, why would anyone pick something else than the military? First of all, there are different powerful benefits and tough choices you have to make. Let's take a look at the choice in the Age of Renaissance.
  • Administrative - Better Administrative Efficiency, Lower Interests, better proximity propagation, Cheaper Mercenaries and more..
  • Diplomatic - Better Merchants, More Diplomatic Reputation, March Subjects, Cheaper Warscore Costs and more.
  • Military - More Prestige from Battles, Monthly Tradition gains and more.
selection.png

Hard or easy choice?

At the start of an age, the tree is populated with the advances depending on what your country is at that time as well, so you will only get relevant advances to choose from in that age. If you switch tags or change religion or government form, that will be seen in the next age.

The Advances tree for Age of Traditions is a bit unique in that it has many starting points, and there are many countries, particularly in the New World, who do not start with all of them. Metallurgy, Agriculture, Written Alphabet, Ship Building & Meritocracy are different starting points who all have trees. Feudalism, which requires to have embraced the institution to research, is in the Agriculture tree, and requires Horse Riding researched first. Legalism is part of the Written Alphabet tree and requires Codified Laws and the institution to have spread to unlock their sub-tree. Many of these are more expensive to research.

This together with lots of unique advances in the first three ages provides an interesting progress as a new world or similar type of country outside of the Eurasian Core.

Each advance has a research cost that is the same for almost all advances. There are a few keystone advances such as “Written Alphabet” that are far more costly though. Every country generates “research” each month, which is “paid” directly into the advance you are currently researching. While a bit unrealistic, but good from a quality of life perspective, you can store up to a year's research without having an advance being researched. There is also a sort of catch up mechanic where advances from an earlier age are cheaper than the current age.

The amount of research you do depends on what type of country you are, if you are a settled country, or still a nomadic group of pops, and on the power of your liturgical language. The satisfaction of the clergy estate and the average literacy of your country also impacts how quickly you research.

research_speed.png

As you build up the literacy of your population you're research will grow .

You can also fully automate research and let the AI keep researching for you, and of course we got a proper research queue, so you can just select which techs you want to get, and it will add all prerequisites to the queue as well, and you can keep adding any valid advance to the queue.

Stay tuned, as next week we will delve into the fun and joy of exploration..
 

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If there are advances tiee to religion or government what happens if you change religion or government after having unlocked previous advances from another? Are they automatically replaced or kept?

kept
 
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So instead of having fixed set of national ideas, you can choose those yourself over time (with some nations having some extra, unique options for that nation)?

Thats one description yes. The design is that you will not be able to "catch them all" in all trees.
 
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If national ideas are advances now, does that mean there's a generic set? Could we see it?
there is no such thing really..
 
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Wait.
So if I don't pick one focus it means I lose on ALL TECH from that category and can NEVER reasearch it?

yes, you have to make a choice between those 3 options.

you get a new set of options for the next age
 
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will you eventually have most techs unlocked (obviously not nation unique ones) as the ages progress (ie they get much cheaper as you move through ages?

The goal is to have 75-80% unlocked if you play a country in a good starting position that does not neglect their research.
 
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When you say each country will have unique advances, how many are we talking about on average for each country? 5? 6? And are they really unique for EVERYONE?

I don't have an average, but we aim to have at least 8 or so.. Not all countries will have them, as there are an enormous amount of countries.
 
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So, do I understand correctly that the advances from the previous age are lost when you enter a new age? Or is it a constant build-up of new advances, making the nations end up with larger and larger trees the more they progress into ages?

No, you keep the previous tree.
 
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I really liked this. It's really interesting.

How moddable is the Advances system? Can you add new categories with ease too? For example, let's say a Magical Focus for a Fantasy mod.

you can script stuff entirely like you want.
 
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I'm thrilled to see a depature from the linearity in EU4.

Surely there will be a meta and optimal choices, but hopefully we'll see a lot of viable routes/picks in advances and tons of different playstyles as a result!

We are really trying to make sure there is many viable paths in the game.
 
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One thing I do not understand and need clarification on: So at the start of each Age you select from an administrative, diplomatic or military focus, which adds certain techs to your 'research pool'. At what point do you get to research techs in the other two branches? Do you get them once you finish the current branch? At the start of the next Age? I.E. If I chose Military Focus in the Renaissance, when later on, if ever, do I get the techs from the Administrative or Diplomatic branch?

You pick one, and the ones you don't pick, you don't get ever. In the next age you have a choice of another 10 from another pool of 30.
 
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Not everyone wants to play a totally bland game, where every tag is the same.

People that are fans of the PDS style GSG tend to want to have unique content per tag.
 
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A question. If at the start of the new age we can choose a focus, does that mean that we can't advance on the other focuses or they won't have as much impact on the gameplay? Like, will we just have a "standard" development in the unchosen focuses (without possible flavoured tech) or we'll have nothing improving there?

There are maybe 25+ other admin, 25+ other diplo and 25+ other military advances in each tree in each age, so don't worry.
 
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How do focuses work? You keep the one you choose at the beginning of the age for the entire age or forever? Can you choose more than one per age?

You chose one per age.
 
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I like it. Does the power of liturgical language work based on how many countries have the same liturgical language, like CK3 court language?

We will talk about different language mechanics in a future TT.
 
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So these modifiers will apply everywhere instantly? If you discover a new advanced production method, you can immediately switch to it in all your locations around the world, even in the least developed backwater?

Yeah, we count that time into the "1-3 years" it takes to research an advance.
 
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Question:

Are you guys moving away from “Ducats” to allow other different currencies to be introduced, or will the Ducats “de facto” stay the same, but countries will have a unique bonus like Krakow Grasz as implications boost?

Ducats is staying
 
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