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Johan

Studio Manager Paradox Tinto
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Hello Everyone and Welcome to another Tinto Talks! This is one of those Happy Wednesdays when we talk about the top secret game with the codename of Project Caesar, so that we can listen to your feedback.

This week we are going to take a look at how exploration will work in Project Caesar. In previous GSG games we’ve done, exploration has primarily been done by units, giving them manual orders to move, or sometimes automated orders, to explore places on the map to reveal. We have a new system that works separately to go away from this and separate the military from exploration.

Exploration in this game works entirely on Areas, and for those of you who don’t remember one of our earliest Tinto Talks, an Area contains a group of Provinces, and a Province contains a group of locations, so it should be about 25-75 locations in an area.

Explorations exist in the “geopolitics tab” together with colonization, maritime and privateering.

exploration_ui.png

You need a proper helmet to be a good explorer!

To get an area explored you need to start an exploration for it. You can only explore areas that are adjacent to an area you have already explored, and if it is an inland area, you can only explore if it is adjacent to an area you own.

Starting an exploration mission for an area costs a significant amount of gold, but there is also an additional cost to start a mission depending on whether it's a land area or a sea area. For a land area, you need manpower, and for sea areas you need sailors.

You also have a constant upkeep cost of gold for your exploration mission, and during your explorations, you may get events related to the exploration.

Missions always have a risk of failure, resetting all progress, and the characters involved can die.

The administrative ability of the leader of the expedition reduces its upkeep cost, while diplomatic ability impacts the success chance, and military ability impacts how quickly the exploration can be done.

attributes.png

Incompetent at a lot in life, Matias redeeming quality was that he failed fast...

While most characters in the game can be assigned to explore an area, there are some characters that are far superior. These are ‘explorers’, which besides just being innately better at exploring, they also have different unique traits making them better or worse at certain aspects of exploring. While there are some explorers that join certain countries through historical events, there is also the possibility to recruit a new explorer. This requires the “Commision Explorers” advance in the Age of Discovery, that is early in the advances tree for the “New World” Institution.


Speaking of advances, there are a few advances throughout the game that speed up explorations, or make them less prone to failures. At the start of the game, at near range, an Exploration led by someone who is not an Explorer may take a few years to complete, but as you get more advanced, this will become shorter in time.

The trade winds on the sea lanes also have a significant impact on how quickly an area can be explored. We have designed the oceanic locations of Project Caesar to take into account the historical ‘sea lanes’ that were used by ships and fleets during the Age of Sail, taking advantage of their knowledge of winds and sea currents. These sea lanes shaped the way explorations were done, as their mastery was critical to the success (or failure) of an expedition.

route_to_the_indies.png
A purple advance is a unique one, and this is one that is unique to anyone in the Western Europe sub-continent in the Age of Renaissance.

If you have built a spy network in another country, you can use it to steal some of their maps.

As an exploration mission is finished, the knowledge of its discoveries will start spreading to other countries that have the capital on the same sub-continent as the explorer. Currently, the map spread takes about 150 years.

Stay tuned, as next week we will go deep into how the combat for armies will work.
 
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To check my understanding: to get to the New World, you need to explore each sea area along the way in turn?

Yeah, but the open sea lane areas are big..


sea_areas.png
 
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Will it be possible to automate exploration on same land? In some mods or vanilla eu4, its annoying if im playing a nation which has terra incognito still but i cant set someone to explroe automatically due to being on the continent.

no such limits in this game
 
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I remember in Medieval 2 Total War, you couldn't explore with earlier ships, that were not designed for rough waters (open seas), until you had proper ships to explore (otherwise they get attritioned and sunk at sea). Would it be possible to have something similar here, where you need to have proper ships to explore?

For open sea, yes.
 
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Missed this in my first readthrough. This is a big change. The inland areas are going to be a lot more untouched for longer.

Johan, quick question: does "area you own" here mean you need to own every location/province in the area, a majority of locations/provinces, or just one?

we are not decided 100% on the rule yet.
 
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Can you give us a list of (already known) features we're going to see this summer, and how many new features we're going to be seeing?

no
 
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Oh, and is there an equivalent of the Seven Cities? Exploring for gold and all that?

Its one of those "it was fun, but also too repetetive"
 
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What about conquistadors? Are they depicted in game?

yes, but thats another mechanic completely, and something for a later TT
 
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I wonder how exploration is going to be somewhat limited during the first 200 years or so of the game. Portugal hadn't even discovered Madeira and the Azores, there was already an European colony in North America (Greenland) that eventually got abandoned, etc.

It is costly and not easy at the start..
 
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Does the ship that I have impact this mission? For example, a squadron of galleys will pretty much guarantee a failure when trying to explore open seas.
And, do I have to assign this explorer to a squadron in particular or the explorer exists completely separated from the units?

It is not using units.
 
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I really love the idea that inland exploration will be more difficult. Will terrain, climate, etc. impact the speed of land exploration? or is it always the same speed?
that impacts it partially yes.,
 
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Can you share maps with your allies/request that allies share their maps? Or is stealing the only alternative to exploration?

If an exploration is successful, are the sailors/manpower refunded, or do they functionally die when you pay for the expedition?

Sharing maps is not yet coded, thats why I didn't mention it in the talk.

sailors & manpowers are gone at the end of the expedition.
 
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This looks fun, clean and not a whole lot of micromanagement. Good choice I guess, still really curious how colonization will work though. I kinda hope for something a bit more inspiring then it was.

Colonization will be talked about sometime in mid august
 
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Quoting the post: "A purple advance is a unique one, and this is one that is unique to anyone in the Western Europe sub-continent in the Age of Renaissance". Wouldn't make more sense to have this special advance locked to certain tags? Because this makes me think that it means that any western european tag can just get in the colonial race to india when most of it didn't even mind until after the 16th century. Like, in the age of renaissance wouldn't make sense for it to be only available to those with certain pre-requisites like ports, a sizable navy or others? I'm saying this because it makes it look that there's no distinction between Portugal going this route or a minor tag in the middle of the HRE.

Yeah, the minor tag in the HRE need to get 2-3 ports first to spend on Sailors.. and will not have the naval range to reach that far for a century. And currently its balanced so Portugal can barely afford exploring at the start, and maybe Flandern or Brittany could gamble on it.. But those tend to be far more busy with other things.. Like English armies visiting regularly..
 
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On the failure of the expedition, how will the results of the exploration look like?
1. Is it an all-or-nothing approach, where the entire area is 'discovered' at once at the end of the project (i.e. the explorer returns home after doing the entire area and shares his maps
2. or will we have intermediary results (like once an entire province is finished within an area), sort of like EU4 currently?

I can see both approaches work, and since explorers 'often' went back to resupply and get more men/provisions, an 'update' of the progess every while would feel more fun imo.
all or nothing
 
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So this is one of character roles that you were not ready to talk about in TT#16. One down one more to go.

yes, good spotting.
 
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Thank You for this TT!

1. How does Naval Range impact the exploration?
2. Exploration failure chance is yearly, right? Would that mean that the longer expeditions have slightly more chnace to fail?
3. Also, will the first nation to circumnavigate or explore 100% of the world get a ssignificant bonus for the rest of campaign?

1 - its a limit
2- yes
3 - no such mechanic yet.
 
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