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Tinto Talks #25 - 14th of August 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the 25th one, the Happy Wednesday where we give you lots of information about our upcoming, still secret and unannounced game, with the codename of Project Caesar.

Today we delve into the mechanics of colonialism, another aspect of painting the map.

Power Projection
One important factor that has a big impact on the colonialism game is Power Projection. Each country has a power projection value, and it is primarily to allow a country to be able to exploit those with a lower power projection. Power Projection is very dependent on how advanced a country is, where each age has an advance that gives you about +10 of it. It is also modified by societal values, rank of the country and more. One important aspect is that the +10 advance for Age of Traditions is in the advance tree from the Meritocracy.

You do not gain Power Projection by doing specific actions, like in EU4, but it's entirely based on your country's current setup.

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Sadly, the “Sweden is properly balanced” modifier has not been developed yet..


Colonial Charters
So, how does colonization work in ‘Project Caesar'? Well, you colonize by starting a colonial charter in a province for an upfront fee in gold. Then each month some of the population will be moving from the homeland to the colonial charter, until all locations that can be owned are owned by you.

In almost all cases, there are people living in a location you want to colonize, so for you to be able to have a charter to flip to your ownership there are a few rules. A location needs to have at least 1,000 people living there, and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.

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Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged!

This percentage depends heavily on the difference in power projection of your country and the countries in the location. Yes, I said countries in plural, and next week you will understand what we are talking about. This has the implication that at the start of the game, Yuán could in theory start colonizing Europe, if it only had been closer and discovered. How the countries and pops already present in a location react to your colonization is something that will be clarified in a later Tinto Talks.

As long as you have a colonial charter, people from your owned locations will start moving to the locations in the colonial charter. The amount of people moving is rather low in the beginning of the game, but there are advances that will increase it in later ages. Societal values have an impact on it, and so does the distance to the colony.

One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country.

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Full speed ahead! Only 40 months per location to get to 1,000 pops!

Colonial Charters are not free, and moving people are definitely not free, and countries need to support them. The higher the population in the target province, the more expensive it is to colonize, the distance also has an impact, but colonizing in the same area or region as your capital is significantly cheaper. You can always cut costs to your charters, but that will also reduce the amount of pops moving every month.

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Not too expensive, so we can easily afford it..


Colonial Nations
When a colonial charter is finished, and all possible locations in that province have become yours, you have multiple options for what you want to happen to that charter. If the province is close, and you think you can get decent enough control over it, you may want to just keep the locations as a part of your home country. You also have the option to have the province form a new colonial nation, or have it join an adjacent colonial nation.

Colonial Nations are a subject type that can not be annexed, but has a few advantages, or disadvantages depending on your point of view, in that while they start transferring less gold than a vassal would, they also grant some manpower and sailors, while also giving part of their merchants to their overlord.

To clarify, you can make colonial nations anywhere on the map where you can colonize.

Supporting the Colonies
If you feel that your charters or colonial nations are not growing enough, there are two tools you can use in the cabinet. Both of these become available from advances in the Age of Discovery

With ‘Supporting a Colonial Charter’ you will move pops from a province you decide upon and to the colonial charter you decided. The amount of pops getting moved depends on your current colonial migration capacities, so when you use it you can about double the migration to a specific

With the ‘Supporting Colonies’ you can move 100 pops every month from a selected province to a target province in a colonial nation subject. This can be useful when you want to boost a colony and you have overpopulated provinces at home, or when you think your country would be in a better situation if you could expel some minorities.

Restrictions on Colonization
There are several ways which can block other nations from colonizing certain places, including diplomatic treaties. At the start of the game, Norrland, Finland, Karelia and Kola are under the claims of Sweden and Novgorod who have divided the area between them.

We also have the situation ‘Treaty of Tordesillas’ where the New World will be split among two Catholic powers, causing lots of interesting dynamics.


Next week we will be back to talk about the difference between countries, and why owning locations is not all there is to life…

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And what is this teaser for next week about?
 
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Its the thing when mechanics are designed by Swedes and Spanish people, who's colonial history was "heretics are burned, not shipped to colonies".

But that's not the case for English colonists. The founding of America was very much predicated on shipping heretics, minorities like Scotts and Irish, prisoners, etc.
 
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So the player will stop ‘trade post’ charters manually after one province, but AI won’t. Sounds like yet another game where Europeans will ahistorically colonise the entire African coastline, making it necessary for the player to participate as well. If you can walk from Senegal to the Congo and not leave european territories, as is almost always the case in EUIV, then I think that is not a good thing at all. And certainly not historical.

Or is there a separate trade post mechanic (ideally where you don’t ‘own’ any land at all, just a theoretically 1-pixel fort)?
 
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I think if you just want an outpost, it shouldn't even be treated as regular colonization, and should be handled separately (but can help you down the line if you want to colonize the area)
 
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Yes there can be multiple competing colonial charters in the same province. But it's not first-come first-served; rather the first country to reach their threshold of religion and culture in each location wins the ownership.
Yes, flipping is per location. Castile and Portugal might have Colonial Charters in the same province but end up with half of the locations each.
The focus is always on a specific target location until it flips, then it moves to another one. Currently it's weighted towards coastal locations of high population.
you can't cherry pick locations, you make a charter for a province.
So imagine that Castile and Portugal both have Colonial Charters in the same province, and they set it up at roughly the same time.
Then there will be a choice of location, which is entirely outside player control. They will both pick the same location which is coastal with high population.
Only one of the countries will get that location, which effectively means the other country wasted years sending colonists there, even though they knew it was being colonized by a rival at the same time.

As of right now, from the information that has been revealed, I strongly disagree with not being able to choose the location within the colonial charter to establish a colony in. I hope you reconsider.

If you decide to keep it as is, it would be best to have further weights when choosing a location to colonize, such as if another country is already colonizing said location.
 
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yes, if you are tiny you have to be careful, as you can easily get down to 1,000 pops in every home location .. (if you can afford extreme colonisation)
What would happen if the population of a random landlocked location in the old world dropped to 0 through wars, famine, disease etc? Is it even possible? Would that location become uncolonised and could the neighbours take it even if they aren't playing a colonial game?
 
Sad Norwegian noises...
One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country.
 
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@Johan have you considered using only(or also) the country's culture group instead of all accepted culture for colonization? I think that it makes more sense from both gameplay and historical perspectives, especially for tags like France that have the majority of their primary culture situated around Ile-de-France it would mean that only people from that area will be used for colonization unless you decide to accept someone else, it also makes sense because by the time France started colonizing north America in the late 16th century people from all over the country went to the colonies and I'm sure that the cultural sitaution wasn't much different from 1337, it would make things easier for the colony since they woukd have to work with people of their culture group instead of multiple different ones and with time all those francophone cultures will become a unique colonial one or more(e.g. colonial french/quebecois/lousianian).
 
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Its the thing when mechanics are designed by Swedes and Spanish people, who's colonial history was "heretics are burned, not shipped to colonies".
Maybe make it a law or something that can change country to country, so England can still colonize by expelling religious minorities
 
Why colonial nation give manpower?
What colonial nation did this irl during the game time frame? sending local trained soldier to the metropole?

i would have thought main advantage of colonial nation is for the trade goods first, then local control and army for local conflicts for straetegic reasons and taxes once it is developped. And the home country would send army in the colony rather than opposite during wars
 
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Since this game is making a turn against being arcade-like as in eu4, Instead of colonies giving manpower to overlord, have the colonies keep the manpower and, let the overlord directly control the units like in Victoria 2/hoi4. They could be used as auxiliary units in local colonial conflicts.
 
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Is it possible to use the presence of your religion/culture pops to justify war? Say that I, as Spain, set up a colonial charter in Kyushu. I'm unlikely to ever get it as a colony, but could I now use the presence of Spanish Christians that needs protecting from godless heathens as a CB to conquer Kyushu from Japan?
 
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