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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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The Spanish also colonized many areas that retained native majorities through their religious mission system, particularly with the Jesuits. Incl. Sonora, California, much of the American southwest, parts of the Amazon basin. The French also set up missions in the Midwest and Canada to colonize, and I believe the Portuguese in Brazil. Will there be any representation of this? I believe missions should also be less integrated into your country/CN, I don't believe they really payed taxes or contributed manpower though I could be wrong.

This is something we will talk about in later TT.
 
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I don't think we've been given enough information to determine that, much less whether attempting such is viable at the start date.
It probably isn’t for Mali but that’s because doing so would be expensive, and early-game Mali is supposed to be in a precarious state. That said Sweden and Novgorod can colonize at game start and this isn’t a special rule, nor do they have any institutions Mali lacks, so if you have the income to sustain colonial charters and have discovered the stateless regions of West Africa, colonization should be possible to start immediately.
 
If a location becomes 0 population, it will become tagless/uncolonised
Hopefully this is not a common occurrence.

Depopulating states in Imperator was not one of my favorite game mechanics. The holes sieges blew in countries were not fun, particularly with their interactions with colonization and wargoals.
 
What if two countries compete colonizing with a charter in the same province and send pop whose culture is accepted in both countries & with same religion ? If they need the same % to finish a location, who gets the location ?

For instance two lowland minors with the same culture and same power projection // France and Spain with same power projection both sending Bask catholics in the same province while accepting Bask culture ?
 
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except a columbian exchanged ravaged america
Speaking of population in post-Columbian America, the idea that the demographic collapse during the early colonial era was caused entirely by disease is considered out-of-date and whitewashes the role the Europeans played. Disease played a major role in the 70-90% reduction of population, but it was part of a combination of causes including:
  • Terrible forced labor conditions--practically the entire indigenous population of the Caribbean was literally worked to death under the encomienda system (which is a "good" event in EU4 lol), but also true in Mexico and especially Peru with the mita system. In colonial Brazil the sizeable Indigenous population in the coastal regions was gradually fed to the sugar plantations as slaves, and Paulista raiders had to search further and further afield in the interior before the transatlantic slave trade was large enough to completely supply Brazil's labor needs.
  • Famine--increased labor conscription disrupted agriculture, leading to frequent famine well beyond the conquest era.
  • Deaths of despair--famously, the Aztecs and the Incas believed that the events of the conquest literally were the end of the world, which didn't help the malaise caused by the apocalyptic living conditions and near-total collapse of the social structure after the conquest. Europeans wrote reports of widespread suicide and infanticide. Alcoholism also caused numerous deaths, especially since imported European wine was cheaper, much stronger, and probably more delicious than existing pre-Columbian alcoholic beverages. Edit: In general these factors led to greatly decreased birthrates which was highly influential in its own right.
  • Saying the name of this cause might get this post removed by the auto-mod, but it's a word that starts with "r" and involves a European man forcing an Indigenous woman to have his child. Interracial "relationships" were frowned upon under the Spanish Crown but still occurred frequently. In Brazil, due to the comparitively low population of Portugal, the crown encouraged such "relations" as a means of assimilation and population growth.
  • Good old-fashioned warfare and slaughter--occurred somewhat more frequently in North America as they weren't dependent on the Indigenous as a source of labor, but it certainly occurred in Latin America as well.
EU4 got away with not addressing this by not really having a population system, but since Project Caesar has a population system it necessarily has to address mortality and causes of mortality. The EU series has made a lot of progress since the early "Guns, Germs, and Steel" days of eurocentrism and historical determinism, so I have hope that this dicey subject will be represented with historical accuracy.

Source: Cambridge History of Latin America Volume I and II, iirc Vol I Chapter 7 gives a good overview, and sections of other chapters go into more detail on whichever region the chapter covers. I believe Red Gold by John Hemming talks in-depth about Brazil specifically but I haven't gotten around to reading it myself. I haven't read much about the events in North America during this time but I know it wasn't just "whoops they all died of smallpox when we got here" either.

Edit: I say this because if, in terms of game mechanics, we're relying on the Indigenous population of a location in America to be low before it officially becomes part of a colony (due to diseases that spread faster than colonizers colonize), that doesn't take into account the causes of death that occurred after the location came under European jurisdiction.
 
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You mentioned Yuan colonizing, so I want to ask - what discourages Yuan from colonizing parts of the spice islands, the Philippines, Okinawa, etc.?
Is there anything in the game to actively discourage AI colonization outside of economic factors?

Yuan can send about 12 colonists month to each charter in the Age of Renaissance. Most of these areas are also owned by countries with similar PP, but Taiwan is not as organized.

Still there are about 50-60k people living in each of the 4 provinces in Taiwan, and in this Age, with all, you still need 40+% to be flip them. So you need to sent about 34k people to the islands. That is about 6800 months, and if you support a charter, you are down to 3200 months, or about 266 years.

And since colonists are picked from any locations where the dominant culture is accepted, its not likely that all of them are good as well.
 
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What if two countries with the same primary culture and religion are colonizing the same province/location? How does it determine who gets what if the flipping is based on culture/religion

if in that situation, its "first charter started"
 
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Not sure about the culture part either, as most of the Appalachian region was colonized by Scots-Irish (basically Scottish culture) rather than English people, and it still was considered part of colonial America and then the US, albeit pretty remote/autonomous de facto. Perhaps being of your culture group (or whatever equivalent you guys designed) would be easier to swallow.

That was rather after the Act of Union, and I'd argue that Scottish was an accepted culture of the UK by then.
 
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Wait, you brought up something relevant. Can pops migrate to "empty" provinces ("going native", etc)? Will Greenland get worse with time with people assimilating into local tribes, going back to Scandinavia, or dying off, to the point the country is unsustainable? Would the locations owned by Greenland become tagless then?

What local tribes?
 
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How are you representing the parts of the world that didn't have steelmaking using iron ore (just a little bit of meteoric iron), but obviously have iron reserves that could be exploited if you have the technology, like the Americas?

They simple can't build RGO's there until they get the advance.
 
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Yuan can send about 12 colonists month to each charter in the Age of Renaissance. Most of these areas are also owned by countries with similar PP, but Taiwan is not as organized.

Still there are about 50-60k people living in each of the 4 provinces in Taiwan, and in this Age, with all, you still need 40+% to be flip them. So you need to sent about 34k people to the islands. That is about 6800 months, and if you support a charter, you are down to 3200 months, or about 266 years.

And since colonists are picked from any locations where the dominant culture is accepted, its not likely that all of them are good as well.
Does flipping specifically require a majority of your primary culture? Or does any culture in your group/whatever you guys have come up with work as well? As historically Taiwan was settled by nearby Hakka and Hoklo people, not Mandarin speakers or people from near the Ming capital.
 
How are the Dutch and Portuguese factorijen and feitorias represented? Unlike a direct colony or charter, these trading posts focused on establishing a foothold where they built a fortress to trade with the local population rather than taking over these areas for cultivation, to settle or for plantation development.

This is something we will talk about in 2 or 3 weeks time.
 
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Does that mean you not only choose the province from which to send people to "support the colonies" but you can also choose which kinds of people? Only certain cultures or religions? To clarify, I'm talking about "supporting a colony" not colonizing itself. I've already read, that normal colonizing works automatically in a weighted system. But you did mention "supporting a colony" being great to expell minorities, so naturally one thinks we can choose who to send to "support the colony", right?

You select a province in your country, and it ships 100 of what ever pops may be there each month.
 
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Does flipping specifically require a majority of your primary culture? Or does any culture in your group/whatever you guys have come up with work as well? As historically Taiwan was settled by nearby Hakka and Hoklo people, not Mandarin speakers or people from near the Ming capital.
Accepted culture works.
 
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Does all this mean that colonial nations cannot colonise? In EU4 it was valid to build up the provinces and then let the colony expand by itself, but this system seems to suggest that you cannot do that in PC.

ofc they can.. they just need pops
 
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Related question: will the higher fecundity of settler colonies be represented? Take colonial New England. Compared to the English in actual England, their lifespans and fertility were generally higher. This resulted in much more of the growth coming from natural increase (births minus deaths) after the initial arrivals.
Think the base game systems will simulate this pretty well - we know that growth is larger in locations which have lower population and good condition (lots of space basically), as well as locations with large food surplus and more peasants (as you would expect in the New World compared to old)
 
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Are locations flipping to your ownership after 1000 pops/hitting that percentage something defined in script, or in code?

Is the colonial charter system another one of those "generic targeted actions" that you mentioned before?