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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.

colonial_progress.png

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.

colony_cost.png

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…

fun_map.png

And what is this teaser for next week about?
 
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You need to be at least one age ahead to do it.
1: I assume this is fine for AI then, but what if one player is playing France, and another is playing something like ottomans or north african nations, but they're not paying attention and increasing their age at all. Would france given they have the money for it, be able to colonise the country at some point?

2: If you can't colonise someone with your own religion, can't they somehow just switch to catholic and profit? If they can't, how does the Kongo turning catholic work? Is that just an event/situation?

3: How does US gameplay work, will you be able to switch to a colonial charter? Perhaps unite the charters (States) and declare independence?
 
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Johan, this is a completely unrelated question, is it possible for 3d models to be cell-shaded, I think a more painterly look will suit the game style better,
 
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So a country may expand rather rapidly into areas with an accepted culture, religion and a suitable population? E.g. Westafrican nations axpanding in Westafrica.
 
I was sorta hoping to read some more detail about how colonies propagate rather than just going for an area and from there on location by location.

With so much granularity and location density in PC I have high hopes for an organically growing colony (as in multi location construct / colonial upstart nation).
Most titles kinda treat colonies like every spot is the same or the expansion is random at best.

What I mean with organical growth is something kinda similar as to how you got your control mechanic to work.
I would expect my colonists to go relatively wide along the coastlines first and then head up rivers, lakes, important passes or generally favorable locations.
Colonization was hard and people didnt make it harder for themselves if they didnt have to.


I think its fine to have an abstract "box" for where they expand as one colonial spot just doing long Chile over the entire Americas is also nonsense.

I guess in a perfect world you would put down your initial colony somewhere and then where it expands on its own works akin to how the control works while following the natural patterns i outlined earlier.

Hope to hear/read more at some point :)
Oh that's an excellent idea. It would be simpler for the player and also more realistic if charters could be declared for provinces OR areas, and colonization would happen dynamically one location at a time based on a mechanic similar to control.

It would also be cool to have estates support colonization by building their own buildings in colonies. Spanish missions, cossack forts, etc.
 
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So I have 1 question, are custom nations going to be in the game again or not? I realize the ideas mechanic that was there ain’t gonna be there any more, at least that’s what I’ve come to believe through the comments, but there’s a couple other ways that I can see that can be messed with.
 
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You can't specifically choose to send religious minority pops, and the system is biased towards sending pops from true faith majority home locations. It would be a waste of time anyway as you need pops to be of your culture and religion for a colony to flip in your favour.
Why is it both culture and religion and not just culture? If it wouldn't be both factors, you could have a system where you can enact a law, an edict, or whatever to incentivize religious minorities to be sent to the colonies. This would be a much more historical approach (like the Puritans on the Mayflower). It would be way more fun to have a religious patchwork in North America.

*edit* Noticed that I have very little knowledge about American history. But generally, having religious minorities in North American colonies would be preferred for me. Even if you expel / incentivize their migration after the colony has been established.
 
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You're not entirely wrong, but that still doesn't make it charter colonialism. I do think the game should have more colonialism mechanics than charter colonies and wars. The conquest of India would be simulated through both wars and "soft" imperialism, but with no charter colonies.
I agree! I think it would be good to have multiple different methods of doing this. Maybe even a more interesting system for diplomatic vassalization (which exists in EU4 but is limited to "be a lot bigger and have positive opinion then click a button", but I think it could be made more interesting).
 
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Howdy pavia !, I have two questions myself, so first off will there be any sort of historical colonization implemented in the game, so that I don’t have to see Spanish Canada, or the Portuguese Caribbean for the uptenth time unlike in EU4, and will there be a path for Brandenburg to get the Hohenzollern house in power on release or will that come with an update down the line ?
 
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Same religion group. And the likelihood of England being more than one age ahead in tech over Ireland is not likely.

You have to do it the historical way. Conquest.

Can you perhaps send settlers to enemy locations that have low control as a way to justify a CB in the future? Exceptions could be made for England to avoid exploits.
 
its permanent yes


I think the base should go up permanently as technology advances but the range should vary to simulate countries having a downturn (Poland during the Deluge) or a country entering a golden age in terms of military prowess (Sweden before losing the Great Northern War).
 
Are the colonists sent to random locations in the chartered province each 'x' month, or is one location targeted until it flips? The former adds a layer of significant rng when competing with rival charters that may be frustrating but fair enough from a mechanics point of view. The latter however would just encourage you to restart the charter until you roll the natural harbour as a target. In that case, it would be better to just allow us to choose our location target