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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.

power_projection.png

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.

monthly_migration.png

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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It depends. In areas where there is a large native majority or you conquered, the likelihood of total assimilation is 0.

If its like east coast of USA, with low population ravaged by eurasian diseases, then yes, there is hardly gonna be that many natives left at the end of the game.
It would be great, if there is a situation about “European Diseases in the New World” so we can simulate the population change better.

PS: Does any Native American country has a chance to stop the colonisation and re-conquer their lands?
 
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Right. I believe the question is does it become a level 1 RGO once you get the tech of do you have to 'build' that first level?

you'd have to build it
 
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@Johan Awesome! Finally, I can recreate the Thirteen Colonies properly in game! This was my biggest bug bear about the colonial system in EU4.

Some questions:

1) Let's say I recreate the Thirteen British Colonies, is it possible for these colonies to form an International Organization who's goal it is to gain independence from me?

2) Can colonists "get lost" and settle in another province, like what happened to the Pilgrims (they were originally supposed to go to Virginia but ended up in New England)? Perhaps it could be an event that fires if you have a colonial charter active... mind you, it would have to be in the same region as the colonial charter at the very least (no pilgrims going to Virginia and ending up in say Siberia).
 
you'd have to build it

I'm confused about the design decision regarding RGOs and lack of Metalworking. In my head, it would make more sense to have some other resource in the location (so peasants/slaves could properly work the RGO there) and, once you researched Metalworking, those locations would swap to Iron etc (maybe even give you the choice). We had something like that in EU4 with Coal being a "latent resource".

And yet, here in PC, you went with this idea of some raw resources being "ungatherable" by whoever lives/owns/etc the location, instead of them having some other resource and then swapping it once local conditions change. Why? Shouldn't it be expected that some provinces would swap their tradegood after the Columbian Exchange, or the start of colonization, or a lucky discovery of gold/iron/copper/salt/diamonds/etc? Are local resources fixed for the entire time period? If yes, why? If not, then why are they fixed in the case of Iron?
 
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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.

I seriously hope that Sweden starts with the Finnish cultures (all of them) accepted then, so that the integration of Finland can proceed with Finnish peoples colonizing the interior themselves, as they did historically. Also historically, Swedes really only colonised the coastline in certain locations. Same goes for the Novgorodians and Muscovites. They didn't really colonise Karelia.

If not set up well, this system sounds like it would have an undesirable potential to end up with Swedish/Russian majority in large parts of the region since the native population numbers up north are so low and thus easy to flip.
 
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We have had debated between province or area, but having at location would make it like an insane micromanagement game.
I think a compromise that could be made would just to leave the system, as-is now, as an automatic thing for those who just want to colonize - but have optional features to go deeper into managing a colony’s settlement manually if you wish

Getting more granular with it could entail just manually choosing what location in the province you’re currently focusing on settling, but could even extend as far a “queueing” multiple locations, so that, for example, you want to settle X first, then Y, then Z - but if another country satisfies the requirements for Y first, you’d just skip right to Z now”.

That way you could prioritize the most important locations for your specific goals (whether gobbling up good harbors / valuable strategic locations / connecting neighboring colonies to each other by focusing on inland areas first / etc.) but you can also just set it to focus on one province and then leave the rest of the colonizing random

The important aspect of it is that it gives players the freedom and granularity to choose how hands-on they want to be with their colony at any stage of the province’s settlement, or just let it be and do whatever automatically, as the current system does. So not replace the current system, but use it as the gateway/stepping stone to then build something much deeper below the ‘entryway’, so to speak.
 
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We have had debated between province or area, but having at location would make it like an insane micromanagement game.

Is there a province tab like there is a state tab in EU4? Since provinces aren't that big, maybe have a list of locations with checkboxes and then you can untick or tick the locations you want to focus colonizing. This way there is the option of colonizing the whole province, part of it, or just a single location. Naturally, if there is too much migration to one location, it will stop and the player/AI will eventually need to open up or allow for the other locations to be colonized. Default would of course be to colonize the whole province as is currently.

This would allow to colonize with precision with regards to budgeting. Maybe colonizing one more province would hurt your economy but if you could just tick one or two key locations in that province, then it would be economically feasible and have strategic implications in the long term (key harbor in that province for example). This is a way to replicate Sweden and the Netherlands in New York, the Scottish colonizing a portion of Darien in Panama, and the French settling in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
 
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Yes, but what if there is only a partial overlap in accepted cultures or differences innpower projections causong one country to finish earlier?
As I understand in that case you wouldn't need to use the "first charter started" rule as there is only one country getting the conditions completed for the location ownership on the tick. It is the general rule that applies, the first country to fulfill the requirement get the location and the pop transfers stops.
 
Maybe you could give us the option to choose our initial Location for the Charter and then let the rest be randomized over the province.

No excess micromanagement but also allows player freedom if we just want one specific location and not the rest.
I hope that you could select to avoid (or focus) on locations that have been started by another charter. As I assume thew weighting system would be the same I would hate to continue pick the same location as a rival only to constantly lose to them as they are slightly faster.

If not, hopefully a location being actively colonized if part of the weighting system.
 
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I read all the diaries, and two questions accumulated:
1) Is it possible to prevent the plague from entering the European country? For example, should Genoa be deprived of its colonies in Crimea before the epidemic, or should an embargo be imposed on all possible neighbors?
2) Will priests pay taxes in the theocratic Papal States? After all, historically the Pope collected taxes from ordinary priests.
 
As I understand in that case you wouldn't need to use the "first charter started" rule as there is only one country getting the conditions completed for the location ownership on the tick. It is the general rule that applies, the first country to fulfill the requirement get the location and the pop transfers stops.
I understand that the same way. But as locations are settled somewhat in parallel it means you can just snatch away other countries colonies that are already filled with their pops and simultaneously block them from ever gaining a location in the colonial charter they started.
 
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England did colonise Ireland, though. The Irish plantations were the model they based the American colonies on, and are one of (if not the) most culturally significant things to ever happen to Ireland.
I think the Irish plantations would better be represented by event or a building. The conquest of Ireland was a more traditional affair of troop movements and annexations, with the plantations only coming into play later. Alternatively internal colonization could be added.
 
I think the Irish plantations would better be represented by event or a building. The conquest of Ireland was a more traditional affair of troop movements and annexations, with the plantations only coming into play later. Alternatively internal colonization could be added.
I would definitely like internal colonisation to be a thing.
 
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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.

View attachment 1174943
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.

View attachment 1174944
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.

View attachment 1174945
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.

View attachment 1174946
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…

View attachment 1174947
And what is this teaser for next week about?
I think it is important to make African locations almost uncoloniseable. Europeans never had even somewhat of a sizeable possessions in Africa until scramble.
Scramble-for-Africa-1880-1913-v2.png

I think game should severly prevent AI and a player from colonizing an entire African coast. Only small trade outposts should be allowed until lategame.
 
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I think it is important to make African locations almost uncoloniseable. Europeans never had even somewhat of a sizeable possessions in Africa until scramble.
View attachment 1177183
I think game should severly prevent AI and a player from colonizing an entire African coast. Only small trade outposts should be allowed until lategame.

The game should simulate both the difficulties and lack of reason for Europeans to go inwards:

Problems:
  1. Disease: High mortality from tropical diseases like malaria hindered inland exploration.
  2. Geography: Difficult terrain, including dense jungles and vast deserts, limited access and movement.
  3. Local Resistance: Strong African kingdoms and societies resisted European encroachment.
  4. Navigation: Rivers, the main transportation routes, were often unnavigable due to rapids and waterfalls.
  5. Economic Focus: Europeans prioritized coastal trade (e.g., slaves, gold) over inland exploration.
  6. Technological Limitations: Lack of advanced weapons, transportation, and medicine delayed deeper penetration.
  7. Colonial Rivalries: European powers were more focused on contesting control of coastal areas and other continents.

Solutions:

  1. Disease: Quinine became widely used as a treatment for malaria, reducing mortality and enabling deeper inland exploration.
  2. Geography: Improved Mapping and Exploration: Advances in cartography, along with more detailed knowledge from explorers like David Livingstone, made navigating Africa’s interior more feasible.
  3. Local Resistance: Military Superiority: European powers developed more advanced firearms, artillery, and military tactics, allowing them to overpower local resistance.
  4. Navigation: Steamships and Railways: Steam-powered boats could navigate rivers more effectively, and railways allowed for overland transport through difficult terrain.
  5. Economic Focus: Industrial Revolution: The need for raw materials (e.g., rubber, minerals) and new markets for European goods drove powers to seek control over inland resources.
  6. Technological Limitations: Technological Advances: Innovations in weaponry, medicine, and transportation enabled safer and more effective inland colonization.
  7. Colonial Rivalries: Scramble for Africa: European powers, driven by competition and the desire to expand their empires, pushed inland to claim territory before their rivals could.
 
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Gulp...
Next week, if it isn't about "playing an American nation" (of course I mean true american, indigenous of the whole continent), then it seems it wiill be about the great bane of human history, true colonialism and imperialism, aka war crimes against humanity. Things might get ugly.

Hopefully we will have trade, diplomacy and cultural exchange options of mutual agreement, respect and coexistence. Not always I'm in the mood to play genociders, nor paint the map red. After all, what is the fun of playing a historical game if only to replay it exactly as it was every playthrough?

Either way I'm looking forward to it, and hope to have some very cool option to deal with stateless and state(ful) nations around the map.
 
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