• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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?
 
  • 181Love
  • 133Like
  • 7
  • 4
  • 3
Reactions:
Looks really cool! How does it work from the perspective of the colonized? If I'm playing as the Aztecs and France starts colonizing me, can I stop them through diplomacy or war?
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
Am I right in guessing there will be no Colonial Regions anymore and Colonial Charters will use the claim system, if countries can even "call dibs" on colonizable land at all?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Not being able to annex Colonial Nations is not a good choice imo.

It shoud just be more expensive in some way, with a chance of triggering a war for indipendence. The player is already limited by control no need to for further artificialy block the player. In Eu4 it was necessary because there was no control and distance based system for provinces. Also there a plenty of exampels where colonial nations were integrated into the administration. Making it a one time choice at the start is not good gameplay or good historicaly.

edit to list an exampel of integration of colonial nations into the administration of the home country.

During the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, Haiti, then known as Saint-Domingue, was governed as a French colony. Saint-Domingue was one of the most profitable colonies in the world, known for its production of sugar, coffee, and other goods. The colony was governed by French officials appointed by Paris, and its economy was tightly integrated with that of France, especially through the mercantile system.
 
  • 35
  • 4Like
  • 3
Reactions:
Ngl I was hoping for something more. I get that it's not easy to create a decently realistic and well balanced mechanic for colonization in a game but it sounds very passive and quite boring imho. Click, wait for 1000 people to move...... profit? I wish there was more active involvement for the player to develop your colonies from a tiny outpost to a real country. Like clear forests, build harbors, settlements and palisades.. discover new flora and fauna etc. have some events pertaining to the life of these settlers in their new home and many things more.
That sounds like a nice game, but more Banished-style than EU.
 
  • 11
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Woah this is insane, absolutely blows all previous Pdx colonization systems out of the water

Dynamic colonial nations anywhere in the world, direct ownership at will, colonization pulling from real pops, a tunable "Expel Minorities"... basically everything people asked for!

I do have some questions of course:
1) We can colonize provinces of fully fledged tags, like we could with EU3 hordes? What is the difference in Power Projection that lets you colonize provinces?
2) Is there a way to actually push out only specific pops from your province, rather than just picking one with a lot of minorities?
3) Is it possible to break restrictions at the cost of relations, slower growth or such? I.e. France colonizing a Spanish Tordesillas claim or Lapland? What about Portugal breaking the Tordesillas line at an even higher cost?
4) What happens if multiple nations are colonizing the same province? They divide the location? Do we still get to form or assign colonial nations if the province is fully colonized, but not fully owned by us?
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
So distance influences both the rate at which people migrate and increases the cost making it more difficult to colonize a far away province. Put from the screen shot it seems that the distance is calculated from your capital rather than your nearest cored province. Does this mean that there is no advantage to first colonizing an area closer to your capital as a stepping stone to a rich/strategic province you are after further away?
 
  • 2Like
  • 2
Reactions:
Could a Lowland minor have what it takes to colonize?
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
To clarify, you set up the charter for the entire province but gain control of each location once the location itself reaches the conditions?
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.
 
  • 91Like
  • 21Love
  • 4
  • 2
Reactions:
Let's say that I, as the player, start a campaign as a New World nation, let's say Cusco. As Cusco, I would then form the Tawantinsuyu, and then the colonizers arrive. Would I have any way to send them away from my provinces (since, as I don't have any institution whatsoever, they will definitely have more pp than me)? Also, would the Treaty of Tordesillas also be enforced on me, or would I be immune to it? That's assuming New World nations will be playable at all.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
Can a location become uncentralised? Say hypothetically a newly finished colonial charter finishes, which is now a province, and has a disease outbreak so the population falls under the 1000. Does that location then become uncolonised/uncontrolled?
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
Reactions:
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.

Is the culture and religion metric universal to all countries or is it law based where some countries might need just culture and others just religion?
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
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.

<snip>

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.

So, it sounds to me like a player playing Great Britain can recreate the 13 colonies as 13 separate colonial nations, if they wish.
(actually, given that the US states are likely represented by areas, more than 13).

What are the pro’s and con’s of establishing multiple small colonial nations vs fewer larger colonial nations?

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. Case in point: 102 passengers set sail on the Mayflower. They now have 35 million+ descendants.
 
  • 8Like
  • 1Love
Reactions:
Are we looking at an American exchange TT later on?
 
  • 9Like
Reactions:
This looks so much more interesting than EU4 - in several ways.

Looking forward to playing with this in many different regions, situations and trying to roleplay and creating weird scenarios. I'm seeing loads of interesting outcomes possible from these mechanics, as opposed to EU4's mechanics with the same 3-4 nations painting The Americas in a 100 years.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
What happens if I am in a war with another nation that is also colonizing the same region? or at least in hostile relations. Will our colonists start killing each other?
I guess at least some events would be an idea.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Everything i have read in all Tinto Talks to date is very positive! i have 5 questions for you related to colonization that i hope you could answer in some capacity.

1 - In a previous Tinto Talk you already stated that mission trees in the style of EU4 will not be present in Project Caesar. Will historical colonization goals like for example Sweden having incentives to form New Sweden or colonize Tobago in the Americas and Denmark ambitions to own the Danish Antilles still be present in game in some form?

2 - You said that for a country with low pop it will not be feasible to make a huge colonial empire. What is considered low population in this case ? Because Portugal and the Netherlands always had a relatively lower pop when compared to other colonial empires but they did have huge colonial empires.

3 - Given that the game timeline of Project Caesar will start almost a 100 years prior to the timeline of exploration in EUIV will the AI controlling historical colonial powers start colonizing earlier or at least have a substantial advantage over countries that were not inclined to colonize ?

4 - In Brazil the colonial clashes between the Portuguese , the French and the Dutch often included the cannibal native tribes that had alliances with the European powers. There were several of these tribes from the Tupi-Guarani culture , for example the Potiguara tribe were close friends of the Portuguese and enemies of the French while the Tupinamba were allied with the French and hated the Portuguese and the Potiguara.
Will Europeans be able to recruit these tribes as Auxiliary forces or any form of alliance with them will come through traditional alliance ? Im curious because these tribes were not on the scale of Aztec , Incas , Mayas ( which would make no sense being auxiliary ) but more like the Tlaxcalans that helped the Spanish against the Aztecs because they believed it was in their interest to do so. A similar situation is that of the smaller North American native tribes that fought alongside the English and French in the French Indian war. I dont see these being mercenaries.

5 - Bonus question if you may allow - The Knights ( Hospitaller , Knights of Malta ) had a short stint at colonization in the Americas in the 1600s century when they controlled the Caribbean islands of Saint Christopher, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Croix for around 14 years between 1651 and 1665. This was due to the close ties that the order had with French nobility , some of them in the order's ranks.
The Knights purchased the islands from the bankrupt Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique and in the end the islands were sold to the new formed French West India Company. The short period of Hospitaller occupation is still remembered on the different islands , for example St. Barthélemy coat of arms still has the Maltese cross. An interesting fact related to colonization and the Knights of Malta is that Later in the century, Étienne-François Turgot, a Hospitaller and French colonial administrator, tried unsuccessfully to settle Maltese people in Guiana.
Is it possible to make these historical colonization ambitions some kind of event for the Knights in game ? maybe triggered if the islands ( or one of ) of Saint Christopher, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Croix are owned by France and other factors decided by national ideas taken from the Knights among other prerequisites ?
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
  • 1Love
Reactions: