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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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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?
 
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Will Norway be able to colonize Northern America early due to Greenland's proximity? Or does Greenland not count as Norway for the sake of exploration/colonization range due to Greenland & Iceland being a subject nation, and not direct ownership?

Do Iceland & Greenland count as colonial nations? Probably not, but would be interesting to know for sure!
 
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I was hoping for something more involved with some emergent/randomized storytelling, and a slow buildup of infrastructure, expeditions, different paths with real choices between integration or bad word, and a more gradual approach to failure-success than the one in EU4. Something inspired by the likes of Victoria 2, Anbennar, Endless Space 2 or Stellaris basically - but fully integrated with PC's other systems. I never liked colonization in EU4, it's AFK gameplay in my view, so I guess it's not a huge loss for me.

As for the dynamic inter-state colonization, could be good if it's balanced right. It should be hard to do against centralized states and/or states with the ability to field moderately large armies with some kind of gunpowder weapons (and therefore, even harder in the first ages).
 
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So if Yuan could theoretically colonise France, what is to stop larger European countries colonising smaller ones, can e.g. England use the colonisation mechanism to take over Ireland?

Ownership of a province in a colonial charter goes to whomever first reaches a threshold. However, if you a colonising land that was already owned, what is stopping another colonial power from trying to flip the ownership to them of a province you have flipped to your ownership?

My guess is that you cannot colonize locations with the same religion/cultural group majority as you. So France as Yuan is fair game, but not Ireland as England.
 
I dig it so far, though I wonder if 1000 is too low as a minimum.
 
That's only partially true tbh. Whilst indeed the bulk of conquests that happened in the 18th and 19th century could be construed as a conquest (but also local factions pledging allegiance to Britain in order to preserve their power and/or defeat a local rival), most of the colonization of asia and africa until then was based on the construction of small trading outposts that were beneficial for both parties.

Is there any way for European powers to establish these minor trading outposts without resorting to war (as often was the case), or at least without a full-blown conquest war?
Yes all of this is possible through diplomacy, trade, and buildings
 
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Could there be a law providing an exception to needing a religious majority to win the province?
 
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Will Norway be able to colonize Northern America early due to Greenland's proximity? Or does Greenland not count as Norway for the sake of exploration/colonization range due to Greenland & Iceland being a subject nation, and not direct ownership?

Do Iceland & Greenland count as colonial nations? Probably not, but would be interesting to know for sure!
Greenland and Iceland count as their own countries and nothing is stopping them from exploring and colonizing Canada before anyone else. Except their tiny tiny economies that won't be able to reliably sustain exploration missions, colonies, or even themselves, I guess.
 
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This sounds good. I have a few questions:
  1. if two countries are colonising the same location and and country A reaches the threshold first, will country B still be able to send pops to get a majority in the location? Or will there be some event to block country B from further colonising efforts? Will this result a diplomatic incident?
  2. What happens to the pops in a colony of country B, if country A reached the requirements first? Will there be a way to simulate where those pops set out and establish a new colony/nation (similar to how the Boer Republics were established)
  3. Are there any cultural hybridisation of mixed European colonists with local pops forming new cultures?
  4. Do you get a claim on a region or area after you have a colonised am x number of locations in that area?
  5. Can you conquest an area (such as India) and then create a colonial nation as a subject, or would that only be a vassal?
 
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It would be a very good idea to be able to put this in place to develop, for example, a Protestant colony with French hugnots as was attempted in Florida.
You can’t flip a location if it’s not of your primary religion and culture, though.
 
Will there be fighting between the local inhabitants of the location and colonialists? Like, if I am colonizing a colonial charter, it'd make sense to me if the natives fought back, and if they didn't win rather than becoming subjects they'd simply move to another location(either within the charter that isn't being colonized yet, or outside of it if things get truly desparate) until they reach a mass of a size that has to be reckoned with. I imagine mortality would also be quite high among the natives.
 
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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.
Okay, but if one of these countries loses this race, do they still retain a claim to conquer this location since some of their population remains there?
 
Does Power Projection depend on a nation's navy? If not, why did you decide to go in that direction? Theoretically, navies and owning far-flung ports should be some of the largest mechanics driving Power Projection, and it would help make navies a lot more important than they currently are.
 
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My guess is that you cannot colonize locations with the same religion/cultural group majority as you. So France as Yuan is fair game, but not Ireland as England.
That would make sense as a mechanic and essentially answer both my question in that post. Though I would add that allowing England and Scotland to colonise Ireland could be an interesting representation of the protestant settlements that were promoted during the game's timeframe. However, it may cause more issues than it is worth.
 
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If you start a colonial charter in someone's territory and halfway through their power projection raises and now it's equal to yours, what happens with your colonial charter? Does it finish its work or stops?
 
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Greenland and Iceland count as their own countries and nothing is stopping them from exploring and colonizing Canada before anyone else. Except their tiny tiny economies that won't be able to reliably sustain exploration missions, colonies, or even themselves, I guess.
Interesting! So that means Norway itself will have challenges with colonizing? Or at least as much of a difficulty as other European countries. Not as much of a shortcut to North-American colonization as in EU4?
 
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Is it possible to get population from other members of your international organisation?
I'm thinking about a more centralized and outward-oriented HRE Emporer starting colonies and allowing people from all over the empire to go there.
 
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