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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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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.
 
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or when you think your country would be in a better situation if you could expel some minorities.
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?

and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.

Side question: If there is an option to secularize (not have a state religion), how would that affect colonization then in regards to "state religion"? (If you can't talk about that yet, that's okay)
 
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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.
I would very much agree with this. If you colonise a province in the new world in 1500 you are unlikely to have the reach to administer that directly in an effective way, but later that may change. There should be an option to integrate the colonial nations into the home country but at a cost naturally.

Do you have to make the decision for the whole province, or can you keep certain locations as yours and form colonial nations from the rest? This would be very useful so that you could potentially keep certain strategic costal locations for yourself but allow colonial nations to administer the hinterland.
 
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Just stop the colonial charter once you have your single location outpost flipped.
on this note, i assume we can expect a notification to pop up once the location is fully colonized right? also just to be clear, can we choose which location in the colonial charter we start colonizing? thank you.
 
I’m already preparing for a “Greenland WC no war colonization only” run
Greenland is actually a great place to learn the way the game works, as its so hard to sustain yourself and it basically becomes a survival sim where every choice relating to food and population counts. Good luck with your WC!
 
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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.
 
Very interesting TT, thank you!
  1. Do pops have a travel time that represents the travel times of ships depending on the available ship technology (Mayflower), or do they teleport?
  2. Is there a chance of pops dying or do they all magically survive the travel?
  3. If slavery would be represented in a similar way (and I think it is a very important part of history), would that mean that all enslaved pops would survive the captivity and transport to the Americas? I'm specifically asking because I visited three castles from which slaves were transported to the Americas, and saying that it was "horrible" doesn't even capture the atrocities and brutality that was carried out over centuries in the slightest.
 
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I get it's for gameplay purposes, but it still bugs me a little that the player is the one exclusively paying for the charters, when in fact many of them, at least those run by Britain, financed themselves as companies with a mere royal stamp of approval.

Also, they didn't like it when you tried to revoke the charter. James II tried to revoke Connecticut's, and they refused and hid the document in a tree.
 
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I didn't get how this is in any way diffrent from eu4.
 
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What determines population capacity? Is it just the climate, topography and vegetation trio?
 
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I realize I'm a bit late but...

That's a colony taking part in a war right on its doorstep. How many of those 60K French or 2M British settlers took part in the European conflicts of the wider 7 years war? While I won't go as far as saying that possibly none, they certainly didn't in numbers which would make a difference to the war effort.. What I object to is the inflation of manpower and sailor pools already present in EU4, the stuff that makes Spain have 300k manpower in 1550 because they colonized a few places.
 
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How will cultures and religions work in the new world? Will the native population slowly be replaced or assimilated by the colonizers, or will it be like in EU4 where colonies are primarily made up of native cultures from nations and confederacies that have been conquered?
 
Since pops are migrating over time, does that mean if you stop a charter early, your pops will remain in those new locations, even if you still don't own it?

Like if France started colonizing England, but stopped early, the French pops would remain in the English owned locations?