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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.

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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If I want to have a single location in Africa like a trading post and I want to have it in a specific location that has a good natural harbor or a specific raw material and then stop colonizing, can we choose which location to colonize first on a charter?

Btw, you don't reveal the name of the game because of the meme or for other reasons?
 
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How dynamic are colonial nations? I was half-hoping they would not be a thing because having them as relatively static subject tags doesn't really lend itself to accurately portraying the constant reshuffling of colonial borders that happened in real life (the Viceroyalty of New Granada being created out of parts of the Viceroyalty of New Spain and the Viceroyalty of Peru, for instance).

Also, will "uncivilized" peoples show up in the map at all times or will you have to toggle them on? Either option is fine by me, it's just that I find the current greyed out uncolonized land a bit of an eyesore, so I think I'd like for there to be an option to have them visible at all times, maybe with some visual distinction like with unorganized countries in Vic3.
 
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Which is the predecessor of this one, no matter how many creative ways Johan comes up with in the weekly talks. You have to be naive to think it's not the same mechanic.
I mean, yeah, it's the same series, but while both have things like "trade" and "colonization" because those happened in real life, enough has changed already that it's likely to be altered in some way. Before hearing it I never would have thought they would put in countries that don't own any land.

Have a little faith about the small things like this, at least. Everything else about the war system seems massively improved.
 
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How do you picture the choice between the use of colonial settlement vs. outright conquest? Where is such a choice able to be made? What trade-offs do you picture as relevant? Can a country annex land militarily and still subsequently displace the native population, and is there a mechanical reason to do so?
In addition, to what extent do you plan to simulate/incentivize historical colonial priorities? For example, should we expect the earliest colonizers of the new world, such as Spain, to prioritize supplanting Aztec and Incan power structures over others, like those of the Mayans, as they did historically?
Finally, what defines the pace of European colonial expansion? Will colonization come in waves, defined by periods of rapid growth and relative stagnation, or will it generally progress at a constant, if accelerating pace, like in Europa Universalis 4? Do colonizers reach a point where they are incentivized to consolidate and reap the rewards of their established extra-continental domains rather than continue eternally expanding?
 
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  1. If two countries are colonizing a location and have the same religion and accepted cultures, who gets the location when the criteria for ownership is met?
  2. Is there any way to continue to send pops to provinces which are already already "fully colonized"?
  3. Would outright conquest from a small starting area be the preferred way of claiming land as say, the Dutch, who likely have low population and would not be able to outcompete the English and French in traditional colonization in North America?
 
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I am wondering :-"is Power Projection (as we can see is something different from EU4 like you say), something more like "Great Powers system" perhaps, from Victoria series, like does a state with an high Power Projection does have better bonus when they reach a higer step (like lets say you pass from Unrecognize power to Great Power in Victoria 3), or is it something really only just "a number" and not some "competiton between states", the opposit of Victoria 3 ?"

PS : (if its like Victoria 3 and you already have a list of 200 something states in this game, its gonna be fun to see the list of Power Projection in Project Cesar... ;))
 
I mean, yeah, it's the same series, but while both have things like "trade" and "colonization" because those happened in real life, enough has changed already that it's likely to be altered in some way. Before hearing it I never would have thought they would put in countries that don't own any land.

Have a little faith about the small things like this, at least. Everything else about the war system seems massively improved.
Yeah, but the point of these talks is to emphasize the little (or sometimes bigger) things that are changing to make this game a (hopefully) worthy successor. The bits where they don't explain how something changes are the bits that stay the same.
 
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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.
Didn't you explicitly mention expecting minorities as a way to boost a colony
Most of Asia have that institution as well
I don't understand. Which institution and how does this institution relate to colonisation? See also my earlier question if France can colonise Andorra or German minors.
 
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If colonization is about exporting your pops to the colonies, then you’re moving your pops from developed land with buildings, control, and proximity to your infrastructure and capital, to distant, undeveloped lands, for a very high cost, while needing a navy to support it. On the surface this seems like a lose-lose proposition.

If countries with ‘low populations’ can’t colonize, and I pick a smaller power- like, say, Portugal- what will prevent my country from being depopulated and moved to the jungles of Brazil? Is there a ton of pop growth in provinces that are under their pop capacity to compensate, refilling my home provinces as I move pops out of them? Or is there something else here to help make this a good decision for the homeland?
 
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can a charter or a colonized location fail and be abandoned like it happened in greenland?
From the sounds of is territories which fall to 0 population will become unowned, and charters can be canceled. So Greenland simply running out of people will cause it to become unowned, and if you aren’t making any progress on your colonization you can cancel the charter to avoid throwing pops and money into a well.
 
"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."

So, does this mean that say as a European country we can directly integrate land in the New world? Say have britian directly integrate New Foundland and Labrador while having Canada as a separate colonial nation or as Spain directly controlling Cuba instead if it being 'colonial carribean'?

Because if so, that would fix one of the greatest problems with eu4 colonization.
 
Yeah, but the point of these talks is to emphasize the little (or sometimes bigger) things that are changing to make this game a (hopefully) worthy successor. The bits where they don't explain how something changes are the bits that stay the same.
Maybe so, maybe not; I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I have fairly high hopes. Besides, even if it winds up being similar chances are it will be altered in a patch at some point as this becomes a "game of Theseus" like all the other Paradox games.
 
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percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.
What happens if you colonize an area that already is majority your state religion and accepted culture. For example, if France accepts Wallonian culture and they colonize Belgium, would it flip?

Is there a limit on not bring able to colonize accepted cultures?
 
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