• 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?
 
  • 182Love
  • 139Like
  • 7
  • 5
  • 3
Reactions:
Can the settlement building be constructed in a colonial location?
 
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.
Since the process of new settlers appearing mostly takes from an existing population, decisions within the colonies like this would be nice to be able to increase a secondary modifier that would slowly create new pops as the number of total settlers increases, simulating births in the colony

Say, for example, you cut down a section of forest. Now you can use that wood to build a new house and also keep it warm during the winter. This decision increases the quality of life for the colonists in that location, therefore increasing the likelihood of them generating new pops locally in addition to the settlers emigrating from settled provinces. Things like that

All costing money, but you could actively put in the work (and the Ducats) to invest in your colonies, either increasing attraction or increasing local birth rate (say it’s 1% of the total colonial population per month baseline, and QoL decisions raise that %, so that eventually you could put in decisions to raise it to a 5% chance, and now on 100 colonists you get 5 local births in addition to the 25 colonists moving in. And each 100 colonists adds to that total. A little adds up

Or you can let it be passively. Obv those figures are examples, but the concept I think would be neat, because obviously once the colony is established with 1000 people, the location is going to generate new pops out of thin air anyways, so why not be able to increase that rate before the colony is ours to make it become ours faster?
 
For the swap, are the requirment of 1,000 population just in total or only for accepted culture and religion?
Total. Culture and religion percentages are a second requirement.
 
This sounds about right, but the work it takes for Mali to be able to expand down the coast is a big part of my question. It seems obvious that expanding down the coast would be easier, but is it more work to get to that point in the first place, or more work to go from colonizing the coast to colonizing Brazil? Is the bigger step getting the first capability or getting from the first to the second?
For Brazil you need to first explore across the Atlantic, then reach Brazil with your naval range, then colonize it. That all takes time, money, and good naval tech. Depending on how much Mali knows about Guinea in 1337 they might be able to start colonizing immediately, at which point it’s just a question of if you can afford the gold cost for long enough. If they need to explore that’s still an issue, but less of one than crossing the Atlantic. How power peojection and culture/religion thresholds work is a big deal too. We’ll probably learn a bit next week but I imagine the exact numbers will be rebalanced even after the game comes out.
 
So for a location to flip to your control, it needs 1000 pops, and a certain percentage of them must be accepted culture and the state religion. If I'm playing as Anglican England, and I'm expelling the catholic Irish minorities, is it possible that the colony will never hit the required percentage and just never finish? Or is there always passive migration from the accepted culture/religion.
 
There’s no way in which say England can say we don’t like you Quakers go away so Pittsburgh becomes entirely Quaker but it doesn’t become English colony.
The TT says that expelling minorities would be possible once the colony has reached colonial nation status and you use one of the two cabinet action to support the colonial nation.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
How will treaty ports work? Is it a separate diplomatic action, or will I have to colonize the whole area to get a port.
Have they ever mentioned Treaty ports? I don’t know that’s in Project Caesar - at least that we know of.
 
Sounds promising. The Colonial race is one of the least enjoyable aspects of EU4.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Can't remember if this has been cleared out, but can I build buildings Like "Hansa kontors", "portuguese factories" or trading posts in non-owned locations, just for the trade perks and habor rights, as a mean to create a vast world trade empire without the need for major colonisation?

1723667961788.png

1723668084605.png
 
Last edited:
  • 8Like
Reactions:
Looks pretty good overall, but I don't like Power Projection being just based on some bonuses and stuff you decided to grab since it won't be an accurate measure of real power projection. It looks possible (and likely) that a small country that has aims to grow, is outward, etc. has just as much (or more) Power Projection than a regional power with a massive army and is very wealthy simply because it chose not to take those bonuses to Power Projection. Similarly, a small dukedom that is beating up everyone around it should not have a lower Power Projection than a kingdom that just got beat up (everything else being equal) simply because the former is a dukedom and the latter a kingdom unless there is something that makes kingdoms inherently stronger (which I doubt there is).
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
  • 2
Reactions:
For Brazil you need to first explore across the Atlantic, then reach Brazil with your naval range, then colonize it. That all takes time, money, and good naval tech. Depending on how much Mali knows about Guinea in 1337 they might be able to start colonizing immediately, at which point it’s just a question of if you can afford the gold cost for long enough. If they need to explore that’s still an issue, but less of one than crossing the Atlantic. How power peojection and culture/religion thresholds work is a big deal too. We’ll probably learn a bit next week but I imagine the exact numbers will be rebalanced even after the game comes out.
Right, that's the qualitative difference, but what is the quantitative difference between the two capabilities?
 
Last edited:
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Can the settlement building be constructed in a colonial location?
And how does this work with multiple nations trying to colonize the same location? Does England’s settlement help Castile’s colonization speed, or do they both build competing settlements and the winner destroys the loser’s (and takes their food stockpile, some slaves new friends, etc)
 
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.
What about Irish colonists in USA? Italians in Argentina. All of the American Great Plains are Germans.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: