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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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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?

They magically teleport.. once a month some are "teleported". In theory we could have had a delay at the start of a charter to simulate the time it takes..
 
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What determines population capacity? Is it just the climate, topography and vegetation trio?

Development, buildings, rivers, etc
 
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So we can colonize landed countries. But does it mean Florence can colonize Portugal?

Only if florence is another religion group and a few ages ahead in advances.
 
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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?

It depends. In areas where there is a large native majority or you conquered, the likelihood of total assimilation is 0.

If its like east coast of USA, with low population ravaged by eurasian diseases, then yes, there is hardly gonna be that many natives left at the end of the game.
 
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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?

yes
 
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I get what you're saying, I think: you object to the idea of kind of magically teleporting troops, yeah? Unfortunately I think this is the best way to simulate colonial troops without getting ultra granular to the point that you have individuals in regiment lists ("Richard Thompson from Stevenage; John Atkinson from Providence, Rhode Island, due to arrive in three months...")

Maybe we can simulate every single pop in 20 years time!
 
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Its the thing when mechanics are designed by Swedes and Spanish people, who's colonial history was "heretics are burned, not shipped to colonies".
Does this mean we can see an adjustment of that requirement, perhaps dependent on your laws? As you say, it doesn't fit for Spain, but it certainly does for England
 
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Still there are about 50-60k people living in each of the 4 provinces in Taiwan, and in this Age, with all, you still need 40+% to be flip them. So you need to sent about 34k people to the islands. That is about 6800 months, and if you support a charter, you are down to 3200 months, or about 266 years.
Does that mean that the percentage of your people that you need to flip gets lower with advancement? Is that how you are going to simulate the later colonization of Africa?
 
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Does that mean that the percentage of your people that you need to flip gets lower with advancement? Is that how you are going to simulate the later colonization of Africa?
The Scramble for Africa was pretty far outside of the game's timeframe. European colonization of Africa during the early modern period was fairly minor in terms of territory, but important in economic terms. Outside of small military/trading outposts and sometimes accompanying coastal strips, the only places really "colonized" by Europeans would be like South Africa, Mozambique, and some small islands.
 
If you play a country and someone that a charter in one of your provinces. Let's imagine you win a war to stop the colonizing process : do you get thé choice to kill / send back or assimilate the populations that were sent to your province by the defeated colonizing country ?
 
Hello Johan can one block a colonial development/people migrating by using your navy?
And if your navy dies what happens to your colony does the growth just stop since there is no government ships for transport?
And if so can trading nations sell/charter their ships for migrants, I can Imagine it becoming quite a lucrative business - same a condottiery.
 
Its 1,000 for when there is no population.
Yeah that just seems a little low to me even in places with no population. Is have thought it would be 2000 or even up to 5000 before you "own" the location.
 
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What local tribes?

Ok, technically it can't be local if you already own the location and I still don't know how natives will work in PC, but I meant "those indian guys living over there in their teepees/igloos/longhouses, in whatever way you decided to portray it".

But now I realize my question wasn't fully answered before. If a location's pop drops to 0, it's because people died or migrated, fine. But can pops "go native"? If a settler gives up on Greenland and decides to migrate back to Iceland, could they instead migrate to an "empty" province and live amongst the natives?
 
Hmm, I see a potential exploit here. Let's say Brittany has a colonial charter in Florida. It starts sending pops and is close to flipping a location. France, having Bretons as an accepted culture opens its own charter there.
France, having a lower percentage threshold due to higher pp as an empire flips the location immediately for free. Even if the threshold would be the same, a few pops not accepted in Brittany would allow France to reach it before Brittany can. Every location in Florida follows falling to France with Brittany doing all the work.

Does this work or am I missing something?
 
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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.

What stops Yuan from colonising its neighbourhood
 
Yeah that just seems a little low to me even in places with no population. Is have thought it would be 2000 or even up to 5000 before you "own" the location.
A lot of provinces in game start have only 1000ish people in Sweden and Eastern Europe yet they were still part of their monarchies, I think that's where the number comes from
 
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A lot of provinces in game start have only 1000ish people in Sweden and Eastern Europe yet they were still part of their monarchies, I think that's where the number comes from
Those are also preexisting settlements with preexisting infrastructure, not built brand new from the ground up.
 
So if colonizing is weighted towards high pop coastal provinces does this mean every nation that starts colonizing the same province will all target the same location or is there a degree of randomness? Does the weighting also lean towards colonizing natural harbors first? Final question if the first question they do colonize the same location doesn't that just mean the person with high population will always win out in a race and the lower pop nation never gets anything if they target the same location? Is there a reason we can't pick which location we would like to colonize first in a province say as Portugal I see Castille colonizing a province in Africa but they are focusing one natural harbor and I want to go there to but I can't pick to just colonize the other natural harbor in the same province?

There is a fair bit of random yes
 
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