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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.

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.

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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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Arguably the British colonization of India was more of a traditional conquest than how we depict Colonial Charters, as the European administrators never outnumbered the locals.
Historically though, that's not what happened. Britain did not gain control of India through war but through trade and alliance treaties, and as I understand it, power projection is supposed to represent how much other nations would be willing to become your protectorate without fighting a war.

I think it should be possible to colonize India without fighting a war and without making its locations majority-British (or majority-French, or majority-Chinese)
 
Historically though, that's not what happened. Britain did not gain control of India through war but through trade and alliance treaties, and as I understand it, power projection is supposed to represent how much other nations would be willing to become your protectorate without fighting a war.

I think it should be possible to colonize India without fighting a war and without making its locations majority-British (or majority-French, or majority-Chinese)

What are you talking about? The beginning of the British conquest is marked by the Battle of Plassey and the conquest of Bengal. British control was improved by alliance but every single rival for British control on the subcontinent was defeated by arms. Early British expansion benefited from the EIC fitting into traditional Imperial structures in India as it grew, and the 1857 Mutiny was spurred in part by a growing abandonment of that presentation in the decades prior.
 
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More realistic yes.

But its also a lot of distance calculation sorting, so for now its just been the capital.

In theory we could set a staging area for the colonial charter when we start it, and have it calculate distance from there. Actually, that is pretty trivial to do, and we could also weight it so that it is also likelier to take pops from that origin as well. And we could add a goods demand for it as well, and have some sort of development bonus to the origin.

Adding it to my "todo" list for when I am back from holidays..
With this plan, and even the current colonization mechanics, will colonizing the next location drain pops from adjacent locations that were just colonized? It seems like A reaches 1000 and becomes owner, then B starts colonizing and pulls pops based on the calculations someone described further up, it’ll take pops from A and pull it down to maybe 200. Or is there a restriction against colonies colonizing new colonies?
 
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I would have expected it to be by area, actually. Their size seems to match historical colonial charters better. And would allow countries to 'claim' a lot more land that they don't actually control, which is also quite historical.
Maybe it would be more historical with areas, but I think province level is a good middle ground between granularity and realism.
 
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They simple can't build RGO's there until they get the advance.
So pops don't extract RGOs by simply living in the area and they need buildings like mines, logging camps and farms?
 
With this plan, and even the current colonization mechanics, will colonizing the next location drain pops from adjacent locations that were just colonized? It seems like A reaches 1000 and becomes owner, then B starts colonizing and pulls pops based on the calculations someone described further up, it’ll take pops from A and pull it down to maybe 200. Or is there a restriction against colonies colonizing new colonies?
It’s possible existing colonies will be excluded, but even if they aren’t I don’t think this is a problem. Those colonies should be underpopulated and see boosts to both population growth and immigration attraction. Plus if you have overpopulated locations the 1000% priority will cause them to provide most or all colonists.
So pops don't extract RGOs by simply living in the area and they need buildings like mines, logging camps and farms?
RGOs are basically a type of building. You need to build up RGO capacity to employ peasants in them. Presumably these locations will have a capacity of 0 and the natives will be prohibited from changing that until metalworking is discovered via old-world contacts.
 
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But highly populated locations with tropical diseases like in Africa will be so hard to colonize, that you're only going to want a few locations at best before canceling, so it doesn't really matter if it's by province or area?
True. But because you wouldn't be taking that much doing it province by province probably wouldn't be that tedious.

I also don't see how colonizing by area would make Scandinavian colonization less historical, since you would still have to go location by location. In fact, based on your description, it would be more historical, since you're unable to spam-colonize multiple provinces at the same time and have to slowly take over a whole area instead.
The point was it wasn't one big project issued by the king at one time, like one charter. Though in the medieval ages Finns had already started slowly colonizing the inner parts of Finland on their own, it became crown policy only during Gustav Vasa's reign, when he declared all uninhabited wilderness crown property and free to settle, and also promising four year tax exemptions for those who moved there. In game this could be represented with a charter separate from the colonization of coastal Västerbotten and Ostrobothnia.

Also if colonization was done area by area, with both Sweden and Novgorod/Russia competing for Norrland for example, Novgorod would basically be competing for half of Sweden. Similarly the pops in Västerbotten could start moving inland to Lapland too early compared to how it happened historically. Because Finnish eastern provinces also follow historical state borders, province by province colonization would probably make the formation of historical or plausible borders more likely. Of course the game is all about alt history, but I think it would be nice to see AI form historical border shapes as often as ahistorical ones.
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They simple can't build RGO's there until they get the advance.
So pops don't extract RGOs by simply living in the area and they need buildings like mines, logging camps and farms?

I don't think that is what he is saying. To me, it means that once you get the 'advance' required you can start gathering the resource.
 
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I don't think that is what he is saying. To me, it means that once you get the 'advance' required you can start gathering the resource.
just making sure
 
The algoritm puts all "possible origin locations", ie those were dominant religion is state religion & the dominant culture is accepted or primarty and has at least 1,000 peasants.

Those are weighted by amount of peasants. +50% if same area, +150% if same region, and +1000% if the origin has a negative migration attraction.

Then its a random roll based from this.

So yes, when Sweden colonises Norrland and Finland, its likelier to pick pops from nearby areas.
Is it possible for pops from already settled locations of a province to colonize the unsettled parts of the same province? Currently the Tavastian and Savonian tribes already inhabit the entirety of their respective provinces, but historically it would be more accurate to say that instead of Sweden colonizing the tribes in the northern parts of the provinces the northern parts of the provinces were colonized using the tribes. As in, Sweden already controlled the southern core areas of the tribes and then gained more control inland by encouraging the tribes to move north. Or is the idea that in the areas Sweden controls the tribes have all assimilated into Finnish culture, and that's why Tavastians and Karelians are missing a big chunk of their historical core territories on the teaser map (no Tavastians in Satakunta or Karelians in Viborg and Kexholm)?

On another note, it felt pretty cool to see my province suggestions on the teaser map if you look closely, along other changes suggested by other people. Awesome how much the devs take feedback! :)
 
I don't think that is what he is saying. To me, it means that once you get the 'advance' required you can start gathering the resource.

yes. locations will start with a level 0 rgo unless they got the tech to use the resource
 
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I really hope we can someday see in PC a mechanic that simulates companies such as the VOC or EIC, with dividends and estates (burghers) getting the money back in the country, and making them richer or developping more at home.
It could be interesting since historically the VOC never made great benefits because of its huge dividends it had to pay to investors, and the debt and all that was what made it collapse.
 
More realistic yes.

But its also a lot of distance calculation sorting, so for now its just been the capital.

In theory we could set a staging area for the colonial charter when we start it, and have it calculate distance from there. Actually, that is pretty trivial to do, and we could also weight it so that it is also likelier to take pops from that origin as well. And we could add a goods demand for it as well, and have some sort of development bonus to the origin.

Adding it to my "todo" list for when I am back from holidays..
Maybe you could make a certain location the 'charter headquarters', just like you could change your trade capital in EUIV. Of course only if the location meets standards.

then the game calculates the distance from that particular area. That way, you don't have to succumb the engine on needless calculations.

I am sure from a coding standpoint it doesn't really matter if it is the capital or some random city that has a flag that overrides the capital flag?
 
How does colonization work with indigenous people in the Americas/minority subjects?

Specifically, two examples:
The Tlaxcalans allied with Spain in Mexico to overthrow the Aztecs, and as a result received autonomy. I'm not sure how the game would represent that in the conquest, but later they went on to set up their own Tlaxcalan settlements in the north of Mexico. Would this be represented as Spanish or subject-Tlaxcalan settlements?
The other example would be dispossessed native Americans in today's US: the Trail of Tears is beyond the game's scope, but if a people are forced out of their territory, can they set up lands elsewhere? This seems like it would make Native American gameplay more interesting and I expect it might be relevant for some of the Russian expansion that I'm less knowledgeable about.
 
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We have had debated between province or area, but having at location would make it like an insane micromanagement game.
Maybe you could give us the option to choose our initial Location for the Charter and then let the rest be randomized over the province.

No excess micromanagement but also allows player freedom if we just want one specific location and not the rest.
 
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We have had debated between province or area, but having at location would make it like an insane micromanagement game.
Maybe you could give us the option to choose our initial Location for the Charter and then let the rest be randomized over the province.

No excess micromanagement but also allows player freedom if we just want one specific location and not the rest.
 
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Historically though, that's not what happened. Britain did not gain control of India through war but through trade and alliance treaties, and as I understand it, power projection is supposed to represent how much other nations would be willing to become your protectorate without fighting a war.

I think it should be possible to colonize India without fighting a war and without making its locations majority-British (or majority-French, or majority-Chinese)
You're not entirely wrong, but that still doesn't make it charter colonialism. I do think the game should have more colonialism mechanics than charter colonies and wars. The conquest of India would be simulated through both wars and "soft" imperialism, but with no charter colonies.
 
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