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Tinto Talks #26 - 21st of August 2024

Welcome everyone to the 26th Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we tell you interesting information about our super top-secret game with the code name of Project Caesar.

Previously in Grand Strategy Games, playable entities, or countries as we usually refer to them, always required you to own land, and their existence was based upon owning land. You annexed and eliminated a country by taking all their land. Now during the four years since we created the first iterations of this system, things have changed, and you will soon have landless playable characters in Crusader Kings III.

Anyway, in Project Caesar we currently have four categories of playable countries.

country_type.png

This tooltip may make it 100% clear?


We have been talking about making a navy based country type, and it would be fairly easy to do, but we haven't really found any country that fits that category.

Settled Countries
These are countries that are based on owning locations. These function the same as you would expect a country to work in a GSG, these countries own land, they build buildings, have cores, raise armies, etc.

Army Based Countries
This type of country is very similar to the location based countries with a few differences. While they can still do everything that a location based country does, they also have one strong advantage and a strong disadvantage in comparison.

The advantage is the fact that as long as they have an army, then the country will still continue to exist, which we use to simulate REDACTED amongst other things.

The disadvantage, depending on your point of view, is that if the country does not have an army at all, it can shatter into multiple pieces.

Many of the Steppe Hordes at the start of the game are ‘ABC’, which fits nicely into their other mechanics. Yes, I do like the acronym ABC for “Army Based Countries”

Extraterritorial Counties
These are countries that are based around the buildings they own. They can’t own land directly, but can have subjects that own land. Their buildings often have pops directly linked to the building, and those pops are also tied to the country.

One risk with them is that they need to keep positive relationships with the places they have buildings in, or they may not be able to survive.

map.png

Various banks, holy orders and Hanseatic League holdings in 1337..

There are many types of playable entities that we simulate with these systems, and here are a few of them..

Banking Countries
There are a few of these countries in Europe at the start of the Game, with Peruzzi and Bardi, and later on you get Fuggers and more. They have main offices in certain cities and have the possibility to build more branches around the world.

Other countries can request loans from them, and they also have the diplomatic ability to take over any estate loan that a country has, and force that country to pay interest to them instead. They also have far lower interest rates on their estate loans, so they can easily become rich from other countries' debts.


banking_advance.png

This is an advance only available for banking countries.


Trade Companies
During the Age of the Reformation you can set up Trade Companies in overseas places, which will be a good subject to get trade going to benefit their overlord. We will go into more detail about these in a later Tinto Talks.

Hanseatic League
This is represented by a building based country which has a few subjects that are normal land owning countries. This is a playable country from the start, and one that is really fun if you want to focus on a purely trading game.

hansa.png

Maybe the trade monopolies estate privilege is less than good for us..

We also have Holy Orders, as a building based type of country, and while I can’t go into details about it at this point, at the start of the game, the Daimyos of Japan are using the building based country mechanic..

Society of Pops
This is one of the most challenging types of countries in the game, as most of the mechanics are not available to them. They own no land, but instead are entirely based upon the pops associated with them. As they own no land, they do not interact with RGO’s nor can build most buildings. Almost all of them start without advances for taxation, codifying laws or constructing cities.

A lot of the world has different societies of pops, where larger groups of people live but are on the fringe of more organized and advanced states. In the New World there are a mixture of settled countries and society of pops.

These types of countries can migrate their pops from one province to another over time, and they can also force the allegiance of pops to change to them through warfare with another society.

The borders between different societies and even settled countries are extremely fluid, and they can be in the same location as either of them.

They can raise levies directly from their pops, and their armies can live off the land anywhere, gathering some small amount of food from any type of land. Their armies can always force any pop of their culture and religion to swear allegiance to their society.

Amongst the ways they can stop being colonized is forcing colonizers to the peace table, forcing them to cancel their colonial charters.

A settled country can in a war force a Society of Pops to abandon pops that they own, and if they no longer “own” any pops, that society will no longer be an existing country.

A society of pops can attempt to settle if they achieve certain advances, after which they will take control over all locations where they have pops and are the dominant culture and religion, and then become a Settled Country.

Currently though, the gameplay experience is not where we want it, and unless that is improved by beta, they are very likely to be AI only at release.

kvenland.png

Here the Kven People have settled…

And to clarify, Society of Peoples and Army Based Countries have ways to become Settled Countries through mechanics, but there are no other normal ways of changing Country Types, except through special events.

Stay tuned, as next week we go into detail about buildings you can build outside your own country.
 

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Society of Pops
This is one of the most challenging types of countries in the game, as most of the mechanics are not available to them. They own no land, but instead are entirely based upon the pops associated with them. As they own no land, they do not interact with RGO’s nor can build most buildings. Almost all of them start without advances for taxation, codifying laws or constructing cities.
Wouldn't this be a method for potentially modelling the Romani people or other similar migratory/ nomadic peoples within Europe and around the world ?
 
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Shouldn't the Kvens inhabit a slightly larger area, especially to the southwest along the coastline?

Below is Jäger-Colonel Eero Kuussaari's understanding of the language situation in the 13th-14th centuries AD. Note that the Sami language and its many dialects are coloured in the same colour as other Uralic languages and dialects:

13-14ad.jpg

I'm not sure what the consensus on this is nowadays, but as I recall haplogroup research suggest that the Finns (i.e. "Kvens" in this context) were rather well-spread into what is now the coastline of modern Sweden. Weren't there even Finnish-speakers just north of Uppland in Viking times, or is that contested?
 
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A lot of people are asking about pirates being naval based societies, but wouldn’t they be better modeled as extraterritorial societies with pirate “lair” buildings where they can build ships and recruit armies? Boats can’t repair outside of port until much later in the games anyway so there wouldn’t need to be a special mechanic to make them work. Also, buildings mean that a pirate band can be given safe haven when it benefits a country and expelled to “rid” an area of pirates. This would also be an interesting way to make control matter if pirates can only build lairs in low control locations.
 
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Oh.

My.

G-d.

On the off chance that you do ever make SoPs playable, would Jewish communities be considered SoPs? That could open up some fascinating gameplay options.
 
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How would that work when 20 different names are overlapped atop eachother? In maps it works because the labels are so broad and vague that you just throw down the dominant group. Here it doesn’t work so well.
I can't imagine there will be 20 different cultures in many locations.
And if there were, the calculation of pop extent for map labelling purposes could just be limited to any location where that pop was over (for example) 25% of the total population of the location. Then there would be very little overlap.
 
Who leaves Gold out in the open just like that, though??
 
Well i think it's a bit more complicated... like say you play as the medici. Would the gameplay be to "purchase land" in Florence location? Or to have your ruler be voted in as Florence's Doge and form a personal union?
I don't know, but in some way or form you need to have some way to expand. What should be your goal otherwise? Green line go up? Why would I bother playing them? I'd boot up Vicky 3 or a Tycoon game in that case

I want my map painting to be historically believable and not a la EU4, but I still want to map paint
 
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We have not YET come up with a way for that to look great.
How does it look if you go by plurality/majority Culture Groups for SoPs? "[CULTURE GROUP] Peoples", click on that area of the map for a popup of the different SoPs of that group to let us interact with them/move to the map showing their full extent. Does that account for enough overlap in particular areas to cut out the likely mess, or would migrations/wider dispersals render that useless.
 
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Many/most hanseatic cities were not independent (e.g. Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald), so who would be member of the organization there? If the membership depends on a building, then it potentially only covers specific locations and allows exclusion of non-urban areas. Also, the corresponding ruler (e.g. duke of Mecklenburg) need not be member of the league.
but an IO doesn't necessarily need to have a leader. And anyways, if you can't gain land or annex your subjects, what should your gameplay be? Max trade in the baltics? It makes no sense to be a playable nation and not an IO

Furthermore, you're setting a dangerous precedent for all of the other trade leagues in the game, how are they gonna be portrayed? As countries as well?
 
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I was thinking more like just sending them directly from my reservers, either instantly or monthly, or just lowering the prices just for them so they can more easily get equipment, not really talking about anything related to embargos. I was thinking something similar to HoI4's lend lease or a way to have a similar result of material support or ease of aquisition, but it's just an idea.
Well, if you have branch offices in France, and they embargo Austria, I can't imagine they'll be too happy if you help Austria buy goods, or just transfer them.
 
Can thoroughly defeated land-based countries become ABCs after all their lands have been taken away?
My example would be the Wild Geese of the 17th and 18th century, formed by dispossessed Irish lords (such as Hugh O'Neills son) and turned into Irish regiments on the continent but also involved in subsequent attempts to liberate Ireland.

These could be represented by mercenary groups who take service with foreign monarchs such as Spain, France and Austria, periodically reinforced (as was the custom) by more emigrants from Ireland.
 
Welcome everyone to the 26th Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we tell you interesting information about our super top-secret game with the code name of Project Caesar.

Previously in Grand Strategy Games, playable entities, or countries as we usually refer to them, always required you to own land, and their existence was based upon owning land. You annexed and eliminated a country by taking all their land. Now during the four years since we created the first iterations of this system, things have changed, and you will soon have landless playable characters in Crusader Kings III.

Anyway, in Project Caesar we currently have four categories of playable countries.

View attachment 1177031
This tooltip may make it 100% clear?


We have been talking about making a navy based country type, and it would be fairly easy to do, but we haven't really found any country that fits that category.

Settled Countries
These are countries that are based on owning locations. These function the same as you would expect a country to work in a GSG, these countries own land, they build buildings, have cores, raise armies, etc.

Army Based Countries
This type of country is very similar to the location based countries with a few differences. While they can still do everything that a location based country does, they also have one strong advantage and a strong disadvantage in comparison.

The advantage is the fact that as long as they have an army, then the country will still continue to exist, which we use to simulate REDACTED amongst other things.

The disadvantage, depending on your point of view, is that if the country does not have an army at all, it can shatter into multiple pieces.

Many of the Steppe Hordes at the start of the game are ‘ABC’, which fits nicely into their other mechanics. Yes, I do like the acronym ABC for “Army Based Countries”

Extraterritorial Counties
These are countries that are based around the buildings they own. They can’t own land directly, but can have subjects that own land. Their buildings often have pops directly linked to the building, and those pops are also tied to the country.

One risk with them is that they need to keep positive relationships with the places they have buildings in, or they may not be able to survive.

View attachment 1177033
Various banks, holy orders and Hanseatic League holdings in 1337..

There are many types of playable entities that we simulate with these systems, and here are a few of them..

Banking Countries
There are a few of these countries in Europe at the start of the Game, with Peruzzi and Bardi, and later on you get Fuggers and more. They have main offices in certain cities and have the possibility to build more branches around the world.

Other countries can request loans from them, and they also have the diplomatic ability to take over any estate loan that a country has, and force that country to pay interest to them instead. They also have far lower interest rates on their estate loans, so they can easily become rich from other countries' debts.


View attachment 1177034
This is an advance only available for banking countries.


Trade Companies
During the Age of the Reformation you can set up Trade Companies in overseas places, which will be a good subject to get trade going to benefit their overlord. We will go into more detail about these in a later Tinto Talks.

Hanseatic League
This is represented by a building based country which has a few subjects that are normal land owning countries. This is a playable country from the start, and one that is really fun if you want to focus on a purely trading game.

View attachment 1177035
Maybe the trade monopolies estate privilege is less than good for us..

We also have Holy Orders, as a building based type of country, and while I can’t go into details about it at this point, at the start of the game, the Daimyos of Japan are using the building based country mechanic..

Society of Pops
This is one of the most challenging types of countries in the game, as most of the mechanics are not available to them. They own no land, but instead are entirely based upon the pops associated with them. As they own no land, they do not interact with RGO’s nor can build most buildings. Almost all of them start without advances for taxation, codifying laws or constructing cities.

A lot of the world has different societies of pops, where larger groups of people live but are on the fringe of more organized and advanced states. In the New World there are a mixture of settled countries and society of pops.

These types of countries can migrate their pops from one province to another over time, and they can also force the allegiance of pops to change to them through warfare with another society.

The borders between different societies and even settled countries are extremely fluid, and they can be in the same location as either of them.

They can raise levies directly from their pops, and their armies can live off the land anywhere, gathering some small amount of food from any type of land. Their armies can always force any pop of their culture and religion to swear allegiance to their society.

Amongst the ways they can stop being colonized is forcing colonizers to the peace table, forcing them to cancel their colonial charters.

A settled country can in a war force a Society of Pops to abandon pops that they own, and if they no longer “own” any pops, that society will no longer be an existing country.

A society of pops can attempt to settle if they achieve certain advances, after which they will take control over all locations where they have pops and are the dominant culture and religion, and then become a Settled Country.

Currently though, the gameplay experience is not where we want it, and unless that is improved by beta, they are very likely to be AI only at release.

View attachment 1177036
Here the Kven People have settled…

And to clarify, Society of Peoples and Army Based Countries have ways to become Settled Countries through mechanics, but there are no other normal ways of changing Country Types, except through special events.

Stay tuned, as next week we go into detail about buildings you can build outside your own country.
NAVY-BASED COUNTRY TYPE FUCK YES

BRING ME THAT HORIZON
 
Not easy when they overlap with each other and themselves. You could have dozens in the same location
All the better! But for real, “stateless society” does sound much better. I really, really hope they’ll become playable at some point.