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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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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.
I might have caused some confusion; I meant another land-based nation, like France sending monetary help to the thirteen colonies, etc.
 
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Keeping in mind that you wouldn't even be the richest country in Europe because hey, Indonesian and Indian spices exist
Until the Age of Discovery, you probably would. Later, historically banks declined, but gameplay-wise maybe you could.
I don't want trade companies to be AI controlled nations
And why? First of all, we don't know of the AI is in this game. Second of all, historically TCs were autonomous entities (albeit being under government control) and not managed directly by the State, so it's, imo, correct to depict them as a separate country
 
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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.
Very intriguing! One small note though, I was under the impression that the Kvens lived in the far north of what is now Norway. Were they in the Torne valley in 1337?
 
Will separatist rebels be replaced by "Society of Pops" then? I'd imagine nations under other countries would be considered Society of Pops whom can then decided to be rebellious as separatists.

Nevertheless, these features appears quite interesting and appealing.
I would think that rebels would be a Military Based Polity and not a Pop Based Polity. They will remain a problem until they are dealt with. I also think that if they win they will 'convert' into a Land Based Polity
 
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@Johan Please Please Please make societies of people playable (if not selectable normally on game start than at least don't boot the player out if they tag-swap through the console). Even if the gameplay is not very fun in vanilla, playable SoPs would allow Modders a lot of room to experiment!
 
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@Johan Please Please Please make societies of people playable (if not selectable normally on game start than at least don't boot the player out if they tag-swap through the console). Even if the gameplay is not very fun in vanilla, playable SoPs would allow Modders a lot of room to experiment!
He said they will be playable sometime post release. They need to make the gameplay more fun for Societies of People and they don't have the time to concentrate on that right now.
 
well, tell me how and why one should play the Hansa then

what happens if you declare war? Because most probably you won't be able to build a big army / navy on your own, thus you're gonna need to vassal swarm, which yeah. That's not fun. Well, what about taking control of your vassals' armies? Now playing as any of the nations members of the Hansa would suck. And what if in a multiplayer game 2 people play a Hansa member and the Hansa. Who controls which units?

And regardless, what would your end goal be by playing as the Hansa? You cannot annex land, and you really can't do anything but controlling the trade in the Baltic. If you can't annex your vassals it makes no sense.

IMO an IO would make more sense from a purely gameplay prospective. Unless they don't effectively let you reach a decision (maybe via a compliance mechanic which honestly would be quite cool) to unify the Hansa it doesn't seem much fun to play as them

also if the Hansa get to become a separate nation they need to introduce now 2 different kinds of formable trade leagues, one that is an IO and the other a BBC, with both being able to lead to vassalization / annexation of its members (for example a trade league formed by Genoa would be dominated by Genoa itself)
Thankfully people are different. The Hansa are going to be the first nation I play as.
Because I find trade really enjoyable, love playing Victoria 3, am excited to type the BBC nation type, and find EU's warfare system to be stale and rather tedious. And I think Multiplayer is an abomination that should be removed from Project Caesar at it risks distracting from its true - single player - purpose.
But of course, I understand that not everyone shares my views.
 
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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.
I just realized (maybe someone beat me to it) but i think the REDACTED part might be the Mughals :D
 
For navy based countries, my initial thought is various pirates (especially in the Caribbean, Madagascar, and Malacca), but also the Dutch Sea Beggars during the 80 year war. And I think it would be mechanically interesting to have a path for a country like England to become a Navy with a state
 
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I have been doing a little thinking, couldn't navy based countries just be army based countries? like ABCs should be able to build a navy, right? so NBCs could just be ABCs with some buffs to the navy or something, or also debuffs to the army.
 
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I’d not call the states that created the biggest empires on earth as being similar so minor tribes with a few thousand people who are close to stone age tech.
And where do you find these tribes because it's not what most of them are. Pretty much every society with stone age technology that i know of would be in a wasteland.
 
-Would mercenaries be army based tags and would Condottieri be Army based tags or building based with armies as some condottieri forces had estates

-Would these mercenary/condo tags be able to overthrow countries to become landed tags and not through event but a overthrow nation CB or something

-Can building based Trade leagues like the Hanseatic league through war force new members in or take cities from larger states to make independent Hanseatic cities
 
Navy based country: the pirates of the Caribbean. Or the brotherhood of Nassau as i think they were called.
There is also this Chinese lady called Zheng Yi Sao that had a huge pirate fleet and dominated a huge chunk of the south asian trade and controlled gambling houses and other stuff in mainland China and I think Singapore.
They are burying the lead for the 15$ pirate dlc