• 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 #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.
 

Attachments

  • banking_advance.png
    banking_advance.png
    277,2 KB · Views: 0
  • 325Love
  • 138Like
  • 9
  • 6
  • 2
Reactions:
Hello, look like one of the best novelty of a Europa universalis grand strategy game. Is diaspora (like Ashkenazi or Roma to some extent) are taken as a society of pop? Or can I go from a settled country to a army based entity or society of pop ? Like if im fully conquered or if I decide to
 
  • 20Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
To start: is it possible to mod in other types of countries, or are these four categories (plus whatever may come in later) strictly hardcoded?
 
This is a very interesting iteration of country system!
Can ABC's also become settled like Society of Pops?
Also, is there a possibility for countries to small to be one location minors (like Monaco, San Marino), to be instead represented by "Extraterritorial Counties"?
 
  • 11Like
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
It would be nice to have an option to see Pop Societies on the map instead of 'empty' land to be colonized. It could be just outlines like tribal lands in EU4 or maybe just very faint coloring/dashed lines over the locations kind of like occupations. Especially if they are very dynamic and change a lot, it would be nice to see unsettled regions with names floating around. They would feel more alive instead of the stale grey we're used to now.
 
  • 28Like
  • 3
Reactions:
could it be possible to create a new banking country/vassal from your own territory like in a gold producing province. or even force a country to release a banking country
 
  • 11Like
  • 4
Reactions:
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.
Sad. Those tags are probably highly dependent on events and characters rather than buildings. I think they need a lot of events like we are colonised by country A or location B is revolting.

Do they have diplomacy? Can they ally with other people? can they federate like in EU4?
Can they exist under settled countries? (Both settled and society of pops own one location)
 
  • 3
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
i hope theres some kind of formable navy based country at least if theres nothing at the start of the game that would fit that category, would a pirate nation fit that description

Yeah, its a player fantasy so if we do it it will be for that.
 
  • 116Like
  • 44Love
  • 6
  • 3
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Does "ABC" countries, will have a mechanic of "march into the province and a few month later the province or location switch to your side COMPLETLY / no peace deal switching province or location", like some mods in EU4 with some scripetd event or buff ?

(Because when you say "Hordes", it sound like it to me...)
 
Last edited:
  • 5
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I loved idea but there are few questions for you.
1-Can these countries gain land without force of arms or by someone giving it to them?
2-Order of Teutonic Knights had both lands in Prussia and Pomerelia beside having a big network of castles in German lands in HRE. Will this mean they will have a combination of both or will one branch be vassal of other?
3-Teutonic Knights had their settlements founded on Germanic law , will this have an effect on game which will affect Teutonic Order in Prussia even though it had no direct subordination to HRE?
4- Will multiple non territorial countries have right to own a branch in same tile? (like both Teutonic Order and Hansa having a branch in Rostock for say)
 
  • 10Like
  • 5
  • 1
Reactions:
So building based countries have no way to become settled? What about the Japanese daimyos, seems like they would be a good example of a building based country that should be able to settle, or at least take over whoever controls the settled nation of Japan?

How and why do you make the distinction between army based countries and societies of pops? Building based countries are definitely distinct, but the distinction between ABC and societies as both being relatively disorganized, nomadic nations seems more arbitrary
 
  • 7
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Yooo, spanish holy orders let's go!

Not sure how fun will they be to play given their irrelevance during the game period but it would be very fun for a run of shenanigans, like conquering Granada yourself without Castille and extending your power and influence, and have a more active role in the new world, opening orders everywhere, evangelizing pops for your armies, getting footholds in north africa, and helping out in the 30 years wars against the heretics,
 
  • 13Like
Reactions:
Please if you lockk people societies for AI, allow mods to unlock it

Can the papal state turn into l
andless country upon losing its locations instead of dying?

So can there be several society people for a same culture as you can get allegiance from your culture pop or not?

Can holy orders be granted land? Is that only showed by getting buildings rather than locations?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Why i cannot turn my banksters family in a settled country!?

Its not easy , and most likely a really bad decision to try to go from a few hundred bankers to taking over an entire location.
 
  • 68Like
  • 33Haha
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions: