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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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Are Roma represented as a society of pops? And more importantly can a society of pops migrate through settled lands or is it just a unolonized land thing only?

Are there ways to create your own banking country? Or take loans from a trade company
 
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Hello @Johan
I would like to Suggest adding Federal Governments as a form of Extraterritorial Country, it makes perfect sense.

Entities like USA for example cannot work with individual states being independent or USA being represented by a single Tag.
If the US Federal Government was an Extraterrestrial Country and the US States it’s subjects, this would perfectly represent the Federalist Model, US States being semi independent countries (Vassals/Subjects) being ruled over by the US Federal Government (Extraterritorial country) which has its own Laws, Rulers, Army, Navy and more.

This would also Perfectly represent the Dutch Republic, later Swiss Confederation.
And if the Devs can manage, even make it possible to create new Federations where the Federal Government (Extraterritorial country) Rules over their Federal Subjects.

Please add this
 
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Also im thinking on mercenaries been precisely these ABC countries alonside the holy orders. Would that be the way to implement the mercenaries so that they are not ethereal entities like previous titles?

+Although if that is the case I don't see why not do the same with pirates, smugglers and mercenary fleets)
 
I'm fairly sure that this map does exist in game Johan is just saying that the SoP map and the standard location based countries map does not overlap.
That's what I'm saying, merging the two map modes should work, it just might get ugly.

That and it might be hard to tell the dashed lines from occupations and SoP minorities, now that I think about it.
 
They stay around as part of their society.
Are there peaceful ways to integrate pops from SoPs? And conversely are there peaceful ways for pops (persecuted minorities as an example) to pack up and leave or join existing societies?

Also is there a way for SoPs to become ABCs instead of settling? I'm thinking the Comanche, Blackfeet, etc. upon the arrival of horses on the Great Plains
 
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So the Hanseatic League has a fleet, soldiers and the capacity to hire mercenaries? How does the Hanseatic League progress? Can it persuade burgher owned buildings/commerce to join the Hanseatic League? Can a nation nationalize their assets thusly upsetting the Hanseatic League?
 
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And how do you differ it from occupation? And how do you show 3 different ones?

The Stateless Societies would be just the outline and where they mix the one with more pops would have that location with occupation lines. Or just have it control it on the political map and if you want a more detailed situation, go to their dedicated mapmode.

Or maybe just show the names without location control. In any case - please do find a way to represent them, having the land appear uncolonised isn't great.
 
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What about trade companies, why can't they own land? Historically both the Duth and English east India Company directly held some land even though the majority of it was held by vassals.
 
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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.

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.
During game's timeline, there are some historical cases where society of pops organized themselves in settled countries, it is especially true for subsaharan Africa, some important regional players dont exist in 1337.

Would be possible to have in the game rules a historical option to nudge the countries that historically become settled countries to repeat the feat around a historical correct time? Similar to how CK3 has a game rule for historical heresies spawn. Or it is not possible because of the way societies of pops works internally?
 
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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..
In all seriousness though,

Is this the final map of the Hansa as I am missing quite a few historical hanseatic cities on this map.

1724247820393.png


All locations in Red should be hansa at the startdate and yellow will become hansa later.
1724247850204.png


One warning on the last image, Hasselt refers to this hasselt: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasselt_(Overijssel)
Not the one in Belgium.
 
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Also, most tribes in North America should start as Settled Countries, maybe becoming Societies of Pops after the columbian exchange disaster (as it forced most tribes to abandon their homeland after their population decreased by up to 90%) and even becoming ABCs when they are introduced to horses and gunpowder, as the way their society worked in real life wasn't so different to the the steppe hordes, moving around and razing the settled societies they bordered.
In South America the situation is a bit different, as we have loads of evidence for the existence of cities, roads and agriculture in the Amazon which all but disappeared once the European diseases destroyed their way of life, turning them into nomad tribes (aka Societies of Pops in game).
 
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