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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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Teutonic Order, which holds land, is a settled country or an ABC? And what about Hospitalier Knights, that switched place from Jerusalem to Rhodes to Malta: also an ABC?
 
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I need to do a proper pass on them, as they were implemented as 'placeholder-WIP' feature, and there are some errors to be corrected, indeed (like having the seat of Order of Santiago not in Uclés, as it should be); but we decided to wait until getting some more functionalities until doing this pass (which will most likely be this autumn).
I would say there is a huge absance of Teutonic castles in German lands. Also there is another thing I think is important for the game is dominicians and there are non I can see . They were a huge part of conversion of Prussia and later down the line they did same for Americas. Them not being a power and Catholic church not being something like this feels wrong. Every area had churches that had cardinals responsible for those areas and those cardinals were part of church organiaation headed by Pope. Why we don't have that as non territorial country?
 
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Wow, so it's finally confirmed: landless tags are a thing. I have a ton of questions that I imagine can't all be answered but I'll rapid-fire nonetheless:
I assume that stuff like the Abbasid Caliphate will be covered by this system?
Will rebellions like the Balliol be considered ABCs?
How do military orders like the Teutonic Order and the Knights Hospitaller work within this system?

Also, some of the landless tag types really need better names, "banking dynasty" instead of "banking country" seems like a no-brainer. "Society of Pops" is rather awkward as "pops" is fine forum terminology but it is a bit immersion-breaking to use it inside the game. Too bad that stuff like "primitive/uncivilized nations" carries such negative connotations because I think it would work better within the game. "First nation" or "native/indigenous peoples" could work, but the issue is that, as you've mentioned some indigenous peoples do have settled countries.
 
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Is there a Society of Pops in Western Africa? Can you share information about a Society of Pops in Africa in Tinto Maps? (future and existing) I think the community can greatly help to create more precision in this regard
Lots and lots
 
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So just to clarify

Will trading companies like the VOC be army based countries, building based countries or land based countries?

I'm still a little confused on those

Building based.
 
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How about extraterritorial countries, society of pops and control mechanic ?
Will a society of pops havealways perfect control upon all his pops, whatever the location, or will locations' control plays a role (like the controle of a state owning the location hampering his capacity to command a pop) ?
Control is nothing society of pops care about.
 
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I suspected them of being a place holder, no worries then. ^^
Could I ask if you could post their final updated state somewhere once you are done? (In case some feedback is needed)
Sure!
 
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Upon reading, I'm wondering why the posts with the idea about federations being a type of extraterritorial country are all so heavily downvoted. Why would that be a horrendous idea?
Can't speak for other downvoters, but as I downvoted them, I'm not fan of adding mechanisms to represent a rather late type of government (the USA appear quite late in PC I guess), and am not too convinced by having 2 layers for independent state + the supra entity. Also, I don't really "see" what fun would be to play a struggle between the supra entity that would lack an awful lot of meaningful things to do or the "minor" entities that would also lack things to do. Which means I'd rather have either IO or lack of control represent federations
 
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Is there a Society of Pops in Western Africa? Can you share information about a Society of Pops in Africa in Tinto Maps? (future and existing) I think the community can greatly help to create more precision in this regard
From what I can tell, they're culture-based, and they already show the culture mapmode in tinto talks, so...
 
So let's say i will make a mod where the world is in such early state, that there are barely any actual countries on the map. WOuld it be better to have the unowned locations to be just unowned or would it be better to create Society of Pops that would replicate various tribes of the (similar)cultures that are so decentralized that they don't have a state? And if I'd do that, they would then migrate from their starting positions and after a while will form their own countries?

Did I understood that mechanic right?
 
Hey PDX Tinto,
I am really hyped for this mysterious new game.
I am from the "Bierstadt" Einbeck which thankfully got its own location in the game, but I fear it could get underrepresentated because of its relative insignificance today, despite its relevance back in the timespan of EU5.

Einbeck is popular for its beer which is known to be exported since 1351 and the company today even brews a beer from a recipe of 1378. Einbeckian brewers even spread the craft of brewing beer to Bavaria which was a land of wine before.
The city got part of the Hanseatic League in 1368 and therefore got pretty wealthy because of their exports all over Germany and the Baltic Sea.
As I understand your post it would be possible to have the location/city of Einbeck as part of Grubenhagen and as part of the Hanseatic League simultaneously.
So I would be extremely happy to see it getting beer as its trade good and maybe even getting a part of the Hanseatic League..

Einbeck had some major events happening over time too. As an example, in 1540 nearly the whole city burned down and got rebuilt quickly because of the before accumulated wealth.

And I wanted to add that the heraldic symbol of the Sachsenross/"Saxons horse" which is now the symbol of Lower Saxony, Kent and more was first used in 1361 by Albrecht I. of Grubenhagen who resided Salzderhelden (small village with an old castle a few kilometers from Einbeck).

Take this information and do what you want or can but I hope my 2 cents make a little difference.
You guys blow my mind with every Tinto Talk over and over again.


Love you PDX Tinto!
Greetings from Einbeck.
 
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