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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.

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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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With the reveal of Japan as using this system, just how detailed are we going to get with the Han system and the Provinces? Will Clans be able to be reassigned to various parts of the country or removed from power and have other clans installed? Historically, territories in Japan changed hands incredibly frequently. It is my sincere hope that Japan will be an ungodly abomination of internal States like the HRE with various Ikki, Temples, Clans, even Pirate Daimyo and perhaps as far as the City of Osaka being its own republic!

I have very high hopes, and the HRE maps told me you guys can do it.

Personally, I would love for there to be a system similar to Client States in EU4 but with preset clan names and mon so you can redistribute the various Han just like the various Shogun did. Also, will there be any Northern Court/Southern Court shenanigans involving Go-Daigo? What about the Insei system of retired Emperors 'ruling'? Historically, the Shogun and the Insei shared more power than most would think, the Imperial Court never truly lost its influence until the Tokugawa bakufu.

I know I've rambled a bit here, but my enthusiasm for the possibilities in Japan is just overflowing. There is so much that can be done with this.
 
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I would like to make suggestions for a Holy order, very important for Portugal at the start of the game, the Order of Christ, it was founded in 1319. Quote from Wikipedia: "The Templars were persecuted by the king of France and eventually disbanded by the pope in 1312. King Dinis I of Portugal created the Order of Christ in 1319 for those knights who survived their mass slaughter throughout Europe. In Portugal, the Order of Christ accumulated great riches and power during the Age of Discoveries."

It is well know in Portugal to this day by the Military Order of Christ.
 
Will there be composite states? For example Venice had a lot of trade posts and quarters (often subject to Venetian jurisdiction under a Bailo) in other countries. Same applies to Genoa and particularly their relationship with Habsburg Spain.

Merchant republics could really benefit from this sort of composite relationship of having a regular settled country with offices, banks, extraterritorial trade posts and similar things in other countries.

It would be a dream to be able to play a merchant republic with few coastal fortifications for maritime control that serve as base for fleets for trade routes while having lots of extraterritorial ownership in many countries.
 
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The Téhnggā (commonly called Tanka but that is considered a slur) of southern china would be a great addition as either a Pop based country or a boat based country. Their existence was recorded as early as the 6th century and their „pirate fleets“ were a thorn in many a dynasties side. The most famous Téhnggā is probably the feared Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao.
 
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Gold for mercs are damn useful. And having more than one branch is good to not be relying on a single country.
But you'll always be quite "at the mercy" of the various countries where you are, barring having enough mercs to be reckoned with. I'd say giving them tools to avoid it, be it in diplomacy or spying / interacting with the society of your "host(s)" countries could be useful. I wouldn't want to suffer a "game ended" because a couple AI decided I was no longer useful. Quite hyped for the whole variety of countries available ofc.
 
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How do you represent anarchy in a game where you play as the state? This is fucking w my head. I suppose you play god? I don’t think they should have alliances? Societies should have internal divisions which come into conflict with one another which you have no control over.

There should be two stages: one decentralised where you’re encouraging urbanisation or the nomadic equivalent and the survival of pops, and then the next where your society has a tribe in each location, nomadic or settled. The latter, the UI would have them all the same colour with the society still being one big tag. You then move to landed tag in one location still surrounded by the tribes. You pick where the first landed tag chiefdom is and your goal is to amalgamate the other locations through simple diplomacy or conquest, and other locations can spawn chiefdoms which do the same. You and the other chiefdoms that spawn grow to become kingdoms, and once no more tribes exist the society dissappears. You now have a group of kingdoms which can then war with each other or merge like with Kongo
 
The "Society of Pops" seems to be increadebly interesting. I was thinking about stunting like this in GST. Would it be possible to make a SoP that is a "rebel country"? What i mean by this, is sobering like this:

If a pop of a certain county is only in provinces they could organise into a SoP country that would try to create a rebelion to establish their national country. Effectively playing as separatists rebels why try to get independent (waiting for the occupants weakness, looking for foreign support, resistance, etc)
 
The Catholic Church is one of the International Organizations mentioned in Tinto Talks #12. The Papal States is obviously a settled country.
Yes I know. Papacy would perhaps be more accurate to what I mean. I'm wondering what happens to it when the Papal state is conquered. Those tithes have to go to somewhere after all.
 
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I see a lot of potential in these non-landed playables, and it certainly looks more interesting and diverse than the CK3 direction, always wanted to see these games evolve with landless play.

But why do I have the feeling that "society of pops, which might be able to settle later" is going to be "these people lived here, on land they managed with their people they governed, but can only be a Real country later" for all populated uncontrolled areas :p
 
There is so much realism and good simulation in this game I just really hope it will actually be fun to play instead of being a full on "simulator" where you have to click and micromanage everything.

Also, I hope there will be pirate republics with very detailed gameplay!
 
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Representation of the Societies of Pops in a map os not trivial indeed.

Why not a search bar in which you can type the name of the entity you want to see ? It will highlight the selected entity on the map.

And if you type a society of pops, the locations concerned appear from lightest to darkest, depending on the number of pops ?
Advantage : even if you can't see all the societies of pops at once, this allows you to see the ones that interest you.

Btw i really like this mechanics. This is opening a lot of new ways to play the game. And this is also a much better representation of many societies from the past.
 
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And how do you differ it from occupation? And how do you show 3 different ones?
An idea
You could represent the society of pops as a shield or coat of arms located in the wealthiest or more populated location in the map. When you scroll over the shield, it highlights the borders of the society, and if you click on it you can interact with it. The shield becomes bigger or smaller depending on how the size of the ui and how much you zoom in or not. And every society should have its own recognisable shield.
I'd also add some kind of color of shade to the map to represent the locations where any society has control. Either way there should be a way to know easily if you're going to colonise a location where there is a society
 
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Johan and the entire Project Caesar team THANK YOU for coming up with the Society of Pops mechanic to recognize the existence of decentralized peoples in game. I was quite concerned about their lack of existence after seeing the West Africa Tinto Maps Thread a couple weeks back, especially since such peoples had been given active presence in Victoria 3, but now in Project Caesar we will have these peoples present and a factor with their own agency in gameplay, not just as a rather minimal speedbump to colonization as in EU4.
 
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I think what is also needed is a hybrid between landed and extraterritorial - best example being Catholic Church, but this could also apply to trade companies etc...
 
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