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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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Do ABC need to own locations or do they exist so long as they have an army (and that army can migrate and shit)?

They just need their army to survive, but with no land, no mnapower or tax for it.
 
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Are the Knights Hospitaller (whose population is greater than the population of Rhodes) an extraterritorial country with a vassal settled country that owns the island of Rhodes, or is that related to what will be discussed next week?

Normal landed with XXXX and YYYY
 
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Are the Jews in the germanic Lands represented as a Banking Country? Since they where known to be landing money to many very influential people, because they are by religion not aloud to do Labor jobs. This leaded to many purchases towards the jews and the known hate towards them and seen greedy moneybags. Later the nazis used this hate. But Jews where known as moneylending people in all over Europe since at least 321 CE.
It would be cool to be able to play the migrated jews and be able to find the way back and retake Jerusalem from mameluks.
 
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Is there a reason for not including the location of Bergen in the Hanseatic League holdings map? Bergen was one of the four cities outside of Germany that was a "Kontor" alongside Novgorod, London and Bruges (later moved to Antwerp). The Hanseatic Leagues presence in Bergen in the 13th hundreds was exponential and even halted the Norwegian burgher class from developing as they couldn't keep up with the Hansas far superior trading network and infrastructure.

Officially Bergen wasn't a Kontor until the 1350-60s, but their influence on Norway and Bergen especially was already very strong and growing in 1337. The German traders had over a hundred years time acquired more and more privileges and special treatment from the crown. In 1284 the Hanseatic League established a blockade against Norway for trying to restrict their monopoly of grain imports to Norway. The blockade was successful and the Hansa gained even more privileges for trade.

It seems very odd that Bergen isn't a location of the Hanseatic League from the start as almost every other location that had Hanseatic influence is apart of the map with the exception of one of their most important trading cities.
 
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Can banks give or take over loans of other banks?
If so. can they then create a vortex of loans, where every one participant eventually turns bankrupt, ruining whatever fragile world economy existed in middle ages?
 
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Please please include the framework Navy Based Countries, even if there are none at release! It would be so cool for modders to have the option to work with them!

Looking at you, Atha'an Miere from Wheel of Time!
 
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EU5 seems to be potentially the first game to simulate the British East India Company and the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie somewhat accurately in the context of a whole strategy game; that's BIG.

Also:
- Cossacks within whoever owns Ruthenia and Crimea
- Pirate leagues that have an allegiance to a country but aren't part of that country itself (Spanish origin pirates raiding only English and Dutch ships, English origin pirates harassing Portuguese ships, but can go rogue and turn on their own country's ships)
- Steppe hordes that are a real problem for landed countries around them but aren't landed themselves
...and much more! This one mechanic opens up SO many doors.

Very excited :D
 
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And how do you differ it from occupation? And how do you show 3 different ones?

I think the issue is how to represent not just each tag but type of tag. Say, how do we see Extraterritorial tags in the map? If I don't open a different mapmode, how do I know they are there?

Maybe this could be solved if you used... something else to represent non-Settled tags in the political mapmode. For example, a location with a Banking Country (or multiple Banks) would have an extra layer at 50% opacity of an icon of a Bank, ABCs would instead have a menacingly red outline to show they want blood, etc. This way you could indicate different types present in the same location.

Then what's left is showing different Society tags... but I don't think that even makes sense? The map is so granular already, if you want to show two tribes living side by side then you'd have two small locations side by side. If their teepees or whatever are all huddled together then they might as well already be a single tag. So it's a matter of how you show a Society present in a Settled location. What I can think of is yet another layer that looks less like paint and more like a cloud or a bubble, to show how fluid their presence/extension throughout the map is. And yes, this would imply in the Society tag's name placement going over the Settled tag's, to show they're there even if not painting the map.
 
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They just need their army to survive, but with no land, no mnapower or tax for it.
So that could work to represent the Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu in 1337, as steppe nomadic people, if you would prefer to avoid having them as a SoP prior to their acquisition of land.

An ABC with SoP subjects representing the various constituent components of their confederation.

Similar thing with the Chaghatai.
 
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Any chance any of these mechanism would be used to describe the Jewish people's diaspora across the world? Through the years of the game, Jewish people were still in a state of being spread across the many countries of the world but maintained a single identity as the Jewish people. It is a common misconception to think of Judaism as strictly a religion. The Jews themselves think in terms of the Jewish people and it would be absolutely wonderful change of perspective if they would actually be represented in this game.
 
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.

I think the Wokou is the best option for one of these types of countries at game start. Korean records show that the Japenese pirates became really frequent from the 1350s onwards.

Later I think the Victual brothers and Barbary coast pirates should be naval countries. The Barbary coast pirates captured over 2 million slaves between 1580 and 1780, so maybe incorporate slave raiding and capturing into the mechanics of naval countries

And I think maybe the slave trade should be incorporated in as naval-based countries, it would be cool to have an evil counterpart to the Hansa where all you do is capture or buy slaves along the African coast and sell them in the new world colonies.

And maybe the early exploitation of Asia by European charters or companies could be naval countries. Companies like the British and Dutch East India could be fun to play as corporations who only care about maximizing their profit at the expense of locals in spice-producing locations.
 
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Question for banking country, is there a limit on a number of branches we can own?
 
No, they never own locations directly
How does that work for trade companies like the East India Company? Would they become a settled country somehow?
Please make sure to avoid the Imperator issue where getting a Causus Beli either as a landless tag, or against a landless tag, was like pulling teeth and usually required you to fight a war of aggression.
 
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Is this through society of POPs that you will/could model wars of religion during the Reformation era?