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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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1. Will roma and jewish people be a Society of Pops?
2. Will conquered countries turn into Society of Pops?
3. Can a Society of Pops go full exodus and completly migrate from one location to an another?
 
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I quite like the ideas in this DD, but I do think the terminology is confusing.

The dictionary definition of "country" is (Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary):
an area of land that has or used to have its own government and laws

So it's "an area of land". But this term is being used for landless entities, by analogy. That is just confusing. We have had fun with the ABC pun, now let's have names that actually make sense. Also, Project Caesar will presumably have a German localization, so are we really going to have tooltips explaining that "extraterritoriale Länder" are "Länder ohne Land"?

"Societies" would be an alternative, or just admit that the common factor is about gameplay rather than reality and call them "tags":
  • Country Tags
  • Army-based Tags
  • Extraterritorial Tags
  • Pop-based Tags
Note that this removes the necessity to use "Settled Countries", which I think is also potentially confusing with the terms "settler societies" and the less common "settler country" to describe the countries established through settler colonialism (e.g. Australia, Canada, and the US).
 
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This seems like an amazing feature for roleplaying and representing all the big actors not visible on a map of countries. I am a bit uncertain what the potential end goals for some of these types would be though. If societies become playable I reckon it'd often be to settle and establish yourself that way, but as other extraterritorials, what is owning all those buildings good for? What do they translate into? Efficient production chains? An impact on the world stage? Powerful subjects?

Otherwise I do see huge potential for wacky fun. Things like modding in a Banish to the Banking Realm CB which transforms any settled country into a bank, or perhaps I'll finally get around to doing the Sámi pirate republic campaign I've been meaning to do if NBCs are added? There was also that old challenge in Civ V where you'd start as Germany, delete your settler and then raise a barbarian army, which I could definitely see return somehow with ABCs, either through mods or as the intended playstyle for some countries.
 
OHH MY GOODDDDD I CAN'T GET MORE HYPED THAN THIS. I WANT THIS GAME RIGHT NOW JOHAN!!11! IMAGINE ANBENNAR IN THIS GAME!!

I have a a suggestion however :D I think there should be some options for extraterritorial countries to become settled :D You know, playing as jesuits and making a coup d'etat in Japan or Kongo would be awesome as hell! Ottomans also struggled a lot with alevi-bektashi orders, i.e. jalali rebellions and having "Alevi Turkish Empire" would be funny :D I would also like to see other sufi orders all around the muslim world. Imagine creating "Chishti Hindustan" That's peak alt-hist right there!

Granted, this rarely happens in history, I would still love to see extraterritorial tags becoming settled tags. Cheers!
 
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I read all the diaries, and two questions accumulated:
1) Is it possible to prevent the plague from entering the European country? For example, should Genoa be deprived of its colonies in Crimea before the epidemic, or should an embargo be imposed on all possible neighbors?
2) Will priests pay taxes in the theocratic Papal States? After all, historically the Pope collected taxes from ordinary priests.
 
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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.

Scripted Invasions (Timur, Babur etc.)? Civil Wars? So many possibilities....
 
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You're thinking of embargo evasion? I think just plain cash infusion would suffice, and if they implement embargo evasion this should massively damage the relations between the one issuing the embargo and the one helping the embargo being evaded.
I was thinking more like just sending them directly from my reservers, either instantly or monthly, or just lowering the prices just for them so they can more easily get equipment, not really talking about anything related to embargos. I was thinking something similar to HoI4's lend lease or a way to have a similar result of material support or ease of aquisition, but it's just an idea.
 
I can think of a Navy-based country quite easy, Grainne Mhaol was a 16th century Irish chieftan who is often reffered to as "The pirate queen of Ireland", although she ruled much of her land through a series of coastal forts and islands, the bulk of her power came from her navy and using thjat navy to plunder British ships. She's present in EU4 through 1 event, but it would be great to see her spawn in as a navy-based country which harrasses British shipping off the west of Ireland. She's also an incredibly important figure in Irish nationalism, with her being the main charachter in the the version of "Óró! 'Sé do bheatha 'bhaile' sung during the Irish war of independence.
 
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Will cossack states be represented as Army Based Countries?
Cossack states/ political entities used the term voisko/войско/військо (army) to describe themselves for example Земля Войска Донского (Lands of the Don army).
 
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Honestly, I think it would be a mistake to have popbased countries be unplayable on release. Its the most annoying feature in victoria 3, and I would be very disappointed as a natives enjoyer if I couldn't play them. Even if they aren't incredibly fun, im sure some people would like them and having them be playable would at least give people the option to mod atop them.

But either way, I hope the new world isn't devoid of content and mechanics!
 
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Society of Pops should really be renamed to "Stateless society"...
they dont seem to be stateless though, they have some kind of govt - they are just not settled with clearly defined borders. migrating tribes in the americas or beduin tribes in arabian peninsula is what i imagine it to be... they have their own "rules" and own hierarchy etc, but move around freely without occupying land.

I also believe they should be visible on the map (similarly to V3 decentralised countries - just the border with the name without the internal colour)
that doesnt make sense since they dont own land. in vic3 either a decentralized country or a regular country owns the land, not both at the same time. in eu5/pc a settled country can own the same location as a "society of pops" exist.
 
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So if I understand you correctly, how the system currently works, you could mod in a poor oppressed herd of polar bears and have them brutally maul all would-be Swedish colonizers en route to becoming the Polar Empire of Sir Bearington, ruled of course by Sir Bearington
 
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