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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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I can’t wait to see the Modern-Day mods making use of these systems, considering most modern-day corporations are powerful enough in their own right to either be ABCs (Blackrock, other PMCs) or BBCs (imagine playing as McDonald’s, fighting a shadow war against Nestle and Disney, alongside your allies Nintendo and Google, for control of the world)
 
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1) Can extraterritorial countries overlap?

2) Can societies of pops declare war against other societies of pops they share a location with?

3) Would be awesome if the VOC could go from a naval nation to a trade company.

4) Can a society of pops transition into steppe nomads?

5) Can extraterritorial countries take over locations and release them as vassals? Or is it purely diplomatic?

6) Will AI society of pops declare war or raise troops against you if you move through their nation?

7) Do banking nations own fleets? If not are there mercenary fleets they can hire?


8) Can a society of pops exist (in their entirety) within a settled country? Or do they need at least occupy some land outside of a settled nation? Would be neat if occupied cultures could be interacted with.

9) Can settled nations demote to a society of pops?

10) Do society of pops need their diaspora to be connected to be part of their realm?

11) Can societies of pops be in a confederation with each other? If so, if the "leader" of that federation settles, will the other societies join? Or would the new settled nation need to start relations a new and convince them?

12) If the Wokou was a naval nation, it would probably require the ability to recruit from pops. Or would they just get their booty from blockading? Can naval nations even interact/touch land nations otherwise?

13) Can ABCs walk into a nation and raid it without declaring war (like in CK3)?
 
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I’m beyond excited for this system! I’ve tried to figure out the paradigmatic difference between these 4 pop types, and I have some questions. As far as I can see, the root difference is what the tag needs to persist in the game. However, they also appear to have differing permissions in other areas.

Country TypeOwn LandOwn buildingsOwn PopsHave Army
Settled CountryMUSTYesYesYes
Army Based C.YesYes?Yes (?)MUST
ExtraterritorialNOMUSTSomeProbably???
Society of PopsNONOMUSTYes

From what I can tell, all types can have subjects of any type, except perhaps Society of Pops.

Here are my questions:

Can an Army Based Country with no land own buildings? Does it have pops? For example, a steppe horde could lose all land but should retain nomadic population attached to its army.

Can Extraterritorials have Armies? Surely Daimyo can. Maybe some can, but not all?

Can extraterritorial tags have pops other than the direct employees of their buildings?

If a Banking Country or Holy Order acquires land, which is impossible for Extraterritorial countries, do they become Settled Countries? Then, if they lose their territory, are they defeated or can they revert to an Extraterritorial tag? If so, why are they not like Army Based Countries, such that they may own land but don’t need to? And likewise, if their banks/churches fail, their landed state collapses.

I know that Society of Pops are still WIP, looking forward to seeing more about them! It makes sense that these can’t own land, since it’s part of their migratory definition. However, the same problem of Extraterritorial countries applies. What happens to a SoP which acquires land, then loses it? Does it vanish, or revert to a SoP? In which case, why isn’t it the case that a SoP may own land, but usually don’t?

From the dev diary, landless tags can become Settled countries by acquiring land, and there is otherwise no regular system to switch between types. This makes sense, if the key difference is what is required for the tag to persist. One case where a SoP may become an ABC would be that of a nomadic conqueror. Consider the rise of Chinggis Khaan, for example, who could be seen as uniting a Society of Pops and establishing an Army Based Country, in this system. Of course, Society of Pops can raise armies and even pressgang other pops—but they can’t acquire land. (Perhaps a Society of Pops that takes land in a peace deal becomes an ABC first before settling, I think that would work well when SoPs become playable.)

In any event, I can’t wait to play with this system myself, and I’m so glad to see it part of Project Caesar!
 
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Society of Pops should really be renamed to "Stateless society"...

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)

Question - would we be able to mod in more country types?

Opinion - maybe uses "state" instead of "country"?
Agreed. The word 'Country' has its origin in land, as the word 'Nation' has its origin in people. 'State' is probably the correct generic term. It brings to mind Governments in Exile; while outside the scope of PC, these would be modeled in this state as Extraterritorial, owning buildings which service related Pops in various countries.
 
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Do ABCs still exert territorial control? Presumably the Hordes have a vested interest in controlling good pastoral lands, even if their direct support from those lands is abstracted?
 
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What about judea? Will it be a buolding based country? It should realistically be a pop based country but it wouldn't work because the mechanics are intended for backwards tribals
When you first talked about landless countries judea was my first thought, it was the most influential landless country at the time and even after and it shaped world history
 
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This all sounds great. There are so many interesting possible game runs.

I wonder if the following entities are also playable with this system:
- Ghazi/Akinci Turcoman Tribes at the Byzantine frontier
- Vassals under centralized states that doesn't "own" locations
- Mercenaries/ Condottieri
- Conquistadors with armies but no land
- Pirate republics with just safe haven buildings
 
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Not easy when they overlap with each other and themselves. You could have dozens in the same location
Couldn't you display the name of the Society of Pops (same as for a settled country), but just don't display the borders? Then you'd get a similar effect as old maps where various non-settled societies are just labelled in a general area.
 
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1. So trading companies, if I'm not mistaken, won't own the locations but they should own the land. Maybe there's the way to transfer subject from metropoly to the companies?
2. Are the societies used only for pre-state entities? Can modders potentially make some kind of sects with this type of state?
 
I was thinking about this TT.
This is how nomadic Natives will be modeled. Great ! I love it.

I get that settled countries might want to ally Society of POPs tribes. Like, if you are colonizing North America, and want to ally local natives. That's great.

But what's in it for the Natives? In an Attikamekw-French alliance, I get that the French get to peacefully colonize the St. Lawrence valley, and have trading partners, and allies in times of war. But what about the Attikamekw? They get a wartime ally. OK. But they also get less and less land as France colonize land bordering the St. Lawrence valley. I guess my question would be, what are the pros of managing a peaceful relationship with nearby settled countries for Society of POPs "countries"?
 
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ABC looks extremely valuable for Cossacks from 1400s (First mention in 1489) up until Khmelnytskyi rebelion in 1648

But still, what would happen with steppe colonisation? There were literal provinces with no pops, just lands owned by hordes where they grazed their cattle, for centuries. Seems you want to make it usual provinces but poor or else?
 
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Does this mean Goverment in Exile mechanics will be possible? For example , when the settled country of the Mughals headed by Humayun is defeated in Battle by Sher Shah Suri, they construct a goverment in exile building in Persia so they can return from there when the Suri dynasty collapses?
 
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I was thinking about this TT.
This is how nomadic Natives will be modeled. Great ! I love it.

I get that settled countries might want to ally Society of POPs tribes. Like, if you are colonizing North America, and want to ally local natives. That's great.

But what's in it for the Natives? In an Attikamekw-French alliance, I get that the French get to peacefully colonize the St. Lawrence valley, and have trading partners, and allies in times of war. But what about the Attikamekw? They get a wartime ally. OK. But they also get less and less land as France colonize land bordering the St. Lawrence valley. I guess my question would be, what are the pros of managing a peaceful relationship with nearby settled countries for Society of POPs "countries"?
There should definitely be some economic/trading bonuses - access to European goods was a major reason indigenous nations allowed Europeans to settle on their lands in the first place. In addition to a military ally, access to European weaponry (especially guns and horses) could also provide a boost of some kind, though I'm unsure what form it could take.
 
Not easy when they overlap with each other and themselves. You could have dozens in the same location
Wouldn't it make sense for the society based country whose pops are the majority in a location to be shown there?. It's not perfect, but I would definitely prefer doing this over having them look empty in the main mapmode. I think this would be fine since there seems to be another mapmode you can switch to see their real extents, so the main mapmode is a slightly imprecise indicator.
 
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