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Tinto Talks #28 - 4th of September 2024

Welcome everyone to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we talk about the top secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will delve into the most hated of all seasons, Winter. Luckily for us, we don’t have to live with it for the entire year…


Climate and Winter
So what impacts whether a location has winter or not? Well, primarily it depends on the climate, but also on the time of the year and the level of winter currently nearby. Of course, when there is winter it is different for the northern and southern hemispheres. Every day each location does its calculations for when it should be changing its winter level.

There are three levels of winter. Technically it is four, but “no winter” is not really winter is it. And during the course of a season, a location could experience all types of winter. We have mild, normal and severe winters.

What is common for all levels of winter is that they affect attrition for your armies, so winters will always kill off some of your soldiers.

Pops living in climates that regularly experience winters have a higher demand for fur.

Food in Winter
Food production is severely reduced when winter comes, while pops still eat normally. A mild winter is a reduction of 25%, while severe winters basically reduce food production to 0. So unless there is a lot of food stored in the province, a severe winter may cause starvation in your locations.

Constructions
One other drawback of winter is that normal and severe winters will impact constructions, and with impact, we are talking about stalling them completely. This affects everything from constructing a building to building a ship. It makes the gameplay experience in a country like Sweden or Norway a bit more difficult, as you have to plan around the fact that you lose several months of the year at times.

stalled.png

Placeholder icons for locking, but useful tooltips..


Freezing Seas
Narrows, Inland Seas and Lakes have the possibility of freezing over during winter. This can happen when a seazone has had severe winter for over a week, and will then last until winter is no longer severe in that location.

A frozen seazone can be traversed by armies and this allows greater military control over the lands it reaches; however, it will cause navies to get stuck until it thaws. Be careful when the weather changes, it can thaw with catastrophic consequences if an army is on the ice. Navies can also not enter any seazone that has frozen over.

frozen_over.png

When Storebælt and Lillebælt freezes, you don’t need navies to reach København…


Mountains
You already know that warfare during winter is a bit more risky, but Project Caesar adds another element to it. Any location with the topography of “Mountain” will be blocked for army movement during normal and severe winters. This can help create natural borders, and some interesting strategic gameplay.


winter_level.png


Tooltips are always helpful..

Sadly there will not be a Tinto Talks next week as we have a holiday that day, but after that we will be back and talk more about roads, development, prosperity and more..
 
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Does army attrition in winter differ if soldiers are on the move or in a siege compared to them just being in the barracks?

partially, but its still not good.
 
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This was my exact question as well..

Different cultures/countries were better suited for environments.

Would be interesting to have that mechanic not be abstracted away into "supplies"... rather, the ability to equip armies with certain aspects of supplies, i.e; mountaineering equipment, winter equipment, arctic equipment, desert equipment, etc.

Obviously if a country isn't prepared to move into northern Russia or Finland in the winter, could be very bad, especially if the said empire hasn't really had the need to deal with cold or harsh climates.
Yeah. Not just winter but also in desert, where for example Bedouins are more suited to that environment and thus taking less attrition and I guess supply hit.
 
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If a coastal city housing a navy is sieged down and captured while it's seazone is frozen, does that destroy the Navy?
Will there be infrastructure projects for nations of certain cultures for ex. to be able to build albeit at a decreased cost during winter?
Does fighting on frozen sea tiles incur any terrain penalties like mountains, hills or forests did in Eu4?
 
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Very cool stuff! Really makes me wish rivers were a thing though. Armies marching over the Yellow River when it froze over was pretty common, and made that barrier less defensive than it might otherwise have been.
 
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Do rain also calculated locationwise? Maybe it can increase food production, but decrease construction speed etc, and causing soil to be similar to wetland for few days
Also will winter and rain increase demand for military goods as cannons may break up due to long rains as happened to Ottomans in first Vienna siege
 
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Nice DD as always! I really like all stuff I've seen but I have some suggestions.

Wouldn't it make more sense for seatiles and mountains to not freeze immediately but have a "freeze level" or something?
Like for the first few days or weeks it would only make tresspassing slower and higher the attrition from day to day until it reaches a critical frozen over level. The melting process could be the same reversed. In this system, it is also strange that things need a week to freeze but they unfreeze in one tick once normal winter is gone.

Maybe in a later Winter dlc?
 
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Also, does a severe winter in any way disrupt trade? If a seazone is frozen and for example Baltic Sea is cut off does it prevent marine trade flow? What about ground trade, is it longer to transport stuff?
 
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Does sea zones being able to freeze over mean that the code that would allow dynamic map changes has succeeded, or is this a fully separate thing?

seperate thing
 
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This sound absoltely amazing. How's AI handling it so far? Not being able to move through places sometimes. Getting its armies swallowed by the cracking ice?

I've not noticed any armies killed by melting ice yet, so its really really rare.
 
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Climate has a maximum winter level

For those interested in how that compares to IRL modern climate data:
It should match up relatively well, except perhaps for some relatively small parts of Southwestern Central Asia and some parts of North America.

Rough estimations of Tinto's ClimatesMin temperature in coldest month
1725456009613.png
Coldest__Month_Temp_Gall.png
Mean annual temperatureTemperature seasonality (Dark blue = nearly no change, yellow = very high temperature difference between summer and winter)
Mean_Annual_Temp.png
Temperature_Seasonality.png
 
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But the most important question is - will we be able to see Autumn on the map?
No seriously, it has been gone since HoI4 and it looked very pretty.

with different colours etc?

I would like it yes.
 
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Could we get a reverse of this but for "hotter" climates?: Some North African and Arabian rivers and lakes drying up during summer removing whatever bonus to food production such body of water would have given and of course adding a monsoon season for tropical climates that could have potentially destructive consecuences for your infrastructure.
 
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Does the game have RNGd regional/continental winters or is it calculated randomly per province? In the same vein, does the game have scripted/historic winters like in 1657-1658?

winters "spread".

but there are no scripted special winters
 
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I just can't wait to play Russia or colonial Norway and let every enemy die during winter on my borders. Also I absolutely love the implication of demand on fur.
 
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If there is an enemy navy in a frozen sea and i go there with my troops can i capture their ships? Something like the French Cavalry capturing a dutch fleet during the revolutionary wars