Tinto Talks #3 - March 13th, 2024

[SauronGorthaur]

Sure, they could display it per religion and per culture as well, for what we know so far.
But perhaps they made it that way because there are other features which we are not aware of, as of yet.
Let’s see.
At least they said they had no performance issue

Well, like I said, I am not against the idea and the way they are handling pops seems like the best possible way to do so in my opinion. Just not really seeing the benefit of this level of granularity, but if it's not going to affect performance the way standard way of doing pops like in Stellaris or Victora does, then it's fine either way I suppose. And like you said, they can have some mechanics in mind that require it. Maybe some kind of law/estate privileges type of thing for internal management to deepen peace-time play where you can tailor each combination to your liking.

 

[halbort]

In terms of content delivery, I really prefer the mission/journal entry system used by Imperator/V3 over EU4 mission trees.

I like the missions having generic conditions for getting them.

If my country gets access to the sea, I should get access to missions about building a navy.
If I have a lot of burgher pops, I should get missions about building a trade empire.

I think mission triggers should be based on geography and pops rather than just tag.

 

[Linbot#6018]

Yeah, but out of these examples only the first one requires splitting population the way Paradox decided to do. In the Castille example the only factor at play is the religious, so there is no need for calculating Muslim Moroccans and Muslim Andalusians separately and all that is required for the game to look at is the religious split of the population.

Ditto for the French revolution, where the focused factor are (certain) social classes, so the game would just need to look at the social split here. And nothing about treating each axis separately would prevent burghers and peasants from joining forces. It would just not require treating Catholic French peasants, Catholic Burgundian peasants, Catholic French burghers, Catholic Burgundian burghers, Lutheran French peasants, Lutheran Burgundian peasants, Lutheran French burghers and Lutheran Burgundian burghers (spiraling into more and more combinations the more cultures and religions are in France at the time) separately in a situation where the class of the population should be the relevant factor for their decision-making.



And what precisely would make it so? Especially the Christian part. And even if you Christianize the country, why would that also turn everyone into Turks? Also, the homogenization of a country relies on the strength of the conversion mechanic and there's nothing about the proposed pop system that would inherently prevent homogenization. Ditto for EU4, where most countries religiously convert all provinces and by the end game also invest into cultural conversion. Even more so for the player.

If you have a province with 50% Turks, and 50% Greeks, and also 50% Christians and Muslim, the game will have no way of knowing that these are actually only two groups of people. So a significant percentage of the Turkish population will be Christian. Also, in real life, many Turks immigrated into the Balkans, into formerly entirely Christian regions, so as the Ottomans expand into Europe more Christian Turks will be created.

For another example, if I'm playing as Castile, and have a province that is partially populated by Moors and partially populated by Castilians, if I decide to expel the Muslims from that province, the game won't have any way to tell that the people being expelled are all Moors, so there will be Catholic moors in Spain and Muslim Castilians in Morocco.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

Will the economy aspect have any... graphs? I'm also curious if the buildings will have more variety than one good per province similar to games like EU4 (I have played very little and might be wrong)

Hopefully more like CK3.
Eu4 buildings were quite boring, with only one upgrade apart from forts, and a century to wait for the next level.

CK3 at least presented 8 upgrades for each (most) buildings. With smaller bonus steps

That being said, the reason why I hope there will also be some degree of inner autonomous vassal / governor construction (a la CK3) is that it started to be quite difficult to manage your buildings once your empire stretched from America to India, as Britain for example. It would be even more with 27K provinces, even if you personally own only 5000 (Mughal India or Ming China for example) .

Speaking of forts, I hope the ZoC is not back No more complicated and illogical game rules for not being able to enter X province despite bordering it because a fort in Y also borders it.
But a system of forts blocking the way through only (or the supply chain through).
And no more carpet siege of the whole enemy country… but a CK3 system of instant occupying non fortified (tribal or native) provinces. While focusing on a few border sieges of the provinces which are actually important to your wargoal.

Even late 18th century wars were not about carpet siege (except perhaps PLC partition), but about occupying only the key military fortresses or cities intended to be conquered. That being said, the era was all about sieges, so they should generate more warscore, instead of aiming for total annihilation of the enemy army (which is both non historical and completely balance-breaking, since every other weak neighbor DoWs them afterwards)

I saw they were speaking of attrition, so hopefully the AI will be coded to minimize it now ( no more 300K doom stacks sieging over 5K supply and month long battles).

 

[SauronGorthaur]

If you have a province with 50% Turks, and 50% Greeks, and also 50% Christians and Muslim, the game will have no way of knowing that these are actually only two groups of people. So a significant percentage of the Turkish population will be Christian. Also, in real life, many Turks immigrated into the Balkans, into formerly entirely Christian regions, so as the Ottomans expand into Europe more Christian Turks will be created.

Except there would be no "Christian Turks" to be created because the game would not consider "Christian Turks" to be its own separate category to begin with, showing that you're clearly not understanding what you're replying to. And given how both Turks and Muslims are the dominant group of Ottoman Empire on each respective axis, it's kinda obvious how each metric would change to reflect the population expansion of them in conquered territories, i.e. Turkish population would go up and, separately, Muslim population would also go up. While the Christian population would, obviously, go down unless you think the total population would have more than 100% religious people. Which indicates the opposite of an invasion of Christian Turks. Let alone the empire getting "overtaken" by them, like you claimed.

For another example, if I'm playing as Castile, and have a province that is partially populated by Moors and partially populated by Castilians, if I decide to expel the Muslims from that province, the game won't have any way to tell that the people being expelled are all Moors, so there will be Catholic moors in Spain and Muslim Castilians in Morocco.

Which can be easily done on case by case basis for such mechanics. You know, like EU4's expulsion of minorities works, even though it has no pops or population metrics whatsoever. Making your initial claim that what I talked about is worse than both EU4 and EU5's mechanics once again false.

 

[ValhallArchitect]

So what does that mean for Project Caesar?

Every location that can be settled on the maps can have “pops,” or as we often refer to them in Project Caesar; People. Most of the locations have people already from the start of the game. Today we talk about how people are represented in our game, and hint at a few things they will impact in the game.

Will the map represent the dominant provincial culture / religion, with stripes representing a significant minority ?

 

[ValhallArchitect]

Except there would be no "Christian Turks" to be created because the game would not consider "Christian Turks" to be its own separate category to begin with, showing that you're clearly not understanding what you're replying to. And given how both Turks and Muslims are the dominant group of Ottoman Empire on each respective axis, it's kinda obvious how each metric would change to reflect the population expansion of them in conquered territories, i.e. Turkish population would go up and, separately, Muslim population would also go up. While the Christian population would, obviously, go down unless you think the total population would have more than 100% religious people. Which indicates the opposite of an invasion of Christian Turks. Let alone the empire getting "overtaken" by them, like you claimed.


Which can be easily done on case by case basis for such mechanics. You know, like EU4's expulsion of minorities works, even though it has no pops or population metrics whatsoever. Making your initial claim that what I talked about is worse than both EU4 and EU5's mechanics once again false.

I’m pretty sure he was making a counter argument showing that storing the different cultures and religions as separate would not work.
I.e as in them just being cultural Turks and migrating into the balkans, the game would not know whether they were Muslim, or Christian.

Thats why storing them as “Muslim Turks” is necessary. So that when the migrate, the new province gets at the same time an increase in Turks and Muslim.

Eu4 did that by event. It worked for very specific iterations, but it could not be reproduced at the scale of the world.
Tinto plans a universal mechanic. That’s why they store data differently.

Also, I remember that there has been many complaints when they added the expel minority feature for colonies.the americas turning into a melting pot of different culture / religions per province (which it was IRL, but with many cohabiting minorities inside a province. Not a 100% Irish next to 100% English). So I understand why they would do it differently.

 

[SauronGorthaur]

I’m pretty sure he was making a counter argument showing that storing the different cultures and religions as separate would not work.
I.e as in them just being cultural Turks and migrating into the balkans, the game would not know whether they were Muslim, or Christian.

Thats why storing them as “Muslim Turks” is necessary. So that when the migrate, the new province gets at the same time an increase in Turks and Muslim.

Except both primary culture of a nation and primary religion of a nation are a thing in pretty much all PDX games. So the mechanic showcasing the steady increase of the dominant people in the territories they conquered would quite obviously take the question of primary culture/religion into consideration. It'd just do it separately for religion and culture in the case of this system. I know what argument they were making. It just so happens it relies on expecting the devs not designing the game around what would be the system in this hypothetical alternative and/or abandoning PDX GDS staple concepts like primary culture/religion.

 

[Linbot#6018]

Except there would be no "Christian Turks" to be created because the game would not consider "Christian Turks" to be its own separate category to begin with, showing that you're clearly not understanding what you're replying to. And given how both Turks and Muslims are the dominant group of Ottoman Empire on each respective axis, it's kinda obvious how each metric would change to reflect the population expansion of them in conquered territories, i.e. Turkish population would go up and, separately, Muslim population would also go up. While the Christian population would, obviously, go down unless you think the total population would have more than 100% religious people. Which indicates the opposite of an invasion of Christian Turks. Let alone the empire getting "overtaken" by them, like you claimed.

I'm not actually saying that there would be more Christian Turks than Muslim Turks, though the word choice of 'overtaken' might give that impression. What I mean is that even though there are basically no Christian Turks in real life, they could easily end up becoming a significant minority.

Let's run through some of the functions that I think pops will have in EU5 and why this would inevitably cause issues:

Estates: I assume that this game will have some of system where you can placate or persecute specific social classes. If I have a lot of provinces which are mixed Turkish and Christian, then the Turkish nobility estate in my country will either have to be split into Christian and Muslim Turkish aristocracies, or it will assume that some of my Turkish aristocrats are Christians, and therefore persecuting Christians will add unhappiness to them. An even worse example is if my country is a conquest regime that doesn't control any provinces that are mostly populated by its dominant culture (for example, the Mamluks), and the conquest regime is a different religion from the general population (let's say Shia vs Sunni even though the Mamluks were not, but you get the idea). The game might be able to know that my country itself is a different religion, but it will assume that all of the provinces that are 96% Sunni and 4% Shia, and 96% Egyptian and 4% Circassian, actually means that 96% of the Circassians in my country are Sunni, so they will be modelled as a different religion from my government.

Characters: If I'm playing as the Ottomans, and have a lot of provinces that are multi-ethnicity, I will probably end up getting a lot of Turkish Christian advisors, and Greek Muslim advisors as well, even though neither of them should exist.

Migration: Let's say one province is overpopulated, and its population randomly decides that some people are going to move to a different province. If that province is 60% Turkish Sunni and 40% Greek Orthodox, and they move to a province that is 100% Bulgarian Orthodox, and the number of migrants end up being 70% of the population of the target province, then the target province will become 42% Turkish, 30% Bulgarian, and 28% Greek, and it will also become 58% Orthodox and 42% Muslim. The game will probably have to assume that the largest group in the province are Turkish Orthodox, even though that would be wrong. If this province rebels and forms its own beylik or something, it could easily be ruled by a Turkish Orthodox dynasty. Even though at no point during this process did any Turks convert to Christianity.

Which can be easily done on case by case basis for such mechanics. You know, like EU4's expulsion of minorities works, even though it has no pops or population metrics whatsoever. Making your initial claim that what I talked about is worse than both EU4 and EU5's mechanics once again false.

What does that mean exactly? Since culture and religion are theoretically completely decoupled, the game wouldn't have any way of knowing how much overlap the categories actually have. I assume that what you mean is that you think the game will know that you are deporting "muslim people who are not of dominant culture". But what percentage of the moorish people in Granada actually fall into both categories? The answer is 100%, but the game can't actually know that. So the only assumption that can be made is that if a province is 20% moorish and 20% muslim, then 4% of the population are muslim moors. Therefore after the expulsion the province's ethnic proportions will not have changed much, the population will be about 83% castilians and about 17% moors. And the religious numbers will not change much either because the game has to assume that most of the muslims are castilian and don't get deported.

As far as I know there is not really a good way to solve this. You could code the game to figure out if the percentages line up and associate them based on that, but this isn't a very good solution. If I have a province that is 40% Persian Shia, 10% Persian Sunni, 30% Turkomen Sunni, and 20% Arab Shia, in your model this would just be a province with 50% Persians, 30% Turkomans, and 20% Arabs, and also 60% Shia and 40% Sunni. If I decide to expel the Sunni people the game has no reasonable way of knowing how that corresponds to the ethnic groups. This will only get worse over time as more random migrations happen.

 

[trooper828]

Some of my friends have voiced some opinions I'm gonna share

1.) Colonization should be more difficult, the systems within Victoria 2 and to a lesser extent Victoria 3 provide blockers in the form of technological development toward colonizing certain areas and these should be integrated into this title in a similar capacity to more historically represent the difficulties europeans/whoever is colonizing these areas.

2.)Sea lanes should be represented by movement speed bonuses and supply leniency based on proximity to coast, rather than static provinces that funnel movement. The current setup would allow a fleet to "blockade" a sea lane.

3.) The current desire for the integration of the pop system is a good thing! I like this idea, I/we just hope that areas that are commonly neglected do not get overlooked and the pop system isn't utilized as a way to bypass criticism regarding these areas receiving little to no content.

4.) Rework or abandon the EU4 mission system so AI is not railroaded into historical paths via mechanics that are not associated with any tangible interests in the map or resources. Based on the idea of this being less of a boardgame and more of a simulation, this does give the feeling that mana will not make a return in this title (again, all assuming this is eu5) then this furthers the idea that missions may not be beneficial towards the experience. Their usage in EU4 progressively became more and more just like a "cheap way to make dlc/content" without actually adding in any meat. The system of focus trees in HoI4 or the Imperator mission tree system may be a better thing to look at when it comes to adding in progression trees for players to follow.

 

[JP idk]

What is the historical connection between literacy and technology? It seems to me that literacy arises from bureaucratic necessity, with technology as just a bonus. I would enjoy the literacy mechanics do not become another word for "science number".

 

[CthulhuTactical]

Performance should be the single most important issue and whatever is coded should be always in mind with this principle. If you have juniors churning out some of the features, really and i mean really make the senior to take its time to refactor the code if necessary. But in principle, the core of architecture have to be good, because everything else flows from it, including juniors work. No more stellaris, eu4 or vic3 alike lag experience in late game. There should be a way to deal/cull the complexity of acrued data as game progresses so late game wont inevitably turn into slogfest.

 

[Stevo2940]

Not sure if it has already been mentioned but I am hopping please that if their is a post 1461 start date that you guys will include Mani. As you know when Constantinople and Morea fell many officials fled to the Toparchy of Maina/Deme of Maina. The Mani penisula never fell to the Ottoman Turks and many officials fled to Mani and sort of operated a government in exile. While the Ottomans sometimes managed to take some border cantons they would always be pushed out of Mani. The Ottomans were never able to estbalish a pernament presence in Mani so they set up a Turko Albanian state near the border to protect Ottoman Laconia from Maniat raids.
Overall Mani was a free state divided in cantons rules by Achons and Kapatanioi who came toegther in the council of Kapatanioi and their was even a senate.

"The truth is that the Republic of Mani was infact an independent and sovereign state, fulfilling all modern definitions of statehood. It had it's own ruling government, the Laconian/Maniote Senate of Vitylon (Oitylo), which was responsible for it's external and internal policies, in a form of federal landed aristocratic republic. Moreover, Mani had it's own standing army (around 7-10 thousand regulars and far more irregulars), it's own population (around 40-50 thousand people), it's own citizenship (which it would grant to Greek refugees), it's own navy (that would often plunder the Ionian and Southern Aegean Sea, exploiting Mani's strategic position on the trade line from Western and Central Mediterranean to Istanbul and the Black Sea), and it's own sovereign territory (about 2000 km2) and border with the Ottoman Empire (which occationally fluctuated). Moreover, it was internationally recognized by other nations, like the Ottoman Empire, their constant enemy, and fellow Christian allies (and often adversaries), from the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom/Empire of France, the Russian Empire, and the Italian States, like the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, the Republic of Genoa, the Republic of Pisa, the Republic of Florence, the Papal States, the Dutchy of Montferrate, and most importantly, the Republic of Venice."

Here are some English sources. The matterial on this matter is mostly in Greek, French and Italian, barely in English: • Morritt, John Bacon Sawrey “The Letters of John B. S. Morritt of Rokeby; Descriptive of Journeys in Europe and Asia Minor in the Years 1794-1796”, edited by G. E. Marindin, Published by John Murray, 1914, London, Albemarle Street • Leake, Martin William. “Travels in the Morea”. Volume 1, Published by John Murray Albemarle Street. 1840. London. • Gell, William. “Narrative of a Journey in the Morea”. Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, And Brown. 1823. London. • Gundogdu, Birol. “Ottoman Constructions of the Morea Rebellion, 1770s: A Comprehensive Study of Ottoman Attitudes to the Greek Uprising”. University of Toronto. 2012. Toronto. • Seifried, Rebecca M. “The Shifting Tides of Empires: Using GIS to Contextualize Population Change Within the Landscape of Seventeenth to Nineteenth-Century Mani, Greece”. Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014 • Randolph, Bernard. “The present state of the Morea, called anciently Peloponnesus: together with a description of the city of Athens, islands of Zant, Strafades, and Serigo”. Printed, sold by Will. Notts, Tho. Basset, and Thomas Bennet. 1689. London. • Galt, John. “Voyages and Travels in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811: Containing Statistical, Commercial, and Miscellaneous Observations on Gibralter, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Serigo, and Turkey”. Published by T. Cadell and W. Davies, Strand. 1812. London.

 

[honkajoki]

What is the historical connection between literacy and technology? It seems to me that literacy arises from bureaucratic necessity, with technology as just a bonus. I would enjoy the literacy mechanics do not become another word for "science number".

If technology is tied to literacy, I think it would be about the number of literate elite. Other things being equal, 1000 dedicated scientists can invent more things than 100 scientists, it does not matter whether there are 100k or 10M illiterate peasants in the country. Then again, if there are no dedicated scientists but the same elite is also responsible for administering the country, an elite of 1000 ruling over 100k would have more time left for science than an elite of 100 ruling over 10M.

But the number of literate elite available to do science is not the only thing that matters, inventions often rise from necessity so they'd invent more when there's incentive to do so. And no hindrances to inventing, eg. religious doctrine saying that is bad to research some things.

Then again, I don't know how much of technology should be tied to literacy. An illiterate peasant is unlikely to invent theoretical physics, but he may well invent a better plow or a better spear.

 

[Diamss]

The pops system looks pretty good, just a bit worried about the start date.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

It was a dead end, as in it was a complete waste of time to address the very loud crowds. Mana was never the issue with imperator. The issue was, and still is, that it is a boring game, with or without mana. Removing it was a complete waste of developer resources. Its removal was caused by the outcry.

That's the whole point. Anyone able to see past the "hurr durr mana" crowds would have seen that mana was never the problem. Removing mana got us nowhere, i.e. it was a dead end. Anyone who still thinks Imperator's failure was caused by Johan's insistence on releasing the game with mana and single consuls deserves another DOA game. If project Caesar launches with an AI as passive as Imperator, as bad a trade system, terrible UI and the majority of tags having no interesting game mechanics, it will be a very bad game, just like Imperator.

You're only focussing on the end result. There's a lynchpin you're not even addressing:

Starting point: I:R on release got a bad market response.
Hypothetical scenario: post-release dev work ignored the mana outcry and somehow managed to do exactly what was needed to make the game appealing.
Assertion: "humans are very superficial and prone to pre-judgement. It doesn't matter if the game became good if too few people believe that story. To the mana outcry market segment, the very presence of mana would have overridden any other detail in deciding whether to give a second chance". Do you agree or not?

If you disagree, you're saying the mana outcry market segment would have been swayed to convert, accepting mana as a core feature.

If you agree, you're saying that market segment is irrelevant (i.e. small in number and wouldn't have persuaded others to take their view) and there would have been other players who'd flock to the game, making it a commercial success.

 

[Ataleh]

Just in case it wasn't mentioned here before: "Greek" culture should be renamed to "Roman" or "Romaioi". Anthony Kaldellis' books, especially "Romanland" and "Byzantium Unbound" go in depth on the topic on Medieval Roman identity and what kind of damage the denial of that identity by Western Europeans did (to be replaced with "Greek"), as well as that Muslim nations never denied it. Having the proper name of the culture by default would make a huge stride towards normalizing Roman identity in general public. You could switch that culture to Greek if Rhomania (name suggested by Kaldellis for Byzantium) falls, giving fields for emergence of Greek national movements as we know them from history.

Renaming "Byzantium" (I pressume that's what the name will be) to Rhomania (or Romania, though that might be confusing) or even Roman Empire would be excellent as well, but maybe too controversial.

 

[viola]

Just in case it wasn't mentioned here before: "Greek" culture should be renamed to "Roman" or "Romaioi". Anthony Kaldellis' books, especially "Romanland" and "Byzantium Unbound" go in depth on the topic on Medieval Roman identity and what kind of damage the denial of that identity by Western Europeans did (to be replaced with "Greek"), as well as that Muslim nations never denied it. Having the proper name of the culture by default would make a huge stride towards normalizing Roman identity in general public. You could switch that culture to Greek if Rhomania (name suggested by Kaldellis for Byzantium) falls, giving fields for emergence of Greek national movements as we know them from history.

Renaming "Byzantium" (I pressume that's what the name will be) to Rhomania (or Romania, though that might be confusing) or even Roman Empire would be excellent as well, but maybe too controversial.

Let's also not forget to rename China "Middle Kingdom", to better represent how they assumed to be the center of the world and civilization, Russia to "Third Rome", as they considered themselves legitimate heirs to the Roman Empire too, the Holy Roman Empire as "Roman Empire" as they also considered themselves the legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire since the throne became vacant in 797 with Irene's illegitimate ascension (the Pope was very clear about women not being able to be Roman emperors), and of course let's rename the Ottomans to "Roman Empire" as well since, you know, from their point of view they legitimately inherited the Roman throne with their conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Byzantine fanboys, man.

 

[Ataleh]

Let's also not forget to rename China "Middle Kingdom", to better represent how they assumed to be the center of the world and civilization, Russia to "Third Rome", as they considered themselves legitimate heirs to the Roman Empire too, the Holy Roman Empire as "Roman Empire" as they also considered themselves the legitimate continuation of the Roman Empire since the throne became vacant in 797 with Irene's illegitimate ascension (the Pope was very clear about women not being able to be Roman emperors), and of course let's rename the Ottomans to "Roman Empire" as well since, you know, from their point of view they legitimately inherited the Roman throne with their conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Byzantine fanboys, man.

There are serious conversations going on right now if the field of "Byzantine Studies" should be renamed, and if so, to what. This is a larger issue that is being raised in the academia, not just me fanboying. And I think this should be taken seriously. Personally, I will probably play with an equivalent to MEIOU and Taxes, some kind of hyperhistorical mod, where these names will be used by default anyway.

 

[Hermerico]

I think especially the 1700s are a very interesting time that deserve to be represented well in a Paradox game.

I agree they deserve being represented in a Paradox game. But not necessarily in this game.