Tinto Talks #35 - 30th of October

[Johan]

Hello everyone and welcome to another Tinto Talks, as it's a Happy Wednesday, the day of the week where we spill information about our super-mega-fantastically-secret game with the code name of Project Caesar.

Today we’ll talk about three relatively related topics, relating to Country Ranks, Great Powers and Hegemonies.

Country Ranks
There are four ranks that countries can have in Project Caesar. It is more similar to EU4 than Imperator in that changing country ranks is something you actively do on your own. Besides having various rules on what a country can do, they also give some benefits, and rather importantly to the player experience, they impact what the countries are called.

The code supports multiple types of ranks at the same level, so modders could in theory add dozens of variants of a duchy rank if they so desire.

The default rank is the County Rank, which all countries default to, unless set up to be something else.

The first rank above that is the Duchy Rank, where you can now guarantee other countries, and a little bit higher diplomatic capacity and power projection. Countries that start on this level include the Duchy of Brittany or the Duchy of Lithuania. To be able to upgrade from a county to a duchy, you can not be in any International Organizations that disallow rank changes, but you also need at least 100,000 pops of your primary culture.

The next rank above that is the Kingdom Rank, which requires 1 million pops of your primary culture and gives a larger diplomatic range and other abilities. This includes countries like the Kingdom of Sweden and the Sultanate of Delhi

The final rank, the Empire Rank, which is the hardest to promote to, allows for a wider variety of diplomatic actions, and other abilities. At the start of the game there is only one Empire in Europe though, the Eastern Roman one. A country must become a Great Power before they are able to attain this rank, and there are special restrictions on Catholic countries from pretending to be emperors without the Pope’s permission.

Yeah, Livonian Order with about 380 Prussians has a bit of a challenge here..

Great Powers
A great power is a country that through advances, population, land area, development, and other factors has risen to be one of the most powerful countries in the world, and as such gains the ability to influence other countries simply by throwing its weight around.

The countries with the highest great power score become great powers. Subjects and countries fighting for their independence may not become Great Powers.

The countries you’d perhaps expect to be Great Powers in 1337 right?


Currently there are always eight different countries that are the Great Powers, but this is not a design we are 100% satisfied with. We have been talking about making the amount variable per age, or by using a threshold. We’ve also talked about mechanics for regional powers, but all designs so far have some severe drawbacks, for example how we would define the geographical area to make it feel good.

There are some advantages to being a Great Power after all…


Hegemony
This is another feature that was introduced in the ‘Emperor’ DLC for EU4, but here will be a part of the base game. In that game this was a late game mechanic that would pit the most dominant countries against each other. This created a mechanic that most people never saw, and if they saw it in single-player, it was merely a tool to make the player even more powerful when he had already won the game.

In this game, however, the Hegemony mechanics unlock through an advance in the Age of Discovery.

We currently have three types of hegemony, Military, Navy and Economic, in the game, similar to EU4, and you can only be one type of Hegemony at the same time. We could be open to adding maybe a Cultural Hegemony as well, as the next few weeks Tinto Talks will show things about Culture-related systems.

To proclaim a Hegemony you need to be a Great Power, and then have a bigger army, navy or economy than all other great powers. After you proclaim it, you get a bonus where most of it scales with how long you have held the hegemony.

In a game where a casus belli is not always easy to get, the fact that you can always create a Casus Belli on any hegemon, if you are not one yourself, can be beneficial.

If you ever lose a war as a hegemon, you will lose your hegemony.

And remember, if you lose your hegemony, your prestige and diplomatic reputation will suffer.

This one is kind of fun to have..

Stay tuned, as next week, we will do the first development diary about our new cultural mechanics in Project Caesar.

 

[Johan]

The EU4 distribution, after all, was designed after Diplomacy and Naval matters being fed from the same Diplo-points mana well.​

The Diplomatic one is harder to quantify.. How do you become the hegemon in Diplomacy?

 

[Johan]

Are historical kingdoms with small populations like the kingdom of Navarre kingdom rank? They definetively didn't have a population of 1 million.

yes.

 

[Johan]

Didn't expect JAPAN of all countries to be a great power at this time. Sure they defeated the Mongols but not the first country(or.. any number of consequent countries) to come to my mind when I think of '1330s Superpowers'

They have a high population and is kind of united at that point.

 

[Johan]

So Empire Rank is limited to 10 nations max?

not many at the start, but there will be a few more during gameplay.

 

[Johan]

Very interesting. I always thought that EU4's Great Power system was far too binary, either you're a GP (and can do all the GP things) or you aren't, regardless if you're the 8th or the 1st. Is this still the case in Project Caesar?

In terms of the new country ranks, they seem to be well-structured, although I'm not sure what the idea is behind not automatically promoting to a higher tier. I think that worked in Imperator: maybe automatic upgrades for everything except Empire rank?

We talked about scaling the GP bonus depending on your rank, it might be something we'll do.

 

[Johan]

@Johan Could you please shed some light on how development is calculated? We had some ideas of our own, but we could be quite a bit of the mark.

if region x add A
if city add B
if terrain X add C
etc.

 

[Johan]

1. Are there any pop requirements to become an empire or simply have 1 million primary culture subjects and be a great power?

2. What does power projection do? In EU4 it just gave some buffs if I remember correctly, is it the same for PC? It would be nice if it affected AI behaviour, making them more likely to accept deals, demands and alliances etc with the player

1) 5 million of primary culture.
2) it impacts if you can colonize those of lower projection, and if you can build buildings in their territory etc.

 

[Johan]

I noted that you only stated that modders can add more ranks at each level, but can we add more than four total levels?

yes

 

[Johan]

As we have hegemony, will there be something like European balance of power? To not allow hegemons control everything

The idea is that a Hegemon should be something other countries works against.

 

[Johan]

Also I hope you go with a less rigid system, I think it's best that, if there's like 10 powers of roughly equal power they can be all Great Powers, while on the inverse if you only really have 4 powers that are "great" and then a massive gap between the other 8 then it should just be 4 GP's.

If we had a threshold over who could be a great power or not, that would work...

 

[Johan]

Let´s say Romania has 10% romanian population and 90% hungarian. Let´s also say it has 1 milion population. When the kingdom will be created, will it also change the name from Romania to Kingdom of Hungary?

You would not be able to form a Kingdom if you don't have 1M of your primary culture.

 

[Johan]

I can't say I'm a fan of conflating "rank" and literal noble ranks like that. Can I as a modder rename them to be something else? I can spin up my own "noble title" thing if I wanted; having it be tied to state size is just weird.

You can script whatever rules you want at each rank.

This is the logic for allowing to upgrade to a Kingdom rank.

    allow = {

        culture_population_in_country = {
            culture = root.culture
            value > 1000
        }
        
        is_subject = no
        modifier:block_from_change_to_kingdom_rank = no
    }

 

[Johan]

Is Japan an empire at game start?

yes

 

[Johan]

If i am a hegemon, and my ally calls me into a war, will i loose my hegemon if my ally lose the war?

How is great power score calculated? Will advancements and institutions play a role in the score? Will score from development (or population) be scaled by control?

yes you will lose it.

Here are the factors for the Emperor of the HRE at the start of the game.

 

[Johan]

Is the Holy Roman Roman Empire not considered a singular great power? Does the emperor get any special points to boost him in the great power rankings?

yeah, they get a +250 bonus for being emperor, but Upper Bavaria in 1337 is a tiny country on its own.

 

[Johan]

Thanks for a great TT!

A couple of questions on the topic and older topics:

1. Can you declare war on hypothetical early hegemon Yuan as a European nation if you have not discovered China?
2. Can a nation lose its Government rank?
3. What about using characters as diplomats instead of abstracted '0.1 diplomats'?
4. We should be able to liberate the slaves of all accepted cultures, not only primary culture. As France we should be able to bring home Languedocien and Provancale guys, not only those from around Paris
5. What about adding the request 'Sell province' to the peace deal to simulate the bilateral peace deals when you want to buy the land? This way it will be formally one-sided peace deal and easier for UI. The price will be defined by some unified algorithm.

1 . no
2 . no
3. no
4. yes
5. that would still be the main problem of performance and ai

 

[Johan]

I think this is because in certain specific situations you shouldn't be able to increase your rank, such as trying to become a kingdom in the HRE. So if it's automatic, it'll leave some players wondering why their rank isn't going up when it normally would at that point.

Its one of the reasons yes.

 

[Johan]

Can a country lose rank? If yes how?

not through normal mechanic.

It was still called the Byzantine EMPIRE, even when it was reduced to basically a city-state.

 

[Johan]

possible amount of artist +1
Do I understand correctly that the artists will be in the game?

You will all know more during November, but you win the prize of being first one to notice it