• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Talks #35 - 30th of October

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.

become_kingdom.png

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.

1730281525724.png

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.

gp_benefit.png

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.

hegemon.png

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.
 
  • 186Like
  • 92
  • 46Love
  • 17
  • 5
Reactions:
Also, like... why does a hegemon give a damn about all the other countries in the world? This mechanic seems catered to MP games where the whole world is carved up between, like, 4 empires.

Why should proclaiming myself hegemon in Europe require me to give a damn about China?
 
  • 21Like
  • 1
Reactions:
1. Proposal for how to recognize regional powers.
Compare the power of origin country to that of all countries within diplo range. But his version of diplo range only originating from cores.

2. I would also rather see great power status be dynamic comparing score of the top countries, needing to have x% of the top rank country or y times the average of all countries.

3. Not sold on hegemonies, achieving such a status should perhaps be recognized by the game but I don't really want it to give any bonusses other than perhaps prestige and power projection. And for it to be something that just happens to you, not something you choose to be. With being a hegemon more an overarching concept, like a great power of great power than being specifically tied to one aspect of the game.
 
  • 13Like
Reactions:
  • 74Like
  • 23Love
  • 4
Reactions:
I found this "strange", for me :"a duchy, has a defin at least weight and size, for at least be comted as a duchy".



When i see some very small "countries / state / entities" on some Tinto Maps, like for exemple the very small states in the HRE, in my mind, they are not "Duchy", some of those countries are even most of the time, smaller than a province and are some times even just 1 or 2 locations.

So i was thinking :



-their is no plan for those really "small countries / very underdeveloped one's"? a "barrony ranked" or something ? or are they all gonna be Duchy at the start ?

( iwas thinking of something like "the unrecognized" status, on those various degris in Victoria 3)
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
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.
 
  • 84Like
  • 11
Reactions:
How does the population of your vassals count for Great Power rank and for country rank?

Edit: and how does the Holy Roman Emperor count into the Great Power rank? Do they only get their own power as a country?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
GP should be regional, at least divided according to continents

Shouldn't the attire of the Mamluks be in Muslim style? We cannot give them Mongolian style clothing just because their rulers come from Inner Asia
 
  • 9Like
Reactions:
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.
It sounds like you get to choose which type of Hegemon you want to be.

Can you switch type later? If so, is there a major cost?
 
They have a high population and is kind of united at that point.
well i guess that makes sense
but if Japan tried to exert influence of nearby nations(say, Goryeo) like the Golden horde exerted influence on Muscovy, for example, the response would probably be something along the lines of 'lmao piss off'
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
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...
 
  • 94Like
  • 4
  • 3
Reactions:
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.
 
  • 139
  • 30Like
  • 13
  • 4
  • 3Haha
  • 2Love
Reactions:
Meh, I wasn't in love with these mechanics in eu4 and I'm not in love with them as presented in project ceaser.
 
  • 21
  • 4Like
Reactions:
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.
Code:
    allow = {

        culture_population_in_country = {
            culture = root.culture
            value > 1000
        }
        
        is_subject = no
        modifier:block_from_change_to_kingdom_rank = no
    }
 
  • 48Like
  • 13
  • 3Love
  • 1
Reactions:
I hope, unlike in eu4, signing a white peace doesn't count as a loss... Especially against some allies
 
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
1) 5 million of primary culture.
I'm not a fan of the primary culture requirement. The Mongol "Empire" would likely be stuck at the kingdom rank despite owning half of Eurasia with these restrictions. Duchy, even.

I really don't think cultural cohesion and country "rank" have any connection.
 
  • 41
  • 17Like
  • 1
Reactions:
  • 43Like
  • 9
  • 2Love
Reactions: