Tinto Talks #38 - 20th of November 2024

[Johan]

Hello and Welcome to another Tinto Talks. The day of the week where we spill information about our top secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will delve deeply into the world of Societal Values.

Societal values describe the attributes of a country. Different countries start with different societal values, creating a unique and different experience. Please that values are all subject to testing and balancing.

The societal value ranges from -100 to +100 , where a -100 value is completely to the left, and +100 to the right of the value.


They change slowly over time, primarily influenced by the estate privileges, government reforms or laws that the country has. However, if you feel that you can’t wait for your society to change, you can always have a member of the Cabinet focusing on attempting to nudge a societal value to something else in your country.

A character with good diplomatic skill is useful for this action..


There are 13 common Societal Values that all countries have from the start, and currently one unique for countries in and around China, which will be talked about in a later TT. We have another one added in the Age of Absolutism as well. Some of these societal values you may recognize the name, or the design intent from previous games like EU2 or EU3, but they almost always have different impacts.


Centralization vs Decentralization
A centralized country may be more efficient, while a decentralized country is more resilient.

Centralization increases crown power dramatically, but being decentralized has other benefits.


Traditionalist vs Innovative
A traditionalist country prioritizes stability and tradition over all other values, while an innovative country wants a more literate population and faster adoption of any new institution.

A Traditionalist country will have a higher estate satisfaction, stability will grow faster and a bigger cultural tradition growth, while institutions will be far more costly to embrace.

An Innovative country will have a higher maximum literacy, bigger cultural influence growth, cheaper institution growth but stability will be much slower to grow.


Spiritualist vs Humanist
A spiritualist country is pretty much organized around its Clergy, while a humanist country is much more tolerant towards heretic and heathen religions.

A spiritualist country will convert pops faster, increase the amount of clergy in towns and cities, and increase the tolerance of the true faith, while reducing the speed of assimilation.

A humanist country will assimilate pops faster, increase tolerance of heathen and heretics, but reduce the speed of conversions.

Aristocracy vs Plutocracy
An aristocratic country is about having the leadership from those with noble blood, while a plutocratic country takes their leadership from the richest and most powerful.

An aristocratic country will increase the amount of diplomats you get, the amount of noble pops of cities, increase the power of the nobility and the expected cost of the court.

A plutocratic country will increase the amount of burghers in cities, reduce the cost of the court, increase trade efficiency but dramatically increase the power of the burghers.


Serfdom vs Free Subjects
A country with high serfdom is about exploiting the peasants as much as possible, whereas a country with free subjects treats peasants as human beings.

Magna Carta and Yeomanry will make England slowly go towards Free Subjects.


As you can see a serfdom focused country increases possible tax for peasants, the raw materials they produce, and the supply limit in your country, while it also increases the amount of food your peasants will eat.

A country with free subjects on the other hand will increase monthly prosperity, make pops promote faster, reduce the food consumption of peasants, but reduce the amount of tax you can collect from the peasants.


Belligerent vs Conciliatory
A belligerent country is a country that does not worry about the opinion of other countries. A conciliatory country appeases others, either due to being weaker, or it just believes that it's easier to catch flies with honey.

A belligerent country will create casus belli faster, get cheaper warscore costs, and faster spy network constructions, but the diplomatic reputation will suffer significantly.

A conciliatory country will increase the efficiency of the cabinet, the loyalty of subjects, and improve the diplomatic reputation, but casus belli will be far more difficult to create.

Quality vs Quantity
An army that focuses on quality is focused on making each soldier perform better, while an army focused on quantity tries to get more people to fight in the battles.

A country that leans towards quality will have morale recover faster, gain a bonus to military tactics, and have far higher initiative, but the maintenance costs will be higher.

A country which favors quantity will have a higher possible frontage, cheaper armies, less food consumed by armies, but the initiative will be far worse in battle.

Offensive vs Defensive
A country that is focused on offensive prefers the attack, and using their armies and navies in enemy locations, while a defensive country relies more on their forts to defeat the enemy.

Do you want to attack or defend? Easy choice or ?

Land vs Naval
A country focused on land is usually a country without much of a coastline, while a naval-focused one may be those that values its coastline more than others.

Here we have actively wanted to avoid military-only attributes, as otherwise 99% would always go land.

A land country will trace proximity quicker over land, trade over land, have larger RGOs, but trade over sea is more expensive.

A naval country will trace proximity quicker over water, trade over water, maritime presence is faster, but trade over land is more expensive.

Capital Economy vs Traditional Economy
A country with a capital economy is more focused on earning money, particularly from trade and towns and cities, while one with a traditional economy is more oriented about living off what the land provides.

A capital economy country will have cheaper buildings, lower bank interest rates and higher production efficiency while food production is reduced.

A traditional country will produce more raw materials, produce more food, and have a higher population capacity, but buildings will be more expensive.

Individualism vs Communalism
A country based on individualism may get more exceptional characters, while one focused on communalism is all about the greater good of society.

An individualistic country will have higher morale in its armies and navies and a far faster migration speed for its pops, but a slightly lower estate satisfaction.

A communalist country will have a lower satisfaction threshold for pops to join rebels, far cheaper to revoke privileges from the estates, a slightly higher estate satisfaction, but pops will migrate far slower.


Mercantilism vs Free Trade
A mercantilist country aims to protect the market price of the produced goods in their country, while a country focused on free trade wants to benefit more from trades around the world.

This determines how you handle trade in your country..

Outward vs Inward
An outward country focuses more on interacting with other countries, while an inward country looks inside its borders.

An outward country will have a higher power projection, higher diplomatic capacity and faster migration to colonies but a lower cultural tradition growth,

An inward country will have a higher crown power, higher control, faster cultural tradition growth, but the colonial migration will be very slow.


Liberalism vs Absolutism
A Liberal country will emphasize the importance of civic liberties and legislative governing bodies, while an Absolutist country will focus more on the centralized authority of its ruler while reining in the power of the different estates.

A liberal country will get a higher cultural capacity, easier to get through requests in parliament, its pops are less likely to support rebels, but the impact of estate power from cabinet positions is higher.

An absolutist country will have a higher crown power, cheaper-to-revoke estate privileges, quicker integration, but the expected cost of the court is higher.

As mentioned earlier, this societal value appears from the Age of Absolutism, and shapes the last two ages dramatically.



Stay tuned, as next week we revisit a topic as it has been revised…

 

[Johan]

Is adding more values moddable?

yes

 

[Johan]

When can we expect a dev diary about America? Will it be playable?

yes

 

[Johan]

On average how long does it take to go from one end to the other end of societal values? Are some values easier to shift? Such as inward vs outward for example.

Its not set in stone yet

 

[Johan]

So the EUII sliders never died...they only lay dreaming in the depths to rise again (with more granularity) !?!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

 

[Johan]

The image tells me that Yeomanry and Magna Carta move it +0.10 which implies moving to serfdom(Already at 10%) instead of Free Subjects, or am I reading this incorrectly?

Edit: Clarified the 0.10

should be +0.1 each to free subjects.. uI need some work

 

[Johan]

Can you provide examples of the starting societal values of some countries? I am more interested in Aragon and Castile but anyone would be useful.

Aragon has

centralization_vs_decentralization = 50
aristocracy_vs_plutocracy = -20
serfdom_vs_free_subjects = -10
traditionalist_vs_innovative = -20
spiritualist_vs_humanist = -50
mercantilism_vs_free_trade = 0
offensive_vs_defensive = -40
land_vs_naval = 10
quality_vs_quantity = 0
belligerent_vs_conciliatory = -10
capital_economy_vs_traditional_economy = 90
individualism_vs_communalism = 10
outward_vs_inward = -20

 

[Johan]

Would a state governed by an elite class of scholar-officials, produced through the imperial examination system, be considered an aristocracy or a plutocracy? Or might it occupy a position somewhere in between on the spectrum?

I'd argue plutocrats

 

[Johan]

What is going to be the balance of societal values across the old world in the 14th century?

Will starting values broadly range or will they be approximately equal

countries have severly different setups

 

[Johan]

This looks great.

Will there be one view of all the societal values for your country? What will it look like?

yes, it will show all your societal values easily.

 

[Johan]

how many unique societal values will there be? you mention the ones near china but are there a lot of others throughout the world? Having one of two unique ones for most regions would be a good time investment, although idk how granular they get with events and stuff so if its too much work then maybe not

At release not many.

In a decade's time... probably many

 

[Johan]

Are there ways to influence your subject's societal values ? For instance having a Capital Economy but nudging your vassals towards Traditionalist so they contribute more raw goods to your market

no, but could perhaps be done

 

[Johan]

I assume the full picture would be more readable, and I'm sure the UI is not final, but Yaomanry and Magna Carta giving +0.10 doesn't really indicate that it's +0.10 toward Free Subjects. B

yeah, clarifying that as we speak.

 

[Johan]

will we have "tools" to our disposition to stop the values to a specific point? Maybe you want to be at 0 for Land vs Naval.

depends on laws and privileges and x and y

 

[Johan]

Shouldn't mercantilism be renamed to protectiomism?

mercantilism vs free trade is a traditional name we have had for 20+ years though.

 

[Johan]

Can we ask a cabinet member to move one of the societal values to -100? Or will it always move to 100?

You can ask them to move to -100 or +100

 

[Johan]

Whenever a strategy game offers the choice between technological progress and anything else, tech. progress is nearly always the better option as it eventually gives the opposing side's bonuses.

So what stops Innovative from doing the same things Traditionalist does but better?

the impact on research is maybe 2% at the extreme over a full game.

 

[Johan]

Looks nice but id hope we would stop seeing Navy-Army and Offensive-Defensive as polar,exclusive opposites..

We don't have any navy-army slider. We have what is basically a "coastal" and "inland" focus slider.

 

[Johan]

Agreed with the thought that -50% Fort Defense seems immensely harsh. Maybe the equivalent of fort maintenance could be higher in Offense countries because they have less experience defending such places and thus are rather inefficient at it?

Its not been in the top 10 complaints yet in internal testing.

 

[Johan]

If a societal value is 0, do I get none of the scaling modifiers, or a percentage of both?

none