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Tinto Talks #38 - 20th of November 2024

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.

cabinet.png

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.

cent_v_decen.png

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.

serfdom.png

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.

off_v_def.png

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.

merc_vs_free.png

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…
 
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I would like to suggest the following:

the bonuses of each side scale from -100 to 100, instead of from 0 to 100 and 0 to -100.

I agree with this. It seems a bit weird the optimal gameplay is to go 100% towards an extreme most of the time? There are negative modifiers, but (most) of them seem pretty tame. Being near 0 seems objectively wrong most of the time
 
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I would like to suggest the following:

the bonuses of each side scale from -100 to 100, instead of from 0 to 100 and 0 to -100.

What I mean by that is that, for example: a country in the 0 of free trade and mercantilism would get:

- 5% trade maintenance

-0.5% trade efficiency

+25% market projection

+5% export cot from market

+10% trade advantage

+1% trade efficiency

-12.5% market protection

+50% burghers trade capacity.

So a country that tends to neither side of the scale is also not only viable, but can get a little from both sides.
That seems like it'd immediately the make the best option going for 0 in most cases - in fact with those numbers, probably all cases. I think they just need to balance the choices some more, make it more costly to go for 100% either way, but make the benefits substantial that way if you're not willing to foot the cost, you try and stay near 0 or at least on the lower-mid end of the scale.

That's probably the plan, these numbers almost certainly aren't final.
 
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Some Societal Value pairs doesn't really make much seance, because they are treated as exclusive opposites when they are not.

  • I suggests few switches, with new pairs being:

Aristocracy – Free Subjects
Plutocracy – Serfdom

Above combination better represents the legal and normative differentiation that happened in this time period. As in Feudal aristocracy with divine rights, feudal contract and no universal common rule of law, with very limited social mobility for all vis-a-vis equality before the law for all. And powerful plutocracy with so much power no institution can curtail it's caprices contrasted with serfdom (maybe it should be renamed into something like technocracy).... where power is derived from expertise and knowledge instead of 'raw' power.

Tradition Economy – Free Market
Capital Economy - Mercantilism

  • I would prefer keeping CE – M as a pair, but complete remove Free Trade and instead have Colonization/Imperialism (instead of giving you bonuses to trade, it shoude give bonuses to economic exploitation of others).

Few other minor suggestions for tweaks on certain modifiers:

Decentralization should drop the Counterespionage debuff and instead get debuff toward local Control/Estate Power management.

Plutocratic countries had as lavish courts if not even more, so lose this. Instead move here cheaper building from Capital Economy.

Give Capital Economy instead of cheaper building, a buff toward Trade (ideally something that was removed with Free Trade like Trade Efficiency).


  • Half of military bonuses given by Off.-Def. & Qual.-Quant. Should be removed and changed for some economic/governmental bonuses, which don't buff military directly but indirectly. Why? Because those overloaded land warfare bonuses are always cookie cutter and boring no-brainers.....so Something like:

Defensive: remove Mov. Speed & Fort. Maint ---- give less manpower lost in battle and much slower building construction

Offensive: remove fort defense and siege ability ----- give instead less army food consumption needs and higher war exhaustion generated by homeland occupation

Quality: remove morale recovery ------ instead it should get production efficiency in urban buildings

Quantity: remove less food consump. & worse initiative ------- and it gets more manpower/retinues generated by estates and a estate satisfaction/happiness debuff.
 
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I agree with this. It seems a bit weird the optimal gameplay is to go 100% towards an extreme most of the time? There are negative modifiers, but (most) of them seem pretty tame. Being near 0 seems objectively wrong most of the time
I agree. There are exceptions through history, but generally being balanced was better for countries in the long run (though admittedly sometimes it would take centuries to see the disadvantages of being too extreme. I think gameplay should reflect this, rather having some sort of a natural progression towards 0 and having extremes be a good thing to aim for.
On the other hand, I do think that being able to go to an extreme should be useful as a short- to medium-term strategy, with the costs of staying at an extreme stacking up in the long run.
An example that I think works pretty well is EU4's estate management system, where at the start of the game you want to give all your crownland for mana privileges, then slowly seize it back over the course of the first 150 years - staying at low crownland forever would give you autonomy and absolutism problems, but going to low crownland temporarily is a good thing because it allows you to have a permanent source of additional mana. Perhaps Societal Values could utilize similar mechanics?
 
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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
I would expect a legalist vs mysticism value for Islamic countries being added when they get to the Islamic part
 
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Maybe being at 0, you should get +2% tax efficiency? So there is some symbolic benefit for staying in the balance. Because everything runs smoothly as a well oiled machine without any need to strive and focus for certain goal on each side of the spectrum?
 
Please find a different name for it than humanist, because in this game's timeframe humanism describes a scholarly movement that started in the 14th century that argues for studying the humanities. It was championed by many clergymen, including popes like the famous Pius II.
It makes no sense to contrast humanism with the clergy and humanism has nothing to do with tolerance for other religions.
Mayhaps Fundamentalist vs Tolerance? Or Zealous vs Tolerant? I agree humanist doesn’t make sense and I wouldn’t exactly say spiritualist works either.
 
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Do player/AI actions have impacts on the values aside from the monthly ticks? Using offensive/defensive as an example, declaring a conquest war instantly pushes you 5 towards offense, while supporting a defensive call to arms instantly bumps you 5 towards defensive.
 
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There are equlibrium points, but its not finished yet.
Nice, that's exactly what I was going to ask.

Will it work like stability in Imperator or prestige in EU4, with a decaying value towards the center?
 
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You simply represent that by having the slider in the middle?

I'm not sure why people are commenting things like "Prussia had a high quality army but also conscripted a large percentage of its population" when that just means that they're not specialized either to the right or left of the slider. That's how it's supposed to work, you don't have to pick one or the other extreme.
Because right now having slider in the middle means you are bad at both. As many others have pointed out, being at 100% at any direction is always better than 0.
There's no option for being good at both or at least quite good at both.

Edit: I'm very much in agreement with those who advocate for finding a way for "being in the middle" being a viable strategy,
 
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Is this anything like Stellaris Johan? If so, very cool
  1. Centralization vs. Decentralization
    • Centralization: Authoritarian (strong control).
    • Decentralization: Egalitarian/Xenophile (distributed power).
  2. Traditionalist vs. Innovative
    • Traditionalist: Spiritualist (preserving traditions).
    • Innovative: Materialist (embracing progress).
  3. Spiritualist vs. Humanist
    • Spiritualist: Spiritualist (religious/metaphysical).
    • Humanist: Materialist (secular/scientific).
  4. Aristocracy vs. Plutocracy
    • Aristocracy: Authoritarian (elite rule).
    • Plutocracy: Materialist/Egalitarian (wealth-based meritocracy).
  5. Serfdom vs. Free Subjects
    • Serfdom: Authoritarian (hierarchical).
    • Free Subjects: Egalitarian (individual rights).
  6. Belligerent vs. Conciliatory
    • Belligerent: Militarist (pro-war).
    • Conciliatory: Pacifist (pro-peace).
  7. Quality vs. Quantity
    • Quality: Authoritarian/Militarist (elite focus).
    • Quantity: Egalitarian/Collectivist (mass mobilization).
  8. Offensive vs. Defensive
    • Offensive: Militarist (proactive war).
    • Defensive: Pacifist/Xenophile (protection).
  9. Land vs. Naval
    • Land: No direct ethic, but Militarist fits terrestrial focus.
    • Naval: Militarist (space/naval dominance).
  10. Capital Economy vs. Traditional Economy
  • Capital: Materialist (growth and trade).
  • Traditional: Spiritualist/Pacifist (sustainability).
  1. Individualism vs. Communalism
  • Individualism: Egalitarian (personal freedom).
  • Communalism: Authoritarian or implied Collectivist.
  1. Mercantilism vs. Free Trade
  • Mercantilism: Authoritarian/Xenophobe (self-reliance).
  • Free Trade: Xenophile/Egalitarian (open markets).
  1. Outward vs. Inward
  • Outward: Xenophile (exploration/collaboration).
  • Inward: Xenophobe (isolationism).
  1. Liberalism vs. Absolutism
  • Liberalism: Egalitarian (participation/equality).
  • Absolutism: Authoritarian (centralized rule).
 
Is there the chance of conflict if societal values conflict with each other, or if societal values conflict with powers in government?
For example, an absolutist, traditionalist, or aristocratic country that is innovative with free subjects, or an aristocratic country with powerful burghers?

In addition, is it possible for societal values to have some benefit to staying in the middle, in modded or otherwise? Like if some societal value is determined to come with distinct bonuses (or maluses) for staying "neutral".
 
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Because right now having slider in the middle means you are bad at both. As many others have pointed out, being at 100% at any direction is always better than 0.
There's no option for being good at both or at least quite good at both.

Edit: I'm very much in agreement with those who advocate for finding a way for "being in the middle" being a viable strategy,
But it doesn't mean you're bad at both. If you're in the center, your nation is not focusing on either side to the point of neglecting the other. If your society focuses on one side, it seems to represent shifting resources in that direction unevenly, be it political, fiscal or military effort. It's changing the share of your military budget from offensive armies to garrisons, from armies and protecting overland trade to navies and protecting sea trade - and paying the cost in the quality of the other. If you want both to be good, you'd go center on a slider and improve your nation's qualities in other ways.
 
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I would say that Constitutionalism could be a better name than Liberalism. Yes, liberal in the sense of a more open political culture is more accurate, but constitutional is probably more suited to the limitation of the power of heads of state and the rule of law.
 
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I've played a lot of EU4... losing siege races to the AI is infinitely frustrating. Id rather my own sieges take marginally longer if it makes the AI sieges significantly longer.
While true, being able to catch AI armies also can be infinitely frustrating. Offensive vs defensive seems to be - defensive means winning siege races, offensive means being able to consistently quickly hunt down AI troops (army movement) and then a small bonus to sieging after wiping their army.
 
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But it doesn't mean you're bad at both. If you're in the center, your nation is not focusing on either side to the point of neglecting the other. If your society focuses on one side, it seems to represent shifting resources in that direction unevenly, be it political, fiscal or military effort. It's changing the share of your military budget from offensive armies to garrisons, from armies and protecting overland trade to navies and protecting sea trade - and paying the cost in the quality of the other. If you want both to be good, you'd go center on a slider and improve your nation's qualities in other ways.
The way modifiers are now, being at 100% of anything is always better than being at 0%.
 
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Will these values synergize with eachother?
Centralization leads to more crown power.
Absolutism leads to more crown power.
Inward leads to more crown power.
Communalism increases estate satisfaction (can tolerate you actively nudging societal values)
Concilliatory makes cabinet more efficient.

Furthermore:
Land or naval polarization leads to less proximity, which means higher control.
Inward gives you higher control.
Decentralization decreases distance to capital, which gives you higher control.
But higher control means more crown power.

And more crown power means more ability to change society values.
-> All make the cabinet action of changing the societal values easier.
 
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The way modifiers are now, being at 100% of anything is always better than being at 0%.
Sure, if if you only need to focus on one direction. Let's take land-sea as an example. For some countries, that's going to be an easy choice, for others, not so much. If you're playing France, do you focus land or sea? If you focus land, your land trade and armies will be on par or better than your neighbors, but your overseas trade and navy suffers and you have England just a channel away. Same for the Iberian nations and the tug between continental ambitions and far-reaching naval trade. On the other hand, it's much easier to make that decision for England if they don't have major continental ambitions (i.e. the 100 years war), or any of the Slavic nations if you don't plan on doing some crazy naval escapades.

For those nations where your attentions are split, the balanced point is the best one - or should be, once the values are balanced.
 
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