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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.

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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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Can they (societal values) influence the opinions of other nations?
 
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mercantilism vs free trade is a traditional name we have had for 20+ years though.
Mercantilism is literally the opposite of what it represents here though, as it is a policy that aims to maximize exports, and yet one of its negative effects in Project Caesar is increasing export costs.

I don't think it being the "traditional" term really cuts it as justification in this case, as it is a rather egregious misrepresentation.
 
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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.
There is always an option to choose the direction once you are presented the one, and then choose which ever is the most pressing need. Does the Austrian Emperor construed the unholy alliance all around you or is it busy with fighting the Poles, Ottomans and German Protestants? Has Spain big European ambitions, while at the same time has enough economic power to construct the massive Grand Armada, so right now to it need more land power and by the time English or Dutch become strong enough to build a trade fleet, Spanish-Portuguese Empire snowballed so are it already controls everything from Florida to Magellan strait and everything from Carribian to the Japan. Oh, and they call the Mediterianan by the name Nuestro Mar.....

But you can look it from different perspective. You only really have 2 chooices, you either pick something you are already good work that stacking modifer rullete, or you pick something that will improve your points of weakness. Maybe as a Commonowealth you already has such a massive and supperior land army and internal stability you dont need more. But you could really use some more money from that Baltic and Black see trade, so investeing into Navy might just be the right thing....

And there is also other combination of choices you can pick, For example you pick offensive/land values for the army, and then the next age you will compensate by picking admin/diplo Focus.....

Or maybe you RP as perfect Confucian Mandate of Heaven Empire, thus you work extra hard to have all the societal values at 0 and refuse to pick any focuses..... thus achieving the perfect harmonic balance in everything! :D
 
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…
Ok, what about liberalism? Wouldn't Parlamentarism sound more appropriate for the time?
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.

I believe using the term Liberalism to describe one end of the strong government vs weak government spectrum is a terrible decision as there were many illiberal countries with weak governments and many liberal countries with strong governments. Liberalism is also an ideology with well defined tenants and therefore using it as a discription for a country with a societal value of a weak government with limited powers is inappropriate.

I therefore recommend changing the term Liberalism to Constitutionalism to describe the same idea.
 
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Good TT today, I really love societal values and I apreciate the advance and reasoning behind some of them and I think many are headed in the right direction but there is some aspects that I don't agree with. And everything has to do with the oposites and the philosophy behind them. (Mention that English is not my native language (my thanks to google translator))

Some of the opposites are clearly opposites like Liberalism vs Absolutism, Mercantilism vs Free Trade or Individualism vs Communalism. Others I don't see so clearly that they are opposites and I think that can coexist but I accept them. Exaples are Capital Economy vs Traditional Economy, Land vs Naval or Belligerent vs Conciliatory. I think others are not opposites and can clearly coexist like Spiritualist vs Humanist.

The reasoning behind is that there are opposite and exclusive cultural values and for many cases it is true but there are exceptions. The one that has caught my attention the most is Spiritualist vs Humanist. I thought you would make an argument that a spiritual society could be humanistic and I thought so because you had given clues to it that (in the game and rl) the clergy was the state that was mainly in charge of intellectual tasks, thanks to being a state with a lot of literacy in the ancien regime, this was the cause of many philosophical currents. The Salamanca scholasticism was the cause of stopping the conquest of America to debate whether or not it was right or not to conquer indigenous peoples from a humanist point of view and it was many religious people and Italian popes who promoted humanism in Italy. Therefore I do not see an position between a society that is religious with humanist currents understood both in art and respect for other cultures and even religions. I see opposition in a spiritualist/religious vs secular society (where the clergy does not have such an important value) and also in a tolerant vs intolerant one (or preferential to the main culture vs preferential to a greater tolerance for other cultures or whatever you want to call this social value proposition)

For example my proposal is this.

Spiritualist/religious vs Secular

Spiritualist give more tolerance for the true faith, more power fore the clergy and and what you can imagine this value give

Secular give assimilate pops faster, increase tolerance of heathen and heretics, but reduce the speed of conversions and reduce satisfaction for the clergy (olmost the same as the original humanist)

As you can see there is no penalties (except for clergy satisfaction reduction, I will explain this) and thast because a change in the reasoning and philosophy behind the societal values.

The change consists of starting out thinking that "I am a specialist in this" and therefore that social value that is not directly oppositeor and is clear that it should not have any clear disadvantage does not have penalties "I am good at attacking and that is why my armies mobilize and move faster, they organize and siege better but I have not forgotten how to build or defend forts, its just my specialty". With this mentality I would like many social values to change. Following this logic, it should also be taken into account that if a social value affects a state, it may see its satisfaction affected, as is the case of Serfdom vs Free Subjects. This is a list of what I would change.

Centralization vs Decentralization: This is a complicated one and I would have to dedicate an entire comment to it or, in case I wanted to implement what is ideal according to me, 2 entire TTs.

Traditionalist vs Innovative: I don't see a clear opposition between these two; after all, a culture can have the tradition of being innovative. but I don't see how to solve it

Spiritualist vs Humanist: I have already said this, divide it in two, spiritualist/religious vs secular society and tolerant vs intolerant.

Aristocracy vs Plutocracy: Good, no changes (If a social value does not appear from here, it means it is okay or I am not sure if it is okay. (or I'm tired of writing)

Offensive vs Defensive: Remove penalties

Land vs Naval: I love that it is not focused on the military but on how people orientate their lives. 10/10 I love it. (Remove penalties btw)

Capital Economy vs Traditional Economy: Remove penalties

This are some of them, I hope that this and other very promising proposals that I have read in the TT are taken into account. PC is going in a very good direction and it is difficult for me to hide my excitement. Thanks for reading. Bye
 
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Awesome system! This feels much more satisfying than the EUIV ideas.

A lot of these societal values have the names of EUIV ideas, so seem to replace them. However, the old selection of ideas feels more like the PC age focus, in a way. Which of these would you say is a closer successor to idea groups, societal values, age focus or both?
 
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I feel like the fact that buffs massively outweigh debuffs combined with the lack of bonuses for moderation means players are going to pick a side and go all in of getting the slider to 100. Maybe that won’t be practical but perhaps if you are in the middle you could have moderate benefits from both SVs? For instance a state which needs to balance its coastal and interior investments would have small bonuses to both, though at a lower efficiency that a state which went to one extreme.
 
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I don't think land and naval should be trade-offs against one another. Many countries with formidable navies *also* levied effective armies - Spanish tercios were as scary as their armadas. It feels like quite a game-y trade-off.
 
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I don't think land and naval should be trade-offs against one another. Many countries with formidable navies *also* levied effective armies - Spanish tercios were as scary as their armadas. It feels like quite a game-y trade-off.
Please read the dev diary. They made it clear, land vs naval is NOT a military distinction. It's basically just whether your country emphasizes your interior economically or coasts economically. Basically land is best if you are a nation without access to the sea, sea is best if you're an island or have lots of coast, and if you're a large nation with significant land and sea holdings then it's time to actually debate what to focus on. There is intentionally no military element to this Societal Value.
 
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At release not many.

In a decade's time... probably many
I see we're already penciling in room for bloat, and honestly I don't think I can blame you, scope creep is a menace.
might be ahead by 1-2%
So is 1-2% like a lot or not noticable? Because if it's the difference between winning or losing a war from better mil tech then I'll always want it but if it's not then I won't ever go for it.
 
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Also shouldn't naval quality vs quantity be split from land quality vs quantity? I might want to invest in a swarm of cheap boats and a professional army, or have an elite fleet and hordes of conscripts.
 
This TT, while very interesting, doesn’t entirely satisfy me.

One aspect I strongly dislike is the "spiritualist vs. humanist" societal value. It feels like a tired cliché of the 21st century.

Humanism, as a philosophical movement, focuses on elevating the individual mind and enriching the spirit with the help of ancient teachings (from the Antiquity mostly). Of course, this isn’t a complete definition, as humanism also seeks to cultivate all aspects of human potential in a balanced way (mens sana in corpore sano). It’s about shaping the most harmonious and well-rounded human being—one who embraces science, philosophy, metaphysics, art, history, sports, languages, and more. But it's not entirely about tolerance (even if being a humanist helps being tolerant, it doesn't necessarily drive toward hardcore tolerance and open-borders thinking).

Moreover, there is a profound connection between humanism and religion or spirituality. Humanism often draws its roots from these traditions. For instance, Renaissance humanism in Europe emerged from the interplay between Christian thought and the rediscovery of ancient pagan science and culture. In China, humanist ideas are intertwined with various philosophical and spiritual schools, such as Confucianism and Taoism. Similarly, in India, humanist traditions are deeply connected to religious and spiritual philosophies.

In essence, humanism represents the pinnacle of spirituality, while spirituality serves as both the foundation and framework for humanism to thrive.





I propose to replace "spiritualist" with "conformist", "conservative", "zealous", "dogmatic" or "devoted"

Most of the time, the clash is between two forms of interpretation of religions and two different views of spirituality. A traditional or legalist one (conservative and conformist) or an iconoclast one (innovative or progressive). Both are deeply spiritual and religious. Observe that the vast majority of humanist from the Renaissance were strong christian or jewish believers !

Or else you can have a different approach :

* Clerical VS Secular (focused on the structure of the society and the relation between politic and religion)

* Dogmatic VS Spiritualist (Enhancing the difference between those who enhance the importance of the church dogma and those who enhance the importance of the personal faith and relation to god or to the divine without any mediation)
-Subidea : it could be a factor and an effect of the reform in Europe

* Parochials VS Classicist (focused on the distinction between those who are attached to their local customs and traditions and those who are attached to the teachings of the ancient civilizations)

* Localism VS cosmopolitism (focused on the distinction between those who have a local attachment and those who have a civilizational attachment)

* Tolerant VS Intolerant (If it's what you wanted to evaluate, it's better to say it like this).
 
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while i very much like the concept and categories i would very much preferr if these were continues scales where all positions between -100 and 100 is equally viable.
This way only unrealisticly extreme positions get rewarded and a system which could otherwise show how every society has to deal with its very specific circumstances turns into a dumb binary system where you have to decide at game start what direction you want and then stack modifiers.
 
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I feel there are not enough negatives. Just from looking at it, the right play is always to pick a side and go full at it, even though you could argue certain countries would historically be more in the middle. Having more (and stronger) negative modifiers would let staying in the middle be a valid option imo.
 
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