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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.

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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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Yeah maybe something along the lines of Warrior Class vs Peasant Army, ie wether it's seen as an honor to fight in a society or a thing you're forced to. But then you also have professional vs mercenary. It's difficult to just put it in one slider like quality vs quantity, as others have pointed out. The ideas system really had an advantage there. Also because you were able to have different priorities in different eras, where now you probably have to decide from game start in which direction you want to max it out eventually, because first going one way and later the other seems really painful
 
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I've long been an advocate for sliders, but yeah, now I realize that these doesn't have to be contrasting ideas.

Maybe instead of quality/quantity, you'd have levies/professional troops. That way you can tie specific modifiers to troop types. Maybe full levies slider gives them comparable morale/discipline to end-game standing armies, ala Nappy's levee en masse, while full professional slider makes them cheaper to employ instead.

And instead of land/naval, you can have logistics? Focusing on military production? State-owned industries vs decentralized/traded supplies? Kind of how several African states and most Native American polities couldn't produce firearms, so they traded them from Europeans instead? But this can be simulated already by having no factories vs putting up factories. Maybe a focus on trading vs producing military supplies?

Offensive/defensive could also be traditional/experimental, focusing again on logistics, army movement, etc?

To be honest, I'm at a lost at this. But certainly, some traditions need not contrast with each other. Another I could think of is Spiritualism/Humanism. Clergies are often the first people to embrace humanist/scientific ideologies, so I don't get the distinction between clergy-led polities and secular polities, some secular polities may even be less humanist than some clergy-led polities. I hate to take something from 40k, but Rogue Trader's Dogmatic vs Iconoclastic is maybe the best term here. You'd have something like a fervent adherence to a religion's tenets, vs something that freely challenges established religious norms, if we're sticking to this definition as surrounding religion. But we already have Traditionalism/Innovative, so IDK.
I get where you're coming from, but I think quantity/quality still works well if we think of it in terms of logistics and costs. Quantity could focus on the ease of maintaining and fielding large numbers of troops—think cheaper recruitment, reduced maintenance costs, better auxiliaries, and maybe faster recovery from losses.

As for land/naval, I don’t think those societal values pertain to military. It’s more about economic and cultural priorities—Venice centering its economy and influence through maritime trade, versus the Golden Horde emphasizing land-based mobility and control. It reflects the broader structure of a society, not just its military doctrines.

I agree with you that humanism is just the wrong word for what the devs are trying to represent - it’s more about how deeply entrenched religion is as an institution. From what i can tell, a spiritualist country isn’t just more religious, it’s one where the Clergy plays a central role in society. That’s why you see faster conversion rates and more Clergy representation, but slower assimilation—it’s focused on reinforcing religious identity rather than blending cultures. Humanism, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily less religious. It just shifts the focus toward pluralism and cultural integration. Faster assimilation and tolerance make sense for a society that values diversity over religious unity, even if it slows down conversions. so maybe pluralism or secularism would be better than humanism.
 
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I get where you're coming from, but I think quantity/quality still works well if we think of it in terms of logistics and costs. Quantity could focus on the ease of maintaining and fielding large numbers of troops—think cheaper recruitment, reduced maintenance costs, better auxiliaries, and maybe faster recovery from losses.

As for land/naval, I don’t think those societal values pertain to military. It’s more about economic and cultural priorities—Venice centering its economy and influence through maritime trade, versus the Golden Horde emphasizing land-based mobility and control. It reflects the broader structure of a society, not just its military doctrines.

I agree with you that humanism is just the wrong word for what the devs are trying to represent - it’s more about how deeply entrenched religion is as an institution. From what i can tell, a spiritualist country isn’t just more religious, it’s one where the Clergy plays a central role in society. That’s why you see faster conversion rates and more Clergy representation, but slower assimilation—it’s focused on reinforcing religious identity rather than blending cultures. Humanism, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily less religious. It just shifts the focus toward pluralism and cultural integration. Faster assimilation and tolerance make sense for a society that values diversity over religious unity, even if it slows down conversions. so maybe pluralism or secularism would be better than humanism.
quantity - quality still makes no sense, one is clearly superior to the other, and nations that "had" both irl can't be represented. It's just an artificial slider that should be changed into something else.

Same for Land - Naval. Sure for Venice, Poland, Ming it makes sense alright, but what about France, Spain, the Ottomans? They're not "naval" and they're not "land" either, they're both. some of these sliders are not good, they suppose "either - or", with no middle grounds inside it. It's annoying and honestly, as it is shown not very fun. Adding more sliders could be a solution to represent stuff better tho
 
Having defensive-offensive give movement speed modifiers could get really frustrating. I'm thinking of trying to catch an enemy army when you're at 100% defensive and they're 100% offensive. How will I ever catch up to these guys? I get that it makes sense flavor-wise but I seriously doubt it will make for good gameplay.
 
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I'd argue plutocrats
This is against barriers enforced on the Four occupations. If there is no difference between Scholar-Official and wealthy Merchant class, the system won't sustain for long. Merchants were generally discriminated by law in the Imperial Exams, while there is a more easy way that transformed rich people into scholar-officials - Juan Na, literally purchase of an appointment, especially when the imperial finance went into trouble. To some extent, Juan Na is similar to indulgence of the Church and emperor would forgive your sin for being a merchant.
 
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Having defensive-offensive give movement speed modifiers could get really frustrating. I'm thinking of trying to catch an enemy army when you're at 100% defensive and they're 100% offensive. How will I ever catch up to these guys? I get that it makes sense flavor-wise but I seriously doubt it will make for good gameplay.
Isn´t that the point, that when you play a country with defensive values you adopt a defensive play style? Chasing armies around the map may not be the natural choice of strategy for a defensive nation.
 
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How do you determine those values for minors? Is there a system like for development where there are manually created "centers" of a value which spread out from there?
Also how about newly released tags (e.g. after a peace deal)? Do they get the values of their former owner?
 
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I think this mechanism can emulate the slow changing and long term values that form different societies. But how will it cope with the sometimes fast and unexpected changes that some times happen during history?

To use an example from history that the developers should be well acquainted with, Sweden was a nation where the king wielded almost unlimited control during the absolute monarchism of the carolean era (kings Karl XI and Karl XII). But after the defeat in 1721 a complete overhaul was made and what was one of the most authoritarian countries turned into what was probably the most democratic nation of its time (during kings Fredrik I and Adolf Fredrik). In game terms that would be a complete shift from absolutism to liberalism. Then again, a new overhaul was made when Gustav III tried to recreate the absolute monarchism until his assassination. Once again turning the sliders upside down.

I don´t mention this example in order to have a recreation of it coded into the game, but rather an example of what happens sometimes. What I wonder is how this societal values mechanism with sliders and slow development from one extreme to the next could emulate this kind of fast transformations that sometimes takes place in history. Loosing a big and defining war and going through a sort of national armageddon that forces a society to reinvent itself, sometimes in the absolute opposite of what originally led to the disaster.

Would that be handled in a revolution mechanism rather than this society values mechanism? Or does it depend on events? If so, can the player in some way influence it, perhaps making a radical change such as the ones above in exchange for a huge cost in stability and authority?
 
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I'm not a fan of the Spirituality / Humanist dichotomy. That captures more a 20th/21st century dichotomy than it does a 15th/16th century reality. Humanists were generally 1. quite religious 2. quite in favor of religion's social prominence.

Humanist Peter Martyr argued for the coerced conversion of Granadan Muslims - not exactly a pro-tolerance perspective.

The other (protestant) humanist Peter Martyr waded deeply into the crown reform of the Edwardian Church of England - again, thoroughly pro "Spirituality".
 
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I liked the Laws systems of Vic3, and wouldn't mind a more Organical and Cultural form of it instead of one determined by hard lettered law, but this dualism feels forced, manicheist even! It does feel a bit slider-y to me too. But, I'm interested in being surprised by having it in action be a lot more interesting than a numeral slider changing decimals somewhere.
 
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Hello,

Once again with the same issue - my colorblidness is acting up on debuffs visilibity on screenshots. Red with darker background is somewhat readible, but on lighter one is hardly readible.
 
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I think we need a better sense of what factors push these sliders around to properly understand some of this. It’s true that for all of these, being at either extreme has more bonuses than penalties. But presumably, in addition to things like the cabinet member and Magna Carta pushing a constant amount in the same direction every month, there will be some factors pushing towards the center based on gameplay or estate power or whatever.

Someone said that it will always be best to just pick one side and stick with it, rather than spend a few decades in the middle. That’s probably true if there are no background factors, but just your cabinet and some decisions like Magna Carta. But if early on, there are some background factors pushing towards serfdom, in addition to some drag towards the center, you can probably use your cabinet member pushing towards serfdom to stick at around 70, while if you try to push the other way you could only get to -10 or -20, so you should probably aim towards serfdom. But later in the game, if the background factors shift, at a certain point you’ll be able to get closer to the opposite extreme, so you’ll want to aim that way.

How much the factors have to shift to make you decide to spend the long time crossing the middle period is not clear.
 
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I'm not a fan of the Spirituality / Humanist dichotomy. That captures more a 20th/21st century dichotomy than it does a 15th/16th century reality. Humanists were generally 1. quite religious 2. quite in favor of religion's social prominence.

Humanist Peter Martyr argued for the coerced conversion of Granadan Muslims - not exactly a pro-tolerance perspective.

The other (protestant) humanist Peter Martyr waded deeply into the crown reform of the Edwardian Church of England - again, thoroughly pro "Spirituality".
I think Zeal vs. Tolerance would be a better name.
 
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Isn´t that the point, that when you play a country with defensive values you adopt a defensive play style? Chasing armies around the map may not be the natural choice of strategy for a defensive nation.
I mean, not really? You're never going to route their army, while they can throw pop at you til you eventually fall. Hm. I wonder if it's useful..
 
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Maybe change Spiritualist and Humanist up into two seperate values, so you can think of it how your state views both culture and religion then.

Spiritualist would be replaced with Fundamentalist Vs Pluralist. So whether your state supports only the domaintent religion or is accepting of minority religions existing.
Muslism countries could that the above replaced with Mysticism VS Legalism instead.

As for Humanist you can change it how to Elitist Vs Cosmopolitian. Elistist viewed their own culture more highly and have higher acceptance cost but allow quicker assimliation and have higher cultural tolerence/influence where Cosmopolitian tend to have lower tolerated costs, can get more taxes/levies out of tolerated cultures but suffer from assmilation due.
 
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Maybe change Spiritualist and Humanist up into two seperate values, so you can think of it how your state views both culture and religion then.

Spiritualist would be replaced with Fundamentalist Vs Pluralist. So whether your state supports only the domaintent religion or is accepting of minority religions existing.
Muslism countries could that the above replaced with Mysticism VS Legalism instead.

As for Humanist you can change it how to Elitist Vs Cosmopolitian. Elistist viewed their own culture more highly and have higher acceptance cost but allow quicker assimliation and have higher cultural tolerence/influence where Cosmopolitian tend to have lower tolerated costs, can get more taxes/levies out of tolerated cultures but suffer from assmilation due.

Like this idea, though not sure Fundamentalist is the right term (the Fundamentalists were a Late-Modern period thing, not an Early-Modern period thing and also heavily intertwined with culture since -aside from supporting workers rights- the main thing they were known for was opposing 'scientific' racism).