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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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Do the societal values influence the gameplay in concrete ways, or are they mainly modifiers? For example, does being 100% defensive make it so that I would lose stability when I declare war?
 
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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
 
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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
 
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I'm not sold on the offensive/defensive difference. Just because someone likes to attack, it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't know how to defend (hell, one could argue that because you know how to bust a castle like a piñata, you'd also have more ideas about counteracting weaknesses), just as an offensive/defensive mentality should have little to do with how fast one's armies move.

I'm also not keen on the diplo rep penalty of belligerent countries. If one's known as a warmonger than that's a pretty consistent reputation, even if this might seem like a semantic gripe. I think increased AE or slower AE dissipation would be a more fitting penalty for belligerent countries, signifying the fact that here they go again.
 
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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
 
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I love the sliders - and if possible, I'd love to see them represented on actual sliders. The only ones that gave me pause are Land vs Naval, Conciliatory vs Belligerent, and Collectivist vs Individual. The latter mostly because I need to think of how that relates to historical behavior. I'll reserve judgement on the first two until I see the actual modifiers, though.

(Edit: In the minutes since posting this, I've given them more thought and the sliders do in fact make sense to me. I simply has to do with whether you're willing to focus a country in a direction. If you are willing to put all your focus into the navy, letting your army become weaker as a result, you push that way. If you want both to be strong, you center the slider and get the strength elsewhere.)

I'm very much looking forward to seeing how creative modders can get with these and how vibrant it might make the world feel and how different it could make different playthroughs if you have different goals.

One small critique is that this UI doesn't make much sense to me at a glance.
serfdom.png

Magna Carta and Yeomanry will make England slowly go towards Free Subjects.
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. Before reading the comment below the image, I actually thought it might have been adding toward Serfdom, which confused me. I suppose you can infer that Serfdom is on the negative side of the slider by the fact it's the first word in "Serfdom vs Free Subjects," but I'm looking forward to seeing it made easier to understand.
 
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Guessing the China + friends value is something related to the Mandate of Heaven?
IIRC in one of the early TT's they mentioned there was a "Sinification" Societal Value.

Presumably representing stuff like conquest dynasties being immersed in chinese culture, and countries around china embracing chinese administrative systems and diplomatic norms. I also imagine it will effect how easy it is to conquer china and be accepted by the local populace(while perhaps also displeasing your primary culture if the sinification gets too high?)
 
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Do the societal values influence the gameplay in concrete ways, or are they mainly modifiers? For example, does being 100% defensive make it so that I would lose stability when I declare war?
well, they are definitely required for events and institutions.(required for institutions was confirmed in the diary about ...the institutions)
 
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How does the AI choose what Value to follow?

Do they try to be historical? Or they simply don't care?

Will cultures/religions nudge values a certain path?
 
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Totally called inward vs outwards
 
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It would be cool if the primary cause for how societal values change was actions rather the more passive, abstract way of employing a minister to try and change it.

For example, if I fight a war that was decided (either way) by more naval battles than land battles, then my values will shift to Naval away from land and vice versa.

Or if I make a lot of external royal marriages then my country becomes more outward looking

Or if I take out a lot of loans, my country becomes more plutocratic.

From my perspective, the more things it the game that happen as a consequence of player actions and decisions rather than employing cabinet members, the better.
 
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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.
Calling it secularism would probably be a better alternative
 
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View attachment 1219008
I'll be honest; I always felt treating these two values as diametric opposites of eachother was never the perfect solution. After all, it's not like countries good in naval matters automatically have crappy armies and logistics on land, and vice-versa. The French navy was never a pushover and neither was the British army. Spain was feared just as much for its Tercios as it was for its Galleons.

This is actually a dimension where I feel like the old system of National Focuses fared better? Having good armies or good navies is, I feel, more of a matter of long-term societal and cultural investments and not so much of mutually-excluding specialties/philosophies.

Edit: Also, yes, this feels a bit too punishing, if the dynamics will be anything like in EUIV lol

View attachment 1219011

This is also true for many of the societal values, like offensive vs defensive and even traditionalist vs innovative. I struggle to see societal values as a continuum of two opposed extremes. In reality for example you'd have a huge emphasis in offensive strategies and less emphasis on defensive values, but not necessarily that translates into neglecting defense.

Also, with the amount of things that cabinet members can do and that you'd probably want them to do, their proposed number continues to be too small. Like in all of France you only have 3 functionaries capable of doing something useful for the kingdom...
 
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