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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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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.

We call the movement that started in 14th century Italy which focused on sudying the classical world and focused on what it means to be human (in contrast to religion) humanism.

 
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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
 
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Will there be decay of the value towards 0 like with prestige?
 
Not a big fun. honestly, it could not exist and I'd be fine.
On the sidenote, UI and showing information in columns like that with numbers is such horrible way to organize it all.
 
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You would just have it be 0 in this case(or favor it being as close to zero as possible).
I am assuming that, within the chinese dynasties the Scholar-Beuracrats are represented as "Clergy" and not as nobles(since Nobles in EU5 seem to be a primarily military focused pop, and Bureaucrats definitely shouldn't favor the military, treating military officers as separate would be best). So just keeping aristocracy-plutocracy closer to zero(probably with a slight bent towards aristocracy in the range of +10-20 or so).
So basically yes I agree.
The reason for raising this question is that according to the previous Paradox game, this universal mechanism would be matched with corresponding events.
However, I think it is necessary to remind TINTO that they should regulate certain values or events that should not be triggered under certain political systems or conditions.
Otherwise, it would be absurd for Chinese emperors to make decisions to satisfy nobles or merchants. For him, dealing with conflicts between civil servants and military officers should be more reasonable.
 
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spiritual vs humanist:

this just makes no sense, you'd have countries like the papal states that in the Reinassance would be "humanist" given this ledger, while being Theocracies. There should be 2 separate ledges, Laical - Spiritual and Xenophobic (or provincialism if it sounds better) - Humanist

mixing together cultural acceptance and religious acceptance together is quite a misrepresentation
 
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Do the modifiers change linearly with the societal value, or are they on some sort of curve? For example, at 100 offensive you get -50% fort defense, so what do you get at half that? -25% or something lower?
 
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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.

View attachment 1218934
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.

View attachment 1218933
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.

View attachment 1218932
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.

View attachment 1218931
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.

View attachment 1218930
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…
A lot of these aren’t contradictory, even if they are opposites. You can have a good Army and good navy and your army can be both big and good at fighting.

There should be tickers for each opposite but the higher one is on one side increases the decay rate for it’s opposite.
 
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Will an innovative country, through direct or indirect means (literacy?), be able to pump out more technologies over the long run? Or do catch up mechanics negate that advantage leaving short term gains only if any
 
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Subjective opinion, but I have some concerns that I can already see a heavy meta:

You'll always go Centralised rather than Decentralised.

You'll always go Innovative rather than Traditionalist.

You'll always go Free Subjects rather than Serfdom.

You'll always go Quality rather than Quantity.

You'll always go Offensive rather than Defensive.

You'll always go Capital Economy rather than Traditional Economy.

You'll always go Individualism rather than Communalism.

You'll always go Outward rather than Inward.


The only stuff that seems balanced is:

Liberalism vs Absolutism
Mercantilism vs Free Trade
Land vs Naval
Belligerent vs Conciliatory
Spiritualist vs Humanist
 
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It looks like all the sliders have zero modifiers in the middle, I think it'd be better if the modifiers from both sides went from -100 to 100 rather than two separate sets of modifiers on each side.

EDIT: picture showing what I mean, the colours represent the modifiers.
 

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I have mixed feelings about that, on one side it is cool to have a feeling about what is the Spirit in your nation and how the majority see different things, on the other side I have the feeling that you use this only to stack bonuses for min-maxing, i want more counterspionage, so I centralise for example
 
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Subjective opinion, but I have some concerns that I can already see a heavy meta:

You'll always go Centralised rather than Decentralised.

You'll always go Innovative rather than Traditionalist.

You'll always go Free Subjects rather than Serfdom.

You'll always go Quality rather than Quantity.

You'll always go Offensive rather than Defensive.

You'll always go Capital Economy rather than Traditional Economy.

You'll always go Individualism rather than Communalism.

You'll always go Outward rather than Inward.


The only stuff that seems balanced is:

Liberalism vs Absolutism
Mercantilism vs Free Trade
Land vs Naval
Belligerent vs Conciliatory
Spiritualist vs Humanist

Definitely agree they need to balance this very carefully in a way that feels authentic to avoid this happening.
 
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From what I understand, each societal value will move towards one extreme or another. Won't it be better to have it try to reach an equilibrium like estate loyalty or prestige? For example the current system for serfs basically forces you overtime into either tsarist russia or the US, when I.think that maxing on either + or - 100 has to be very complicated so that the bonuses are earned, like trying to have and maintain 100 prestige in eu4.
Maintaining 100 prestige in EU4 is super easy, barely an inconvenience. Otherwise I quite agree with you, maybe a system where these bonuses/maluses overlap and one moves up or down on a scale between the absolutes toward an equilibrium based on laws, privileges and temporary actions would be much better.
 
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It looks like all the sliders have zero modifiers in the middle, I think it'd be better if the modifiers from both sides went from -100 to 100 rather than two separate sets of modifiers on each side.
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.
 
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We call the movement that started in 14th century Italy which focused on sudying the classical world and focused on what it means to be human (in contrast to religion) humanism.

Yes, it's now called renaissance humanism to contrast it from modern humanism.
But modern humanism didn't exist yet, so if you use the word "humanism", anyone who is familiar with the time period will assume you're talking about the movement that started the renaissance.
 
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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.
You could say this about any binary opposites, it's a design choice with pros and cons.

Personally I think positives of binaries in this case heavily outways the negatives that is the simplifications - as they're manifold and in unison creates nuances.
 
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