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Tinto Talks #4 - March 20th, 2024

Welcome to the fourth iteration of Tinto Talks!

Today we’ll give you an overview of the different mechanics of the Government part of the game. There will be development diaries going into much more detail for these later on.

First of all, we have 5 different government types in the game, which determines a fair bit of what type of mechanics you get access to. As an example, a Republic does not have access to royal marriages, and a Steppe Horde has a different view on how war, peace and conquest works compared to other types of countries.

  • Monarchy, which uses Legitimacy
  • Republic, which uses Republican Tradition
  • Theocracy, which uses Devotion
  • Steppe Horde, which Horde Unity
  • Tribe, which uses Tribal Cohesion

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An illustration from our game..

These, together with country rank, government reform, and local flavor gives countries names like “Crown of Aragon,” “Kingdom of Sweden,” “Principality of Wales.” Not all countries are countries that are based on owning locations on a map though; more on that in later development diaries.

Each country also has a ruler, or they may be in a regency, if there are no possible adult heirs.

One of the most defining parts of the government of a country in Project Caesar is the Estates mechanic. This has been one of the core parts of the game, with a full connection between the population and the estates. Keeping the estates satisfied while keeping their powers low is an important part of the gameplay loop. In this game, the Estates are also active entities and will do things on their own if they get enough power.

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Two government reforms, one culture specific and one government specific.

As time passes, different government reforms and reform-slots will be available. They can also be based on tag, culture or religion.

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These are the two available possibilities in the Law 'Language of Pleading' for the country I tested.

Something that is different from a reform is what we call a Law. A Law can have several different policies you can pick from, and several laws have unique policies only available to certain tags, religions, cultures, government types or other factors.

There are some drawbacks to adding new reforms or policies though, as it takes a few years for it to have full effect, depending on your country's administrative efficiency. (Yes, it's a name for something else in another game, but it fits here.)

Regularly, if your government allows it, you can call in a Parliament. If you don’t do it often enough the estates will start to get irritated, but each parliament has issues that need to be resolved, and the estates will have agendas they want done for their support. Of course, you also have options to push through what you want from a parliament, if you are willing to accept the demands of the estate, like changing a particular law.

Another part of the government is the cabinet, which also grows in size as you become more advanced, allowing you to do more things. This is something that can be viewed as a hybrid between EU4 Advisors and the CK2 council actions.

Some of you may remember the domestic policies from EU2 and EU3. In Project Caesar we are bringing the idea back in the form of Societal Values. There are seven that we took from these games, one that was split in two, and we added four new ones, bringing the total to 13 different Societal Values. Societal Values are primarily affected by what other actions you do, like what policies you pick in a law, or what reforms you pick. As with so many other things in our game, this is not an instant action, but a gradual change over time.

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oh look, its eu3!

Next week, we will go into much more detail about estates and how they work.
 
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I can't argue about your preference or what constitutes as the majority of players, but I had a blast playing the game before missions trees (2017 or so?) existed. If the game needs a mission tree for a country-specific experience it has failed on start.

The difference between playing a Japanese Dyaymo, an HRE minor, an Iberian Colonizer, an Island nation like England vs a landlocked country like Hungary surrounded by threats, between a country with the Mandate of heaven and a tributary, a Shia nation in central Asia or a pirating sunni East Asian state, between an Aztec kingdom or a steppe Horde or a African tribe, between a trading republic in the Mediterranean and the Emperor are all só big only because of game mechanisms, events and geography that by the time the 'majority' needs more flavor through Mission Trees I can peacefully move on to EU6.
True. Felt the same. I can’t speak for the majority of players in and one or the other direction, but in my opinion
- once mission trees got introduced, they created a huge unbalance between nations who had detailed ones (with lots of perma claims) and nations who had not
- DLCs became almost required for nations who got a mission tree upgrade. They were too disadvantaged without.
It also created an incentive to develop more mission tree DLCs, time which could have otherwise been dedicated to adding or developing existing mechanics
- they created a lot of railroading. I always think about how Austria gets lots of PU claims on nations, who could have historically turned otherwise. Or Spain on Milan / burgundy / the lowlands, even if they had not acquired marriages through game mechanics
- they were presented in a really unfriendly manner. Having to scroll down 10 pages to read a small caption supposed to give you some context, only to come back and click to get your reward. Let’s be honest, how many players read the whole caption VS how many read only the benefits ?
I believe events get a much better done job in terms of graphical presentation of the context.

Finally, the most important to me. The game is designed to represent a 4 century long alternate scenario. After all, it’s a game about creating your own narrative. A lot can differ in 400 years, muscovy might lose to Novgorod or Poland, France can lose the Hundred Years’ War, Ming can explode, a restored Mongolia can drastically alter the trade routes from the south seas back to the Silk Road, a landlocked country can become maritime or vice versa…
Mission trees, by their static definition, although they can to some extent anticipate a few alternate branches, were not able to react to these changes.
 
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We can finally play the Ottomans from an early start! Since it's 1337 I believe we would play as Orhan son of Osman (Osman that the Ottomans take their dynasty name from). Also there are many more Turkish dynasties too which we can possibly play too and have alt-history with like the Karamanids.

I've always wanted to start as an early Ottoman Empire ever since playing Vic2 Japan (that era is the foundations of the Empire of Japan). CK2 offers this but only 100 years since the game ends at 1444. And in EU4 by 1444 with Mehmed is just prior to the Ottoman Golden Age, so they start steamrolling after that.
Now the first bookmark really deserves to be called “Rise of the Ottomans” :cool: :cool:
 
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I only just found out about this subforum and flew through the four available DDs. I have nothing to contribute to the discussion; I just want to say I'm absolutely thrilled by everything I've read so far, and I'm looking forward to what else you've cooked up and are willing to share in the upcoming weeks and months! :)
 
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Will we see culture hybridisation and religion reformation as in CK3 which could effect the country court? I ask as they're arguably the best features for culture and religion, or will we stick to base cultures / religions?
I don't think they're the best features for culture and religion and hope they won't return. I'd hate to see a Mughal empire create a generic Uzbek-Hindavi hybrid culture, or a Russian-Mishtar culture when Russia invades the hordes. I'm not against hybrid cultures because I think they're interesting, but CK3 did it wrong. I like in EU4 where you complete a mission to create the Griko culture for the byzantines in Sicily. I hope they will tie hybrid cultures to mission.
 
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no. there will very likely be another type and style of mission trees.
The original version of this answer, that was just "no" was a huge disappointment for me, so glad it got amended. Not saying that missions trees are anything like perfect, but I like the direction that missions provide, and I think the lack of country specific direction and mechanics is what made Victoria 3 feel very bland and same-y to me. I for one only believe in "universal" systems so far
 
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@Johan

Will societal values change on their own, or is it the min/max that will move on its own and we will have to move a slider ?

They move over time depending on what choices you make in many different parts of the game
 
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The sliders will probably work as a hybrid of Imperator's stability system and EU4's estate loyalty equilibrium.

Imagine you are on the centralized vs decentralized "slider".
From -50% to +50% you would get a proportional of the bonuses/maluses from each "side".

The default bland state would correspond to 0% equilibrium (in terms of estate loyalty from EU4) but actions and events could move it momentarily to +10% for example.
Then as the equilibrium is 0% it would slowly move down by itself until it reached this number.

On the other hand estate privileges etc would change the equilibrium state. If you have a "strong feudal lords" privilege given to the nobles then it gives a +30% equilibrium modifier. So if an event/action/the state of the country changes the slider position in the moment it would eventually move to the "stable" point of +30% in the slider.

In my opinion this would work well and could integrate several mechanics such as administrative decisions of the ruler (invest in navy now!), estate privileges (better revoke those feudal estate privileges if you want to be in the centralised side), buildings (that docks you build is slowly turning you more on the naval side), etc, and we would have both sudden or accelerated "unstable" changes and the stable equilibrium state calculated from your "static" institutional and infrastructure framework.
 
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I know Johan said something about no multiple start dates awhile back, but I'm not sure of the context.
Per PDX metrics, an overwhelming percentage* of the userbase would chose the earliest start date possible which made them of waste of resources for PDX and a burden to maintain.


*IIRC, less than 1% of the games were started in later start dates (even when they only had 2-3 options).
 
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I think this is the single weirdest request I see regularly for EU5.

Why would anyone want this to be a feature?

A) It would just make finding royal marriages harder therefore diplomacy more obnoxious.

B) It wouldn’t even be historical. “Royalty” extends much further than the king’s kids, political marriages extended further than royalty, and all that aside waiting for duke A to get to fifteen so you can marry him off to duchess B to get +25 relations sounds like the worst part of Crusader Kings wedged into a game where it doesn’t make any sense.

Can people please stop asking for what would inevitably be the most-hated feature of whatever game it was put into? You’re just going to complain when the feature is dead on arrival and get it patched out three weeks after release.
People want it since it would make PUs remotely interesting and not "backstab your in laws by pressing button"
It's pretty telling 90% of the mission trees people love whining about let you get PU war goals. Actually having a dynastic system would eliminate the need to do this. Because unless it's railroaded to hell, there's no way you could represent something like Philip II marrying Queen Mary, or literally any of those sorts of marriages that were historically important. I don't really know how anyone could say with a straight face something like Maximilian I being married to Mary of Burgundy wouldn't be important enough to actually merit a basic mechanic to allow for something like that to happen.
 
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They move over time depending on what choices you make in many different parts of the game
Will they constantly grow, like if you have +0.4 monthly progression for serfdom and you so you gain 100% serfdom in like 10 years or are there limits, I think there should be limits based on laws, technology or era. Or it should tend to balance more if it is further away from it kinda like IR stability, so that it just stoos advancing at some point.
 
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Will societal values tend towards balance? It would be a little weird if just with a modifier, like government reform of autocracy, we were a 100% autocratic country.
I think there should be balue where they can't advance anymore, and thar value should be determined by laws, technology and era.because if it always tends to 50%, it would be bit weird. Or maybe it tends more to balance further away you go, so if you are far from balance, it will advance slower, until it stops
 
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I don't think they're the best features for culture and religion and hope they won't return. I'd hate to see a Mughal empire create a generic Uzbek-Hindavi hybrid culture, or a Russian-Mishtar culture when Russia invades the hordes. I'm not against hybrid cultures because I think they're interesting, but CK3 did it wrong. I like in EU4 where you complete a mission to create the Griko culture for the byzantines in Sicily. I hope they will tie hybrid cultures to mission.
I’m not familiar with these mixed culture you are speaking about .

But another option could be to not have dynamically created cultures, but instead cultures with attributes like in CK3.

And replace the static culture groups and tolerance/intolerance of EU4 by a more generic cultural affinity between cultures based on shared traits. The more traits you have in common, the easier it is to get them accepted. The more different (religion,language, nomadic/sedentary, climate, agriculture/pastoral…), the more unrest.
So instead of Catalan being 100% different from occitan (because one is Spanish and the other one is French group), have Catalan be closer to Occitan, than it is from Portuguese for example.
At the same time, have Occitan closer to Catalan than it is to wallon.

EDIT : after reading about it, it seems I accidentally described CK3/VIC3 culture mechanics :D
 
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