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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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Exactly what I want. A lot of great nations did arise as either revolter states, or revolters backed by other nations/polities. For example, a "governor" of Punjab may betray the Delhi sultanate and pledge allegiance to a Military leader of Kabul of a certain Timurid dynasty, and in turn as the Delhi Sultanate collapses, allows for the establishment of the Mughal Empire.

Allowing a more in-depth rebellion system adds sooo much more flavour to the gameplay, if the world around you is constantly evolving - it forces you to evolve with as the game progresses. Events and disasters alone cannot provide for such flavour. I'm so tired of seeing the same 5-way blob of Gujarat, Bengal, Vijayanagar, Jaunpur and Delhi in the Indian subcontinent. Or in most playthroughs following the collapse of the Ming, the Qing never fully unify china because of the warlords blocking the path and forming strong alliances with each other and not becoming vassals of the Qing.

PS: I believe the Deccan revolt happened in the year 1347, not 1337 - establishing the Bahamani Sultanate. :)
I should have specified the Southern Deccan, then. Malik Kafur raided down south from the Krishna to Madurai between 1308 and 1313, then the Tughlaq (Mohammed bin Tughlaq, I think) held temporary suzerainty over most of the south, except for the Malabar and Kanyakumari. Regardless by 1334 the southern Deccan was in full revolt. The governors that had been installed in Madurai declared independence as the Ma'Bar Sultanate that year. The subjugated Hoysalas (along with a host of petty kings and chiefs) revolted throughout the southern Deccan for the next three years (Vijayanagara was founded during this, in 1336. The exact origins of the two founders are shrouded in myth). They essentially acted as a Hindu coalition, which after successes in the revolt started cannibalizing each other.

The revolt of the Bahmanid sultan was different, but similar. A revolter king was crowned in Gulbarga in 1347, as you said.

For a further discussion, see Sastri's A History of South India. There are newer works but it is canonical in South Indian history, and provides a rough overview of the revolt in one of the chapters.
 
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A deeper revolt system also allows for more challenging and engaging gameplay. When you have to juggle the demands of a disparate nation, there will always be powerful people who will stand against you. Are they going to lay down and let you have your way? *sometimes* I suppose, but definitely not always. You should be scared of the powerful or numerous in your nation getting sick of your shit eventually, just as the leaders of these polities were IRL. Of course, IRL isnt everything, but i personally find that to be one of the most engaging parts of the time period and history in general; the balancing, juggling and genuine fear that these leaders went through to reach their power.
And it should scale with the size of your nation - the larger it gets, the more extravagantly it crashes (or atleast tries to, and is upto the player to hold it together through internal and external politics). The only system that accurately depicts this in the EU4 is the Mandate of Heaven for the Empire of China and to a certain extent the Majapahit disaster. It would be very interesting to see one such societal value scale for Expansionism/Isolationism which plays into how often and what kind of revolts you get (or don't get if the nation stays within its realms and plays tall). It'd be interesting to see a neutral Swiss confederacy only focus on getting the Genevois lands and then shift to an isolationist policy - similar with Goryeo staying within its cultural borders and the Shogunate implementing Sakoku. This makes not only the gameplay more challenging, but also the AI more dynamic allowing a better worldbuilding aspect to the gameplay.
 
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Caucasus in 1337 in the latest paradox game Project Caesar.
View attachment 1099829
As for the Kabardians, they came to the region called Great Kabardia only in 1350-1400 from the Taman Peninsula.

Previously, Kabardians were called Kasogi.

Kasogi​

1223 - Kasogs are mentioned in a chronicle about the emergence of the Mongols. [12] The Ossetians , long-time neighbors of the Kabardians , a Circassian tribe , still call the Kabardian country Kæsæg and the Kabardian people Kæsgon . Additionally, the Svans and Mingrelians continue to call the Kabardians "Kashgon".
As for the Turkic peoples of Karachay and Balkar, I do not know whether they were independent or under the rule of the Alans.
As for the Abazins, in 1337 they lived on the Black Sea coast and were subjects of the Georgians.
OK, didn't know that they migrated there. Hopefully all of them will be releasables at least.
 
I should have specified the Southern Deccan, then. Malik Kafur raided down south from the Krishna to Madurai between 1310 and 1320, then the Tughlaq (Mohammed bin Tughlaq, I think) held temporary suzerainty over most of the south, except for the Malabar and Kanyakumari. Regardless by 1334 the southern Deccan was in full revolt. The governors that had been installed in Madurai declared independence as the Ma'Bar Sultanate that year. The subjugated Hoysalas (along with a host of petty kings and chiefs) revolted throughout the southern Deccan for the next three years (Vijayanagara was founded during this, in 1336. The exact origins of the two founders are shrouded in myth). They essentially acted as a Hindu coalition, which after successes in the revolt started cannibalizing each other.

The revolt of the Bahmanid sultan was different, but similar. A revolter king was crowned in Gulbarga in 1347, as you said.

For a further discussion, see Sastri's A History of South India. There are newer works but it is canonical in South Indian history, and provides a rough overview of the revolt in one of the chapters.
I apologize, I misinterpreted the revolt in question, but thank you for the information! The Madurai Sultanate and the Vijayanagar Kingdom both seem to be represented in the population map of India we saw in one of the previous tinto talks so that further confirms the start date.
 
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Hi devs, i don't know if you will read this, but i have two suggestions that i believe represent a significant portion of the player base:

1.Please re-evaluate the combat mechanics.
Specially in this period, but more generally throughout history conquest was never easy, and always had dire consequences. We don't really see this in EU games generally.
Personally i'd like to be able to play defensively, building a country of sturdy unbeatable fortifications. The isolationist gameplay in EU4 just isn't a realistic possibility, this needs to change. Playing defensively should be arguably more powerful than offensively, if not also more costly. There are many examples of such setups, constantinople and the byz being the most famous. I hope this happens.

2.Please make sure there is a 2d Game mode for low end pcs.
A lot of EU players have lower end spec hardware, they could really use having a 2d map mode, with overall 2d graphics with -no 3d- anywhere.
This is a niche game, and you can't afford to lose players over cosmetic choices. Also, it would be great to have more people from the poorer parts of the world playing the game. In recent Paradox games, the company has shown these gamers the finger. Please change that, it won't hurt you to support lower end specs.
This is a MAP game, ideally the minimum requirement should be opengl 3.1 or so, nothing else.

Either way, the dev diaries look promising, good luck.
 
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I really hope the siege system is more realistic. I am not a big fan of entire forts being repaired in the time span of just one single misclick. I understand that supplies would go into the city immediately once the siege is over. Yet how did you guys repair the entire damage in a single day?
yeah, it even happens if the game is paused and it's also not so realistic that they would have enough supplies to bring it back down to -40percent again maybe 0percent or 20percent would make more sense and be more logical and not soul crushing.
 
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Just add to it various subject types and administrative division of the country (and if dynamic or can be changed while reforming the country, even better) into... whatever they are depending on how much autonomy they have and in what culture or language they are - regions, provinces, voyvodeships.... and it starts to look like a game that we never had and always wanted to have :)
 
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It wouldd be neat if in republics, the parliament is called automaticly and the strongest faction(represented by estate machanic maybe) forces a mission onto you.
 
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Just want to say that this looks great, good changes overall (it's for Vicky 9 right?). I'm quite interested in seeing how you are going to implement these governments since so much changed over time, kings going from being absolute monarchs to being more figureheads and so forth. Will this be visible in game?
I am wondering to which depth that parlamanets will work. In England the king could not just decide to levy a new tax but had to call the parlament to make that tax legal, can we expect something similar from Ceasar?

Looking forward to the next Tinto talk
I had almost forgotten about the sliders from EU3, now I want them back. They where great
 
Court and common languages? sliders? Ever more appealing to my taste!

Wondering how similar sliders will be to the EUIII ones... the EUIII ones weren't perfect, as i recall.
 
Regarding the naming stuff, for example Serbian emperor had the title emperor of the serbs, greeks etc. (not sure if there were other cultures in his title), if we can get these titles in the game whould that make greeks a integrated/accepted culture provided that enough countries recognise Serbian empire (in this case) and there is no greek state/it's weak enough. Also the emperor of Serbia got his emperorship by elevating the lvl of Serbian ortodox head of church to a patriarch(a pope in the ortodox church) since neither the pope nor the Byzantine patriarch whould give him the title. Will we get to see something like this in the game like needing high relations with the pope to become an emperor or boosting your local head of fate for some other religions?
 
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Wish list of quickfire stuff:
  1. User customization of keyboard shortcuts
  2. EU4 style notifications with customization - I know you don't like situation menus (thank god) but I hope you achieve eu4s level of brilliance on notifications
  3. User customization of the outliner - this one is so important, especially as you get so much more complex on some features
  4. Message settings! So vital and so missed from many recent games - really dramatically improves the user experience when you can pick what you care about
  5. A comprehensive ledger - or equivalent.
  6. Custom mapmode placement ala IR or EU4 - ideally with layers like EU4, such a great system
So many recent PDS launches have come without these features and many have added them back in later
I implore you to get it right first time!
1711214266198.png

You'd be happy to know, dotpoints 2 and 4 have already been confirmed by Johan.
 
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Multiplayer confirmed?
I haven't seen anything announced anywhere about multiplayer but, given all hte other Paradox games ofr over a decade and given overall Paradox statements during the same period, i can't see Caesar not being multiplayer-capable.
 
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I pray for a dynamic system to name countries. A nation named after the ruling dynasty or after its capital cannot have a static name, as both might change at any time.
 
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