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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 think having a mixture of the mission system of Imperator and EU4. Give us choices and dynamic missions, but still let us work on more than one mission section at a time.
I agree. the dynamics that could be created from having multiple mission trees to select are unparalleled especially if you can forcefully cause a rival to abandon one temporarily for example: take the Italian wars, France, Austria, and Spain all get mission trees to dominate Italy. it could be that when France declares their ambitions for Italy the others get locked out and instead get a mission tree explicitly to stop the French which ends with France abandoning their ambitions for now, and Austria proclaiming their ambitions with France and Spain getting a tree to stop them queue the cycle repeating until Italy is strong enough to repel them or one of them wins
 
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Comparing to eu4... First of all, I hope there will be more options to interact within familly e.g. daughter could marry prince from other nation and this prince would became a king but... something for something. The same for powerfull houses within a country. Second, hope there will be no mission trees or their impact will be reduced. I'm playing eu4 because I like history and I want history to be written itself. In eu4, if you want to built a powerfull country, you almost have to follow chain reaction. I dont want to have hearts of iron 2.
 
Comparing to eu4... First of all, I hope there will be more options to interact within familly e.g. daughter could marry prince from other nation and this prince would became a king but... something for something. The same for powerfull houses within a country. Second, hope there will be no mission trees or their impact will be reduced. I'm playing eu4 because I like history and I want history to be written itself. In eu4, if you want to built a powerfull country, you almost have to follow chain reaction. I dont want to have hearts of iron 2.
I dont think family interactions work for an EU game, assuming this is an EU game. In this period, the minutia of dynastic politics stop really mattering all that much, and I personally just find that that kind of thing distracts from the real point of the game, which is going from a feudal, decentralised polity, into a centralised strong state. Thats the real soul of EU, you arent playing as the ruler, rather you are playing as the *state*, and family interactions distract from that.

Consider the difference between rulers in CK and Vic 3. In CK3 you *are* the ruler, and the rest of the state isn't directly accessible to the player. However in Vic 3, you are the state apparatus, and the ruler is basically just a modifier.

EU covers the period where these two systems swap, as happened in the period. So i disagree that the player should have any true interaction with family members, because they should be acting independently of the player. The player is the state, trying to become stronger and more independent from the individuals and especially the families in question.
 
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I'm not here to look at the update for ONE week and already I see the power of Truenaming Arcane Geodesy, the power to project desires and power only by the inherent properties of a given name, usually refered in any serious publication as TAG magic, is back. Oh well... I suppose in a world made of brands and personalities, it became a cultural trait

Nice coloration of the sea controlled areas I guess, and I do hope the +0.10 Progress stuffs are working as Prestige does with further pull back when going to the extreme, so you are not just plonking the stuffs up to max a value then repel all related laws to keep the bonus and get rid of the malus
 
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I hope the level of detail we are seeing in mountains as obstacles in this region of the world will be matched in the Americas and Africa, which tend to have very lackluster blockers, making the game less immersive, and the regions less dynamic. Commented about this regarding Brazil last Tinto talk, just worth reiterating.
 
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is there gonna be a system to have a historical game like in hoi4 or is it gonna be random like in eu4?
I like how they did it for HOI4 but i dont think it is feasible to do that in this game, because in HOI4 that basically affects the national focus that the AI nation chooses. This game does not have that. Not to mention that HOI4 spans just one or two decades of gameplay.

EU4 used Luck to try and represent this, but I am hesitant to say it was a success. It helped for sure, but the way they do it is by giving bonuses to that nation rather than affecting AI decision-making.

I have no idea how Project Caesar will approach this. What I really want is proper and competent AI that will adjust to its circumstances to create a thematically rich and believable world.
 
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is there gonna be a system to have a historical game like in hoi4 or is it gonna be random like in eu4?
HOI4 game lengths is about 9 years.
Even over such a short period the historical mode is a bit “dumb” as the AI only copies historical focus trees without adapting to impactful neighboring decisions (such as human SSR restoring the Romanov or Hungary restoring dual monarchy which should impact the ideological alignement and territorial claims of neighboring or rival countries…)

EU4 or CK3 on the contrary, have a cycle of 4-5 centuries. The amount of randomness in religion, culture, trade, geopolitical influence, internal struggles, climate, diseases etc is so important over such a long period that I fail to see how any “historical” railroading could be successful (let alone interesting, in my opinion).
EU4 mission trees are already too “static” to adapt to variations such as a Swedish North America or a British Austria PU.
Any decision by the player or just random dice rolls in battle / events will have large repercussions by the end of the game
 
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I dont think family interactions work for an EU game, assuming this is an EU game. In this period, the minutia of dynastic politics stop really mattering all that much, and I personally just find that that kind of thing distracts from the real point of the game, which is going from a feudal, decentralised polity, into a centralised strong state. Thats the real soul of EU, you arent playing as the ruler, rather you are playing as the *state*, and family interactions distract from that.

Consider the difference between rulers in CK and Vic 3. In CK3 you *are* the ruler, and the rest of the state isn't directly accessible to the player. However in Vic 3, you are the state apparatus, and the ruler is basically just a modifier.

EU covers the period where these two systems swap, as happened in the period. So i disagree that the player should have any true interaction with family members, because they should be acting independently of the player. The player is the state, trying to become stronger and more independent from the individuals and especially the families in question.
so did you forget there were wars over succession to thrones for basically the whole period of the game or what? You don't think who marries who or who succeeds to what throne matters? You'd rather just have total RNG like in EU4?
 
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Will subjects be depicted on the map in the Victoria 3 fashion (same color as the overlord), the CK3 fashion (part of your realm until you break down the vassals in the political map), or the EU4/HoI4 fashion (look like independent countries but are actually vassals)?

In other words, with the map scale, will the HRE look like a Christmas tree due to all the different colors, or will it be a solid color like in CK3 until you zoom in?
 
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Will subjects be depicted on the map in the Victoria 3 fashion (same color as the overlord), the CK3 fashion (part of your realm until you break down the vassals in the political map), or the EU4/HoI4 fashion (look like independent countries but are actually vassals)?
Or the EU3 fashion, in which the vassal keeps its colour but loses the country name and the overlord's name extends over vassal territory
 
so did you forget there were wars over succession to thrones for basically the whole period of the game or what? You don't think who marries who or who succeeds to what throne matters? You'd rather just have total RNG like in EU4?
I think the minutia should not be in the players control. The general parts, of "The state needs an alliance with Spain, so the royal family will marry into Spain's" should be up to the player, but how that is ultimately done should be up to the royal family, (i.e. the game. you could come up with a non-rng system if you wanted). You are not playing as the royal family, you are playing as the state.

No matter what, RNG will come into it. You cant control heir's or deaths, can you? You might have a fantastic plan to get the throne of Spain but if some crucial piece in that plan gets dysentery its over. Or if your epic plan gets foiled by them just not having a male heir, thats still up to RNG. You can't avoid it, and I don't think you should have exact control anyway.
 
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I think the minutia should not be in the players control. The general parts, of "The state needs an alliance with Spain, so the royal family will marry into Spain's" should be up to the player, but how that is ultimately done should be up to the royal family, (i.e. the game. you could come up with a non-rng system if you wanted). You are not playing as the royal family, you are playing as the state.

No matter what, RNG will come into it. You cant control heir's or deaths, can you? You might have a fantastic plan to get the throne of Spain but if some crucial piece in that plan gets dysentery its over. Or if your epic plan gets foiled by them just not having a male heir, thats still up to RNG. You can't avoid it, and I don't think you should have exact control anyway.
I think I agree with you, in part.


I wouldn't want CK-level details in the life of your ruler, but I think there is space for a basic family tree and its implication, because I would still like more details about what is happening, so that I can plan ahead, but not necessarily play the family. Then again, sometimes it could make sense to specifically have your heir marry the female heir of the throne. It's a State affair, after all! And the Habsburg are there to show us how seriously they took the "preservation" of their line.

So a good compromise could be an option to marry specifically your ruler or heir, but leave everything else to chance. That way, you don't have to implicate yourself into what your third child, or grandchildren are doing, but you can still directly pursue a PU if the conditions are there for it. Of course, the AI would be far more guarded about such "special" marriage proposals.

Another advantage of having a basic family trees would be that, as your rulers die, sometimes in rapid succession, you would see how your line is becoming thinner until you seriously have to think about its survival.
 
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I'd not even use a family tree as it is likely a problem to represent in game, but rather have a list of Next in line to the throne, with (using EU4 terms) Legitimacy, Prestige, Diplomatic relation, Culture, Religion... be the determinant of who is first, with the ability to get ahead if you play the diplomacy game well