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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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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.
It would be nice if estates were deeper than being the faceless generic abstract entities they are in EU4. One way to get away from this would be have more characters coming from estates and to tying them more closely to advisor mechanics.

Each estate could have several powerful families (or just members) and hiring advisors means hiring one of these people into your cabinet. Similarly with appointing military leaders. But then there should be political considerations to keep in mind. Hiring a cabinet of all military leaders may give your armies multiple powerful bonuses, but it effectively means giving your military estate total control over the country, with all the disadvantages that brings. Also hiring one person may make their rivals from other estates and even their own estate made.

In this way, the estates mechanics could become its own interesting little minigame of notable personalities within a nation, jostling with each other for power. With enough fleshing out, ruling a nation could be like refereeing a CK-like realm from the outside, with actions between personalities (like assassination or marriage) generating political events for the nation.

I think Imperator was on the right track with the idea of incorporating individual characters into a game about nations, although I think the idea there was not developed enough to turn into something truly interesting. But EU has a better basis for doing it anyway, with advisor mechanics already in place.
 
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There are too many provinces. It is really good but How will you adapt this with the microbattle system? I think there will be thousands of armies in the late game and it must be difficult to bring the armies together in big wars. At the same time, laying siege to all these provinces without an advanced carpet siege(not like in eu4) could be pain

I'm guessing it'll be sort of like Imperator Rome where you can siege down the province capital and the remaining locations of the province will auto siiege on their own (with some exceptions for fort zones).

It's just a guess but it works pretty well for IR.
 
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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..
Will republic have random ruler elected based on influence of factions / estates or, will we still be an « autocratic » republic which dictates its next ruler (something some would call dictatorship) ?
 
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The start date is confirmed to be between 1337-1342. İzmit is owned by the Ottomans (Conquered 1337) but Mihaliç is not (Conquered 1342). Given the Hundred Years' War hype, I would 99% bet on a 1337 start date.
 
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Really love the idea of dynamic countries name
Me too but I am scared of the potentially mediocre translation to other languages. EU4 in Spanish already shows ugly names like "francesa México" following the English syntax and random genders, instead of "México francés". I assume some other languages have similar issues.

I hope they prepare the ground for good localization from the start. I can tell new monolingual players in particular are often unnecessarily confused in a game that is already confusing enough at first.
 
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Obvious conspiracy theory: they didn't announce this game as EU5 officially because it will not have the title "Europa Universalis 5", because they try to make it less eurocentric and feel that this name would not fit.
I feel like the biggest argument against it is Crusader Kings 3
 
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so How will it be to siege 27k provinces with a micro warfare system?
IRL conquering armies often only besieged strategically important locations, like major cities. It's possible that Project Caesar's warfare system will allow nations to win wars by only besieging an enemy nation's most important locations, and not have to occupy the entire country.
 
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Some thoughts on sliders:
- I get the impression that we don't move them directly, and that laws, reforms, & etc. moves them instead.
- Which EU 3 slider gets split? Centralisation vs Decentralisation? Aristocracy vs Plutocracy? or Innovative vs Narrowminded? I can't see how the rest could get split up.

Also, someone asked about the difference between laws and reforms - I assume that you have to pick one between a set of laws in each category, while reforms are additional bonuses you pick in addition.
 
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Have you considered using a upgraded version of the character system from Imperator Rome it would make the government and possible advisor system better and more dynamic especially if we are going to have a game around the time of the 100 years war
 
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so How will it be to siege 27k provinces with a micro warfare system?
Lets take constantionple as an example, id imagine youd be able to siege down individual locations around constantinople, but if you siege down constantinople you will gradualy obtain control over the countryside around it in other locations. Like whats forts do nowadays in eu4 if there is a sieged province around it, it will gradually unsiege it
 
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Show me a source for that because what I find is "somewhere between 1331-1338"
Turkish-language sources pretty much all agree that it was 1337, though unfortunately I can't find an English-language source on short notice. The siege began in 1333 and was concluded in 1337 after the Byzantine army was forced to leave Nicomedia behind in order to supress revolts in Albania, leaving the garrison without food or supplies and forcing their surrender.
 
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I like the proposed things, but I love the choice of the background pic. After all that speculation about starting date and possibility of stronk Roman Empire - we got this screenshot. Beautiful.
 
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Will you finally cave in and make Zeeland an island (like Venice) in Project Caesar, as it historically was?
 
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