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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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Currently its a 2 year cooldown, and the estates does not care if its been less than 5 years, and every month after that they get more and more anxious.

so no, its not a major "click at time x"
Would there be any point in not calling it? Like is there any drawbacks in calling it every two years or otherwise, is there any postive reason in not calling it at all?
 
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Some questions:
a) Although I'm from the Balkans, and if the starting date is what we all think it might be, I'm very curious about the Baltic region - namely, will there be a playable nation with pagan religion in Europe or at least the possibility of conversion to paganism?
b) Will the issue of rebels be addressed more realistically - proportionate to the population etc.?
c) Will there be events that will affect the whole region, like Black Plague in Europe, minor ice age, historical earthquakes, floods, etc.?
d) Assasinations of enemy leaders and generals?
e) Special options similar to Iroman, only with online saves, where you will be prevented from restarting the game (if the initial situation does not suits you - like rivals that are not to your liking or such), and with no "sc.m" saves? To make sure you get just one start and see it through, where you will gather online points and be on some kind of HoF list?
 
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Hoping the game will simulate Constantinople being basically impossible to take for the first 100 years or so. Also hoping the AI won't just give it up even if you haven't sieged it. I played M&T as Ottomans once, sieged some forts in Thrace and then just demanded Constantinople and the AI gave it to me. Something like AI refusing to give up their capital unless it's occupied?
 
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I did some more research again and saw that Izmit was captured by the Ottomans in 1331, but then somehow went back to Byzantium. And then conquered again in 1337. If the game starts in 1331, there can be an event such as return Izmit to Byzantium, just like the Surrender of Maine event, and the Ottomans and Byzantium may enter an early war. Another detail I researched is that the city of "Mihaliç", in Karasids control and in border with Bursa, is still in the Karasids and this land was conquered by the Ottomans in 1336. When we look at these and re-evaluate, the game will most likely start in 1331.
 
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Beautiful map, I see a much greater density of provinces than in EU4 - I like it! (it is possible that there will be definitely more countries than in EU4 at the beginning of the game)

I can ask for a screenshot of the map of Central Europe? Please, I'm begging you ;)
 
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
well that makes sense
 
Am I the only one who thinks the "societal values" mechanic seems super abstracted and game-y? Wouldn't it make more sense to tie a modifier directly to the policies rather than have the policies affect a societal value which changes a modifier? Like instead of "Court Language" adding monthly serfdom progress which gives -X% peasant strength, make "Court Language" give -X% peasant strength.

I just think it's kind of silly to be like "France has 20 narrowmindedness points while England only has 10 narrowmindedness points". Like what does "narrowmindedness" look like in real life? What does that represent practically?
 
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I did some more research again and saw that Izmit was captured by the Ottomans in 1331, but then somehow went back to Byzantium. And then conquered again in 1337. If the game starts in 1331, there can be an event such as return Izmit to Byzantium, just like the Surrender of Maine event, and the Ottomans and Byzantium may enter an early war. Another detail I researched is that the city of "Mihaliç", in Karasids control and in border with Bursa, is still in the Karasids and this land was conquered by the Ottomans in 1336. When we look at these and re-evaluate, the game will most likely start in 1331.
@dorukdorucu can you confirm?
 
Interesting. I do wonder how it will work and if you'll use limited use of characters like in Vicky 3 or stick to the roots of EU series and keep them just as names in government tab. If second, then I wonder how Republics gonna work, because I think there should be a way for player to influence who's gonna be elected.

Also, you did mentioned "No male heir remaining", but if you use old system, the game simply generated a new one, so to me itseems like there's gonna be some kind of character system or at least dynasty tree for monarchies and other autocratic governments with just names.

Also, I hope that in terms of modding, I would be bale to setup which monarch names have a regnal number up to this point and if I want there to be none, then I'd like to just clear them and the game would use the name list of the culture. This request is influenced by the thing in EU4, where if you clear names from country at common/countires, the game will not pick names from the culture's name pool, aka each of those files require a name pool to be defined for rulers only. Hope this will not be the case here.
 
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Amazing content. Love how many different (but likely heavily inter-locked) mechanics there are to governments. Separation between laws and reforms is very interesting. So is the part where government reforms may be linked to different things than just government type. Cabinet also sounds intriguing. Probably the best thing is that so many things are going to expand over time with new slots for reforms or cabinets.

Estates actually following their own agendas on their own is also a great prospect. Would love to hear more about estates in general though, especially how you unlock them. If other parts of the system have more flexibility in that regard, it'd be awesome if you could expand the types of estates you have over time too, like by conquering lands of other cultures and whatnot.

The regional title variety is also a nice touch. And if the land-less titles would include HRE, I wonder if we'd see the division between King of the Romans and the imperial title with the Papal coronation which was still a thing in the time period covered by the estimated starting date. And if we'd see imperial interregnums of the candidate fails to achieve the second step.

Also, from the sounds of it it looks like you'd be able to pursue multiple issues in a single parliament session? If so, that'd also be neat. I hope the parliament gets a hefty overhaul though. In late game you have so many seats you need to placate that it gets tedious, even if it's fine for the early game. Maybe later parliament reform where seats represent entire regions of the map? Or maybe overhaul covering the entire time period.
 
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One issue I find in all grand strategy games is that there is usually few post-conquest life. Once you conquer a state, you have full control of it with the exception of some unrest or local autonomy you may need to deal with (but it's automatically done over time). Is there something like 'state/government reach' here? Or sub-national government levels? Internal regional powers and entitites and potestates that we need to deal and interact with?

PS: I "love" when my provincial governors in Imperator Rome become disloyal haha

PS2: I think MEIAOU and Taxes mod tried to address this by adding communication distance or something like that... it may still be a bit convoluted mechanic
 
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Would there be any point in not calling it? Like is there any drawbacks in calling it every two years or otherwise, is there any postive reason in not calling it at all?

You'll see in a future dev diary :)
 
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That new font and UI does not work at all, it feels incredibly flat in the middle area, almost looks like flash. I hope it isn't like Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3. Imperator Rome made the new UI system work but those two absolutely dropped the ball and look garish, to the point it gives a bad feeling when playing the game and trying to navigate their UI. Hopefully that gets fixed. The color scheme works but that font is simply too plain and soft, especially against a completely flat background.
 
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Interesting choice if the start date *is* 1337 as it appears to be (assuming that dynamic province renaming is a thing). The Black Death was a thing and a half
It's not a bad thing if plagues are in the game, London suffered its last major plague in 1665/1666 and let's not forget the impact on the american natives.
 
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