• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Talks #41 - 11th of December 2024

Hello Everyone and Welcome to another Tinto Talk! This is the Happy Wednesday where we give you information about our very secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week we will talk about Parliaments. We have a simple feature with the same name in EU4, but this is rather different, as you will see. We have also gone heavily into making this flavorful as well, and many countries have their unique names for their Parliament, where it is a “Corts” in Aragon, and a “Riksdag” in Sweden…

parliament_overview.png

How is this parliament going?


Type of Parliaments
First of all, there are five types of parliaments, although technically you could argue that no parliament is a type as well. They are based on the different types of 'gatherings' that different societies had, which means that different countries will start with a different type of parliament and that you will be able to change it during the game.

Assembly
  • Available to all countries.
  • Nobles + Peasants can have agendas, but they have very weak impact.

Council
  • Requires Codified Laws Advance
  • Nobles + Clergy can have agendas, but have a weak impact.

council.png

Can be useful…


Estate Parliament
  • Requires Feudalism Advance
  • Nobles, Clergy and Burghers can all have agendas

Autocratic Parliament
  • Requires an Age of Absolutism Advance.
  • Nobles, Clergy and Burghers can all have agendas
  • Crown Power is 25% stronger.
  • Can force through any issue they want in parliament for a small cost.

Constitutional Parliament
  • Requires an Age of Absolutism Advance.
  • Nobles, Clergy and Burghers can all have agendas, and their impact is much higher.
  • The Nobles Estate has an improved estate satisfaction.


If you wish to let your peasants have a say in your parliament you can grant them a privilege, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.


Calling a Parliament
If you are able to hold any type of parliament, you can call them as long as it's been at least five years since the last parliament was called. If you do not call one for a decade the estates will get less and less satisfied for each passing month.

When you call a parliament you get the choice of where the parliament should be held. You can always hold the parliament in your capital, which will give a small boost to centralization but you also have the option to pick another location. Usually you can pick any town or city, but there are countries that can hold a parliament in a rural location as well. If you pick a place that is not the capital, your country will become slightly more decentralized, but that location gains a nice bonus for the duration of the parliament, which lasts about half a year.

parliament_location.png

A temporary mini-capital that prospers?


You also need to pick an issue that will be the main debate of the parliament as well. You have up to two options per estate to choose from, where the parliament support you gain depends on their current power in the country.

select_DEBATE.png

The needs of the crown do not grant additional support..

Parliament Issues
The issue picked has a modifier that is applied to the country while the debate is ongoing. In many cases this is rather beneficial, but it only lasts for the duration of the parliament. We currently have over 70 different parliament issues, and about a dozen country specific ones.

If you fail to get enough support in parliament there will be a drawback which is usually a hit to stability, but if you get over 50% backing in parliament the country will get some benefits depending on the Issue.

castle_issue.png

This is something that many estates may view as beneficial..

parliament_issue.png

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.


Parliament Support
So what is Parliament Support then? You will always have a base support from your current crown power, which normally will be rather low (unless you have completely crippled your estates), and then you also have the potential support you get from picking an issue. There are also some government reforms and/or advances that increase the base support.

So how do you increase the support during a parliament then?

Parliament Agendas
Well, you can always see what agendas that the estates want to push during a parliament, and if you grant them what they want, your parliament support will increase. The amount that the Parliament Support increases is based on the estate power that they have, multiplied by their current satisfaction. This makes it beneficial to keep estates happier than the minimum levels, if you wish to rely upon them in parliament.

These agendas include law changes, changes in societal values, privileges granted and more. If you accept the agenda of an estate, then the next agenda they propose in this session will give far less parliament support.

autonomy.png

It’s for the greater good I assume?



Parliament Requests
You can also use the parliament support immediately during a session, and get a request fulfilled, but that will reduce your support by 50%.

Request Additional Taxes
This allows you to collect more taxes from the estates during the next 3 years

Ask for Larger Levies
This will make you able to raise 25% larger levies at any point during the next 3 years.

Ask for Law Changes
This will allow you to change laws at a much reduced cost of stability during the next 3 years.

Prepare for War
This will get you an insulted casus belli on a country of your choice within diplomatic range.

Of course, using any of these requires you to probably have to pick an issue backed by a powerful estate, and probably accept an agenda or two.


I would not recommend hovering closely to 50% if you really want an issue to succeed as there may be events that could reduce it happening.

Parliament Seats
We have two more things influencing parliaments that might be of interest as well. There are two special buildings that can be created that are counted as “Parliament Seats”, which gives extra significance to that location. One is an Urban Parliament Seat that the Burghers can ask for during a Parliament, which grants a significant permanent power to the Burghers in a town or city. The other one is the Rotten Borough, which the Nobles Estate will build in rural locations increasing their power if they are not currently happy.


Before we end though, we would like to hear of any flavor names you would like to see for parliaments, we have about 35 at the moment...

Stay tuned, as next week we will talk about disasters!
 
  • 190Like
  • 72Love
  • 11
  • 9
  • 1
Reactions:
Code:
Cortes
Corts
Veche
Althing
Tynwald
Riksdag
Sejm
Uijeongbu
Senate
Congress
Meclis
Estates General
Rogati
Reichstag
Duma
Staten-Generaal
Tagsatzung
Hluttaw
Parlamento
Jatiya Sangsad
Tshogdu
Sansad
Majlis
Oireachtas
Council
Landtag
Folketing
Storting
Althing
Seimas
Mejlis
Sabor
Országgyülés
Kurultai
Upstalboom
"Senatus" for latin-court theocracy could be interesting
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Hmmmm, the base system is good I think! I really like the different versions that give power to different estates!

But is there a convincing gameplay reason why the ongoing parliament debate should have modifiers at all? Otherwise it seems like an unnecessary complication that is possibly even detrimental. The parliament hasn't actually decide to do anything yet, right? Seems to me that it would have been wiser to save those kinds of modifiers for when the debate actually passes.

Not to mention the examples given are just... nonsensical? How does parliament being in a debate over whether a census should be held, increase population growth? How?! I'm sorry, I just can't take this seriously.

One of your game design pillars is "Believable World". This is not. This is EU4 style board-gaminess that you said you were trying to avoid.
 
  • 10
  • 7
  • 2Like
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
For Denmark:
Stænderforsamling (could also be called Rigsdag, as it occasionally was noted as)
Landsting could also be used but is a bit anachronistic, as it, in the game's timeframe, referred to more regional assemblies. The term was however revived for the constitutional parliament in 1849 where it referred only to the upper house, the entire parliament was called "Rigsdag"

If you allow multiple names depending on the law my suggestion would be:

Council: Danehof
Constitutional parliament: Rigsdag
Everything else: Stænderforsamling
 
  • 6Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
5 - not the scope for this game. estates matter, not their actual characters. english whigs or swedish hats & caps are not really that important to us atm.
so, DLC material it is?

for real tho, for stuff like the Netherlands or England they are very important, it would be a very very bad hit flavourwise to not have them at all
 
  • 4
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Code:
Cortes
Corts
Veche
Althing
Tynwald
Riksdag
Sejm
Uijeongbu
Senate
Congress
Meclis
Estates General
Rogati
Reichstag
Duma
Staten-Generaal
Tagsatzung
Hluttaw
Parlamento
Jatiya Sangsad
Tshogdu
Sansad
Majlis
Oireachtas
Council
Landtag
Folketing
Storting
Althing
Seimas
Mejlis
Sabor
Országgyülés
Kurultai
Upstalboom

Tawantin suyu Kamachiq (imperial council) for the incan empire, but I guess since Tawantin suyu is the incan empire just Kamachiq may be fine
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
+0.5% population growth I think represents 'oh, looks like we counted more people than we expected during the Census', not the actual birth rate increase :)
Thanks for explaining, but then it's not the right metric then. As you say, the pop hasn't increased, just peoples' perception of it. That doesn't mean any more economic trade or manpower. I guess it might mean more tax, which this is the abstraction of?
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
Could you please have this in order: crown issues, nobility issues, clergy issues...

View attachment 1229336

Alphabetical order, while useful in many occasions, is not particularly important here.

I sorted it on alphabethical there..
 
  • 25Like
  • 1Haha
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
'Kuvendi' is a good flavor name for Albanian parliaments. Rooted in 15th-century debates between Lekë Dukagjini and Skanderbeg, Kuvendi historically represented a union of clans where chiefs, elders, and youth gathered to resolve disputes, enforce the Kanun, or bind the Besa (sacred oath).
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Code:
Cortes
Corts
Veche
Althing
Tynwald
Riksdag
Sejm
Uijeongbu
Senate
Congress
Meclis
Estates General
Rogati
Reichstag
Duma
Staten-Generaal
Tagsatzung
Hluttaw
Parlamento
Jatiya Sangsad
Tshogdu
Sansad
Majlis
Oireachtas
Council
Landtag
Folketing
Storting
Althing
Seimas
Mejlis
Sabor
Országgyülés
Kurultai
Upstalboom
Althing mentioned twice, is that an oversight or are there 2 unique parliaments with the same name?
 
Very nice, it's good to see improvements to Internal Diplomacy.
Hopefully in some later updates, the Crown won't be the only one calling Parliaments and Issues. An Estate forcing a Parliament to be called and trying to force an Issue would also be both historical and give some spice for the player to deal with. But this already is better than what we had in EU4.

Census shouldnt give a baby boom through that makes no sense. It should give increased taxes if anything.

I assume that in this case it's used to find unregistered citizens in the state.
Which sounds silly today, but it was not unusual for there to be even entire villages that are founded and not everyone knows about, including the Central Government. The Census documents such missed entities
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
Is "constitutional" supposed to be literal in terms of representing the England-UK? Because they never had a literal constitution.

Anyway, time to enforce republic my way across Europe. Crowned heads will tremble at the sight of... Well, I dunno what country I'll be doing it as. But they'll still tremble.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
since we are talking about parliaments

will we be able to give to colonial holdings representation?

You know, it's the whole reason why the US war of independence started, I think we should be able to give them seats if they demand / we wish so
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
The House of Commons didn’t really represent the Peasants until after the end of the game period. Prior to the Reform Act 1832 the Commons was dominated by the landed gentry and by anyone who was rich enough to buy a seat in a rotten borough; the gentry were not considered nobility in England, but in game terms it would be the Nobility and the Burghers that controlled the Commons, while the Nobility and the Clergy controlled the Lords.

Even after the Reform Act 1832 the franchise was still heavily restricted based on wealth; the working classes didn’t get a significant voting franchise until the Reform Act 1867 and the Representation of the People Act 1884.
The House of Commons wasn't a "representing the Pesants" thing. It was very much for the Burgurs and the freemen. Universal adult male suffrage wasn't established for the commons until The Representation of the People Act 1918.
Interesting, I didn't know that. I meant more that in game terms there's no reason to represent bicameralism given the way parliament is represented.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Code:
Cortes
Corts
Veche
Althing
Tynwald
Riksdag
Sejm
Uijeongbu
Senate
Congress
Meclis
Estates General
Rogati
Reichstag
Duma
Staten-Generaal
Tagsatzung
Hluttaw
Parlamento
Jatiya Sangsad
Tshogdu
Sansad
Majlis
Oireachtas
Council
Landtag
Folketing
Storting
Althing
Seimas
Mejlis
Sabor
Országgyülés
Kurultai
Upstalboom
I am not sure about this but for the Ottomans/Turkish beyliks a better name would probably be Divan/Divan-Hümayun than (I'm assuming) Meclis. While the Divan was more like a cabinet, it was also where petitions from the public were heard and answered. It was also a final decision making body and also involved factional interests and rivalries (for example between the Janissary Agha and ministers) similar to a parliament in game. Furthermore, the name Meclis is not used to refer to any central decision making organ in this period and only exists similar to a parliament after the Ottoman Constitutional era beginning in 1876. Such a name would be anachronistic.

Overall although it is not the same thing in reality, I think Divan/Divan-ı Hümayun is a better name for the game mechanic it is trying to capture.
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions: