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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!
 
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We have "Sabor" for croatian.

adding the other
Sabor is aplicable in Bulgarian as well, albeit sounding a little archaic, and could be confused only with religious conferences of the time. But there is precedent, in 893 the old ruling knyaz convened the "People's sabor of Preslav", that would be equivelent to the Estates General.
 
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So the issues/agendas are short term benefits/gains you can try to pass with a bit of horse trading for a longer bonus, but it's alright to fail them as long as you time them right and take advantage of the benefits the debate gives? The cost is mainly stability, but that's something you can invest into, plus it's probably way worse in the long run if you don't call a Parliament.

kinda yes.. parliaments are definitely "horse trading".
 
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I think it'd be better if laws gave some more / less parliements request, and eventually gave more power to parliements.

Also, I hope there will be some possibilities to use parliement to get out of your obligations to other countries / some specific peace terms that don't include territory. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traité_de_Blois_(1504) dynastic part was broken by the use of the general estates
 
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Can tags with tribal and horde governments have autocratic and constitutional parliaments?

hmm..if they can research it then yes.. but well..
 
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If I'm correct (and the national archive is down so I can't double check) the Staten Generaal of the Dutch Seven Provinces was only Nobility and Burghers, no Clergy. Which I don't think is an option for the different parliaments.
We thought of broad categories that would work for several different countries. This could be possible if we'd add something like 'unique types of parliaments', which in theory is potentially doable.
 
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Rada is ahistorical for nearly all the tags you mentioned.

Ruthenian states had "duma", and as I can see even current Ukrainian sources use it.

E.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20071105014603/http://litopys.org.ua/krypgvol/krypgv13.htm - https://web.archive.org/web/20070930190032/http://litopys.org.ua/krypgvol/krypgv14.htm
or even here:
Both words are equally used in Ukraine in relevance to the medieval Boyar Rada/Boyar Duma. These are synonyms.
As long as the game uses language (dialect) flavour, then it makes sense to separate rada and duma for Ukrainian and Russian lands.
 
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What happens when the location the parliament is held in gets occupied? Estate leaders die? Influence down? Parliament gets dissolved?

hmm.. parliament ends.
 
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Mehestan for Zoroastrian Iran, shura for Arabs, maybe divan for Turks since meclis is a really late word, Logtyng for Faroe, Tynwald for Mann Island, orszaggyüles for Hungary, sobor and veche for Russians, jirga for Pashtuns?
 
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Is "constitutional" supposed to be literal in terms of representing the England-UK? Because they never had a literal constitution.
England-UK certainly had a constitution, but compiling it into a single document is the sort of uncouth thing that revolutionaries get up to.

Can you give some examples of country specific parliamentary issues?
The English crown can use the parliament to curtail the Palatinate of Durham's power in the north for example. Big angry Clergy in the short term but probably a long term benefit.
 
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Beside names does something else change from country to country with the same parliament type? Like do the Castilian Cortes and the Swedish Riksdag have something else unique beside the name?

privileges?

power of the estates?

Laws?
 
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We thought of broad categories that would work for several different countries. This could be possible if we'd add something like 'unique types of parliaments', which in theory is potentially doable.
In that case I suggest adding a special Georgian parliament, which has only clergymen and nobles, as the burghers were not allowed to attend. You can read more here.
 
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Can the same country have different names of parliament depending on circumstances? For example, Portugal should have the regular "Cortes" for parliaments with only one or two estates but have the "Cortes-Gerais" when all three of the Nobles, Clergy and Burghers are represented
 
What are the benefits and drawbacks of getting peasants into the Parliament, other than them stinking, of course?

more options for agendas

(drawback and benefit)
 
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How do parliaments work for like peasant republics and or other republics, and would suggest senate as a parliament name for specific colonies (or maybe if you reform Rome)
 
Thanks for the update Johan! Another great Tinto Talk.

I was curious about your warning about giving peasants the right to participate. From reading, it seems like the worst outcome is either not holding a parliament (where I assume you get a scaling estate disloyalty modifier), or you hold a parliament and fail. Considering all of the examples you displayed showed positive modifiers for succeeding, could you not always focus the parliament on a popular issue getting minor benefits you don't care about, effectively ignoring the parliament, or can the people force something more significant on you?

For example, in Stellaris, there are policies that lock you out of aggressive wars, or make you dedicate more resources to the people (through consumer goods), and if you deviate from these, factions of your society can unite against you. Is this something that would be beyond the scope of PC? I think there could be some cool things you could have, like for example, the peasant class pushing for reduced levies/restrictions on your ability to declare wars if they were completely decimated in a recent war where you really over extended yourself. I believe such a thing could further reduce the player power creep that we see in EU4, where players who don't care about putting their state on the brink of collapse will always beat an AI who is not willing to desperately in-debt themselves/overextend to the same extent to expand.
 
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