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Tinto Talks #42 - 18th of December 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the happy Wednesday where we give you information about our upcoming super secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

This week we will be talking about the disaster system, which has been present in different forms in recent GSG games from Paradox.

Disasters
There are two major differences between a disaster and a situation. The first is that a disaster is almost always negative, and secondly a disaster is always for a specific country. While multiple situations can be active and involving a country at the same time, only a single disaster can happen at the same time.

There are also two categories of disasters. The specific historical narratives, and the generic ones that can happen to anyone under the right circumstances.

Disasters in Project Caesar are not just a modifier applied to the country, and some events triggering until you fulfill the winning conditions, but you also get unique actions you can do to affect the disaster.

Let's start looking at some common more generic disasters.

Court and Country
Resistance to the growing centralization in our country has culminated in a period of general crisis and conflict between Court and Country. Depending on how we handle this time of crisis we might come out of it a stronger country than before.

This disaster can happen to any country with strong Absolutism or Crown Power in the Age of Absolutism or Age of Revolution.

court_and_country.png

The Nobility has taken the biggest offence to this plan

As you can see above here the UI for this disaster shows your current crown power, and the power of your estates, while also showing the rebel closest to starting a civil war. It also lists the current actions you have in the disaster. Here we cannot rein in the Nobility, as they are too strong already.

Two of the icons above have special tooltips that are useful for you as well.

end_condition.png

You have to endure it for at least a decade..

advice.png

In case you don’t know how to increase crown power..


Religious Turmoil
religious_turmoil.png


Despite the country's efforts to mediate between the different religious groups in our nation, conflicts have been erupting on a regular basis. The situation has worsened and without drastic measures, we will soon be engulfed in a religious civil war.

This disaster can occur during the Age of Reformation for any Catholic country or any country following any Protestant religion, if they have a low enough religious unity and a weak clergy estate.

To get out of this disaster there are multiple ways: get religious unity higher; get the power of the clergy much higher as a spiritualist; or go full humanist, while restoring stability.

While this disaster is happening, there will be a lot of conflict from religious minorities in the country.



If we look into some of the country specific ones, we have a few here, and we don’t want to spoil them all..

The Rise of Savonarola
savonarola.png


An upstart preacher has started to spread his apocalyptic message, advocating for repentance and reform. His message is causing quite a stir among the population, and it's for sure a sign of changing times.

This is a disaster that is likely to happen to Florence in the last decades of the 15th century, if they are a Catholic republic.

To get out of this disaster you either have to become a Theocracy or Savonarola will have to die.


War of the Roses
war_of_the_roses.png


Two junior branches of the House of Plantagenet, the House of Lancaster and the House of York, both claim to be the rightful heir to the throne of England. Sporadic fights between their supporters have already broken out in a number of provinces around the country. Their heraldic symbols, a red rose and a white rose, have already become synonymous with the conflict now commonly known as the War of the Roses.

This is a specific disaster for England which can happen during the 15th century if the ruling dynasty is Plantagenet, and some specific historical events have happened. It will allow you to side with either York or Lancaster as it will build up to a civil war for the throne.



So, which historical events do you think would be best represented by a disaster? Post your suggestions here..

Now, you either get a Christmas present next Wednesday, or you get a lump of coal…
 
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end_condition.png

The lines on the left are amazing, finally there's an effort to make these sort of requirements easier to understand, but, if I may suggest something, using my extremely advanced and amazing art skills, could perhaps the different types of logical requirements (eg. all of these, at least one/two/etc of these, etc) be given a different UI treatment to make them even more immediate to understand? Something like this:

1734531910598.png
 
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can we get both a Mingsplosion and a Yuansplosion?
We've got the Red Turbans Rebellion situation, and then a generic 'Crisis of the [X] Dynasty' disaster. We'll talk more in detail about their mechanics in the Tinto Flavor devoted to China.
 
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Is that because it affected multiple countries/an entire region? While disasters are only for a specific country
Exactly, yes.
 
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Are disasters repeatable? If I get one War of Succession disaster, can it happen again if the conditions are fulfilled once more?

Personally I hope so. Just because it happened once shouldn't give you magical immunity. You should need to commit to the solution instead of backpedaling after solving it.
 
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How hardcoded is the "only one disaster at a time" rule? (Also, will the Savonarola disaster be able to rename Florence to New jerusalem?)
 
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"-80 Absolutism vs Liberalism" and "25 Absolutism vs Liberalism" is a kind of clunky way of describing them. Might be better to rework those descriptions so for example in this particular case -80 would be 80 Absolutism and 25 would be 25 Liberalism. Similar to EU4 Islam discussing Positive/Negative Piety in terms of Legalism and Mysticism.
 
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What we can see now is limited, so there may be more beneath the surface. But from what is here, this feels a little uninspired. Compared to most dev diaries from TT.

It feels very close to EU4: a few half-arbitrary conditions are met, so a disaster is triggered, which has high mana cost until you get out. A 'Rein in' button feels simplistic and not immersive.

Are you able to come up with a way that feels a bit more organic. A bit less like a binary distinction between in or not in a disaster?

And for the generic vs specific, wouldn't it be much more immersive to have many third type disasters too: history-inspired. Which are conditional on quite a specific set of circumstances, but a large number of countries can trigger them.

For example, let's say a Catholic-led country with some non-catholic christians breaks a royal marriage with a catholic country. This triggers a crisis of faith within the country, where the catholic and non-catholics fight over the future of the country - with three potential outcomes: a catholic country, a protestant country, or a catholic-protestant hybrid. England ad Henry VIII went the third route.

Or is this going to be handled by Situations?
1. That's ONE disaster, they're all different.
2. We have those, and also semi-unique (more on those later on).
3. Situations are heavily scripted, as they're more narrative pieces of content, they can't randomly appear. So even if they affect a large number of countries (e.g., the Black Death), they won't trigger randomly to any certain country, such as a generic disaster.
 
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In my opinion, most of the disaster focus should be on generic or semi-generic disasters. Having flavor be less centralized is better, in my opinion. (Of course, some nation specific ones are good too, but they should only really happen if conditions are fulfilled)
Our philosophy is that a mix (some generic ones, some country-specific ones) is what we want for the game.
 
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Awesome. In that case, I assume the Golden Horde's Great Troubles is another one?
There's a generic one for Horde Civil Wars (which is detached from regular Civil War mechanics, as they're a bit specific). So, let's say, it can also happen to Chagatai.
 
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Noted, do you have a good ref to follow for circa 1400?

I don't know if these can be considered "good", but here are various historical variants shown:



Coin of Casimir III:

398993_1b.jpg


Early Jagiellonian:

49_0182r.jpg


Late Jagiellonian:

132129.jpg


401123.jpg


and early elective:

aukcjamonet-tOaHo-308K-(3)-product_image_z2BebTL2w9iXpp6j.jpg
 
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1. That's ONE disaster, they're all different.
2. We have those, and also semi-unique (more on those later on).
3. Situations are heavily scripted, as they're more narrative pieces of content, they can't randomly appear. So even if they affect a large number of countries (e.g., the Black Death), they won't trigger randomly to any certain country, such as a generic disaster.
Sounds good! Thanks for responding.
 
Does 25 here refers to Absolutisn as far as I understand?
Is this a rule that positive value is the left one, negative is the right one?
View attachment 1232824

Thanks!
Usually, the left-side value is -100 to -1, while the right-side is 1 to 100. So this means +25 towards Liberalism; maybe we should add the '+' in the tooltip.
 
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There's a generic disaster called 'Succession Crisis', and our new system for PUs allows for more flexible CBs and wars regarding them.
I still think this should be made into a generic situation, considering how major succession wars turned into extremely important multinational conflicts at the time, like the Spanish or Austrian succession wars.
 
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Is there a particular reason you've kept this restriction? Real life doesn't really work like that, where bad stuff just gets in line to screw with you, and certain disasters could/should be happening at the same time. Why would the issue of absolutism vs. liberalism occupy the minds of people so much that they couldn't also find the capacity for sectarian violence for example?
There are gameplay reasons to have only one at once, as the game ≠ real life.
 
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Can something like "the end of the northern crusades" be a thing for the Teutons? If Lithuania converts to Christianity then there is no reason for knights from western Europe to flock to the east and therefore the Teutons have to reinvent themselves
 
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