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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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Polish content wouldn't feel correct without a proper Szlachta disaster, although it's oriented to early game.
But Poland wouldn't really have disasters in the time frame 1300-1600.

I am rather dissatisfied with EU4's Poland nobility crisis, because for some reason it takes away the actual historical option of Poland maintaining it's electoral monarchy system, and forces you into an ahistorical absolute monarchy (this ties into the notion that Poland's political system was somehow less evolved than absolute monarchies, which I would disagree with).

The way EU4 portrays Poland's political system seems to be greatly misinformed; the Polish political system was an incredible success early on, allowing the creation of a large, mutli-ethnic and multi-faith state through diplomacy and consensus and without much military conquest. EU4 portrays Poland's elective monarchy as flawed and limiting from the start, when in reality, Poland's political system only really started failing from the 1650s onwards, due to devastating wars, collapse of the economy, rise of sectarian violence and religious intolerance, etc. etc.

I hope you are able to portray a more accurate picture in Project Caesar.
 
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For "War of the Roses", the conflict was actually called the "Wars of the Roses" because there were multiple periods of war and peace. At one point, it even looked like the Yorkists had won and then Richard III had to ruin it. If the disaster is going to be a single conflict and that's it, then fair enough I guess the name is fine. However, if you plan on multiple periods of conflict, I would prefer the proper name.
 
There should be a generic disaster for a monarch being captured in battle. This happened several times during the period (king Jean II of France, Sultan Bayezid, Emperor Yingzong of Ming). This could provide a unique challenge as the nation is forced into a type of regency where the state tries to ransom the monarch back while estates and potential heirs struggle to fill the power vacuum.
 
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Why is it only possible to have one disaster at a time? Is there a technical reason? To me it seems like it should be possible to enter religious turmoil, while at the same time having court and country, for example.
 
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Once again, I must confess the character models do not look good...

I get that it’s a work in progress but I’m not seeing much progress. The main issue is that different assets don’t fit together, the crown and the robes are either too big or too small, making it look like a bad collage. Also, the King stoically sitting in a room on fire in full regalia, looks like that dog meme, is that the intention? That image there is doing nothing for me but break immersion. I would much rather have a still painting, like the beautiful artworks you have on this and other dev diaries, than to see a poor 3D character model plastered over a 2D background.

Please reconsider this.
 
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In EU4, disasters can only happen once per TAG, can disasters in Project Caesar happen more than once? To avoid AI doom spirals, maybe limit them to a 90 year cooldown?
 
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But Poland wouldn't really have disasters in the time frame 1300-1600.

I am rather dissatisfied with EU4's Poland nobility crisis, because for some reason it takes away the actual historical option of Poland maintaining it's electoral monarchy system, and forces you into an ahistorical absolute monarchy (this ties into the notion that Poland's political system was somehow less evolved than absolute monarchies, which I would disagree with).

The way EU4 portrays Poland's political system seems to be greatly misinformed; the Polish political system was an incredible success early on, allowing the creation of a large, mutli-ethnic and multi-faith state through diplomacy and consensus and without much military conquest. EU4 portrays Poland's elective monarchy as flawed and limiting from the start, when in reality, Poland's political system only really started failing from the 1650s onwards, due to devastating wars, collapse of the economy, rise of sectarian violence and religious intolerance, etc. etc.

I hope you are able to portray a more accurate picture in Project Caesar.

But the whole "szlachta disaster" sells very well to players, so no surprise here. There should be flavored events for growing influence of the szlachta (even though I'm pretty sure nobility in other states wanted more priviledges as well and we will have generic infighting among the estates) and ways to counter it somehow, but it shouldn't take place too early and definitely not under non-elective monarchy with heirs with strong claim.
 
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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.
but why tho? I thought, hoped, that some situations could be procedural to simulate the various succession wars when half of Europe went at war (a la crisis system in Vic2 sorta). Having them scripted feels bad, especially cause it would be cool to yk, not being forced to follow a historical scripted path
 
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This is a kind of disasters that are a bit fringe to portray (there are other similar ones, as the 'Infantes of Aragon' one, that I helped to design), as they happened in a very specific background, that we usually prefer to portray with the base game mechanics. Not ruling it out, but probably better to discuss it in a future Tinto Flavor.
So for example, would a "Tripartition of Hungary" situation/disaster, spawned from a very specific combination of Ottoman/Turkish occupation and a succession crisis, one that potentially would spawn the Principality of Transylvania from a pretender faction, be also too specific and fringe?
 
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Do you have famines as a disaster? They had large effects on nations besides just starvation and were huge factors for the French revolution and revolutions of 1848. In fact, the little ice age from the 16th-19th century should be it's own situation.

I don't know if it deserves it's own disaster, but the pilgrims not knowing how to survive on their own without the help of the natives could give interesting disaster options like integrating more with their society, only accepting their help, or taking what they have.

Over hunting could be it's own disaster. Thinking of things like bison and beaver in America due to either wasting the food like the bison or hunting beavers to make hats. Which for the beavers was also done a lot by the native population as a great resource of trade with the colonials. On that note, possibly deforestation. Not sure if that ones prevalent to the time period though.
 
Will disasters have their difficulty increased to make them more serious threats for players and especially large empires? In Eu4 it was sort of annoying how larger country=easier time dealing with internal strife, which was completely contrary to how it (generally) worked historically. Also, for Civil Wars and other disasters, will they be able to fire more than once?
 
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Is the "Religious Turmoil" disaster restricted to Christians only? I find that odd. You can probably find something akin to the religious conflicts in Western Europe in other parts of the world. I'm thinking of the fluctuations between Hinduism and Islam on the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia in particular.
 
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