Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

[Daniel the Finlander]

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I know "devs are Spanish" is a running joke but the idea that Valencia has the same climate which does not attract pop migration as the Gobi desert is... uhm.

Yes, but if those there from below 5k pops I'd be surprised.

I think our usage of cold arid in some places is wrong though. For me, its like Gobi Desert, not Valencia.

Reality is unrealistic I guess?

Semi-arid climate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(Though, if you could add semi-arid as a separate climate from cold/hot arid that’d be great too)

 

[Wildrake]

Reality is unrealistic I guess?

(Though, if you could add semi-arid as a separate climate from cold/hot arid that’d be great too)

Gobi desert is actually cold arid, not cold semi-arid. Cold semi-arid is actually okay climate, close to continental but drier. Arid also includes a lot of deserts, so why it is more attractive than places like Anatolia, Black sea coast or Valencia is bizarre.

 

[Lord_Baltimore]

it exists yes.

Just to make sure I understand, you can make a mod that changes vegetation ( or climate, or topography) but the change won't be reflected on the world map. Although it would presumably be reflected in the vegetation map mode? And would the new terrain display correctly on the map if you reload the game?

 

[musMiro]

I would like to discuss "Attacker Diceroll in Battle" modifier for grasslands, flatlands, etc. If battle occurs in flat location attacker gets no penalty. But in real life that location is like 100 km wide and there is probably something like 50m hill or 5m wide/2m deep river, so attacker should always get some penalty anyway. Also they might prepared some defense by themselves, if they had time. I would say in addition to terrain bonuses it could be penalty for attacker, depending how long defender is staying on that location. The longer you stay, the more time you had to prepare.

 

[Aliandre]

Being a game developer myself, we often focus on packaging everything into neat graphics, and I understand your POV @Johan of the engine not being able to display changes in the locations and limiting this to provide players a consistant experience. And I agree that performance should be a MAJOR focus to keep us playing the late game.

However, I think a gameplay focus here should be chosen. In such games, the map is our playground. Having this kind of changing terrain for gameplay reason is part of "my country is grounded in a believable world" that is incentive to play and replay for years.

Personally I place it in the same pocket as road building. The ability to modify my landscape. And although I am hyped about discovering the map visuals and WILL USE the terrain map mode, in the mid-late game of my playthough I don't care if I see roads or accurate terrain on the terrain map mode, as long as the specifics map modes are up to date. We are gamers, we understand limitations. You have such a focus on delivering incredible mechanics for Project Ceasar, I think this is one more that should be there.

In the "choose 2" triangle of "Performance, Gameplay and Visuals", maybe for this one we choose "Performance and Gameplay"

And let's be honnest, maximum 1% of locations will be changed manually (this needs a high cost), and in majority of playthough, less than 20 locations in the entire world.

As always, thanks for the hard work of the team !

 

[Bonqurito]

Changing it in the game-logic is trivial. Its just that it will not change how it looks in terrain mapmode.

Okay! Then please please please at the very least make it possible to script it, even if you don't decide to utilize it in the base game, just having the ability to modify it with scripting would amazing for modders.

 

[Daniel the Finlander]

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Gobi desert is actually cold arid, not cold semi-arid. Cold semi-arid is actually okay climate, close to continental but drier. Arid also includes a lot of deserts, so why it is more attractive than places like Anatolia, Black sea coast or Valencia is bizarre.

Uh, I know that. But the devs merged semi-arid and arid climates. Did I get 3 disagrees because people don’t know this fact? I was just explaining why Valencia and Gobi have the same climate in game (parts of Gobi are semi-arid too, like in the map…).

I do think semi-arid should be split into its own climate though. Like there’s no transition between tropical and arid climate in the Sahel region of West Africa which is far from ideal.

 

[Johan]

Okay! Then please please please at the very least make it possible to script it, even if you don't decide to utilize it in the base game, just having the ability to modify it with scripting would amazing for modders.

that exists yes, just won't be any correlation between graphics and gameplay though.

 

[Nihat Amipoglu]

It's a shame that we can't really change the vegetation in-game because it's hard-coded. I was really looking into turning the whole Andes into terrace farms connected with an immense road network as Cusco/Inca What's funny is the fact the terrain in game technically changes because we can build roads(hopefully they will be visible like I:R) and cities grow over time. Why can't the devs make marshes, farmlands, woodlands, forests and even tiny lakes something dynamic like cities and roads? Even Vic3 shows more farmlands around a settlement. Oh well it probably tanks the performance

 

[sbadkins4]

Changing it in the game-logic is trivial. Its just that it will not change how it looks in terrain mapmode.

Can we have the gameplay mechanics without the terrain graphics change? Stuff like deforestation, reforestation, draining wetlands and such, all seem very appropriate to this time period.
Some of us don’t use the terrain mapmode, so we really wouldn’t mind…

 

[Nikicaga]

Changing it in the game-logic is trivial. Its just that it will not change how it looks in terrain mapmode.

Please allow modders to do so via events or other triggers at least! The graphics are far less important than the functionality of i.e. modeling the rise of farmlands in densely populated regions or the mass deforestation that occurred in this period

If terrain is also changeable in code, even the draining of Wetlands can be modeled

 

[Nikicaga]

Wetlands
Movement Cost for Armies +50%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -3
Road Build time +75%
RGO Build time +25%
Development Growth -30%
Food Production -10%

Should wetlands have a food production debuff? Some of the most fertile areas of the world, from Nile Delta, Mesopotamia to parts of Ruthenia, Low Countries and the Pannonian plain are categorized as such

 

[Inzano]

Should wetlands have a food production debuff? Some of the most fertile areas of the world, from Nile Delta, Mesopotamia to parts of Ruthenia, Low Countries and the Pannonian plain are categorized as such

Wetlands are problematic because you have several types. Maybe you could compare their characteristics with the climate. Because continental wetlands are certainly not more productive than subtropical or Mediterranean ones. For example, the Ljubljana Marshes, which are the largest in the area of Inner Austria, are very watery, peaty and clayey, wheat grows worse than on dry plains. Only corn, which prefers wet soil, grows best, especially when there is drought in the country. Maybe rice would grow, but no one has tried it yet. In addition to the fact that the Ljubljana Marshes have dried up, they have never surpassed the productivity of, for example, the Prekmurje Plains.

 

[Gurtannon]

Why does forest give 25k pop, but jungle 50k?

 

[Gurtannon]

Couldnt engine read the terrain features from a larger static image, which would contain all possible terrain adjustments to the locations mechanically possible in game, I mean if we deforest a location, engine would start looking for coordinates x’y’ instead of xy associated with that location

Each variation terrain wouldnt be that large as only vegetation changes and wetland to flatland is enough,

for non wetland locations the amount of variation is 7 (for each vegetation) and for wetlands it would be 7*2 = 14 as only wetland cns turn to flatland not the opposite or other topography,
This makes the size of static data approximately 8 times larger than the original one which is not a big deal tbh
(Also it is even less probably as no need to add forest variation for a grassland in static map as deforestation is only one way)

 

[Ekyman]

Being a game developer myself, we often focus on packaging everything into neat graphics, and I understand your POV @Johan of the engine not being able to display changes in the locations and limiting this to provide players a consistant experience. And I agree that performance should be a MAJOR focus to keep us playing the late game.

However, I think a gameplay focus here should be chosen. In such games, the map is our playground. Having this kind of changing terrain for gameplay reason is part of "my country is grounded in a believable world" that is incentive to play and replay for years.

Personally I place it in the same pocket as road building. The ability to modify my landscape. And although I am hyped about discovering the map visuals and WILL USE the terrain map mode, in the mid-late game of my playthough I don't care if I see roads or accurate terrain on the terrain map mode, as long as the specifics map modes are up to date. We are gamers, we understand limitations. You have such a focus on delivering incredible mechanics for Project Ceasar, I think this is one more that should be there.

In the "choose 2" triangle of "Performance, Gameplay and Visuals", maybe for this one we choose "Performance and Gameplay"

And let's be honnest, maximum 1% of locations will be changed manually (this needs a high cost), and in majority of playthough, less than 20 locations in the entire world.

As always, thanks for the hard work of the team !

The visuals tie into gameplay here though. Especially in the newer games with better (and clearer) 3D map graphics, I'm going to use the 3D graphics to judge terrain most of the time, not the simple terrain mapmode and not tooltips. It's often faster and easier. It'd be quite frustrating to have that just lie to me every now and then.

 

[Fawr]

An example in Iceland showing some other things that impact population capacity.

Furthermore, the absolute number never dips below 1000 even if the modifier does happen to add up to -135%

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Is having an absolute minimum number the way you handle when modifiers get close to -100%? I think that really encourages modifier stacking.

 

[SAmaster]

that exists yes, just won't be any correlation between graphics and gameplay though.

Sidenote: Scriptable graphics could also be useful for representing monuments on the map. I don't suppose you could make every forest into something like a building, like how castles can be put up or tore down on the map? I guess that'll just add to much busywork to the engine and chug things along.

 

[keaswaran]

Cold = bad

This really looks a lot like modern office workers projecting their living preferences onto early modern farmers.

If all you do outside is go to the park and stroll through the streets, then absolutely, we want warm and dry weather. But if you’re a subsistence farmer, the attraction of a place is all about whether you can grow enough food for your family regularly every year, and perhaps have some surplus to trade. You’ll take the cold place over the warm one if there’s more available land producing good amounts of food.

 

[marsh_otter]

I hope the mesa_wasteland terrain means we're getting esthetical tepuis in the Guiana Shield. That would be awesome.

After seeing the modifiers, I think it is impossible to represent entire world with only general 8 climate, 5 topography and 7 vegetations

There should be regional climates, more topography types as Sulphurologist had proposed and regional vegetations

Because right now whenever you modify and try to balance a place it will explode from somewhere else

Suggested climate splits:

Continental Climates can be splitted to Continental and harsh continental,

Tropical can be splitted into Tropical and Monsoon

Arid can be splitted into Arid and Semiarid

Cold Arid into Cold arid and Cold semiarid


For unique vegetation, Maquis could be added

While I consider that only the (cold) semiarid climate is really necessary since the other climates can be represented in other ways, I agree with the need for a new vegetation type for thick shrublands that don't really fit any of the current categories, as an intermediate between the "sparse" and "wood" types. The name "maquis" is too restrictive though, so I consider that a more generic "shrublands" or "scrublands" could be used instead, to not only include mediterranean scrubs but also the different matorrals in South America, the chaparrals in Mexico and California, the caatinga in Brazil or the cardonals in the Falcon state of Venezuela (currently these last two have the "grasslands" vegetation type despite not being anywhere close to grasslands and the tooltip for it explicitly excluding shrubs).

Also, I suppose that the tropical locations with arctic, cold arid or oceanic climates that don't get any kind of significant snowfall irl have some kind of "tropical highland" modifier to reduce the max strength of the winter. If not, it definitely should be added unless the game deals with the issue in some other way.