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Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

Welcome to another Tinto Talks! Happy Wednesday where we talk about our super-secret game with the codename Project Caesar, asking you for feedback!


Today we’ll go into the details of how terrain works in the game. To iterate from the Map-Tinto-Talks from almost a year ago, each location has three different attributes instead of a single one as previous games had. This creates more variation and allows us more granular control over game play.

Each location has a climate, a topography and a vegetation set. Sea locations do not have vegetation though.


Climate

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The climate of a location impacts how well pops can live there, including how much food can be produced. It also affects the maximum winter level of a location.

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Tropical

Population Capacity +50%
Development Growth -10%
Life Expectancy -5
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
No Winters

Tropical represents areas with high average temperatures and no winter.

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Subtropical

Population Capacity +100%
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
Max Winter is Mild

Subtropical represents areas with high average temperatures and mild winters.

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Oceanic
Population Capacity +50%
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
Max Winter is Mild

Oceanic represents areas with mild winters but high humidity.

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Arid
Wheat Production -10%
Life Expectancy -5
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
No Precipitation
No Winters

Arid represents an area that has a severe lack of available water.

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Cold Arid

Wheat Production -10%
No Precipitation
Max Winter is Mild

Cold arid represents an area that has a severe lack of available water but experiences winters.

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Mediterranean
Population Capacity +150%
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
No Winters

Mediterranean represents areas with a perfect climate!

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Continental
Population Capacity +50%
Free Capacity Attracts Pops
Max Winter is Normal

Continental represents areas with cold winters.

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Arctic
Population Capacity -55%
Development Growth -25%
Life Expectancy -5
Max Winter is Severe

Arctic represents areas with very cold winters.

Vegetation

vegetation.png


Vegetation represents the foliage cover of a location.

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Desert

Can have Sandstorms
Movement Cost for Armies +10%
RGO Build time +50%
Road Build time +100%
Development Growth -10%
Food Production -33%
Population Capacity +10k

Deserts are barren landscapes with little precipitation and almost no potential for plant or animal life.

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Sparse
Road Build time -10%
Population Capacity +25k

Sparse represent large flat areas of land with few or no trees.

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Grasslands
Food Production +10%
Population Capacity 50k

Grasslands represent terrain dominated by grass with little or no trees or shrubs.

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Farmland
Movement Cost for Armies +10%
Road Build time +10%
Development Growth +10%
Population Capacity +100k
RGO Maximum Size +10%
Food Production +33%

Farmland represents anthropogenic terrain, devoted to crops and/or extensive pastures.

woods.png
Woods
Movement Cost for Armies +25%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -2
Road Build time +25%
Population Capacity +50k
Development Growth -20%
Food Production +10%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea

Woods represent terrain with less dense vegetation than forests.


forest.png
Forest
Movement Cost for Armies +50%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -3
Road Build time +50%
RGO Build time +33%
Population Capacity +25k
Development Growth -25%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Land

Forest represents terrain with dense vegetation.


jungle.png
Jungle
Movement Cost for Armies +100%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -4
Road Build time +200%
RGO Build time +50%
Population Capacity +50k
Development Growth -50%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Land

A jungle represents terrain with dense forest and tangled vegetation that makes doing anything on the land difficult.




Topography

topography.png


Topography represents the roughness and elevation of the land within a location. Flatter Topography is generally better for growing Towns and Cities while rougher Topography is easier to defend.


These first ones are land related topographies.

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Flatland

No special attributes

Flatland represents terrain that does not have any major topographic variation, so there are no impediments for army movement or building development.

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Mountains
Movement Cost for Armies +100%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -2
Movement is Blocked in Winter
Maximum Frontage in Battle -4
Road Build time +200%
RGO Build time +100%
Population Capacity -80%
Development Growth -70%
Food Production -20%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Land

Mountain terrain has high altitude and also steep slopes with relatively few and narrow flat areas, so it is more difficult for armies to cross and fight in it, and also more difficult to develop.

hills.png
Hills

Movement Cost for Armies +50%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -3
Road Build time +50%
RGO Build time +25%
Development Growth -30%
Food Production -10%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Land

A terrain with hills has variations in the topography, but the slopes are not as steep nor as high as those of mountains, so the penalties are also not as bad.

plateau.png
Plateau
Movement Cost for Armies +25%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -1
Road Build time +50%
RGO Build time +25%
Development Growth -25%
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea

They represent relatively flat areas situated at high altitude, so they have some penalties compared to flatlands due to their elevation.

wetlands.png
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%

Wetlands are terrain that is partially flooded, generally due to being near a river, lake, or coast.


The following are the naval ones.

ocean.png
Ocean
Naval Attrition +1%

This is the open seas between the continents, where only the best of ships can travel.

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Deep Ocean
Naval Attrition +2%

This is the open seas between the continents, where only the best of ships can travel, in the furthest areas from any coast.

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Coastal Ocean
No special attributes

This is the open seas between the continents, where only the best of ships can travel, but in the areas closer to the coast.

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Inland Sea
Can Freeze over during winter

Inland seas represent the land-enclosed seas like the Mediterranean or the Baltic.

narrows.png
Narrows

Can Freeze over during winter
Movement Cost for Navies +20%
Attacker Diceroll in Battle -1
Maximum Frontage in Battle -2
Blocks Vision from Adjacent Sea

Narrows are areas of sea with proximity of coast on many sides, like straits or the sea inside archipelagos, where there is not much space for movement.


Lakes, Salt Pans and Atolls exists, but are just graphical variants of Coastal Oceans, even if lakes could freeze over during winter.

Stay tuned, as next week we’ll delve into the wonderful world of military objectives.
 
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View attachment 1241002Farmland
Movement Cost for Armies +10%
Road Build time +10%
Development Growth +10%
Population Capacity +100k
RGO Maximum Size +10%
Food Production +33%

Farmland represents anthropogenic terrain, devoted to crops and/or extensive pastures.
We went through all the map threads with this ambiguous definition now, so I don't expect anything to be changed, but for the record, I still think that having farmland vegetation that is a mix of natural soil fertility and human development is unfortunate and causes several issues.
Development already exists in the game, so how is farmland vegetation separated from the effects of high development? You can't change vegetation in the game, so new farmland can't be created which certainly makes no historical sense. Areas that are very suitable for farming but had little development at the start of the game can't be accurately represented due to this.
 
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Also what exactly makes the Mediterranean climate the best vs say subtropical, isn’t it generally drier?
This is a very good question. While I am team Mediterranean for lifestyle, objectively the main population centers in the world are in Subtropical, Mediterranean should really be second place in terms of population capacity.
 
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Very cool! Why does Mediterranean climate get such a huge boost to population capacity compared to other climates though?

Wheat grows well in it but not a huge deal compared to how well other crops grow in other climate zones. There is more ample evidence to make subtropical climate have a larger population capacity than mediterranean in my opinion. I'm not fully convinced Mediterranean is able to sustain larger populations than oceanic either. There seems to be a historical/global trend towards Mediterranean climates encouraging a certain level of pastoralism if you look at Iberia and South Africa.
 
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Are salt pans traversable under any circumstances? Can they dry out during the hot season and allow armies to walk over them?

hmm.. not sure, think neither can move through it.
 
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Can some of these be changed by the player? Like well developed grasslands turning into farmlands automatically, or wetlands being drained because the king wants his palace built here (I see you Versailles), or forests being cut into extinction in order to build a fleet.
 
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Hmm, maybe mountains should hinder vision from the adjacent location as well? I can't say I 100% agree with this mechanic though, there should be other ways to know where an army is than looking at it from the adjacent location. Maybe at least bigger armies should be noticable through intel and scouting, even if you don't directly see them
 
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I don't think that the mediterranean sea can freeze though
I know but it is considered as inland sea. Same for the inland seas in Baltic and around Japan, places where there can be snowing and thus be cold enough to freeze water. Going with game logic, not really much with real life logic.
 
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It says that deserts have sandstorms; I assume this impacts armies/combat in some way? Are there any variants for sea tiles to have storms as well?


yes and yes
 
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  • 95% of wetlands are inherently very fertile, so need positive food production instead of negative, especially riverine floodplains (Nile delta, Tokyo, Rhine-Meuse part of the Netherlands,...)
The problem with that is that undeveloped wetlands aren't good for food production at all.
A good example of this is Sumatra, where (until the 19th century) the majority of the population lived away from the extensive wetland plains. The coastal cities that were surrounded by wetlands were fed by rice exported from the highlands.
 
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Back in the first map dev post about the netherlands you mentioned not being sure whether or not terrain change would be possible in engine. Any change in that? Any hope for polders?

probably not gonna be feasible
 
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I know but it is considered as inland sea. Same for the inland seas in Baltic and around Japan, places where there can be snowing and thus be cold enough to freeze water. Going with game logic, not really much with real life logic.
I asked him the same question for the Bearing sea once and he told me the same thing I told you
 
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