Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

[Praetorian44]

So the game will feature visible sandstorms, like in Imperator Rome? Will there also be regular storms on the map? And will they affect fleets? And what all does precipitation affect?

 

[Pirat6662001]

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

Shouldnt Sargasso Sea have vegetation?

Sargasso Sea - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[purplephoton]

I've given some thought about how warfare is going to be conducted with these modifiers and I have a few concerns.

First, the inability to see into forests/mountains outside your land:

If one of the neighbours is forest or mountains, they cannot see into that neighbour.

What this means in practice is that the optimal way to conduct warfare against someone who can is weaker than you but can still muster enough troops to defeat one of your armies and has forest/mountains that you need to walk into to win the war is one of two options.
Strategy A is to group all your armies together so that if one takes a potentially engagement, the rest can reinforce. Then, while you suffer heavy attrition, the enemy army appears halfway across the world because you couldn't see it and start ruining you land. That's what EU4 AI tries to do now, except this is going to be more severe because you have less information to act on and can no longer keep an army hanging back to prevent it since your armies are grouped up. If you go back to defend your land, you'll just end up playing whack-a-mole. Not fun.
Strategy B is to send a single regiment into the forest, see if they die on contact, and if they do then check the battle screen to see how big the enemy force is so that you don't walk into a horrible engagement. Repeat for every single forest or mountain location that you want to walk through. This is a lot of micro that I think the player should have ways to circumvent. It can also be countered in some cases (depending on location distance) if you’re really precise with moving your armies, which is an additional factor that could add to the micro.

I hope that we can unlock an ability to either
a) Scout surrounding forest/mountain tiles (for example, through a general with a trait or with the right level of professionalism so that warfare doesn't become a combination of gamey and micro-intensive.
b) Infiltrate enemy government or military much earlier in the game.
c) See that an army is in a forest/mountain tile, but not know their numbers.

Second, it looks like some modifiers can be stacked to insane levels.

additive like all our GSGs

It can severely impact movement:
Mountains + jungle is +200% movement cost (3x slower)
Mountains + forest is +150% movement cost (2.5x slower)
Hills + forest is +100% movement cost (2x slower)
I think a penalty is completely reasonable, but this is a lot, especially when combined with the vision change, and here's why: if time to move into a location has distance between locations as the base, then the multipliers will amplify the difference in movement cost. This can be especially bad if there is a "locked movement" mechanic, because then the defender has a LOT more time to stick their army into the defensible location while you are helpless to address it.
I'm hoping this movement penalty gets cut in half, otherwise forests and mountains will become impossible to attack an intelligent player in (maybe not an AI but definitely a few human players in MP... even if not the majority) without overwhelming numbers.

And I'm guessing force march is going to exist and enable a single organized defender to move more cheaply than several armies of the attacker, making warfare even more painful.

Overall, I hope a lot of these penalties become less severe, otherwise warfare is going to be not very fun in SP and especially in MP.

 

[purplephoton]

Shouldnt Sargasso Sea have vegetation?

Sargasso Sea - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Good luck with growing wheat and building roads in the middle of the Sargasso Sea.

 

[vincius t melo]

I have a doubt, while the naval terrains won’t have any vegetation. It can still have vegetation for mods?
I think that some areas should have corals as vegetation, but I do understand that this may be a bit complicated as it may demand some fragmentation of the naval tiles. Still I think it is an important topic.

 

[Xero_99]

I don't know if I'm going blind, but could we get the info on the Marsh Topography?

 

[Metz]

We have some things like that, pops demand more fur in climates with higher maximum winter for example. Suggestions for more things like that are welcome

Could you post a list in a thread of what currently exists and then the community could add or discuss about what would go with what? It might even open the door to dynamic cultural fascinations like in Victoria 3 (English and tea for example).

 

[GDQuirm]

For modding purposes, can you trigger weather events by means other than the regular seasonal effects? IE, could you have an event that creates a winter in the Mediterranean, freezing it over for a year?

Ditto for things like monsoons or sandstorms. How triggerable are these effects in modding?

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Do certain demands also change not only by climate but per season, for example requiring more "turrón" or "polvorones" as Christmas aproach?

Joke aside though, does demand of certain goods change per season too?

No, pop demands are calculated per year because we found that when fluctuating by the month it was too unpredictable for the player and also not very performant.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Can you add more variants to a terrain type? For example a new topography.

Yes it's easy to expand.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Can vegetation be modded back onto sea tiles or is this hard coded?

I believe it's hard coded for performance reasons currently

 

[Zerodv]

So first up I do not forget valleys. I live in a valley. Bozen is only about an hour away from me btw and it's an exageration to say it's subtropical there. Yes in South Tyrol overall the climate is a lot milder than in North Tyrol but I fail to see how this local peculiarity disproves my overall point but whatever. What I absolutely don't understand about what your saying is your description of continental climate. You say: "mountain valleys being continental compared to the plains does indeed represent the fact they have colder winters" That statement just leaves me baffled. Continental climate isn't tied to elevation or mountains. Large parts of the european plains have continental climate both in reality and in game.

I don't know what to tell you, you keep thinking that Alpine valleys have colder winters than continental flat plains or plateau in the north and have provided no evidence yet,

this is Merano:

Which is indeed Subtropical/Oceanic despite being deep in the Alps

This is Munich, just north of the Alps:

Also technically Oceanic, on the verge of continental. Care to show how the Alpine valleys represented as mountains have harsher winters? Munich is a flat continental farmland and Merano a mountainous, continental forest in game I believe.

Edit: Average temperature in January, coldest or close to the coldest month in most of Europe:

The Alpine valleys are totaly colder than Southern Germany, Czechia or Poland lol

 

[Vejoviis]

Does anyone know if increased build time also means increased build cost?

 

[wowlock]

Only Arctic Mountains challenge when?

 

[Roscaris]

Adding my voice here to say that I really hope deforestation can be modeled somehow. It was important historically, affecting production of navies, expansion of farmland & food production, making overseas forest areas more economically important etc. As an idea, perhaps, a separate accumulating modifier could be added to lumber locations so that the more of that resource is exploited overtime the less is produced in any given timeframe while also increasing food capacity? Or if that is too performance intensive, maybe have the modifier only change every 10/50/100 years etc?

 

[matfer13]

@SaintDaveUK Oceanic and cold arid climates should have normal max levels of winter(places like England, the rockies and Kazakhstan are defininetely not mild most of the time), while mediterranean should have at least max mild levels of winters(I have been many times in south Italy and it's not much warmer than in northern Italy)

 

[Zerodv]

@SaintDaveUK Oceanic and cold arid climates should have normal max levels of winter(places like England, the rockies and Kazakhstan are defininetely not mild most of the time), while mediterranean should have at least max mild levels of winters(I have been many times in south Italy and it's not much warmer than in northern Italy)

It depends really on how often the max level is reached

 

[Ispil]

Yes it's easy to expand.

Oh good, so I can remove farmland then and just make the "natural vegetation" deplete as development grows and eventually becomes the farmland vegetation's effects.

I will have my deforestation, dammit.

 

[Fatherlorris]

probably not gonna be feasible

Will the Dutch get methods of upgrading their swamps still?

Via local modifiers/buildings ect.

 

[titan.bevel]

We have some things like that, pops demand more fur in climates with higher maximum winter for example. Suggestions for more things like that are welcome

Are pops demands also impacted by culture / culture group ? Say the french could ask for more wine, or is this considered too "touchy" with where this could go (stereotyping negatively some/all cultures) ?

Regarding suggestions for goods demands modifiers, I'd say reducing hot beverage AND alcohol demands in hot climates would make sense, as well as furs, and increasing it in cold climates at the opposite. Salt demand should also probably go up a lot depending of winter average duration. And maybe tar should depend of the average precipitation ?