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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

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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.

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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.


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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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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
Some things I can think of off the top of my head:
Naval supplies/lumber or other shipbuilding supplies for pops with access to a coastline
Livestock/horses for farmlands or flatland
Firearms for pops living in Arctic climate
'Luxury goods' for pops living in towns and cities but I'm sure this is already modelled in some way.
Ivory based on certain belief systems or could just allow certain cultures to have a building that turns ivory into medicaments.
Salt based on climate (I'm not sure how salt consumption actually varied based on temperature but I'm sure there's some element to it. I assume pops in tropical climates may not preserve food as much given the lack of winter. Pops living in Arctic climates may have the option of just freezing things but also have to preserve more things due to a longer winter.)

On a similar topic, do rebels consume firearms and weaponry like a normal army would?
 
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I've just exposed pixel count of each location as a location_size trigger so modders can do whatever they want with that information.
Is latitude also exposed (to correct pixel size for the projection's distortions)?

probably not gonna be feasible
Not even changing terrain through event? Having one province locked as farmland no matter how you loot and pillage it, while the next province in locked as not being farmland no matter how much you develop it seems counter intuitive.
No need to get cloves, nutmeg, mace, pepper or chilli from abroad when you can just develop the wonderful terrain of Avignon and get spices from there instead.

additive like all our GSGs
In EU4 there was a mix of additive and multiplicative. This wasn't well explained in-game. Personally I find additive % confusing, and it results in a lot more math required (this option offers +50%, and I'm getting 4.5 now, but that's with a 15% bonus already, so...).

I think it would simplify the learning curve for new people if % worked multiplicatively like in the math everyone is taught in school.

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
I love the general idea, but not the example of beer in hot weather. Aren't some of the top beer drinking countries cold ones? I know in Roman times northern Barbarians (colder) had beer while around the Med (warmer) the preference was for wine.
 
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Swamp drainage or deforestation?
I mean if the climate is OK for agriculture people tend to change what can be changed in order to make the land even more productive.
Can be changed the vegetation to farmland from woods/forest/jungle? High technical level was not necessary to eliminate many ancient Europen forests in the middle ages.
Can be changed the topography? With higher technical level, flatlands could be made form wetlands (in the XIX. century, most of the wetlands in Hungary was drainaged to create very productive agracultural areas.
 
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but muh rain!
Rain is nice and absolutely fundamental to sustain life anywhere.

The inconvenience of getting your pants wet on the way to work doesn't compare with the inconvenience of the severe droughts ruining the harvest season.

I'm from a country with both Mediterranean and Oceanic climates, and the Mediterranean part suffers FAR more from climate-related issues than the Oceanic part, which is nice, mild, fertile and pleasant all year round.
 
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So, if a location is arctic mountain it has -%135 population capacity so there would be no population to harvest goods produced there. How this situation works? Are there any arctic mountain locations?
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%

1736415013767.png
 
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Units have vision in their current location and (by default) any directly neighbouring locations.

If one of the neighbours is forest or mountains, they cannot see into that neighbour.
How does the AI handle that?

In Caesar IV (;)) the AI can see everything and tries to not act on it; how are the AI rules in this game for vision?
 
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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%

View attachment 1241415
So if an arctic mountain isn't coastal or your country doesn't have the appropriate societal values the location is simply doomed to a pop cap of 1000?

I would suggest either reducing the penalties from climate and topography or making those modifiers multiplicative with each other.
 
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Should wetlands have any sort of life expectancy penalty to represent malaria/mosquitoes? (It might have to be climate dependent though)

malaria is another thing
 
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So if an arctic mountain isn't coastal or your country doesn't have the appropriate societal values the location is simply doomed to a pop cap of 1000?

I would suggest either reducing the penalties from climate and topography or making those modifiers multiplicative with each other.
Buildings increases cap as well and besides, what else do you expect from inland arctical mountains?
 
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I think it's because where there's sparse vegetation ususally the terrain is more dry and better for road maintainance?

that was the idea
 
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