Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

[Gurtannon]

Will different types of units different penalty on different terrain? (Fixed)

I mean, cavalry should get reduced combat ability in woods and forest or artillery should have reduced morale or initiative in wetlands etc

 

[Thorum]

I've just exposed pixel count of each location as a location_size trigger so modders can do whatever they want with that information.

Also, would it be possible to make the conversion to square kilometres instead of pixels, since the cilindrical map makes those dependent on latitude?

 

[Gurtannon]

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

 

[Ispil]

I suppose (since I really, really don't want to mess with the map) that I can accept the fact that farmland exists as a vegetation type and that there's no "deforestation" as a broader vegetation-changing system.

Also probably won't bother implementing a "make things more like farmland based on development" because I don't know to what extent the existing vegetation types are trying to exist "in the middle" of the 500-year span representation; making development adjust vegetation in mechanics would still require significant readjusting of the vegetation map to map to exactly what things are in 1337, and that seems annoying to deal with.

 

[Berasa 16]

I was hoping that terrain would have an effect on other things like the cost of transporting goods, a cap in control in mountains and dense forest or the cost of distance to the capital, I don't know, but I think that terrain should have an even greater influence on the game, but that's just my opinion.

Also, from my point of view, terrain and not vegetation makes more sense to be the flat base bonus for pops.

Whether there are trees or not can help or not to have more people, but I think it's more important if there is a mountain, some hills or plains for my population to live on.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Will different types of units different penalty on different penalty?

I mean, cavalry should get reduced combat ability in woods and forest or artillery should have reduced morale or initiative in wetlands etc

Yes but that kind of detail exists in the unit definitions instead of terrain definitions.

 

[RohenTahir]

Hello

Can you tell more about language versions of coming game? As you should see, more versions is better and with help of AI and the community it would be great to see more languages (good example is giving CK3 polish version thx to modding community).

 

[Goran42069]

Currently in our engine that is painted into the graphics, so the visuals wouldn't change.

Is that the only issue ? If i click on a location that used to be forest and it now says "farmland" and the corresponding "simple vegetation mapmode" has the farmland color i think thats good enough for most people

 

[Prot3ktor]

I rather have vegetation be changable and not be represented by graphical change on the map (which is what I presume is the reason why this cant be added?) than not have it all. Features > some minor graphical consistensies

 

[cz1h]

We share the opinion that it would be a perfect feature for Caesar, but if it was as simple as us agreeing then it would have fixed it 12 months ago. Unfortunately it's a bit deeper than that. With the unprecedented worldwide level of detail that Caesar has, it's a unique engineering challenge to make the required improvements to the graphical system as we really are on the cutting edge in several respects.

I understand that graphics are very important for the base game, but for players who don't mind if a "farmland province has trees on it would it be possible to make a modding backend that allows for mods to change a province's terrain without changing its graphics?

 

[Ispil]

The plan for me to represent things:

• Keep the map the same, vegetation-wise, for my own sanity
• Move the base population capacity (which to me represents housing and the like; agricultural capacity is a separate system) to be calculated from location size, not vegetation; vegetation provides one of those percentage modifiers based on the ease of building in that vegetation (denser vegetation is harder to build in)
• Development removes maluses (and benefits!) of various vegetation types and moves them more towards the "farmland" vegetation for all non-farmland vegetation
• Farmland as a vegetation type is consequently representing human-shaped vegetation to the point of whatever vegetation was originally there is there no longer; I'd reduce the modifiers for these a bit so that development can scale it better

Maybe need a thread to figure out any other details I'm missing.

 

[viola]

Jokes about Mediterranean superiority aside, I too think that the devs might be overestimating the qualities of Mediterranean climates compared to Oceanic and Subtropical, or even Continental.

For starters, Mediterranean climates are temperate and support settled civilizations well, but also naturally suffer from potential drought because their whole deal is being mostly dry areas that are hot and dry in the Summer, then get refilled with water during the rest of the year and particularly in Winter. So, hot and dry Summers and cold and wet Winters.
Subtropical meanwhile it's usually about wet season all year round at temperate latitudes, so not South enough that it turns Tropical and not North enough that it turns Oceanic or Continental. Regions with this climate are the Po Valley in Italy and really most of Northern and Eastern Italy, the Plain of the Ganges in Northern India, Southern China pretty much up to everything below the Yellow River system, the Southern US states where the Mississippian civilization developed, Southern Brazil and Northern Argentina. These are all pretty ideal places for urban societies, considering that Northern Italy was growing into the wealthier half of the peninsula even during the Middle Ages thanks to its more developed urbanism and its city-states, the Gangetic Plain has always been the most densely populated place in India, most of China proper and its major cities fall under that climate, and even in the Americas the Mississippi civilization was starting to develop urbanism first in that environment and the Southern Brazilian coast and Northern Argentina is where most of the population of those countries resides.

Seeing Mediterranean having a +150% bonus to population capacity to Subtropical's +100% seems quite excessive considering that, even in Mediterranean countries, it wasn't always the Mediterranean part to be the most developed or populated one. You'd think these two should have the same bonus, or even Subtropical having a slight edge.

Oceanic is weird too, because Oceanic is yet another temperate climate characterized by wet season all year round, but found at higher latitudes, or higher altitudes too in southern countries. This is the climate of Western Europe, meaning France, Western Germany and England, but also the Pacific North-West and the South-Eastern Australian Coast. This gets only a +50% bonus to population capacity, even though France was the most populated country through all of this time period and it's not like the rest of Western Europe was particularly under-populated compared to the Mediterranean areas or most Subtropical ones (with the exception of China and India, of course). The Pacific North-West also saw the particular development of local natives into rather organized societies even though they never practiced agriculture exactly because the climate and natural resources were good enough they never needed agriculture to sustain permanent settlements and stratified societies, and South-Eastern Australia is the most populated area of the country (that, and the Subtropical Eastern Coast).
It feels to me like Oceanic should definitely have bonuses to population capacity closer, if not on par, with Mediterranean and Subtropical.

It makes more sense for Continental to give lower bonuses, because it does represent considerably cooler climates, but even then North China is supposed to be Continental and, as far as I know, that's where Chinese civilization started off and was as populated as the rest of the country, also as far as I know. Continental seems to vary a lot more drastically depending on where that climate is geographically, because in Russia it means freezing harsh winters, in Eastern Europe it means a cooler climate but still a fairly temperate one, in North China the climate is also influenced by the Monsoons, and so on. I feel like binding Winters to climate alone might lead to some oddities, like Russia not having harsher Winters than Hungary.

If I were to rebalance the bonuses to the climates I'd go for Subtropical being equal or very slightly better than Mediterranean, then Oceanic being less optimal than Subtropical and Mediterranean but not by a massive amount, then have Continental either as it is or with a slightly bigger bonus. Maybe Tropical would then need a buff as well, because I understand that its +50% to population capacity is due to the fact that a lot of populous civilizations developed in the tropics too, like in Mesoamerica, India outside of the Indo-Gangetic Plains, Indochina and Indonesia. Like:

Subtropical: +150% to population capacity
Mediterranean: +150/125%
Oceanic: +125/100%
Continental: +75/50%
Tropical: +75/50%

Then there's the issue of Arid climates, and whether to divide them into Arid and Semi-Arid (I understand that the vegetation layer already helps differentiating between full-blown deserts and semi-arid areas that lack humidity but can still sustain an ecosystem and human activity, but seeing central Spain and Anatolia being assimilated to the Gobi Desert and Central Asia still seems a little weird to me), and also the question of the Andes.

With how bad Arid and especially Arctic locations are, I feel that matching the historical Inca empire and the Andean civilization is going to be a massive struggle, especially with the region even lacking in settled polities and most of them being mountainous to boot. I wonder if the Andean countries are going to have modifiers that will allow them to turn those locations much more productive than how they would normally be, which is to say, not much at all given the base modifiers.

 

[Bestiliand]

Cold = bad

Respectfully think this is unwise. The Cold Arid in Spain and Crimea is Semiarid, not Cold Arid. You should split these two.

That half of Spain has the worst climate where people in Girona can't migrate to Tarragona, or people from Cadiz to Cordoba is nonsense. You are using the climate of the Gobi desert for perfect livable regions in Europe (Spain, Southern Italy, Black Sea Coast) that may have low rains and less agriculture than other places, but are not Turkmenistan desert, and is nonsense that Valencia, Andalucia or Castilla has no rains and that people doesnt settle here.

 

[Bestiliand]

Also, it has already been comented but is nonsense that Mediterranean is wayyy better than other climates, in terms of agriculture and population it should be worse than Subtropical or Oceanic. Andalucia or Badajoz has less water than northern Europe, the population or agriculture production isnt better. I think is worse because you need irrigation because of having not too much water, unlike in Oceanic Europe. Anyways there are greater density population in France than in southern Italy or Spain.

 

[Bestiliand]

Here Malaga is God's Heaven (Mediterranean) and Granada is Hell (Gobi desert Cold Arid BWk , which should be Temperate Semi-arid BSk). When Mediterranean and Semi-arid (which has a Dry Mediterranean subgroup) should be not very different, and slightly worse than Oceanic. There is no benefits in Andalucia climate for population, you need irrigation, there are less water and the pop density is lower than northern Europe

 

[aono]

I don't think Farmlands should be a terrain. It's, specifically, a type of development humans did; maybe it should be just grasslands or river valleys with a lot of farming RGOs.

 

[hardom]

Wow, this looks really amazing!

I just have a suggestion on the possible and highly requested vegetation change mechanic.
If deforestation is implemented, you should also implement reforestation mechanic in the locations, that lost significant part of their population (at least due to the Black Death (UPDATE – and Native Americans catastrophe)).

According to the scientists, the Black Death caused significant reforestation in Europe in the following ~100 years.
Here is a France example from Mather et al. (1999):
View attachment 1241070

Here is a table with some calculated forest cover data in Europe from Kaplan et al. (2009):
View attachment 1241069

Of course, that should be limited only to relevant regions/climates. Not expected in tundra or deserts.

And thank you for your dedication!

UPDATE. There will be no dynamic vegetation, confirmed by Johan in the comments.

That's nice! You could also enjoy https://www.researchgate.net/public...ern_Europe_and_East_Asia_15th_to_19th_century for forest etc

 

[Oglesby]

The plan for me to represent things:

• Keep the map the same, vegetation-wise, for my own sanity
• Move the base population capacity (which to me represents housing and the like; agricultural capacity is a separate system) to be calculated from location size, not vegetation; vegetation provides one of those percentage modifiers based on the ease of building in that vegetation (denser vegetation is harder to build in)
• Development removes maluses (and benefits!) of various vegetation types and moves them more towards the "farmland" vegetation for all non-farmland vegetation
• Farmland as a vegetation type is consequently representing human-shaped vegetation to the point of whatever vegetation was originally there is there no longer; I'd reduce the modifiers for these a bit so that development can scale it better

Maybe need a thread to figure out any other details I'm missing.

looks good, one question.

Should development push towards something other than farmland for city/town (urban?)?

 

[K_lenz]

edit: I forgot to review the orthography.
So, first I agree that is not nice that population capacity and resources (or at least food) production is not proportional to the size. Less province-dense areas are debuffed. I do understand that this is the status-quo, as EUIV is like this, but it is not very nice. The map density is centered in the general old world, but is also American-centered, as North America is way more elaborated than South America. This is ok, as it's mostly a question of performance and game production effort, as you give more attention to regions with more players. But the absence of proportionality to the location size makes the actual game mechanics Eurocentric. We're very aware that you guys are trying to better portrait the rest of the world, so it's kind of a bummer that you are not considering making this small change.



Second, I'm making some extensive review on a specific region of south Brasil and I have some terrain questions:

1) Oceanic climate has mild winter, therefore oceanic Inland Sea and Narrows can freeze? Sounds reaaaaaally weird considering the region I'm working on is definitely Oceanic but the coldest it gets is like 0. No body of water freezes. Is the freezing automatic for all Inland Seas and Narrows or do you sey which ones freeze? Or does Mild winter no freeze?

2) Grasslands and Sparse description is rather similar. I suppose Sparse has little vegetation in general where grasslands has lots of grass bu no trees. Also, how should I portrait regions with lots of bush-like vegetation? Kinda grasslands with more woody grass.

3) How high is Plateau? I specifically need to know if a 1000 meters high flatland region in plateau or flatland.

4) Hills are rather vague for my purpose, cause I have two distinct regions. One with very wavy terrain with hills of less than 50 meters (eyeballing) and friendly slopes. Other with oscillations of 300/400 meters height and much more aggressive slopes, but not vertical. The later is much harder to develop and build, but the first can also be annoying.

How should I portrait them? I want to say that both are hilly, but they are not the same amount of hilliness. It's an overreach to say the second is mountainous.

Spoiler: Photos less hilly region

Spoiler: Photos more hilly region

 

[viola]

Here Malaga is God's Heaven (Mediterranean) and Granada is Hell (Gobi desert Cold Arid BWk , which should be Temperate Semi-arid BSk). When Mediterranean and Semi-arid (which has a Dry Mediterranean subgroup) should be not very different, and slightly worse than Oceanic. There is no benefits in Andalucia climate for population, you need irrigation, there are less water and the pop density is lower than northern Europe

That's another issue with the logic of Mediterranean being the best climate by far while also putting all "Arid" climates into just Hot and Cold.

A Semi-Arid climate (just Arid in PC) is just Mediterranean climate where it rains and snow less for a few years. Mediterranean areas, that are dry but bathed in rain and snow during the Winter and Autumn months, naturally proceed into neighbouring Semi-Arid areas, where for whatever reason yearly rainfall isn't enough to sustain large amounts of vegetation and agriculture, but still enough for the land to be livable and cultivated with whatever can grow in drier environments, and those in turn naturally lead into full deserts where barely any precipitation ever happen and thus everything's dead.

Seeing such drastic differences between Mediterranean Spain and Turkey (apparently the Garden of Eden) and central Spain and Turkey (a place so horrid that people wouldn't migrate there if there was space, by the game's own mechanics) is just weird.
Central Spain and Turkey should be worse off, but you'd think it'd be way less sudden and drastic.