Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

[matfer13]

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

When you say it exists you mean the possibility to make it possible with mods or that it already exists in game? I'm confused by some of these answers of yours...

 

[bokorthedust]

When you say it exists you mean the possibility to make it possible with mods or that it already exists in game? I'm confused by some of these answers of yours...

The former. Giving the possibility for modders is fine, but they'd never live down the UI lying if they release it as a functionality of the official product. It'd be massively frustrating to play with it if you don't expect it, and you'd have to constantly check instead of just looking at the graphical representation of the location in question. With mods it's a different matter, you purposefully download them to alter how the game works/looks, and if you find something like this annoying then you skip the mod and that's it.

 

[Lank1]

probably not gonna be feasible

Not feasible in the game engine, or not feasible by release but a potential future update?

 

[Panther-1]

So I’m guessing this means we will get ships capable of moving down rivers?

 

[Panther-1]

Damn, I was hoping for a non-diceroll combat. A mix between Hoi4 and CK3

Hoi4 is dice roll

 

[Rule Britannia]

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

I think most people would prefer if the vegetation was dynamic, even if this was not represented graphically. Personally, it always bothered me in EUIV that E.g. Berlin was forrest (or woods cannot remember which it is) irrespective of how much you developed it.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

Development
One concept that has been in many of our previous GSGs is development. It has been used for various things, but in Project Caesar development represents how cultivated the land is, and how much it is used by the pops living there. The higher the development, the more people can live there, and the more it can be exploited.

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.

Considering the above farmland vegetation seems to be a terrain transformed by high development.

There would be no problem with this if terrain could be changed but as it won't be changeable at release, nor any time soon after that, results in that farmland terrain, plus some wetlands, turn into a problem of balance between regions that were already "developed" at the beggining of the game and regions that weren't.

A solution for that would be to remove farmland as a terrain type and either transform it into mechanic (maybe tied to development), give vegetation terrain types a farmland bonus when development is high enough, or integrate farmland bonuses into development itself.
As for some developable wetlands: development could progressively reduce penalties or even give bonuses when high enought, alternatively this could be done by the levels of a special building.

Speaking of development, by it's definition it seems to be related with how much of the native vegetation remains because higher development means more cultivated land, so i wonder if higher development shouldn't reduce some vegetation terrain penalties because of the deforestation done for land development? Or maybe there will be some other mechanic for deforestation instead of development?​

 

[Sulphurologist]

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

The 'problem' is that the game merged 'Hot Semi-Arid' into Arid and 'Cold Semi-Arid' into Cold Arid. If we neglect winters for a second, it would make more sense to make an 'Arid' and 'Semi-arid' category, but then the winters would need to subdivide them again, not great...


You could perhaps do a workaround where the vegetation is also a determining factor for migration:
Desert/Sparse? --> no migration
The only climate which would still have this modifier then would be Arctic.

That way you can make the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, Indus valley, attractive, and the deserts around it not so.
Similarly, Catalonia becomes available for migration, while the gobi desert is not.

You could also consider doing the same thing for 'Jungle' and 'Tropical', so non-jungle tropics (in most cases Savanna climates) become more suitable, relatively speaking.

I made a full post here if you want to do some light reading.

 

[korandder]

I feel like the vegetation type Desert is a bit misleading since a lot of deserts have vegetation that would fall into the Sparse category. Bare might be a better name for terrain that lacks vegetation and would also include arctic areas we often do not think of as deserts.

There is a huge difference in whether you can grow crops without irrigation between arid and semi-arid climates so I think it is an important difference to highlight. While they are too dry to grow most crops, arid areas with sparse vegetation can be used for low intensity grazing.

 

[Johan]

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.

Dry is bad, you need regular rain.

However cold is bad, really really bad.

I use to live in the countryside outside of Stockholm. It was impossible to grow ANYTHING for many months, not just because it goes below 0 C many times each week even when its relative mild. The ground also freezes solid. One year me and my wife was planning to erect a new deer-proof "fence", and wanted it ready before we started planting season.. We had to make controlled fires for every single of the 80 poles we wanted to get into the ground, as its literally impossible to dig a half meter deep hole into the ground during that part of the year.

 

[Johan]

When you say it exists you mean the possibility to make it possible with mods or that it already exists in game? I'm confused by some of these answers of yours...

mods can do it..

we just wont unless graphics match.

 

[Johan]

Not feasible in the game engine, or not feasible by release but a potential future update?

one day

 

[Thrudgelmir2333]

Dry is bad, you need regular rain.

Howeverm cold is bad, really really bad.

I use to live in the countryside outside of Stockholm. It was impossible to grow ANYTHING for many months, not just because it goes below 0 C many times each week even when its relative mild. The ground also freezes solid. One year me and my wife was planning to erect a new deer-proof "fence", and wanted it ready before we started planting season.. We had to make controlled fires for every single of the 80 poles we wanted to get into the ground, as its literally impossible to dig a half meter deep hole into the ground during that part of the year.

That can't be right. If Age of Mythology taught me anything, other than that Poseidon is a jerk, is that you can build infinite food farms in any ground, even frozen Norse ones under attack by the frost giants.

You're clearly just a city boy, Johan. Get your hands dirty on some mythology.

 

[ArVass]

mods can do it..

we just wont unless graphics match.

Can mods also make it sure that the graphical terrain (static) is also dependent on some fourth factor other than the base three terrain attributes?

Things like "fauna and flora realms" (eg, temperate forests in the Southern and Northern hemispheres have different tree models, or that American deserts and sparse lands might have saguaro or Joshua tree models whereas Afro-Eurasia has its own tree models), or something like "magical activity" (eg. enchanted forests have different trees and some eerie blue fog ambience, or cursed places have a lot of dead trees or creepy bones scattered around)?

We got confirmation that the effects of terrain can be replicated by some other modifiers, but what I'm curious about is if the GRAPHICAL terrain generation logic can be meddled with in mods.

 

[Johan]

We got confirmation that the effects of terrain can be replicated by some other modifiers, but what I'm curious about is if the GRAPHICAL terrain generation logic can be meddled with in mods.

yes, you need to paint the terrain graphics in the map editor and then repackage the files. need a pretty powerful PC to use it though

 

[ArVass]

yes, you need to paint the terrain graphics in the map editor and then repackage the files. need a pretty powerful PC to use it though

so it is basically the same as in CK3, essentially? though probably more massive?

 

[GenericUsername1444]

yes, you need to paint the terrain graphics in the map editor and then repackage the files. need a pretty powerful PC to use it though

I, for one, would be completely fine with playing without terrain details on a paper map if it allowed me to modify the terrain type at will. Such a system is unprecedented in Paradox history and is a huge leap forward for it.

I think my words will resonate with the majority of the playerbase.

 

[Johan]

I, for one, would be completely fine with playing without terrain details on a paper map if it allowed me to modify the terrain type at will. Such a system is unprecedented in Paradox history and is a huge leap forward for it.

I think my words will resonate with the majority of the playerbase.

some people will be like you yes.

 

[GenericUsername1444]

some people will be like you yes.

I'd say most.

 

[reynold21]

What happens when a location is both Arctic (-55% Population Capacity) & Mountain (-80% Population Capacity), that means it has -135% Population Capacity, it literally cannot support any population, even if was a coatal location (+25% Population Capacity), still -110% Population Capacity. There are a few examples in Scandinavia that i can see and elsewhere as well. Have circled an example here.