Tinto Talks #45 - 8th of January 2025

[Strybjörn]

Could it be possible to mod that a unique unit can see through the terrain fog. Like some sort of elf that ignores forest and jungle blocks vision?

 

[King_Potat]

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.

View attachment 1243271

View attachment 1243272

They probably don't stack like that, instead stacking separately like 20k -> (-55%) 9k -> (-80%) 1.8k, and not like addition. Plus there is a minimum capacity of 1000 pops in any given location regardless of modifiers.

 

[lutharien]

They probably don't stack like that, instead stacking separately like 20k -> (-55%) 9k -> (-80%) 1.8k, and not like addition. Plus there is a minimum capacity of 1000 pops in any given location regardless of modifiers.

They stack additively, but you are right that any figure below 1000 (even a negative figure) results as 1000 population limit.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

What happens when a location is both Arctic (-55% Population Capacity) & Mountain (-80% Population Capacity), that means it has -135% Population Capacity

This question felt familiar so i took a look at earlier posts and found this answer for the same question:

the absolute number never dips below 1000 even if the modifier does happen to add up to -135%

 

[Nintz]

Correct. You will have a hard time doing much in Arctic Mountains, they are deliberately a horrible terrain type.

Multiplicative modifiers are a can of worms and even harder to balance, we always avoid them if possible.

I find it strange to focus so much on the innate/marginal value of land when you have already established that poor port locations can still be developed with enough effort. In Imperator it always bothered me that individual territories had these terrain based hard caps, because it meant that the carrying capacity was so limited in the lategame. Cities you could build more infrastructure, but for rural locations your options were close to 0. So many of my files I decided to end when I started to get mass overpopulation throughout my empire due to the arbitrary limits that game imposed. For that matter, Vic 3 has the same problem if you play vanilla late enough, though it takes longer and is more moddable.

The problem, as I see it, is that people do actually live even in very remote areas, and (almost) always have. If a larger state sees strategic value in developing these territories despite the cost, they should be able to do so. It doesn't need to be efficient, but there's a world of difference between 'you can do this, but inefficiently' and 'the game has decreed this is unallowed'.

We already have food as a discrete mechanic to model population limitations. If I'm being honest, I fail to see why we actually need population capacity at all beyond just raw inertia from previous games. If the goal is to model infrastructure investment it should be something that can be changed through player (state) actions. If the goal is to model agriculture, then you should be looking at the food system exclusively. And if climate affects food production, great! That's actually accurate and something that could (hopefully) be affected through investment in your agriculture sector. Better natural locations for agriculture can devote smaller percentages of the population to living, naturally driving players towards the prime locations. If you want population capacity to model infrastructure, that's also great! You can make it based mostly on buildings that can be slower and more expensive to construct in poor terrain. The Alps were absolutely not a comfortable place to build huge amounts of buildings. Again, that makes sense, but could be pushed through if the incentive is powerful enough. The current implementation is imo exceptionally gamey as a mechanic, and seems to exist purely for balance reasons, when I believe the others systems you have already shown ought to be enough to accomplish the goal of driving population development towards certain types of terrains, without such arbitrary methods.

 

[Gurtannon]

I hope sandstorms makes locations and saharan corridors impassable (like mountains in winter) , so that we can have a bit of fun in Sahara or in other desert locations

 

[SAmaster]

I hope sandstorms makes locations and saharan corridors impassable (like mountains in winter) , so that we can have a bit of fun in Sahara or in other desert locations

Typhoons/hurricanes should also at the least come with a movement penalty. I don't know about jungle provinces, but I think they would definitely flood wetlands provinces and make them impassable.

Don't know if flood plains could or should be similarly portrayed.

 

[Lord Lambert]

the attraction of a place is all about whether you can grow enough food

Funnily enough you can do this more when you have a warmer climate (with enough rainfall) than you can in Scandinavia.

 

[jfgkenya11]

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

Map editor confirmed? If so, that would make me very happy. Does that mean we don't have to use Gimp to edit the map?

 

[MasterPaw]

I'd say most.

In this forum likely but generally I'm not sure

 

[Tavolo87]

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

it's not just you, seeing Apulia, which is mainly flat and on the Mediterranean having a part of its locations be "cold arid" didn't make much sense. For the sake of game balancing probably those parts in the med should be converted to Mediterranean climate, no?

 

[Serbon333]

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

Can't you change that when you load up save file? Or is it completely hard coded. Why don't you procedurally generate terrain?

 

[Dev2150]

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

OK, what about development growth? The modifiers add up to less than -100% in

• tropical woods mountains
• mediterranean jungle mountains
• subtropical jungle mountains
• tropical jungle mountains
• oceanic jungle mountains
• continental jungle mountains
• arid jungle mountains
• cold arid jungle mountains
• tropical forest mountains
• arctic forest mountains

 

[Serbon333]

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

Can't you create a map where you have farmlands everywhere you can have framlands (wetlands, grasslands, hills in mediteranian, subropic, tropic, continetal climate) and then mask farmlands where you need them? That woudn't effect performance too much.

 

[Kotyk-durkotyk]

We already have food as a discrete mechanic to model population limitations. If I'm being honest, I fail to see why we actually need population capacity at all beyond just raw inertia from previous games.

They mentioned somewhere that food impact was not enough so they needed more strict limitations.

 

[ramius3443]

yes and its controller for fort.

What happens if a siege on a mountain fort is ongoing in winter? Does the siege continue on with the attacking army unable to leave, does the siege pause for the season, does the attacking army get exiled and told to leave…?

 

[Nintz]

They mentioned somewhere that food impact was not enough so they needed more strict limitations.

Then increase the effects of food until it becomes a limiting factor. If food itself is not restrictive to population growth...then why does the food system itself even exist?

 

[Cotoshky]

Me parece extraño centrarse tanto en el valor innato/marginal de la tierra cuando ya se ha establecido que las ubicaciones de los puertos pobres aún se pueden desarrollar con suficiente esfuerzo. En Imperator siempre me molestó que los territorios individuales tuvieran estos límites estrictos basados en el terreno, porque significaba que la capacidad de carga era muy limitada en el juego tardío. En las ciudades se podía construir más infraestructura, pero en las ubicaciones rurales las opciones eran casi nulas. Decidí terminar muchos de mis archivos cuando comencé a tener una superpoblación masiva en todo mi imperio debido a los límites arbitrarios que impuso ese juego. De hecho, Vic 3 tiene el mismo problema si juegas al modo vainilla lo suficientemente tarde, aunque lleva más tiempo y es más modificable.

El problema, tal como yo lo veo, es que la gente vive incluso en zonas muy remotas, y (casi) siempre ha sido así. Si un estado más grande ve valor estratégico en desarrollar esos territorios a pesar del costo, debería poder hacerlo. No necesita ser eficiente, pero hay un mundo de diferencia entre "puedes hacer esto, pero de manera ineficiente" y "el juego ha decretado que esto no está permitido".

Ya tenemos la comida como una mecánica discreta para modelar las limitaciones de población. Si soy sincero, no veo por qué realmente necesitamos capacidad de población más allá de la inercia pura de juegos anteriores. Si el objetivo es modelar la inversión en infraestructura, debería ser algo que se pueda cambiar a través de las acciones del jugador (estado). Si el objetivo es modelar la agricultura, entonces deberías mirar exclusivamente el sistema alimentario. Y si el clima afecta la producción de alimentos, ¡genial! Eso es realmente preciso y algo que podría (con suerte) verse afectado a través de la inversión en tu sector agrícola. Mejores ubicaciones naturales para la agricultura pueden dedicar porcentajes más pequeños de la población a vivir, lo que naturalmente lleva a los jugadores a las ubicaciones principales. Si quieres capacidad de población para modelar la infraestructura, ¡eso también es genial! Puedes hacerlo en base principalmente a edificios que pueden ser más lentos y más caros de construir en terrenos pobres. Los Alpes no eran en absoluto un lugar cómodo para construir grandes cantidades de edificios. De nuevo, eso tiene sentido, pero podría impulsarse si el incentivo es lo suficientemente poderoso. En mi opinión, la implementación actual es excepcionalmente parecida a un juego como mecánica y parece existir puramente por razones de equilibrio, cuando creo que los otros sistemas que ya has mostrado deberían ser suficientes para lograr el objetivo de impulsar el desarrollo de la población hacia ciertos tipos de terrenos, sin métodos tan arbitrarios.

yohen this fucking best coment ever

 

[Dev2150]

Then increase the effects of food until it becomes a limiting factor. If food itself is not restrictive to population growth...then why does the food system itself even exist?

Modders will make it so that different climates affect different crop yields. Currently only wheat is affected and many more terrains can be added, like tundra. The mechanism of irrigation would be splendid too.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

We already have food as a discrete mechanic to model population limitations. If I'm being honest, I fail to see why we actually need population capacity at all beyond just raw inertia from previous games.

While I agree that food should be much more of a hardcap, with the current market mechanics, as long as you have enough food on your market, all the locations can get the food they need and that would mean that desertic or artic locations could have booming cities which would be completely unrealistic. The truth is this period is not the 21st century where food can produced almost anywhere, frozen and stored and sent anywhere. Back then food had to grow elativly close so there had to be an element of self subsistence so places who could not like very horrible cliemates just did not grow. As the game stand food distribution logisitics within the market is not something that exists so to avoid that, a cap needs to exists so that you cannot build a massive megacity in an artic or dessert province by just importing food into your market.

I do agree thought that food should b e much more of a limiting factor than it was in IR but i think it will be. Pops are self subsistance so any excess you need to build RGOs, unlike IR where all provinces automatically produced food just because potato way in excess of what they needed, and you barely needed to import any food because it was so ridiculously abundant.