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Tinto Talks #47 - 22nd of January 2025

Hello Everyone and Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we give you some information about our entirely secret upcoming game with the codename of Project Caesar.

As mentioned in https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/psa-tinto-talks-topic-change-this-week.1726639/ we have a change of schedule for this week.

Today we’ll go through the market screen and show how it's used in the game. Here I will be playing as Sweden, and this is the 6th iteration of the UI we have done for the economy system as we kept iterating upon it to make it more player friendly. Our goal has been to give you important information at a glance and reduce the amount of clicks you need to do anything to a minimum.


market.png


At the top of the screen you can see the balance tab for all your fun sliders, and the trade tab where all your trades are shown.

First, let's explain all the keywords you see here.

Trade Efficiency
This modifies how much gold you get from trades, by directly impacting the price you sell goods in the target market. A negative will decrease the profit, and could even make a trade unprofitable if the margins are low enough.

Production Efficiency
This impacts the output of buildings. A positive Production Efficiency increases the profit, while a negative may make it not worth keeping open.

Trade Advantage
The Trade Advantage of countries in a market determines who will be able to get their exports fulfilled first. If there is a limited amount of supply of goods in a market they get distributed by the trade advantage that each country has in that market.

Market Attraction
This impacts how much pull a market_center has over a location to make it a part of its market. As we play Sweden here, and currently don’t have a market, it's not that important to us.

Trade Maintenance
Trading is not free, as the ships, wagons, and caravans need to be maintained, and the merchants themselves need to be paid.

Market Protection
Protectionism is a desire to keep trade within one's own Country. This is represented by one location_modifier and one country_modifier, which reduce locations' likelihood of belonging to foreign markets.

Trade Capacity
This is if we have any bonus to how much capacity each merchant has in all our markets. This represents how much a country can export and/or import from a market. Each trade created from this market uses merchant_capacity depending on the distance to the other market, and the volume of goods that trade is doing.

Trade Range
This is simply how far our merchants can reach, and determines how distant the markets we can trade with can be. This is calculated from any market we have merchants in.


Below we have the search bar and filter list. This is something we have in pretty much every screen with a list of objects in Project Caesar. The Search Bar allows you to just type what you look for, and it will check on names, or any other relevant information that is connected to the elements in the list. The filter allows you to toggle any data.

filters.png

These are the filters we have for the market list.


Let’s focus on the market entry of Riga then. This is a UI widget, which we refer to as the Market Card, that you will see in several screens, as it gives you information about the market, while allowing you to quickly do actions.

riga.png

The flag and name do not need to be explained

In the top right corner we have an automation button, which allows you to toggle trade automation for that market.

Below it you will see 5 blue buttons, all with important information.

The first shows the amount of trade capacity available and how much you have in that market. If you click on it, it would open the buildings overview tab, with this market filtered, and with all buildings you have and could build that could increase your trade capacity in that market.

The second shows our position in the market when it comes to trade advantage and clicking it will open up your trades with a filter for the market, so you can quickly change your trades.

The third button shows how many types of goods you have some sort of lack for when it comes to your constructions or the requirements of your buildings in this market. The banner is only shown if there are any goods lacking. Yellow if buildings are inefficient due to lacking of some of the goods and red if there is a blocker. If you click on it you get to the goods screen with the needs and the market filters selected.

The fourth button is similar to the third, but is about the needs of your pops in this market. The banner goes red if you have pops in the market that are actively part of a rebel faction. If you click on it you get to the goods screen with the needs and the market filters selected.

Below here is the tooltip for this button...
pop_needs.png

Yeah, I’d also be upset if I lacked wine…


The fifth button shows the current food balance in the market, and if you click it you go to the food screen, with any locations in the market you can get food from in the filter. If any province is starving or likely to starve in the next 6 months, you will see alerts there as well.


Lets end by taking a quick look at what the goods panel shows when we click the fourth button..

goods.png


Market widget is at the top, as mentioned above, where it acts as a filter for the information displayed below The buttons to the right allow you to quickly toggle to the next market we have presence in, or remove the market filter to see data for your whole country.

Normal search bar and lots of possible filters. The “Pop Needs” filter is present, so the list below only displays the goods that our Pops are currently demanding.

Let’s now explain this list, with 4 entries.

First is the icon of the goods, in a tiny little version, so it works fine with lots of goods at the same time.

Second is a small vertical progress bar, which shows how much goods are in the stockpiles in the filtered market. Obviously empty here.

Third is the monthly balance in the market, which is very red and negative, so we need to do something about it.

Fourth is the price in the market, with gold or silver icons indicating relative price, with Wine being more expensive than the default price, indicating that imports can be profitable here.

Then we have the two buttons for importing and exporting. The export button is greyed out, as there is no surplus. We have some capacity so we could attempt to import about 2 goods of one type.

After that is the Expand RGO button, Cloth can not be expanded as it's not a raw material, but the others are also greyed out, as there are no Wine production in Sweden, and no gold or silver mines. The Sala Silvermine was not present in 1337, but there is a nice DHE for it. If any of the RGOs were available, clicking on the button would open the Expand RGO screen with all locations you own with that raw material in the filter. The number on the button shows the profit of the most profitable RGO of that good you can expand in your territory.

The final button is the “build a building that produces the goods” button. If you click on it, it would open the buildings overview tab, with this market filtered, and with all buildings you have and could build that could produce that good in that market. Now the quick thinking of you will ask: “wine?” Yes, there is a production method for Breweries that can turn fruit into wine.



Cheers, next week we will back the regular scheduled programming.
 
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Did you put that vineyard as the header to make fun of the poor pops missing wine?

yeah, i usually pick an unsued goods illustration for the header if nothing specific should be used.
 
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If you go for the same goods yes, and he has the capacity to take all the surplus.
So if I as a Poland (10% TA) share market with Teutonic order (10.1% TA) and this market lacks cloth -> I expand buildings that produce it and they sell that cloth to the Teutons first and not country they are in? I guess there will not be a situation where one country in a shared market takes 100% of the goods produced in it but it still doesn't feel right to me
 
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Will it account for diacritics and other funny characters? Example, if search for "Bork", will it return "Børksville" amongst the results, or do I have to specifically search for "Børk"?

it should support weird diacritics.
 
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One trade example.

Your friendly swedish merchant buys 10 units of Coal for in London 50€, as the price for coal there is 5€

He then sells the 10 units of Coal in Riga for 60€ for a profit of 10€as the price for coal there is 6€

Trade Efficiency
With a Trade Efficiency of 5%, he would get an additional 3€ in profit, giving him a total profit of 13€.

Trade Maintenance
Shipping 10 units of between London and Riga required 20 capacity, and the maintenance cost per capacity is 0.10€, adding a cost of 2€ to the trade. If we got a Trade Maintenance reduction of 10%, it would cost 1.8€ to do the trade.

Total Profit is 11.2€

If we instead ship the coal to Lübeck, where the price for coal is 5.5€ and requires 10 capacity to ship, it would be like this.
Base Profit of 5€
Trade Efficiency adds 2,75€ (5% of 55€)
Trade Maintenance is 0.9€ (-10% from 1€)

Total Profit is 6.85€

Now you may think, trading from London to Riga is higher profit, so its clearly better... but, we have 10 more trade capacity in London that could be used on another trade, that could perhaps be similar in profit, and give us a bigger total profit.
Thanks for the detailed explanation ! Just to confirm though, in game your friend will also be able to ship the coal from riga to London (paying then 10 euros, and with the trade efficiency allowing to reduce the price to only 7 euros, + 1.8 euros for a total of 8.8 euros ?) Say because he has an awful lots of factories in Great britain and want to ensure coal stays as low as possible there, and / or he plans on fighting sweden to conquer paradox HQ and wants to ensure they won't have the coal to move their ships to defend ?
 
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Does the Burgher estate of every country also have both trade capacity and trade advantage for all the markets in which the country is present?

no, the burger trades are done AFTER all national trades are done, and all burghers in the market adds all their burghercapacity to the market and try to solve important needs in the market.
 
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Can you give an example of what would modify the price negatively that isn't production costs or maintenance costs.

Am not trying to poke holes - am just trying to understand what Trade Efficiency actually represents.
As I understand it, if the price of selling wine in the market is 2.55, and your efficiency is +10% you'll get 2.81 for each unit of wine you sell.
 
Nice work. Thanks for the overview.
 
It is not clear to me how much I need to interact with this. Trade automation is severely lacking in Victoria 3.

If it is crucial to interact with this in detail to play the game, it may be overwhelming. If it isn't, does the level of detail of the simulation really add something to EU5?

This looks more like the Anno series with supply chains and hood-by-good optimization.

I hope they pull off a good game design here that allows meaningful strategic interaction (not just operatively optimizing).
 
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I'd like to reiterate that the medium green background is detrimental for distinguishing red text for most colorblind people (1/12 men, of which over half with red-green variant).

A darker, or more desaturated green or even gray would be better for us. I don't think changing the red itself will solve anything unfortunately.

In EU4 for instance this was not really an issue, due to the desaturated background. (it's still a tad difficult, but on par with the example I made here on the right).

left: original; right: adjusted contrast for greens
1737557167991.png

1737557991055.png
 
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Great TT. I have one question about trade capacity (maybe I just forgot details).

If Sweden has TC of 2 in Riga, is it market related, or would Sweden have the same capacity in any market they had presence in. And, is this capacity total, or does it count "double", 2 for exports, 2 for imports?

Keep up the great work!
 
Great TT. I have one question about trade capacity (maybe I just forgot details).

If Sweden has TC of 2 in Riga, is it market related, or would Sweden have the same capacity in any market they had presence in. And, is this capacity total, or does it count "double", 2 for exports, 2 for imports?

Keep up the great work!
I think the capacity is calculated market by market. The capacity can be used in each market either for importing or for exporting, so it's shared (based of my understancing of other answers in the forum)
 
I'd like to reiterate that the medium green background is detrimental for distinguishing red text for most colorblind people (1/12 men, of which over half with red-green variant).

A darker, or more desaturated green or even gray would be ideal for us. I don't think changing the red itself will solve anything unfortunately.

In EU4 for instance this was not really an issue, due to the desaturated background. (it's still a tad difficult, but on par with the example I made here on the right).

left: original; right: adjusted contrast for greens
View attachment 1246156
View attachment 1246197
It's definitely an improvement, but I do still think it's a bit hard to read the red text. Maybe make it a bold text so the red pops better?
 
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