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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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A couple of months back I considered making a post asking for a Tinto UI series that would go over all the major UI interfaces in the game, allowing us to give feedback on what is definitely up there as one of the most important parts of the player experience. At the time, I decided against it, thinking that seeing screenshots of the UI might not really convey what using that UI would really be like.

However, after reading this dev diary, I'm convinced that such a series of dev diaries would be very interesting for us, and hopefully would provide decent feedback for you. Please consider it!

A separate series might not even be necessary. You could just do it somewhere close to launch as a part of Tinto Talks. I think they would also work really well as marketing for the game. Seeing the UI in this dev diary certainly made me even more hyped for the game.
 
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Will pops who dont know about a trade good be barred from wanted it. For example will south americans be barred from wanting chinaware/ wine (as it wasnt produced in new world i think) untill a nstion imports it. Also on the topic of alchol would mongols be able to make wine (or beer) from horses (ayrag) from a building or cultral tradition
 
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The legibility of the lower figure under Trading Advantage is massively improved by the black shadow, while the figure under Trading Efficiency is much more difficult to decipher without the black shadow. I suspect that all text and numbers in the UI would be much more legible with a black shadow for more contrast. :rolleyes:
 

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The part where it shows the trade and production effiency at the top of first picture red on brown it seems a bad choice because it makes it hard to read and notice since the other information is in a part with a village/marketplace background but they are on different background it does not attract my attention as much as the information with picture background I realized them after reading the part, where there is information about them in the picture to go back to picture and look for it.

Is it possible to move trade and production efficiency down to have a pictured background so they are all together or like make it have more and better visibility.

Thanks for the post and trade examples as well.
 
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All production is in buildings (or the "natural location production" of clay and stone and sand that was elaborated on elsewhere, but that isn't that significant) and RGOs. Those buildings are either built by the state or estates. RGOs are upgraded by the state.
And then there is import/export by the player and by the burghers as the other method of getting good.


Could you explain why you went for a winner takes all system when it comes to trade access? I personally feel like a weighted system makes more sense. If two countries are competing for trade access they will both try to get every bit of exportable good and it will split fairly evenly. But if one country dominates the market they will get the fast majority of what they want.

I really feel like having a very small advantage in TA shouldn't give you priority over someone who's only slightly behind. Of course if you want to represent monopolies of some sort you could implement something like:
1. Having more than x% of TA in a market gives you full priority over everyone
Not a huge fan of this one as it is a kinda binary system with little flexibility

2. Having twice(or some other factor) as much TA as someone else does give you full priority OVER THEM.

All of these systems are more complex for the player as well as more computationally intensive, but I'm not enough of a programmer to know if any would have a real performance impact
I would say that the reason is performance. With the winner takes all approach to trade (and this is limited to trade) you only have to iterate once down the list of countries with a presence in the market. The top country does its preferred trades for all its goods (using all the TCap that it wants too) and then with the goods removed the next does it based on available goods. Each country in the market is touched once and make one set of decisions

If we went with a weighted access first you would need to convert the +/- TA % to a weight value. They you are going to have make multiple passes through the decision and completion stages as after each cycle through only part of the action gets complete.
 
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Do we know at this point how much of a role the characters have in project Caesar?

I can't imagine their role and interactions would be as intense as CK3, but I hope they have a bit more to them than games like Vic3 or Hoi4 where they are just a set of buffs to your country, with no other forms of interaction.
I, personally, would have preferred a minimum Character presence in the game. I didn't feel they were missing from EU4. I feel they are added to justify to time/money invested in their 3d doll. I feel Characters puts us on a too micro-level. I am fine with Pops as I see them as less micro-level than characters.

This is 500 years which would approximately be 25 generations. Am I really going to care what the name of the 100+ diplomats that I had throughout the game are? I would have more preferred to have a diplomatic corps, the size of which depends on the amount of gold I put into it. The size would also then be the limiting factor on how many actions I can perform.


I realize I am probably in the minority here but wanted to put it out there.
 
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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.
Unfortunately I think this is the least player friendly UI screenshot I have seen throughout all the Tinto talks. Is that dull red on brown supposed to be readable? The blue text on the picture background is bad, but I straight up can't read the number for the trade efficiency without zooming in.

Also, why do the numbers with the picture as a background have shadows when no other text/numbers have shadows?
 
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Yes, but why owns the building? Who gets the profit from selling produced goods? Do the state get all of it, or the estate gets the profit and the state just taxes it?
Here is my detailed question and a sufficient answer by Johan:
The 10 ducats go to the estates proportional to their relative power, and then you tax them

I will just sum up what I know from other replies:
  • Production buildings buy input goods and sell output goods within one market. The difference makes profit, that goes to the estates proportionally to their power. Then those estates are taxed and you get your tax income in the budget.
  • When merchants trade, they buy goods in one market (actually from the buildings) and sell to another market. The difference makes trade profit that goes directly to you as trade income.
Example (for simplicity without any modifiers and the volume is always 1 unit):
  • A Glass production building in Venice.
  • The building buys input goods (sand and lumber) for 1$ and sells glass for 3$ to the Venice market.
  • The building profit is 2$. It goes to the estates and then taxed (you get let's say 0.2$ as tax income from all possible estates).
Then trade happens:
  • Your merchants buy glass in the Venice market for that 3$ and sell it to Paris market for 7$.
  • Trade profit is 4$ and 100% goes to your budged as trade income.
  • In case your burghers make the trade, the trade profit goes to their estate and then taxed.
I hope I have understood everything correctly :D
 
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The legibility of the lower figure under Trading Advantage is massively improved by the black shadow, while the figure under Trading Efficiency is much more difficult to decipher without the black shadow. I suspect that all text and numbers in the UI would be much more legible with a black shadow for more contrast. :rolleyes:
is this close to simulate poor eyesight?
 
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You buy the coal in Riga for 60€and sell it for 50€ in London. (This is assuming there IS any surplus coal in riga to export)

Base Profit is -10€
Trade Efficiency adds 5% of 50€, ie 2.5€
And a cost of 1.8€.

So the first month you'd lose 9.3€, and it will get worse as prices drop in London and increase in Riga due to supply increasing in London and demand increasing in Riga.
I propose using Đ as a short for "ducats", or ƒ for "florins", because it would be funny and also cool
 
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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.
I'm sorry if that was mentioned before and/or this is not a thread to ask such a question, but:
Will there be a supported Polish language for this Game?
 
the first
wow, then it seems like trade advantage is a massively important variable to prioritise making even the tiniest improvements to. I guess for small markets or common goods it wouldn't be too different being the 2nd or 6th, but for those with many large countries, for more exotic goods, it might be that no one outside the top 3 would even get access to it? Like even if you did an import while being, say, the 5th or 6th, you would still not be able to use it if the others ahead of you still had pending requirements, right? You will HAVE to become the highest trade advantage in your node if you want to be able to make stuff you want.

Are there a lot of different factors and tools at our disposal that affect trade advantage? Did you go into it in more detail in any of the previous tinto talkies?

EDIT: ohhhh waiiiit, is advantage only for choosing who gets to *sell* stuff to a different market? Or also about who can buy? Can you use up goods your country produces without having them go into the market and having to fight for them?
 
EDIT: ohhhh waiiiit, is advantage only for choosing who gets to *sell* stuff to a different market? Or also about who can buy? Can you use up goods your country produces without having them go into the market and having to fight for them?
Trade advantage only determines who gets to buy/sell leftover (surplus) stuff from a market. Within the market, locations satisfy their needs based on their market access value. If there aren't enough goods to go around, trade advantage doesn't matter at all, because exports (goods moving between markets) happen only after the internal buying/selling phase gets taken care of.
 
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Trade advantage only determines who gets to buy/sell leftover (surplus) stuff from a market. Within the market, locations satisfy their needs based on their market access value. If there aren't enough goods to go around, trade advantage doesn't matter at all, because exports (goods moving between markets) happen only after the internal buying/selling phase gets taken care of.
oh ok, so it affects the trades made by the *country* in the trading menu. But the pops and constructions use goods without looking at it? And the countries can only do stuff with the remaining goods after all pops and constructions take stuff, and this is where advantage comes in? What if 5 countries had a construction each that took 2 of good A for example, but there were only 8 A in the market? Would only 4 of these progress, ranked by access or advantage? Or would all of them progress just with 80% efficiency or higher costs?
 
What if 5 countries had a construction each that took 2 of good A for example, but there were only 8 A in the market? Would only 4 of these progress, ranked by access or advantage? Or would all of them progress just with 80% efficiency or higher costs?
The former. Locations (and the buildings in them) buy their goods from the market in the order constituted by their market access value (which is IRC tracked to 5 decimals, so there's an extremely small chance of a tie). Location 1 has a market access of X, so gets to go first, location 2 has a market access of X-0.01 so it has to go second, location 3 has a market access of X-25 and goes third and so on and so forth. If there were 9 goods A in the market while there would be demand for 10 from the 5 locations, location 5 would go last and would presumably progress at 50% efficiency, though this last bit hasn't been actually confirmed as far as I remember.
 
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