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Tinto Talks #5 - March 27th, 2024

Welcome to the fifth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design for our upcoming top secret game with the codename ‘Project Caesar.’


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The state is me! Oh, you meant E-state, sorry.. not me ..

Today we will go into detail about one of the core systems in the game, and talk about how estates work.

First of all, there are four estates in Project Caesar, which mostly map 1 to 1 with a social class: Nobility, Clergy, Burghers and the Commoners. There is also the Crown, which represents the state itself.

Each estate gains power based on the amount of population belonging to the estate, which is also modifiable by local attributes of where the population is, where some nobles may have very high power in a certain area, or whether a specific city has entrenched burgher rights there.

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This is the estates part of the government view, where you can see their power, current satisfaction, the equilibrium its trending toward, and what privileges it currently has.

Every 1,000 nobles gives +50 estate power to their estate, while 1,000 peasants merely give +0.05 estate power as default. Then these are modified locally in every location, as mentioned above, and then in the entire country by laws, reforms and most notably the privileges that you have given the estates.

The total power of all the 4 estates and the crown then together all add up to 100%, which is the effective power they have.

Depending on your crown power, you either get a scaling penalty or scaling bonus, on aspects like the cost of revoking estate privileges, the cost of changing policies in laws, the efficiency of the cabinet, the expected costs of the court, and other things. If your crown power is weak, you need to have the estates really satisfied, or you will not get much out of any parliament you try to call.

Each of the four estates has a current satisfaction and an equilibrium it will move towards. Some estates, and some countries, will have the estate satisfaction moving quicker to the equilibrium than others. Each estate has 2 factors per type of estate in which their satisfaction impacts the entire country, where satisfaction above 50% gives a scaling bonus, and below, a scaling penalty.

If the satisfaction is below 25%, this estate will not provide any levies. Most importantly, the estate satisfaction also impacts the satisfaction of the pops that belong to that estate, possibly creating rebel factions or even civil wars.
  • Nobility impacts your prestige gain and your counterespionage.
  • Clergy impacts your research speed and your diplomatic reputation.
  • Burghers impact your merchant power and the production efficiency.
  • Commoner impacts your food production and your stability costs.

So what impacts the satisfaction equilibrium of an estate? The privileges they get, the current stability, some reforms may impact them, some laws may, how you tax them, and much more. Some examples include clergy being happier with higher religious unity or burghers liking having more market centers in your country.

# estate privileges
Estate Privileges then? You may feel forced to grant privileges to estates to be able to tax them more, and you may be forced to grant privileges to get their support in parliament. All privileges impact the power of their estate, and many also increase their satisfaction equilibrium. They all have some impact on gameplay fitting the privilege, and often they also impact a societal value of their country.

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WiP ui, temporary graphics and no icons etc.

There are many different privileges, and many unique ones depending on where and what type of country you play.

We mentioned taxes before, and while this is not the development diary where we go into details about the economic system, it is important to mention that the estates of a country have wealth that is increased by the amount of money that you have not taken from them in taxes. Rich estates will use their wealth on many things, primarily to invest into things that benefit them, but will often also build things that also benefit the country.

Next week we will talk about a few new concepts that are rather new to this game that have not been present in previous games, as we will talk about proximity, control and maritime presence, all concepts that need to be talked about in detail, before we go into the economy system.
 
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Hopefully modding will solve this issue for me, and clearly plenty of people like this new modern style map. I really don't though - there is such a great balance that can be achieved between still feeling physical and tangible, yet keeping the clear obvious political boundaries.

We are currently only showing the "flat map".
 
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Ironically, I've never really played MEIOU beyond testing it. I do have employees from the mod, and I really enjoy talking with @gigau and his friends at every Pdxcon.
Could the player cancel the buildings an estate automatically builds themselves? If so, would this piss the estates off since its a way the player controls them or exerts power over them?
 
Let’s say early game you have very happy nobles and very angry peasants. How will that play out in terms of levies? Are grumpy peasants going to severely limit your available fighting force? Or are most of the levies considered to be coming from nobles and the men they muster, so in this case you’d still have a sizable army?
 
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How does estate power evolve during conquest and vassal integration ? Proportionally to the assimilated pops (culture/religion) ?

What do you mean by “based on the population belonging to the estate “ ? Is it gonna be like at the beginning in EU4 (ie one location belonging to one specific estate) or more of a general state percentage (as in late EU4 patches)

Social class of the population maps to the Estates.

So if you increase your percentage of burghers after a conquest is all done, you are likely to get their estate more powerful.
 
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just noticed Venice owns a few regions of land on the map, and they're just called "Venice".
Same with Genoa, they're just simply "Genoa".

So it seems like the dynamic naming mentioned in TT#4 only occurs for certain countries, and most of them (Serbia, Bulgaria, Venice, Genoa, etc.) don't have dynamic names (at least not at the start of the game).

I would personally much prefer to have each country have titles (e.g. Kingdom of Serbia, Serene Republic of Venice, etc, to go along with TT#4's mentioned Crown of Aragon and Kingdom of Sweden).

They do, just on the map you have to fit the name as well.
 
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I would like to share my thoughts on the topic of country names which you can see on the map. As far as I can see, there are a lot of wastelands on this map. If the naming of a country functions similar to EU4 it might be hard to read it. For example, Karamans' country name should also stretch over Taurus Mountains in order to make it easier to read and better to look at.

Also another suggestion, if every other Beylik has the plural suffix of (-s), Ahiler should be renamed to Ahis, since -ler/-lar is the plural suffix in Turkish language. It makes it uncoherent when you take a glance at other Turkish Beyliks. Even though Ahis weren't a Beylik, it would look better with others surrounding it.
 
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Beyond renaming each group, will different countries get different power structures? E.g. Clergy providing nobility and/or burghers attributes?

no. thats hell to keep balanced
 
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Will there be sub-groups in the Estates? For example, the Ottomans would have Orthodox and Muslim clergy, would their interests just be "Clergy" or will there be a system to appease the christains and the muslims. Or will Dhimmi be a separate Estate?
 
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Speaking of Stability. I wish that stability would be closer to the Imperator model than the EU4 model.

Meaning in a scale 0 to 100 and moves toward the equilibrium of 50. Rather than a scale of -3 to 3 and static.

We'll talk about stability in about 3-4 weeks.
 
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Each estate gains power based on the amount of population belonging to the estate,
That seems bizarrely anti-monarchist. What next, peasants getting to choose their own leaders? Nobility having to pay taxes? This is frankly absurd and I won't stand for it. (but no really this seems kinda ahistoric with how lopsided population and power worked back in the day)
If the satisfaction is below 25%, this estate will not provide any levies.
What, we can't just shoot the peasants when they get uppity? What socialist nonsense is this?

Anyway the only thing I don't like about the UI I'd say are those backgrounds. They look much too clean much too 'pop-art'. I hope we see UI that emphasizes the old baroque style UI of EU4.
 
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Hello Johan,
Will the estate mechanics going to have a linear action sequence, like we always try to reduce it power (like the landowner in vic 3 where we always try to reduce it and we try to improve intelligensia).
We should have a incentive to have strong estate also, like for prussia like country player will benefit a strong nobility and a country like venice with a strong burgher

I personally like to have 1 strong estate to rely upon when calling a parliament.
 
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Social class of the population maps to the Estates.

So if you increase your percentage of burghers after a conquest is all done, you are likely to get their estate more powerful.
Social class of the population maps to the Estates.

So if you increase your percentage of burghers after a conquest is all done, you are likely to get their estate more powerful.
Ok so it will be based on the local power of nobles/clergy/peasants over the counties / locations I conquer.

Also what about dhimmies ? They are not listed in the base 4 estates (ie if playing ottomans and conquering heathen lands while having religious tolerance, what happens ?)
 
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A bit off topic, regarding UI and game rules.

1. This is something that bothers me in eu4: most actions buttons are blocked when you don't fulfil the requirements. This seems fine at the first soft, but it's a pain when the button first opens a menu with more options for the action, and then you need to click confirm.

E.g. i need have a certain minimal amout of gold to check the potencial of provinces for "charter companies". Not even buy them or spend the gold yet.

It used to be worse, when we could not see the planned peace deal without a diplomat available.

My question is: will the UI be designed in this project to prevent this inconvenience. E.g. the action submenu always available, just the confirmation button disabled.

2. Changing campaign options during campaign. In eu4 it is completely unavailable without modification of the save file itself with external tools.

For UI options or makes no sense. Toggling of coloring wasteland or how the country name is displayed doesn't affect campaign. Or should be just a ui option as e.g. enabling trees.

The other options that do affect campaign i think it should be available. For example changing difficulty should be an option (increasing is useful when your country is too powerful mid/late game). This could just disable achievements - console commands are available without ironman, why not this?

So my question is again: how is this handled in this project?
 
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Oooh tons of info on this one.
We'll have food production and levies come from estates, interesting.

I don't really like the style of the estates UI. I know it's an early version and maybe I'll like it when the game is released.
It's not that it's bad, just aesthetically I don't like it. Not really sure how to explain it. It is not particularely important tho
 
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I think there are way too many shadows on the map, like really big shadows around really small islands

Also the map looks rather dark compared to eu4 and imperator
 
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