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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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Will hordes/tribes have unique estates or will they still have same estates as outlined above. Also, are there cultural/religious estates like the dhimmi and Cossacks or will they be represented in a different way?
 
Commoner impacts your food production and your stability costs.

How important will food production be? Will it be more like Imperator where food production and availability can seriously affect locations? In EU4, food provinces were one of my lowest priorities to dev-up production wise. Would love to see more resources playing a more important role.
 
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If its my decision alone, achievements should ALWAYS require ironman.
A bit early for that but as its the topic here and as a Achievement-Hunter, who pretty much only plays for them and has for example 100% in EU4:
Can you please fill the game with them a lot? Even if there are some mediocre achievements its better than none.
Ofc nice creative ones are always better and there are a lot creative ones that I can think of missing in other games like EU4.
 
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Satisfied peasants reducing stability costs implies that the inane and backwards stability mechanic from eu4 will be making a return. Which disappoints me. Why say you're getting rid of mana if you're not even getting rid of all of the obvious mana-associated problems? And all of the other estate dissatisfaction modifers seem basically random.

Unhappy peasants producing less food and unhappy burghers doing less commerce is also really weird. Like what does this even represent? The peasants going on strike because the King enabled enclosure? This is actually backwards, peasants being unhappy could lead to less food being produced but the actual reason would be because they are rioting or rebelling. As the system is, it seems like the effect is for your country to be at higher risk of famine because the peasants are "dissatisfied".

The way this is described also confirms that there are only four estate entities in your entire country, which means that the expanded estates system with more actors tied to regional politics some of us had hoped for is not going to be a thing. So we can probably just forget about nomads and tribes and regional ethnic minorities to be represented at all. Therefore meaning this is probably not the paradox game I was wishing for.
 
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Johan stated in a response that this is related to fog of war (he was Aragon, so a bit removed from the area).
Well, yes and no: Athens and Neopatras (Atenes, Neopàtria) are Aragonese vassals through Sicilly in this period, often ruled by Catalans directly as a result of a weird kerfuffle that happened a few decades earlier. Bit weird that they don't seem to be represented.
 
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You've said the warfare will be units moving on a map like ck3 and eu4 which is great but I do think there is a major way to improve the system rather simply.

The current system doesn't allow for the player to have much control of maneuvering outside of deciding when and where to engage the enemy. The rest falls into stat modifiers, generals, and tech

In order to better simulate many great battles in history, it would be nice to add in the potential for flanking and enveloping maneuvers. Currently a significant portion of the game is sending death stacks into eachother. But what if i send a stack of 15k north one location into battle against a stack of 30k, and then send another stack of 5-10k into battle from behind the enemies line?
Instead of having them just join your main army it would be really cool to see it represented as an envelopment, maybe the enemy stack splits in half facing each of ur stacks and you get a bonus to rolls for flanking or enveloping the enemy.

Something to give the player a little bit more control of battlefield maneuvering would be nice because as it stands it feels more like I just have to min-max stat modifiers and not attack in the mountains which is fine but its not as in depth of a battle simulation.

This may be a lot to ask I'm not a programmer or game ai designer but I think it would really set this game over any strategy game thats come before.
Such tactical considerations are beneath the level of consideration for a game like this. Having a little more that the army can do, besides doing pitched battle might be a good idea, like set an ambush, harry supply lines, conduct guerilla warfare, construct defenses. Battles otherwise happen too quickly
 
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How would say different faiths within a kingdom work with the Clergy influence. For example if I am playing as England, how would the religious factions ala Anglicans, Presbyterians, Independents, etc in parliament be modeled? What about something like say the Ottoman Millet?
 
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I noticed Epirus and Achaia are both a different purple. Does this mean they are subjects of the byzantines or is it just a coincidence?
I don't know how accurate it is, but in the extended timeline mod for EU4, achaia is a subject of Naples, and in the screenshot they're the same shade.

So maybe countries under a personal union will use the same shade, but vassalized countries are a slightly off colour?
 
I wonder - how does estates will work for other governments?

Like Republics could still have nobles and etc, but crownland?

Same with Tribes and Nomads, how will they'll have nobles, burghers, peasants and etc, considering these had either typical nomad or a clan chief at most as a caste system. How's that gonna work? Will their government just prevent power growth of certain estates?
 
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