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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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How will the estate power shift after conquest or lose land? Based on the local pop power or the national influence reset local pops.
Also does somewhere like trade or religion centers influence local pops estates power.
 
So the dev diary is great, but I am wondering about the levies part.

It implies that we would have a separate manpower pool where all the estates contributes percentage of their total pops into it, but would losses in manpower also translate into losses in pops?

I am asking because manpower pool in HOI4 is quite different from the soldier pops system of the Vicky series. In HOI4, you don't really see the reduction directly in the population, only in the manpower pool, while in Vicky, losses in the soldier pops means that you actually lost pops.
 
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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?

Ah that makes sense. Question still stands with Epirus though. I imagine it must mean they are a subject or it is a very odd choice of color.
 
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Basically all first universities were built by the church and generally the most educated class were priests. You'd be hard pressed to find a better estate to support for research and education. There are more factors, yes, but generally this is the right choice.
And if you play as China, where this is not even remotely the case, you're just out if luck. This really should have been an estate privledge, or actually not a mechanic tied to satisfaction at all because it's not like people stop researching if they don't like the government.
 
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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.
Not in 1337 I don't think, they're the same dynasty but different monarchs.
 
As a RotW player, I'm a little curious if much is planned for the estates of non-European nations, such as the Tribal Governments and Hordes discussed last week? I feel like in EU4, a lot of estates kind of amounted to name changes with one or two unique privileges, especially when the estates system was new, and this somewhat broke immersion. Is the intent to start with this framework, or are other government types going to have radically different estates, or at least, completely different sets of privileges and equilibriums? I know it's a big ask, but hopefully if the estates are tied to the government type, and the names for those estates are tied to primary culture, they could be a lot of variation without too much dev effort.
 
hi there Johan, thanks for the updates. I have a question, you have said you are taking community feedback into account heavily as opposed to previous releases, and I am most interested in where does your feedback come from? Is it just the forum community, or are you also taking reddit/youtube videos/streams into account? i am asking as the opinion on the forum seems to sway one way for a topic, but maybe those who are not using the forums think otherwise.

For a specific example, there was a thread that the quite popular streamer Florryworry looked over yesterday where the forum opinion on stackable modifiers went one way (they are bad), but the stream audience's opinion was on the opposite side(they love it).

I am asking this as I just want to make sure that Project CAE(U5)SAR succeeds and the forum opinions are not always in line with the opinions of people who do not spend time here. Thank you respectfully for everything!
 
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Not in 1337 I don't think, they're the same dynasty but different monarchs.
In 1337 they were ruled by N'Anfós Frederic d'Aragó, a commander of the Great Catalan Company which conquered the area in favour of the Crown of Aragon (and a bastard of the King of Sicily, another Aragonese vassal). The duchies were administered by a system of vicars rather than through the dukes themselves, and these vicars were also either Sicilians or Catalans. Further evidence of direct vassalage can also be seen in how 1319 Alfons brokered a deal with Venice to divide the area between the former and Aragon.
 
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I like the visual of the map.
 
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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.

Is there are reason to go 0 to 100, with an inflection point at 50% instead of -50 to 50? At 0 no effect, scaling bonus if positive, scaling malus if negative. No levies if below -25?

If it is the 50, you could switch that to any value. It could be -100% (completely unsatisfied) to 100% (completely satisfied).

I feel this principle should be used across any other area where you have that inflection from bonus to malus half way through the scale. (Stability if going to the IR style).
 
I'm worried about one thing, if the start of the game is 1357 or something like that, there will be a long time for colonization to start, so how do you play a colonizing nation? spend 200 years doing nothing? and how will AI be able to survive this time and begin colonization? Will the Hundred Years' War be balanced? so many questions... another thing is immigration, in Brazil and other colonies in the first two centuries around 100 thousand Portuguese migrated, but it was all men, so they mixed with natives and Africans, how will this be portrayed? will exist diferent types of colonization changing laws or reforms? if i want to make diverse and mixed USA, or a Brazil without slavery? the immigration to the new world will be constant? the wars will have the impact that it had in real life? like in the 30 years war some areas having a population decline of 50%, and wars having most of the deaths in diseases will be portrayed? earnestly, if it dont be accurate i do not care, i already love this game for having population, continue the good work!
 
if the start of the game is 1357 or something like that
1337
there will be a long time for colonization to start, so how do you play a colonizing nation? spend 200 years doing nothing?
I assume you're talking about Portugal. Reducing the country to "200 years doing nothing" is wrong. The 14th century had a lot of conflict in the peninsula, even though the borders historically remained mostly unchanged. There is a lot of interesting things to do other than colonizing.
 
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Good afternoon, very interesting diary.
According to estates:
- In China and the Horde there were no estates in the Western sense. Will there be something like an estate of bureaucrats in China? Eunuch estates for China and Muslim countries?
- Can we count on separate estates for nomadic tribes for countries that include steppes and the corresponding type of population (for the Mongolian states)?
 
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Ah that makes sense. Question still stands with Epirus though. I imagine it must mean they are a subject or it is a very odd choice of color.
I wouldn't like subjects (except for Colonial) to be my colour at all, I hope it's optional and I can change it in the settings that every country has its real colour, if it's really the case.
 
@Johan Is it possible to have the name of your vassal on the map be overtaken by its suzerain like in CK2 with tributary names disappearing and the map name of the overlord growing in size proportionally to take land of the tributary.
 
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