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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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Folks, looking at the map, I can't help but feel that Imperator: Constantinople is shaping up to be a great game. And the attention given to France is just excellent, can't wait to crush them at Alise!

I'm ofc just joking, but if this is the starting setup, it's pretty similar to I:R. The Byzantine situation here does seem comparable to what Rome faces in that game, not still/yet quite an empire, but regionally strong and ready to consolidate Anatolia/Italia respectively. Remains to be seen how easy that task is though, otherwise we've already gotten our first case of a nation being OP:p
 
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Johan, if you were playing Aragon, how could you lose the duchy of Neopatras? Just in case, I think you lost it cause you say the region is full of fog of war. Be careful, the Catalan Company will go take your Pan Tumaca if you don't take back those lands
 
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Will estates influence the diplomacy of a country ? Call other nations to their aid (ex. Targowica Confederation) if mistreated or hungry for more power? Secede from the nation altogether (like Janissaries, Danzig, Netherlands in EU4) ?
Or the estates will be interested only in internal matters of a nation ?

Will countries be allowed to change sides during war (Great Northern War) ? Offer their rivals to fix the imbalance of power by attacking together a blobbing neighbour or to partition a weaker nation ?
 
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Any possibility that estates can be broken out by culture or religion? So in a multi-religious blobbed nation with Christians and Muslims...shouldn't we have two estates? With a multi-cultural nation... shouldn't we have different nobilities? The Austrian, the Styrian, the Italian? Each having their own interests (and varied levels of power) and investing in their own places.

The lack of this in Victoria 3, in full XIX century nationalism waves, is starting to be striking. But in Project Caesar we would still have time to have it included.

Edit: as a Catalan, I should have used the Catalan vs Castillian nobility issues to show how one estate for all does not work, instead of using Austrians and Styrians as example :p
 
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I'm not sure if Johann is having fun or if it's killing him to not say EU 5.
 
The lack of others estates beyond these 4 is a let down and probably will be a factor that makes different tags in different regions of the world to feel the same.
 
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I would really love if the menu/ui is nice and medieval themed. I know the pictures are not the final ui but i think going more medieval would be really fitting and immersive
 
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How will the tickrate be? like in EU4 it was 1 tick per day, in HOI4 its like every hour, personally i feel like that the tickrate for project caeser should be at least 4 ticks per day. the problem with 1 tick per day being that battles can take a long long time in EU4 to finish. it also limits stuff like night attacks and makes the winter feel far shorter, making the player not care for attrition
The problem with four ticks per day is the time spent on the game. In EU4, the game starts in 1444 and ends in 1821. That means it takes 137,605 days/ticks to reach the end. If you use four ticks per days, that means it will take 550,420 ticks. That's a lot of ticks! This game's start date is 1337 and, if the image of this dev diary doesn't lie, it will end after Louis XIV reign (which ended in 1715). It will take at least 137,970 days to reach the end, and I'm pretty sure the game won't end just after Louis XIV's death if he has a picture on the game. Passing the days after four ticks will take at least 551,880 ticks to reach the end, which is a lot. HoI4 starts in 1936 and ends in 1950. Using one tick per day, it will take 5,110 ticks to reach the end, which is few. Now, using one tick per hour, it takes 122,640 ticks, which is closer from the EU4's 137,605.
 
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Any possibility that estates can be broken out by culture or religion? So in a multi-religious blobbed nation with Christians and Muslims...shouldn't we have two estates? With a multi-cultural nation... shouldn't we have different nobilities? The Austrian, the Styrian, the Italian? Each having their own interests (and varied levels of power) and investing in their own places.

The lack of this in Victoria 3, in full XIX century nationalism waves, is starting to be striking. But in Project Caesar we would still have time to have it included
The lack of others estates beyond these 3 is a let down and probably will be a factor that makes different tags in different regions of the world to feel the same.
These are my greatest fears right now yeah. Not only will playing in different regions feel the same, but playing as a small country or large empire will also feel the same because you're still just going to be interacting with the same four boxes that work in the same way.
 
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Hello, I know it's a bit too early for that, but I have question about the music player. Will it even be in the game? If yes, would it be something similar to EU4 music player? I love how EU4 is really easy to modificate and control the music so the lack of the music player (like in CK3) would be a rather big dissapointement in my opinion, because music in the game is very important for me.

I really hope there will be music player in Project Caesar and modding it will be as easy as in EU IV :D
 
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I have questions about two issues: Will pastoralists in nomad societies just be modelled as commoners that live in locations with pastures instead of farms and are more mobile? How will they differ from settled peasants in the same state?

As estate influence differs between locations, will we also have the opportunity to give out local or regional privileges? Like town rights or a tax privilege to "the nobles of lower Silesia"? A bit like edicts in EU4, but affecting estates
 
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Johan, in terms of modding capability, does there have to be a one-to-one correspondence between pop type and estate? Could a pop type be split among multiple estates, or could two or more different pop types share an estate?

yes to which option? Yes there's a 1 to 1 or yes they can be split/merged?
 
If i would say that i'm not getting more and more hyped up with those Tinto Talks, i'd not be credible, right?

If, when i started MEIOU in 2007, one had told me that a game would incorporate so much of a mod i work on (and most of it was the work of fellow team members, not me personally), i'd have laughed. I know it's more a parallel in phylosophy than Caesar copying the mod, but it's exciting to see.

Excited to see how we can push things even further !


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.
Enjoyment was both ways... hope there is a PDXCon this year and that i can join !

Its rather different, closest is the Civil War mechanics in Imperator.
Oh boy ! oh boy ! Sounds so exciting !

The Marmara and Halone islands should have been Byzantine possessions in 1337.
The islands should be connected to the province of Constantinople because they were conquered in 1453 by the Ottomans.

View attachment 1103864
I think the issue could be mecanics... like some water crossing, say in EUIV... adding those small islands to Kōnstantinoupolis would allow some shortcuts. So my guess is that it's a matter of gameplay "necessary evil".
 
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