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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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Looks good, except:

  • 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.

This reminds me of I:R in a bad way. It feels arbritrary, like you had to find a place for those things and just divided them up as best you could between estates.
But nobility can research, burghers can research. Why only clergy?
And clergy can counter-espionage, ans so can burghers and commoners.
Plus, nobility, clergy and burghers should also affect stability. Why only commoners?

I dont know how these things work but i have an annoyed gut reaction to it. It's not elogant or intuitive.

If I can throw back to the first dev diary; it breaks one of the pillars of the game. It feels gamey, and hurts the feeling of realism.
Valid concern - the question is with what to replace it, as estates clearly influence the state of affairs. One possible solution would be adding estate property ownership, and applying relevant bonuses/maluses for it's operating efficiency/tax contribution, and varying effects on province scaling with the ownership percentage for that province, in addition to some stability penalty scaling with total power.

But I guess it is quite tough to implement, almost Victoria level of complexity, so I'm really not sure whether it will make it to the game or even DLCs.
 
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Are there new changes in terms of optimisation?
Will it be a new engine or its upgraded version so that the game would not become slower in late game? :)

The game period of approximately 5 centuries looks very ambitious and it would be amazing to experience all the way to the end without noticeable delays :p
 
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I love the map design and realistic approach. I noticed that the grey areas not passable? Or unhabited? In red, I quickly marked Roman roads. The upper one is Roman Rd Apollonia-Iconium. The bottom is partly roads from the ancient era, speculated to be a part of Via Sebaste. In yellow, there are settlements, quarries, and forts. They are probably a bit inaccurate, just quickly marked with no georeference. But in the general area, there was Roman-era activity and a passage. Are these areas representing inhabited or impassable? It makes sense that a large army wouldn't pass at least in the bottom area above Antalya. Prob no urban settlements there in the time of 1337 but impassable or inhabited I'm not so sure
theyre impassable. not sure what youre confused about but heres your reference

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Will naval passages like the Bosporus, Dardanelles, Danish Belts, etc. be controllable? If Denmark can control the Danish Belts (at least later in the game) it gives some incentive for a country like Germany to build the Kiel Canal. It would also give some more benefits to controlling things like the Panama canal, and the Suez, and would give Russia a reason to want the Bosporus under its control, or any black sea power for that matter.

It could also work off of tech levels, to use Eu4 terms. For example, having a certain "diplo tech" allows you to control the Bosporus. Some straits might need higher tech, as controlling the Danish belts would be much harder than controlling the Dardanelles. Having access to the oceans is a major aspect of why many countries did what they did. Most notably Russia, of course, but being able to freely traverse the Black/Baltic sea has been an important geopolitical issue for centuries.

During a late game war, assuming Project Caesar goes this far, it would be an interesting dynamic to see an attacking army (for this example ottoman) occupying the (British) Suez, blocking British travel & isolating their colonies by requiring the British to go around Africa or through the pacific. It would certainly add an interesting dynamic to war, as it's advantageous to control these during wartime and could be used to create some interesting scenarios. For example, a Crimean War scenario. The British and Ottomans are at war with the Russians, and the British player boldly sails his whole fleet into the Black Sea. The Russian player can then march down, contest/occupy the entrance to the Black Sea, and possibly trap the British navy there.

Perhaps this system would work on a tiered format, so you can
-deny enemy ships
-deny all warships
-deny all ships

ALSO, assuming the trade is less rigid than Eu4, it would be interesting to see how that could be influenced by your connection to the oceans being severed. This last part might be a bit ambitious, but just a thought.

Using the tiers, it could change who gets affected and how. If France is trading with Russia and the Bosporus is blocked by the Byzantines, will French ships be allowed through? They aren't an enemy but they are trading with an enemy. This would give a third party (in this example France) incentive to either join on Russia's side to re-open trade, or try and enforce a peace to save their trade routes. It makes the politics and diplomacy more dynamic (especially for MP unless the AI is smart enough to comprehend it). Similar to how there is a "trade dispute" CB in eu4, there could be a "reopen trade" cb available when your trade line gets cut off by a war you're not in.

Furthermore, it's even possible for your "country" to be severed by such a thing. Using the 1337 start date, I believe Genoa controls parts of the inner Black Sea coast. If Byzantium/Ottomans want to seize that territory, they could simply close off the entrance into the sea and take it without any ability for the Genoese navy to intervene (Unless they want to do a Gallipoli but let's not be silly now)


This is VERY ROUGH mock-up to visualize the idea, I whipped it up very quickly so it looks terrible, but you get the idea:
View attachment 1103838
very epic and cool
 
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Valid concern - the question is with what to replace it, as estates clearly influence the state of affairs. One possible solution would be adding estate property ownership, and applying relevant bonuses/maluses for it's operating efficiency/tax contribution, and varying effects on province scaling with the ownership percentage for that province, in addition to some stability penalty scaling with total power.

But I guess it is quite tough to implement, almost Victoria level of complexity, so I'm really not sure whether it will make it to the game or even DLCs.

It doesn't need to be anything complicated. Could just have an effect be influenced by multiple estates. Like having commoners, nobility, and clergy all having a major effect on stability, with burghers having a minor influence on it.

Or clergy having a major effect on technology; nobility and burghers having a minor effect while commoners have no effect on it.

Something like that?
 
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It doesn't need to be anything complicated. Could just have an effect be influenced by multiple estates. Like having commoners, nobility, and clergy all having a major effect on stability, with burghers having a minor influence on it.

Or clergy having a major effect on technology; nobility and burghers having a minor effect while commoners have no effect on it.

Something like that?
Heh, ask Teutonic Order if burghers should have a minor impact on stability.

Jokes aside, I guess that should do it, although it still would feel a bit underwhelming unless mitigated by tons of events and agendas - influential estate should be a force to reckon with and significantly impact the gameplay, in my opinion. I think estate influence should affect province administration and revenues where said estates are stronger.
 
Or clergy having a major effect on technology; nobility and burghers having a minor effect while commoners have no effect on it.
In EU4, the techs include scythe, Rotherham plough, four field rotation, and three technologies for pikes. It may be that scythe was reintroduced by someone how had studied ancient Rome, but it's still basically peasant tech. Rotherham plough was invented by a poor tenant farmer. Four field rotation may have been invented by peasants. Pikes were a weapon for poor people, the two later techs may well be educated officers creating tactics but the first pike tech could represent peasant soldiers, or rebellers, coming up with pikes.

I'd say there's two or three techs in EU4 invented by what would be classed as peasants in Project Caesar. Possibly more. History tends to be written by the literate, if an upper class person spreads an idea invented by a lower class person, history may remember the upper class person as the inventor.

Should peasants have less effect on tech than the other estates? Absolutely. Should they have no effect? I don't know how the tech system is going to work, but I think they should have some effect, at least for some of the techs.
 
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If its my decision alone, achievements should ALWAYS require ironman.
I will say the no-ironman stance of Victoria 3 has made it really easy to file bug reports for that game. Many of the bugs I encounter benefit from being able to back up a few days for a before/after comparison that lets me document with screenshots and better save files. I've filed more Vic 3 bugs than I have for other games like CK3 and Stellaris, even though I've probably encountered way more bugs in the latter.

This is despite playing all my non-ironman runs as if they were ironman anyway. Also makes it less risky to play in that gap between a major release and the first hotfix in case a game-ending bug slips through.
 
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When most people hear "Roman Empire" they are not thinking about the Empire post-fall of Rome. Certainly not the Empire in the 14th century A.D.
This is far more indicative of the perpetual continuation of using archaic historian lingo for the Roman medieval period which enforces the disconnect between the "Byzantines" & the Romans -- causing the supposed confusion you speak of. Rectifying the accuracy shouldn't be swept under because of an irrational concern over confusing players. Nothing will fix this vacuous convention unless PDX takes the plunge and starts accurately calling the Roman Empire the "Roman Empire".
 
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So population gives estates their power, but what gives the crown its power? And why do I have a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with proximity? Naturally crown power would vary by province, but I wonder how it's calculated on the "national" level.
 
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I wonder; this Estates mechanic is universal, not monarchy-exclusive, correct? In that case I presume the "Crown" Estate will have different names depending on government type. Alternatively, perhaps one of the estates will replace the Crown in that case, i.e. Clergy in a Theocracy, Burghers in a Republic?
I'm interested to hear how this'll work.
 
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This is far more indicative of the perpetual continuation of using archaic historian lingo for the Roman medieval period which enforces the disconnect between the "Byzantines" & the Romans -- causing the supposed confusion you speak of. Rectifying the accuracy shouldn't be swept under because of an irrational concern over confusing players. Nothing will fix this vacuous convention unless PDX takes the plunge and starts accurately calling the Roman Empire the "Roman Empire".
It is literally not the job of Paradox to rectify what you consider to be "archaic historian lingo".
 
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Havent the aydin own sakiz? İnstead of byz

Had to look that up and that's Chios? If so, Chios was briefly owned by the Byzantines from 1329 - 1346. It was actually owned by Genoa before (1304 - 1329) and later (1346 - 1566), after which it fell to the Ottomans.
 
Johan will San Marino, Monaco (it was bigger at the time), Liechtenstein, and Andorra be represented in the game? I feel like the tiles are small enough to represent them.

Edit: perhaps this may incentivize an answer, if these nations or even just San Marino are represented I will probably pre order the game (though tbf was likely going to do that anyway)

I'd have to believe Andorra will be big enough to appear, going by the location sizes. Liechtenstein didn't exist until 1719 though, so it's really a question if the map will show the County of Vaduz.

EDIT. Johan later confirmed Andorra on the map. I wonder how the condominium of the co-princes will be handled, as the system was already in place in 1337?
 
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