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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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Oh I hope it doesn't replace. That's not the vibe I got.
I've been liking these flat maps from PDX a lot lately. The topographical map from EU4 looks really dated. I hope they do the right thing and decide to keep both maps in the game it would make both player bases happy.
 
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I would love there to be a realistice option in game, that you don't know all the stats of other countries and maybe that you need spys to find out stuff, like: do they have secret alliences, how strong is there army. And also for the map just because you once discovered an area doesn't mean you know everthing in it from now on, maybe only after the fog of war lifted you find out that a nation doesnt exist anymore.
Love this! Incindentally, Imperator Rome has that to some extent, but some infos you can either get via the ledger or via the map lol
 
@Johan

Given that there is a fixed and limited number of social classes and estates:
- 1. How will you model the struggle between Szlachta and Magnates in Poland/the Commonwealth - since both groups would belong to the Nobility?
- 2. How will you model Cossacks?
- 3. How will you model the struggle between the King and the bureaucrats (which often could be conflicted with the monarch and conduct different policies)?
- 4. Will the Jews and Armenians be classified simply as Burghers with another faith, or will there be separate mechanics for their diasporas?

And about slaves:
- 5. Given the slaves will have no estate, how will you be able to monitor their overall likelihood of rebellion or be able to influence it?
- 6. Upon abolishing slavery will the slaves simply convert into being commoners?

Lastly about ethnicities:
- 7. Will ethnicities be represented or have any impact at all - like i.e. the discrimination of Wends in what is today eastern Germany - or will all those aspects be handled by culture of pops?

Best regards,
P.
 
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And on another note, will there be any mechanics to model noble factions, political parties or reform movements?

Some interesting examples from Poland's history:
- the Executionist Movement
- the Familia (led by House of Czartoryski)
- the Bar Confederation
- the Targowica Confederation

All googleable and with articles on Wikipedia (the spam bot doesn't allow me to post links).
 
Admittedly I have mixed feelings about this. I'm all in favour of more mechanics regarding politics and internal affairs and this seems fundamentally more interesting than anything EU3 or 4 had going on in that department, but it's also... very, very Western Europe-specific and is likely to map poorly onto many other places in the world (it makes very little sense for North American migratory tribes, for instance), and I think an issue EU has consistently had is "make mechanics with only Europe in mind and then try to kludge them to fit the rest of the world, with very mixed results".

I'm specifically particularly concerned with the looming spectre of China, which historically has a tendency to just completely break whatever systems were built for not-China in Paradox games and then require custom fixes later (with, again, mixed results). Given the rise of popularity of Paradox games in China (at least if the Steam Workshop is any indication, which of course it might not be), I had some hope this meant that this Mysterious Mystery Game might be designed from the ground up to handle a world that includes Europe and China. And it still might, of course, just the comment that this is the estates and everyone has them and they're basically the same everywhere worries me.

Still happy about the apparently increased attention to things beyond map-painting, however.
With the lack of unique estates, I'm very concerned that the game will be very shallow compared to EUIV on the release and we'll have to wait like 3-4 years for it to actually have unique playstyle and flavour around the world.
 
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Can you remove the nobility? Thinking about republics and such.
The Republic of Venice still absolutely has a social class equivalent to the nobility. And in fact, arguably late-game revolutionary type republics do as well, they're large landowners, every country has them.
 
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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.
Does that mean estates posses wealth as a group or pops have their money separately and then combine their money. Considering pops doesn't have agendas, it's most probably won't be distinction between poor and rich pops. Only poor and rich estates as a whole. Also, would there be an administrator pop, or similar to that?
 
yes. all of that can and will in many places have localised names.

For me personally though, a parliament is what a monarchy has..

Will the French parliament be called Parlement? It’s an accepted term to distinguish itself from Parliament which in most if not all cases refers to the English/British Parliament.
 
The Republic of Venice still absolutely has a social class equivalent to the nobility. And in fact, arguably late-game revolutionary type republics do as well, they're large landowners, every country has them.
You should read up on the history of France, also capitalists =|= nobility. The estate may make sense to keep, but not the pop type.
 
I might be missing something but shouldnt athens and neopatras be PUs or Vassals of Aragon if the start takes place in the 1330s, making them not hidden by fog of war when playing Aragon?

They were vassals of Sicily at that point (The Duke of Athens and Neopatras was the son of the king of Sicily, and vicars-general sent out to rule the Duchy were appointed by the King of Sicily), which was pretty much independent of Aragon at that time. It's a borderline case about Sicily, but considering King Frederick of Sicily had been on the throne for over 40 years in 1337, it seems that being Sicily being independent and the Athens being a vassal to it are likely the right side of the fence to be on.
 
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I wonder how ethnic and religious minorities will be represented in the Estates.
Could be some real cool dynamics. Cultural revolutions and fun unhistorical "protestant reforms".
 
I would love there to be a realistice option in game, that you don't know all the stats of other countries and maybe that you need spys to find out stuff, like: do they have secret alliences, how strong is there army. And also for the map just because you once discovered an area doesn't mean you know everthing in it from now on, maybe only after the fog of war lifted you find out that a nation doesnt exist anymore.
I don’t really monde knowing enemy alliances, but I have always found it weird however, that you know their military strength to the last digit…

Considering that in this era, until the XVIIIth century there was not even a proper census but counting households by « chimney fire », knowing your own army strength was already quite hard.
For sure, it’s already gonna be pretty accurate to know every country’s population on a map mode.
But not knowing exactly the enemy army size could in some cases, generate a certain taste for risk.

Besides, unlike in EUIV, in history even a 2:1 army size was not always a guaranteed win
 
I think it would be cool if we saw the influence more on the estates screen, like the basic idea I had when looking at the image was something like this (obviously a super quick edit, only the idea counts)
View attachment 1106280

When the percentage number really dictates how important this power is, it being just a number (when happiness has charts and icons) is a bit meh. With something like I shown, we at a glance would know who's important.
That of the EUIV cake which was also obvious at a glance
 
In my opinion, the major issue with the post-HOI4 paradox games is UI. It lacks atmosphere, a feeling that you are in exactly that period, and a certain warmth or cold of steel if we speaking of HOI. Instead, we get a generic, soulless UI like any other strategy and unfortunately, these screenshots give the same disappointing vibe. Hope I'm wrong and it's a work in progress
That’s why I hope for a CK3-styled dynamic UI map (zooming in showing terrain with immersive textures, trees, rivers, bears and gulls, cities, roads and armies) with a far away map similar to the Catalan Atlas or other early modern maps, displaying paper texture, portolan charts, compass rose, and a plain color per country and emphasizing more the era of navigation
 
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They will mostly start with historical privileges and be setup in a way to not have a brewing civil war at the start.
Except Georgia…

Joke aside, how likely will the Yuan fall be represented in a 1337 start ? Will it have dedicated privileges or its culture mix to ensure that it falls ? Will it be a 50/50 chance that they will collapse or is it more a 90/10 ?

Considering how important their fall was for the shift of trade routes to the Indian Ocean, I’m a bit worried they might survive too often