• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.’


i9u3ksuIdrnkGRpoqqS569fPV4MxZiIUi177GzANdKN3-RRijYJv_VqMpBhjUTjsEVTaov9m4AGJ5-aoYxJ__2KR8XA1S5m-2GIUlxyKmAZCLzUNcgt-kHUYOdbcMAb8y5--BUUJRdSYo8jtzdTOfsc

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.

TG6PPAx_7XDWjJZ3JTatHNPtlwP2FtURWHBHR8r7CTRmwKGJRCv8p5yIh_3aASZtpA1Qb4OrqmBlmf3HGTWMJ1bQjS88o-fskeoBVbTIfrBMNx-HwPTOg4F9GqPSJhLCgwWLeWBBAyET3HfuPwSxZUQ

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.

fmFONeiCiTYVPVVKLr3mV8LxsRBW4VjWQN0JAuGUKG7CBTOSDXah48Os_Iv-jBZwHEatySoLTvPwr0J-XphLB-2xRNp1i5XrNaQyhDgTZ0IRhpXBMU_nJ5G8z5urGGJ9JHPkRXF4kusffvpmCxVgKsw

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.
 
  • 304Like
  • 179Love
  • 16
  • 7
  • 1
Reactions:
Its rather different, closest is the Civil War mechanics in Imperator.
I understand the revolt ms will hve its own army / coffers based on its population ? Unlike EUIV where revolt size was an abstract number 7k+ fraction of development, and the AI did not « pay » for its army

When we get to chose our faction (i.e War of the Roses or the French Revolution or even a pretender rebel), can we lose the game like in CK3 (no remaining territories) or is it gonna be closer to EU4?
In EU4, there was no real risk for losing pretender or revolutionary revolts (unlike peasants revolts which only added autonomy), as you would inherit a brand new army and could even voluntarily let your government change by intentionally losing the war. It even was sometimes an exploit
 
If anyone wants to do that, then they are lame and that is their problem. Achievements are personal, so why gatekeep them? Not being able to play mods because achievements are not unlockable with them is my biggest gripe with eu4 and I am glad they changed it for other games. Achievements are attainable goals that make the game more enjoyable (to me). Mods make the game more flavorful, which also makes it better (for me).

I personally still play on ironman, but can use all kinds of fun mods on ck3. That option just makes the game much better, and I would like it for project caesar as well, and will keep advocating for it.
Human nature.

If you take away Ironman as a requirement, it stops being an intended challenge from the devs. It’s a difference to the intent of what the game is explicitly asking you to do.

An analogy could be if the dark souls games had an easy mode, and if all the achievements were equally unlockable in that mode as the regular mode. Sure, anyone could choose the regular mode instead of easy, but the intended experience completely shifts from that, and it changes the game and its culture. For better or for worse.

I personally like the Ironman achievement culture, and it would certainly lose something should the system change from how it is in EU4.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
This is such a silly position to hold. The veracity of achievements through ironman is next to zero. It's easy to hack the game through cheat engine, and there's even a simple program to enable the console in ironman that anyone can come across by googling "EU4 console patcher". The community of challenge runners basically requires an entire campaign to be streamed for anyone to take a run seriously because of this, and at least one content creator that I know of has gotten ensnared in a controversy when they had the ironman icon but were using console. There's also the Steam achievement unlocker and probably a bunch of other ways to get around it.

In contrast, someone who doesn't want to cheat by using the console but would like to use QoL mods while still having achievements is basically out of luck. A great example was when govcap was instituted in EU4 1.30 that required spamming courthouses, but building slot limitations meant you had to tediously go through *every* province you conquered deleting AI dockspam. This was something basically every challenge runner complained about from day 1, and the +1 buildslot was eventually given, but that took almost two full years!
Regardless if it is still possible to cheat achievements in Ironman, it’s still less accessible. And that’s noteworthy because of human nature.

If the game presents you two options and one is easier and both provide the same rewards, a lot less people will end up interacting with the harder option. The question that the game inherently asks of you as a player is different when Ironman isn’t required.

Regardless of whether one wants Ironman achievements or not, I think it’s clear that its existence fundamentally changes what achievements mean, to a lot of people. (Regardless of how others may or may not interact with it themselves)
 
I agree with your opinion on this matter but maybe a compromise might be a tiered system. A basic achievement that anyone with any mod or non-Ironman game could earn but higher levels for Ironman games of varying difficulty.
I also think this is a fair and ideal middle ground.

Tons and tons and tons of games explicitly provide achievements for complete if challenges on harder difficulties. Ironman is simply a form of “hard” mode and I think it’s completely reasonable to tie at least certain achievements to it.
 
I'm curious if the map for this project will be a globe (Imperator: Rome) or a flat map (CK3, Vic3, EUIV)?

Let's begin with the projection we chose for this game. In the past we have used the Mercator or Miller projection which has some severe drawbacks, as you are all aware of. As we are restricted to a cylindrical map, we had to pick the least bad of them, which is why we went with the Gall Stereographic projection.

Why is that one good? Well, it keeps areas we care most about, those in the middle latitudes, bigger without making the poles ridiculously oversized or the equator too undersized. It also has a reasonable conformal shape, meaning that the shape of the continents stays the closest to their real areas and angles without sacrificing a recognizable shape of them.


_9PYO04WeWxinmQ908H0ppIYzOEd8G2dr52m_sYlaiZCJTC9v8lfhYlwitil4ywR_ubig2b1QpP4bQA4ky64uRQ7K4kbdJ_04sVET3P9zxdJ6iSnlxfUVXloVVO2HyERtafi-H-gZJ3or_Mph8rpu-8
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Welcome to the fifth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design for our upcoming top secret game with the codename ‘Project Caesar.’


i9u3ksuIdrnkGRpoqqS569fPV4MxZiIUi177GzANdKN3-RRijYJv_VqMpBhjUTjsEVTaov9m4AGJ5-aoYxJ__2KR8XA1S5m-2GIUlxyKmAZCLzUNcgt-kHUYOdbcMAb8y5--BUUJRdSYo8jtzdTOfsc

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.

TG6PPAx_7XDWjJZ3JTatHNPtlwP2FtURWHBHR8r7CTRmwKGJRCv8p5yIh_3aASZtpA1Qb4OrqmBlmf3HGTWMJ1bQjS88o-fskeoBVbTIfrBMNx-HwPTOg4F9GqPSJhLCgwWLeWBBAyET3HfuPwSxZUQ

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.

fmFONeiCiTYVPVVKLr3mV8LxsRBW4VjWQN0JAuGUKG7CBTOSDXah48Os_Iv-jBZwHEatySoLTvPwr0J-XphLB-2xRNp1i5XrNaQyhDgTZ0IRhpXBMU_nJ5G8z5urGGJ9JHPkRXF4kusffvpmCxVgKsw

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.
Can we get a look at a map fragment at the end of an Observer game?
 
If the game presents you two options and one is easier and both provide the same rewards, a lot less people will end up interacting with the harder option.
Except Ironman isn't a difficulty setting, but a game mode. Sure, you could say a modded game could make obtaining an achievement easier, but using that mod has the same accessibility issue you say exists about Steam Achievement Manager or any other cheating tool. Just as tools to cheat your achievements existing doesn't mean that everyone uses them, a mod making obtaining an achievement easier in-game wouldn't mean everybody would use it.

We could talk endlessly about what achievements mean for any given player, the truth will always boil down to the fact that those who want to cheat them will go out of their way to do that, and those that don't, won't. Tying them to Ironman compatibility is meaningless in this sense, while it is an active hindrance to harmless QoL stuff the community could come up with to make playing a game more enjoyable, but not easier.
 
One general question if estates will give the same boni and all, how will smaller nations like the ottomans even have a chance against the Byzantines? I don't know the early conquest history of the ottomans well but for historical games it would be nice if the ottomans in general win the region more elften than not.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Did you guys hire M&T devs? I am so glad their ideas are very influential here!
As confirmed by Johan, at least one M&T has been recruited by Paradox Tinto, yes.

pretty sure we can have that
Oh, yes, dynamic country flags... please... pretty please with a cherry on top !
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
would there still be a "historical ally" opinion modifier? like England and Portugal? if yes wouldn't it make sense to make players able to gain such a modifier during the gameplay? let's say you have an ally for at least dunno 100 years and then you will gain the modifier, or a scaling one depending on alliance length (something like long reign in ck3) just an idea I have, I'm so hyped to see the game ughh? announced? I guess it already kinda is
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Will the music system be similar to EU4 ? or is it in the lines of CK3 and VIC3 ?

Oh, Songs of Regency is so freaking good! I use it in my RPG sessions.

I'm eager for the new game music either way it turns out! I don't need much graphics (although I really want modelled characters, at least for the leaders), but I want to hear music as soon as possible!
 
  • 1Love
  • 1Like
Reactions:
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.
On paper this sounds good but hopefully there aren't restrictive building slots like in CK3, because your vassals would build useless buildings in your kingdom and fill up building slots, so the meta was to build optimal buildings at lvl 1 before they start with useless ones.
Although EU4 also had building slots they were pretty generous and did not restrict you as much, you had loads of space to build what you wanted.
This is all assuming the building system will work similar to previous games.
 
  • 1
Reactions: