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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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I'm interested on how culture and religious conversion works. I asume that it won't work the same way like in EU4. Obvious point to that is lets say that when I play as Byzantine empire and secure Anatolia will I be able to culture and religious convert Turks to Greek or Roman culture.

Also will Coptic culture exist in Egypt since in that time they pretty much existed?
 
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This Feels... Off. The black death empowered the peasantry because they dropped in numbers, causing the nobility to fight and offer better deals to the peasantry.

however, under this setup either the opposite would be true or the black death wouldn't cause any change which also feels off as you'd (correctly) expect the Back Death to affect different wealth levels at different rates affecting the poor worse than the rich.

perhaps it would be best to have a ratio between the different estates with deviance from the ratio be what empowers them?
Or maybe estate power per population can be modified by other things? For example the peasants should have less power if full serfdom is enacted and more power if free subjects is enacted.
 
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Can powerful nobles on a border start border conflicts with another country causing you to go to war without you really wanting to? The fact that food is actually going to be represented and maritime presence is going to be a thing gives me hope that as a smaller country there will be more avenues to winning a war against a larger country then just through battles.

I know this will probably be a question for future diaries but if food is represented does that mean that death stacking armies or navies will consume more food and require supply trains? Making them move slower or more susceptible to raiding supply line because that would be amazing.
 
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That map (and especially the map font) are looking gorgeuous!

Although I really miss the heightmap in this view.
What good are those mountain-related wastelands if you can't *feel* them? Same is true for the other map modes that were shown so far.

If not, I hope it will be possible through modding.

Looking forward to the next TT!
 
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Been seeing a lot of people comment how much they love the new political map, but I just can't seem to agree. I personally find it quite dull/bland, at least compared to the map in Imperator: Rome. To clarify, I am specifically NOT referring to any of the map modes in I:R, but rather the underlying terrain/landscape on the map, which, at least to me, always felt like it breathed with life.

Perhaps it is still too early in the pipeline to know for sure that this is what the map will look like at the end, but my hope is that either a) what they're showing us here is actually just an atlas mode (though last week's cultural map mode has me doubtful), or that b) the map for EU5 receives a lot more love in order to reach the same level of detail that I:R's achieved.
 
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One thing which seems to get lost in this is that (especially the nobles') estates were regional. So you would have a different nobility in Valencia to Catalonia, and they would have different privileges and rights. If these are all bunched into one "nobility" we lose the option of keeping, for example, Valencia with us, while the Catalonian nobility rebels (or similar).

This was really the case in most countries and would also help reflect the difficulty of conquest: let's say that five provinces were conquered. Now, if they used to arrange themselves in a parliament of their own (which they probably did), then their rights would (probably) have been unaffected by the formal submission to another state. I really wish we would be able to get this sort of granularity, as it would help with regional immersion.

The same applies in many other places as well. Another example could be Livonia where even after the Danish sale of the territory, the nobility of that was privileged compared to the rest of the Teutonic Order. It would be impossible to represent them as one "nobility" because in one territory they had the right to do certain things and in another they did not.

From a player's point of view, it would make sense to be able to merge these classes into one with some action (but not by default!).
 
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That map (and especially the map font) are looking gorgeuous!

Although I really miss the heightmap in this view.
What good are those mountain-related wastelands if you can't *feel* them? Same is true for the other map modes that were shown so far.

If not, I hope it will be possible through modding.

Looking forward to the next TT!
I personally prefer flat map, but we could get that in EU4 through modding, so if they make it possible here as well it would be ideal. Best of both worlds.
 
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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.
Does this means that estates have more power in locations that they have more influence in and, for example, would use their wealth more for those locations?
Also is the influence/population of a estate in a location influenced by what's in them? like more burghers on port cities, nobles on capital of monarchies and the clergy on holy sites, etc?
 
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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 K

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)

There are mechanics for those passages that will be revealed later.
 
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love the way its looking, any idea if we are going to be seeing navigable rivers? or the Suez?

the suez was an actual thing that trade flowed through, again, the CK system of paying to onboard ships works, would have to pay to land troops in the suez, then pay again to get on ships in the red sea to continue to whatever theatre they are going to, can then make owning the suez remove the fee you have to pay, and the fee that is paid from other nations goes to you, this would make owning things like the suez and the panama really worth it for money, trade and power projection. Sorry Portugal, I'm at war with you, so unless you occupy the suez, you are going to have send your troops around africa to siege down my provinces in India.

also a CK3 way of moving troops across water, make some sort of naval supply system based on convoys or total naval ship limit, sick of random ships being pulled from Australia to move troops from Dover to Calais.
 
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Been seeing a lot of people comment how much they love the new political map, but I just can't seem to agree. I personally find it quite dull/bland, at least compared to the map in Imperator: Rome. To clarify, I am specifically NOT referring to any of the map modes in I:R, but rather the underlying terrain/landscape on the map, which, at least to me, always felt like it breathed with life.

Perhaps it is still too early in the pipeline to know for sure that this is what the map will look like at the end, but my hope is that either a) what they're showing us here is actually just an atlas mode (though last week's cultural map mode has me doubtful), or that b) the map for EU5 receives a lot more love in order to reach the same level of detail that I:R's achieved.
How the political map handles borders next to mountains leave a lot to be desired. Georgia looks positively mangled
 
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Can Estates force through law changes and reforms if they are dissatisfied and powerful enough? Even if you don't call parliament?

there are ways for that.
 
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