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Tinto Talks #51 - 19th of February 2025

Welcome to the 51st Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we give you information about our entirely secret game with the Codename of Project Caesar.

Today we will talk about subjects and how they function in our game


Subjects and their Overlord
In Project Caesar, as it starts at the end of the Medieval Era, and reaches into the Post-Napoleonic World, we have to have a system that works for feudal states and also for grand empires spanning the world. This is simulated by our subject system.

A Subject is any country that is subordinate to an overlord. It typically has limitations on its diplomacy in return for protection in a war. Subjects may also suffer subject taxation, and have a certain percentage of their great power score exacted by their overlord. Additionally, a subject may not become a great power. The exact rules are dependent on the subject type. Subjects have subject loyalty towards their overlord, and a liberty desire - both of which indicate their current stance on their subordination. Any subject may in turn be the overlord of other countries, allowing long chains of Subject-Overlord relationships.

An Overlord is a country that has any number of subjects as its subordinates. In return for protecting each subject in wars, it typically receives subject taxation, and exacts a certain percentage of the subject's great power score. The exact rules are dependent on each subject's subject type. Any Overlord may in turn be the subject of other countries, allowing long chains of Subject-Overlord relationships.


Subject Loyalty
Every subject has a Subject Loyalty towards their overlord. Ranging from 0 to 100, and when a subject has less than 50 subject loyalty towards its overlord, it becomes a Disloyal Subject. When in such a state, it will no longer join the wars of its overlord and cannot be annexed.

There is also the concept of ‘Liberty Desire’, which represents a subject's current drive for independence from its overlord, and it affects subject loyalty. Its value is from -100 to +100, but it has a monthly decay towards 0. The value is also used as a currency in some Subject Interactions.


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The Bretons are loyal.. for now..



Diplomatic Capacity
As we mentioned in earlier Tinto Talks, the cost of having a subject is not a fixed number as in previous games we have made, but depends on many factors, including the type of subject.

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Of course we have nested tooltips to find out detailed information..



Create New Subjects
If you have locations in more than 2 different provinces, you’ll always have the possibility to create a subject of one of your provinces. You can also select from the valid types of subjects that your country can have in that province. After you have selected the type of subject you want, you may, if the type of subject allows it,also pick the character to be the ruler of the new subject.

There are also ways to convince your subject to change from one type of subject to another type, where it would be valid.


Vassal
The most typical type of subject, a vassal oversees its territory on behalf of its overlord, pays vassal fees and joins the military campaigns of its overlord.

Almost all countries can make Vassal Subjects.

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Probably needs to improve and merge some lines here to make tooltip less unwieldy..

Fiefdom
A Fiefdom is a junior title that is the property of its overlord's ruler. This can only be created and maintained by a Monarchy though. There are some drawbacks to it, as it can not be created by diplomatic offers, and does not grant any prestige.

March
A March is a subject country focused on defending our domain, acting as a barrier between their overlord and external threats.

A March pays half the gold that a vassal does and can not be annexed, but the March gets a discipline boost and gets better-lasting forts that are also cheaper.

Colonial Nation
A Colonial Nation is a subject centered around the administration of overseas colonies on behalf of its overlord.

There are two ways to create a colonial nation. First of all, you can make one from a conquered overseas territory, but secondly, and most commonly you have the option to create one directly from when one of your colonial charters finishes.

A Colonial Nation gives up 33% of its trade capacity and trade advantage to their overlord, while also giving up 10% of their manpower and sailors, and pays 20% of their tax to the overlord.

Conquistadors
Conquistadors are the leaders of a private army who have signed contracts with their rulers to explore and conquer certain territories in exchange for the title of Governor, and a share of the new lands and spoils.

This is a unique type of subject that is only available to Catholic countries with the Capital in Iberia, and this advance is available from the Age of Discovery.

A Conquistador can be commissioned by selecting an area in America, and then a character to lead them. It will also require about 2,000 manpower and some gold to start. It will start with preparing in a nearby good port.

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Just a few months…. And then it’s Conquest of Paradise.

Afterwards the Conquistador have gathered enough resources for their expedition they will set sail, and you will hear from them the next time in a few months time, informing you that they have started their activities.

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Let's see what he can do!

This spawns an army-based country in a location in the area, starting with about 2 regiments of conquistadors. They start at war with the owner of the location where they spawn, and will automatically conquer any location they get control over. They also have the capacity to raise levies from the local people, even if it's from a non-accepted culture. If they manage to get to peace or get enough locations they will convert into a colonial nation of yours.


Some other unique subject types we will go into detail on when we talk about countries that can use them in a Tinto Flavor include Appanages, State Banks, Hanseatic Members and more..


Playing as Overlord
Several types of subjects allow the overlord to annex a subject. Annexation is when an overlord completely takes over one of its subjects. The overlord will gain all of the subject's owned locations, and any character not fleeing to other countries.

A disloyal subject can not be annexed though, and the cost of annexation depends on the amount of cities and towns that a subject has, with rural locations having less of an impact.

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Less than 30 years, should be worth it..

There are also plenty of different subject interactions, like giving locations or provinces to your subjects, take land, manpower, gold or sailors from them and much more.

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And of course there are other unique ones..

Playing as Subject
If you play a country that is a subject you have a few tools at your disposal. First of all there are two different cabinet actions that you can use.

Frustrate Annexation
This action uses the administrative ability of the ruler and the cabinet member assigned to the task to slow down annexation.

By hindering their delegates with an archaic constitutional legislature and obstructing them at every turn, we can increase the amount of time it will take for our overlord to annex us.

Sow Disloyalty
This action uses the diplomatic ability of the ruler and the cabinet member assigned to the task to reduce the loyalty to your overlord.

By spreading cruel rumors about our overlord and espousing the benefits of ruling ourselves, we can decrease our own subject loyalty, potentially becoming a disloyal subject.


disloyalty.png

Maybe I need a better cabinet member to do it?

And if you want to become independent there are two ways to do it.

First of all, there is the classic option of just declaring war on your overlord, but that is often not entirely a good idea, especially not if you have a tax base at about 1% of your powerful overlord.

However, the other option in Project Caesar, is to start an independence movement. This is somewhat similar to a coalition in that it is an international organization with a target country. You can invite other countries to join it, including other subjects of the same overlord, and when you have gathered enough strength in your movement, often securing the backing of another powerful country, you can start the war and have a chance at liberty.



Stay tuned for next week we will delve into weather and natural disasters.
 

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Some other unique subject types we will go into detail on when we talk about countries that can use them in a Tinto Flavor include Appanages, State Banks, Hanseatic Members and more..
Those along with Conquistadors are a very interesting flavor subjects!

Hopefully, other "PC" unique subjects include what we had in EU4, such as:
- Eyalets for Ottomans/Rûm
- Pronoiai for Byzantium/Rome
- Cultural Influenced States for Iran (maybe renamed to something like: Persified States)
- Mongol Brother Realms for Yuan/Golden Horde/Ilkhanate/Chagatai (maybe if one of them avoids desintegration [or unifies in case of Ilkhanate], it can unlock this)
- Soyurghals for Timurids
 
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Conquistadors being Iberian only, feels kinda very strange. Every colonizing nation sent entrepreneuring leaders with small retinues to the new world to found settlements, genocide, and conquer. Conquistadors are just the name we use for the Iberian ones to make them pop-history sexy.

What sets Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain so apart from the Iberian conquistadors? You're only a conquistador for conqueror of indigenous territory and creating a settlement if you originate from the conquistador region of Iberia? Everyone else is just sparkling explorers?

It feels kind of like a very pop understanding of early colonization. Separating the Iberians into some mythical special colonizers and as per usual completely ignoring the giant french colony in the north or the emerging massive english colonies. Not to even get started on the smaller colonizers.

If sir Walter Scott didn't coin the term to romanticize exoticize, and otherize the Iberian explorers to contrast them to the English ones would anyone even be making the distinction today?

EU4 understood that conquistadors were not some special magical Iberian invention. Why should Project Ceasar fall into that ahistorical mistake?
 
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Will subjects be able to do country formation? For instance, if an Irish minor power is made a vassal and then given all of Ireland, will they form Ireland?
 
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I hope there will be some graphs built in to help track things like Population size and Pop type changes in a country over time like in Vic 2/3. Would really scratch my data itch.
 
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Conquistadors being Iberian only, feels kind very strange. Every colonizing nation sent entrepreneuring leaders with small retinues to the new world to found settlements, genocide, and conquer. Conquistadors are just the name we use for the Iberian ones to make them pop-history sexy.

What sets Jacques Cartier and Samuel de Champlain so apart from the Iberian conquistadors? You're only a conquistador for conqueror of indigenous territory and creating a settlement if you originate from the conquistador region of Iberia? Everyone else is just sparkling explorers?

It feels kind of like a very pop understanding of early colonization. Separating the Iberians into some mythical special colonizers and as per usual completely ignoring the giant french colony in the north or the emerging massive english colonies. Not to even get started on the smaller colonizers.

If sir Walter Scott didn't coin the term to romanticize exoticize, and otherize the Iberian explorers to contrast them to the English ones would anyone even be making the distinction today?

EU4 understood that conquistadors were not some special magical Iberian invention. Why should Project Ceasar fall into that ahistorical mistake?
Sparkling explorers lmao. But I agree yes it's a bit odd.
If they simply wanted Spain and Portugal to have an advantage with regards to colonization I feel like they could have just made it so they got conquistadors earlier compared to other nations via unique advances. For example maybe "Conquistador" would be a late rennaisance advance while other nations get an equivalent in the Age of Discovery or something, giving Spain and Portugal a head start.

Anyway, it does make me wonder if you can declare war normally on countries in the America's(since they are so iberian specific). Because if you can I worry the Conquistadors will be underused if you can just conquer directly.
 
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Can a subject country marry its overlord?
 
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I believe due to the timeframe this game starts in a crusader type vassal should be a thing, leaving room for some alternate history. Say I the British or French king decide to launch a crusade against the mamaluks or any other middle eastern nation, I should be able to set up a crusader state which is a vassal with similarities to the conquestadors, however they should have some special abilities like being able to call in non overlord nations into defensive or offensive wars, with offensive being much harder to convince other nations to. Also a slight bonus to religious conversion and cultural acceptance, cultural acceptance due to the large amount of European peoples of different cultures moving to said state. Catholic and orthodox nations should be allowed these vassals and the crusader vassal state should become non existent at some point in the later parts of the game. With similarities to the conquestadors, these states have the ability to set up military orders like the knights Templar etc. that can privately crusade. Also once the local culture has converted to the religion of the overlord of the region, the state can raise levies of those culture. However once this state is set up it should cause a major malice with the surrounding nation or nations of that religion. Reducing trade with said nation. These crusader states will not always have their overlord protect them.
 
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However, the other option in Project Caesar, is to start an independence movement. This is somewhat similar to a coalition in that it is an international organization with a target country. You can invite other countries to join it, including other subjects of the same overlord, and when you have gathered enough strength in your movement, often securing the backing of another powerful country, you can start the war and have a chance at liberty.
Could there be added an option for Overlord to accept Independence Movement's ultimatum once they state their demands, without triggering a war right away?
It could be something akin to demanding a province in EU4.
I believe that AI overlord would usually decline it, unless it is in trouble like big war or internal crisis.
 
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Nice!

About the Conquistadors; it does seem their mechanic is specifically designed to help model the conquest of Mexico and Peru. But what about India and Africa? Is the Portuguese conquest of Indian ports, Angola and Mozambique also possible to model in such a way? And could it extend to the British conquest, too? This seems to have potential for a lot more than just the conquest of the Aztecs.

We could call them "Military Expeditions" and use them to model long-distance, inter-continental invasions. Perhaps with technology, the amount of resources a tag can apply to them increases, enabling more ambitious projects.

Also, it does seem a bit unfair that conquistadors are only available to Iberians? Perhaps some lesser leeway can be given to other Atlantic cultures? Or even Maghrebians?
Portugal should be a different thing, they essentially build port fort towns, there should be more types of subjects than current
 
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I agree that conquistadores should be restricted to Iberian countries (as a legacy of the reconquista), but should the state itself launch conquistadores, or should the elites (ie nobles) organize these expeditions independently?

Historically, the system of conquest in Spain was not a purely state-driven effort. The monarchy did have have ultimate authority, but expeditions were usually privately funded and organized by noble families, military entrepreneurs, and adventurers under contracts in exchange for land, provided they remained loyal to the Crown.

Other European colonial powers relied more on state-backed exploration and perhaps the mechanic as it current stands should work for them instead (maybe tie to later techs).
 
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From the way it was worded it sounds like when you create a vassal it just automatically becomes the province you selected, however, I think it would be much better if it was on the location level and you could actually draw the borders across as vast or as small of an area for the subject you wanted. Maybe you just want to release a city state or maybe you want to create a vassal in control of all of Jutland but because it’s not a tag and it multiple provinces you can’t under the current model.

Edit: Also a lot the province border doesn’t match the RP you want to do so maybe you want to create x historical vassal but the province border doesn’t match but if it was by location with a sort of brush tool to select locations then you can make however you so desired.

Edit2: Just realised that you can cede locations to a vassal which could negate what I said however if you wanted to create a vassal that was less than a province what I said would still stand and also you should just be able to create it how you want from the get go. Also I have a sneaking suspicion that cede locations will hurt your prestige or have another negative modifier.
 
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Vassal swarms will be practically omnipresent
Not necessarily. Vassal swarms were potent in EU4 because every country had some base income and force limit that it got just from existing, thus making very small vassals more valuable than what their provinces would be for the overlord.
I suspect in Project Caesar this won't be the case as we've already seen that armies can come in very tiny sizes. Vassals might extract a bit more value than what their overlords would get from their provinces thanks to having 100% control in their own capitals, but it's not a huge difference and would not be enough to make vassal swarms stronger than big countries.
 
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For the Market/Trade TT, we saw that things like sound tolls are a thing, but that you have to control either side of the strait to have them.

Do subjects count for the sake of controlling either side?
 
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Almost all of them are SoP so they are technically not playable.

And for those that are, the Pestilence and Euro invasions makes their gameplay sometimes as challenging like playing Elden Ring blindfolded.
Can you share any updates on the playability of SoPs? Is it something you're still working on/hoping to achieve? I would be a little disappointed if they are ultimately unplayable, though I understand that it's been quite challenging
 
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