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Tinto Talks #52 - 26th of Feburary 2025

Hello and Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we spill all the secrets about our upcoming game with the codename Project Caesar.


In a game where we simulate hundreds of millions of people, not all calamities that they get exposed to involve Warfare or Diseases. Today we will talk about how Mother Nature does her best trying to reduce the population regularly.

Little Ice Age

As the widest definition of the Little Ice Age encompasses almost the entire timespan of our game, we decided to go with the Maunder Minimum, which happened between 1645 and 1715, being the colder phase of the period. We simulate the Little Ice Age with a Situation that will affect the northern half of the Northern Hemisphere, making winters last longer.

During the Little Ice Age, food production in the affected areas is lowered, and events and other mechanics are happening which will make the experience a challenging mid to late-game phase.

ice_age.png

Who will survive?

Weather
We also have a rather in-depth weather system, where we simulate storms and similar phenomena moving across the planet. We currently have two categories of weather systems, the weather front, and the cyclone. We have also included in the weather fronts the monsoons, which have the particularity of going in one direction (Africa to India) from February to June, and in the other direction (Himalayas to the Indian Ocean) from October to December.



cyclone.png

Ireland might suffer some weather fronts during the year, yeah…


Not all weather systems that spawn are the same strength, and their strength can change as they move across the map. The strength of the weather system directly impacts the benefits and penalties they give to the locations.

Fronts are usually wide weather patterns bringing rain from the oceans into lands. This has some negative impacts on armies and navies, but it provides a large food production boost.

passed.png

This was a huge rainstorm..


Cyclones, or Hurricanes as they are known in the Northern Hemisphere, are a more narrow weather system, which causes a lot of damage due to high wind speeds.

wind_damage.png

At least no buildings damaged? Or????


In deserts with cold arid or arid climate, there will not be sometimes beneficial rains though when a weather system passes through, but instead you will get sandstorms.

sandstorm.png

I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

In any location with severe winter, where a front passes through, there will be snow instead of heavy rain.

snowstorm.png

Didn’t stop Carl Gustaf Armfeldt trying to move his army..


Volcanos
There are locations which contain volcanos that are not entirely dormant. At any point, any one of them can erupt, spewing out long streams of lava and an enormous cloud of ash that leaves a path of destruction in its wake, causing huge devastation to the location they are present in.

It will ruin RGO’s, destroy buildings, kill a lot of people, and reduce prosperity dramatically. Afterwards, there is a small boost to food production due to volcanic soil for a few decades.

volcanic_soil.png

Can be helpful longterm yes?


Earthquakes
A large part of the world is prone to earthquakes. While we do have some famous historical earthquakes likely to happen, we also have a small chance that any area with an earthquake risk can get one.

Similar to a Volcano it will destroy buildings and kill people, but earthquakes will usually not affect just a single location, but many adjacent ones as well.


Sadly there are some locations that are in the awkward position of most being in an earthquake zone, and having a volcano.

naples.png

Not the best place for a city?



Next week we’ll be talking about how mercenaries work in Project Caesar.
 
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Tangentially related to weather, I know that Rivers are not in the game(tragically) but in provinces where river modifiers exist, during cold winters can they freeze negating the river crossing bonus when defending and also lowering the trade bonus they provide? For military applications notably the Yellow River freezing could allow armies to cross it at times, which would be cool to see represented in a decreased time to cross during freezing winters and no "Crossing" bonus for defenders.
 
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There are two map changes that I can see.

  1. England has control of most of Wales, with separate Justiciar of North Wales, Justiciar of South Wales, Palatine of Cheshire and Palatine of Durham.
  2. There are some Landed tags that I think are the Iroquois

si claro.

creo que esta es muy bueno
 
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Had a "fun" campaign as Naples.

2 cities destroyed and black death hit me hard in like 50 years... :)
Do random events like that use geometric distribution or a conditional distribution to reduce variance? Are there different types of randomness in the game or just one?
 
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Are these weather fronts visible graphically? Can we see storm systems, hurricanes/cyclones roaming the map if you have visibility?
 
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No mention of tsunamis or floods. Will they not be represented in the game? Also, can earthquakes trigger volcanic eruptions in the game? (and if in the game tsunamis a well)
 
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If the arrow marks on the sea lanes indicate the only direction they are navigable:

How do you get to the Azores before discovering America? There should be another sea lane to represent the "Volta do mar" sailing technique.


voltadomar.png
voltadomar2.png
 
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There will be events for Greenland related to the little ice age? Like a decision to abandon the settlement with all pops moving to iceland that the AI takes in 9/10 playthrough? Or will it be tied to the black death?
 
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Can we get a full world map of earthquakezones and volcanos? Are they present on test island :p ?
1740585591911.png
 
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Ireland might will suffer some weather fronts during the year, yeah…
Fixed for historical accuracy.

Also, sounds really cool!

Though hopefully you've learned from your mistakes in HoI3 when it comes to creating weather systems...
 
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Between the terrain, winter and weather mechanics you have designed the most in depth natural world system that I have seen in any grand strategy game, very impressive. However, looking the three dev diaries, I do have a few questions/suggestions.

1) You mention that the little Ice Age makes winters last longer but should it also not increase the severity of the winters that different climates can experience. If I remember correctly, only severe winter can lead to narrows and straits freezing, but only arctic climate can get severe winters based on your climate descriptions in the relevant TT. That means that the Danish straits can never freeze as it has continental climate. However, if you increase the severity during the little ice age by 1, then those straits could freeze during the little ice age as famously happened historically. Or perhaps there is something I am missing?

2) The fact that only severe winters can get snow storms seems a little strange. Why not make any winter fronts into snow storms, but make them mild, normal, severe based on the severity of the winter, with little to no negative effects from mild, and the shown effects for severe? Since you already have the winter classifications does this not seem an easy win for an even more in-depth depiction of weather?

3) Have you considered making mountain provinces increase the severity level of the winter that can occur by 1 level, relative to the climate it is in. E.g. according to the latest German map feedback it seems that the alp area all have continental climate just like much of the surrounding area limiting those areas to normal winters, but surely in the high alps you should be able to get severe winter, or no?
 
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I'm truly amazed by the depth and diveristy you are putting in all the systems in PC.

But it also leaves me wondering how you balance this game being the greatest history simulator of all time against things like performance, player agency and "fun".
 
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