Tinto Talks #55 - 19th of March 2025

[LordThanatos]

The ideal version of this IMO would be additional penalties when nearing the extremes of each value. Maybe a bigger negative starting at +-50%, which would combo nicely with the new gov. reform threshold being 50% as well.

Agreed. I almost feel as though rather than linear modifiers, the societal values deserve a more exponential change, or as you said, additional modifiers kicking in at certain increments.

Now I'd wanted to go through the values we know, and assess them, but hadn't had time, before.

Centralisation: +5 max war exhaustion might be a large negative, but it in no way dissuades me from that +50% Crown power given how many mechanics it ties to, never mind that there are another two, more minor benefits and that if you manage your war exhaustion, you might never even see that negative in action.

Decentralisation: I don't know if -20% counterespionage is debilitating, but even without knowing that for sure, the distance cost to capital is a massive benefit for proximity calculations, which there are plenty of, and obviously reduced rebel growth is a huge help if you're managing a large empire. I can't see that negative slowing me down much.

Offensive: Perhaps the one example we have where the negative is actually so strong that I would never pick it. -50% fort defense means that my gameplay will have to change in order to keep the enemy from besieging my forts, seeing as they will not hold long. The positives of movement speed help with that slightly, but the siege ability does not make it worthwhile. However, this has an issue, as it pushes me toward Defensive..

Defensive: I just have to take a minor movement speed penalty to get a huge fort defense buff and reduced upkeep? This is a no-brainer for most nations, in my mind and I'd not pause for even a moment.

Mercantillism: It's difficult to see why someone might go for this value unless they're purely on the defensive, economically. If that's the case, though, that +50% Market Protection is difficult to overlook, even with two negatives to income.

Free Trade: Compared to its opposite, I can't see why you wouldn't go for this in most cases. The huge benefits far outweigh the -25% Market Protection, and unless I had a neighbour with a huge market attraction, I'd not hesitate to go for this and have no regrets.

Now unfortunately we don't have the Free Subject side of this set of values, but we can get the values at 100% for Serfdom, given that we know they scale linearly.

• Maximum Tax for Peasants Estate: +20%
• Peasants Food Consumption: +10%
• Raw Materials Output: +10%
• Supply Limit: +10%

I can see this being situational, based on the resources of your country. If peasants require 10% more food, that might starve your nation in some cases. And if you don't have significant raw resources, perhaps that won't sway you, but given that we know the peasants are the vast majority of the population, that additional tax seems like it might be difficult to turn down, even if they aren't the wealthiest sector of society. In fact, based on what we saw from the last Tinto Talks, and the example taxes from Naples this may be double the income from peasants, which represented about 80% of the tax income from that location.

Edit: I'd forgotten to add the new values we've seen here.

As above, we don't have the opposite, the Capital Economy, unfortunately. I'm sure it would be interesting.
From this we can work out the modifiers to Traditional Economy at 100% as:

• Buildings Cost: +20%
• Raw Materials Output: +20%
• Population Capacity: +25%
• Food Production: +20%

This actually has a fairly substantial negative and it would almost give me pause. However in a nation with decent raw resources, you might increase income enough that this is still a net positive, any nation would also have the additional taxes from a larger population base across your entire country. I imagine in many cases, that 20% will feel like nothing compared to the additional income, but this one feels the most balanced. Perhaps if it didn't have two routes to additional income, even if one is not immediate (Population has to grow into the capacity), then it might give me a little more pause. Still, this one might actually give me pause, and I hope values are more in line with this one, now, given that it's the most recent we've seen.

---

On to the case of being at 0%

Personally I'd rather not have any modifiers at 0%, though I'd have to see what they'd be. I mean, at 0% on centralization/decentralisation, what would be modifiers be? Surely these are opposing societal values and should cancel out. Realistically I don't believe it would be easy to maintain 0%, anyway, but say you skew 1% toward centralization - are you getting a few benefits from decentralization, still, or do they cut off abruptly?

Rather I'd like to go: "Oh, if I skew toward one of the values, I'll start to get these negatives, and none of the positives are worth it for me, right now. I'll try to stick near the middle" It seems that one of the sides will help my nation more than it harms it, I can go for that one. I don't want to go into the game and have to choose which extreme I'm aiming for on every single Societal Value, knowing that it's not worth it to stick to the middle in almost any situation. If that's the case, there's a binary choice between them and they may as well be two simple choices rather than a slider, after all.

If I had to go: "Oh, going above 50% centralisation makes the estates angry, and they're far too powerful right now, maybe I should stick between 10 and 40% for the best benefit to me, but if I weaken them enough, it might be worth it, later... Actually, decentralisation seems to make them happier, maybe I should go for that, instead? I'd better not become too decentralized, though, that would give them even more power..." That is a choice, and far more interesting gameplay than picking everything with +centralisation modifiers.

 

[ArVass]

We also added a building that was requested by the community, which is available through an advance in the Age of Discovery.

View attachment 1268117
Could be useful…

Can this be built in nomadic countries? I'd say no, especially if their parliament is localized as Kurultai and they have access to the Kurultai building (it would be weird).

Proximity now traces along rivers, where it's even easier to propagate proximity and market access downstream.

View attachment 1268115And where in the world are we now?

Good thing that it is bidirectional now.

 

[JMorais]

What about events that move your country in a direction in whole number steps? Will I need to always choose the option that moves me further along in the direction I'm already at?

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

I personally like the idea of a soft cap to societal values, but I don't like the way you did it. I think there should be a natural decay the higher the value is. Everything would work the way you outlined, so if you have a push of 0,75 towards naval, you'd increase slowly to 75 until decay stops it there. But if you drop to 0,65 towards naval it would naturally decay to 65 again. Otherwise, a situation I could think of (theoretically) is, that I give some priviledges that increase the push towards a value that I like, but have some sort of drawback. Keep them until it's at 75 or whatever, then I simply revoke these priviledges, keep a measly 0,01 push towards the value and I stay at 75 with no drawbacks, for some reason.

If there is no big push towards aristocracy in my country, why would it naturally stay at 75 aristrocracy, if at one point we had 0.75 push for it, and then support for it declined greatly?

But...thats exactly how it works? If you are 0.75 towards aristocracy, that is clearly a big push towards it and it should stay at 75. If you start changing things in your country more to plutocracy and your modifier gets to 0.25, then you can tell you are not pushing for aristocracy and the game will reflect that capping you at 25 aristocracy max.

I don't see why it should decay, it makes no sense from a real life prespective. Things swing one way or another, but they never trend towards "nothing". Countries in fact are usually heavy in the ideology and values they choose, not indiffierent being neither one or the other.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

While the change to the values is nice, it does not address the main issue that was put forward in the original Tinto Talks. It's not so much a problem of caps, but the fact that most values are a net possitive despite one small value being negative. There is little to no reason to not max out one direction or the other. The soft cap represents that real value situation of countries not going all in in one way. But I think EU3 represented it much better. You didnt go all the way in on one value because there was a soft cap, but because having +20% naval morale (example) meant having also a -20% land morale. And that was usually not worth it. So as UK you would push it to 5% or 10%, so it would be beneficial wihout ruining your army. The other side of the bonus was the cap itself. You rarely wanted to go 100% one direction as the negative debuffs were just as bad as the possitivie buffs, not making worth it.

Here the malus is neglegible and there is no reason not to go 100%. So you have had to come up with this soft cap to make it interesting. Why not make the choice itself interesting by making the malus equal to the bonuses? Instead now its just completely different set of bonuses that you choose by going one way or the other, which makes the slider pointles and you might as well have gone with the ideas system from EU4, as it boils down to a choice between one set and bonuses or the other, instead of opposing ones depending on which direction.

It's not a deal breaker as this is easily moddable and i am sure plenty of mods will change it, but I just find it curious

 

[Kvesir]

I would prefer if the Societal Values system worked like estate satisfaction did in EU4, with laws and such changing the equilibrium point, and the values would always drift towards the equilibrium. I don't think it makes much sense for them to not start dropping until I reform my country so much that the equilibrium point is on the other side.

 

[DerAstrophysiker]

no penalties?

I would like to suggest a change here. No penalties in the center is nice and all, but does not "feel" as good in gameplay terms. Also, generally speaking, the benefits for a particular societal value outweigh its penalties, thus incentivizing a maximization, if possible.

I think it would be nice to introduce a "floor" of modifiers in the center, i.e. if you are at 0% towards offensive and defensive, you get a little bit of each. As you turn towards one side, you increase the modifiers from one and decrease the modifiers from the other, so if you are 100% defensive, the defensive modifiers (from the floor) are multiplied by 2, while the offensive modifiers (from the floor) are multiplied by 0, i.e. you multiply the modifiers by (1 + current_position [%]) for defensive and (1 - current_position[%]) for offensive.

If you want to increase penalties instead of taking away benefits, you may consider multiplying the offensive values by ( - current_position[%]), instead, i.e. you flip the modifiers, so that the penalties outweigh the benefits in terms of offense! (Here, that would mean you get -10% siege and assault ability at 100% defensive societal values.) In that way, you strongly penalize going against your societal values. I think both options have their advantages and disadvantages, but generally speaking, I think it would be better for gameplay to give some incentive to stay in the middle, or rather make that a viable playstyle. (Of course only if that doesn't collide with your vision of how these values should work.)

 

[Scutum]

Will there be a way to simulate the impact of building a road/port/bailiff on proximity before we build them?

To see whether the investment improves the travel time enough for it to be worth it.

 

[Dsingis]

But...thats exactly how it works? If you are 0.75 towards aristocracy, that is clearly a big push towards it and it should stay at 75. If you start changing things in your country more to plutocracy and your modifier gets to 0.25, then you can tell you are not pushing for aristocracy and the game will reflect that capping you at 25 aristocracy max.

I don't see why it should decay, it makes no sense from a real life prespective. Things swing one way or another, but they never trend towards "nothing". Countries in fact are usually heavy in the ideology and values they choose, not indiffierent being neither one or the other.

I think you should read that part of the dev diary again. When you are at 75, and your push drops to 0.25 you stay at 75. I literally want what you are saying, that it decays to 25 when the push is only 0.25.

 

[H.A.S.E.V.I.R.]

What if I want to strengthen certain estate power to 100% and weaken all the rest estates? Pretty much to play as if that estate is ruling the nation.

Dictatorship of the peasantry since 1520? Then onwards to 500 years of victory?

That said this may not be entirely possible. Well Polish nobility exempted.

100% crownpower with full centralization.. and a full parliament of all the Estates.. i am the senate? Better yet as a republic with a Emperor! Then build a 5000 cannon 0th rate super obese battleship costing more to run than 2 Sweden could ever pay in taxes.

 

[Malle8370v]

Will parliaments have prime ministers, other ministers and in later ages maybe different parties, such as torries and whigs? And will the english have both a house of lords and house of commons?

 

[Oglesby]

Agreed. I almost feel as though rather than linear modifiers, the societal values deserve a more exponential change, or as you said, additional modifiers kicking in at certain increments.

Now I'd wanted to go through the values we know, and assess them, but hadn't had time, before.

View attachment 1268565
Centralisation: +5 max war exhaustion might be a large negative, but it in no way dissuades me from that +50% Crown power given how many mechanics it ties to, never mind that there are another two, more minor benefits and that if you manage your war exhaustion, you might never even see that negative in action.

Decentralisation: I don't know if -20% counterespionage is debilitating, but even without knowing that for sure, the distance cost to capital is a massive benefit for proximity calculations, which there are plenty of, and obviously reduced rebel growth is a huge help if you're managing a large empire. I can't see that negative slowing me down much.

View attachment 1268572
Offensive: Perhaps the one example we have where the negative is actually so strong that I would never pick it. -50% fort defense means that my gameplay will have to change in order to keep the enemy from besieging my forts, seeing as they will not hold long. The positives of movement speed help with that slightly, but the siege ability does not make it worthwhile. However, this has an issue, as it pushes me toward Defensive..

Defensive: I just have to take a minor movement speed penalty to get a huge fort defense buff and reduced upkeep? This is a no-brainer for most nations, in my mind and I'd not pause for even a moment.

View attachment 1268574
Mercantillism: It's difficult to see why someone might go for this value unless they're purely on the defensive, economically. If that's the case, though, that +50% Market Protection is difficult to overlook, even with two negatives to income.

Free Trade: Compared to its opposite, I can't see why you wouldn't go for this in most cases. The huge benefits far outweigh the -25% Market Protection, and unless I had a neighbour with a huge market attraction, I'd not hesitate to go for this and have no regrets.

View attachment 1268585
Now unfortunately we don't have the Free Subject side of this set of values, but we can get the values at 100% for Serfdom, given that we know they scale linearly.

• Maximum Tax for Peasants Estate: +20%
• Peasants Food Consumption: +10%
• Raw Materials Output: +10%
• Supply Limit: +10%

I can see this being situational, based on the resources of your country. If peasants require 10% more food, that might starve your nation in some cases. And if you don't have significant raw resources, perhaps that won't sway you, but given that we know the peasants are the vast majority of the population, that additional tax seems like it might be difficult to turn down, even if they aren't the wealthiest sector of society. In fact, based on what we saw from the last Tinto Talks, and the example taxes from Naples this may be double the income from peasants, which represented about 80% of the tax income from that location.

View attachment 1268604
Edit: I'd forgotten to add the new values we've seen here.

As above, we don't have the opposite, the Capital Economy, unfortunately. I'm sure it would be interesting.
From this we can work out the modifiers to Traditional Economy at 100% as:

• Buildings Cost: +20%
• Raw Materials Output: +20%
• Population Capacity: +25%
• Food Production: +20%

This actually has a fairly substantial negative and it would almost give me pause. However in a nation with decent raw resources, you might increase income enough that this is still a net positive, any nation would also have the additional taxes from a larger population base across your entire country. I imagine in many cases, that 20% will feel like nothing compared to the additional income, but this one feels the most balanced. Perhaps if it didn't have two routes to additional income, even if one is not immediate (Population has to grow into the capacity), then it might give me a little more pause. Still, this one might actually give me pause, and I hope values are more in line with this one, now, given that it's the most recent we've seen.

---

On to the case of being at 0%

Personally I'd rather not have any modifiers at 0%, though I'd have to see what they'd be. I mean, at 0% on centralization/decentralisation, what would be modifiers be? Surely these are opposing societal values and should cancel out. Realistically I don't believe it would be easy to maintain 0%, anyway, but say you skew 1% toward centralization - are you getting a few benefits from decentralization, still, or do they cut off abruptly?

Rather I'd like to go: "Oh, if I skew toward one of the values, I'll start to get these negatives, and none of the positives are worth it for me, right now, and I'll try to stick to the middle" And if it seems that one of the sides will help my nation more than it harms it, I can go for that one. I don't want to go into the game and have to choose which extreme I'm aiming for on every single Societal Value, knowing that it's not worth it to stick to the middle. If that's the case, there's a binary choice between them and they may as well be two simple choices rather than a slider, after all.

If I had to go: "Oh, going above 50% centralisation makes the estates angry, and they're far too powerful right now, maybe I should stick between 10 and 40% for the best benefit to me, but if I weaken them enough, it might be worth it, later..." then that is a choice, and far more interesting gameplay than picking everything with +centralisation modifiers.

First, I would say that the +50% Crown power does not add to the relative state/estate power but affects the raw crown power which is used to determine the state power. This would still take someone that is at 50% crown power to 60%. This is how estate power +y% effects work so it would make sense that this is the same format.

Looking at the provided panels you can see that two values are shared(Maximum War Exhaustions and Counterespionage for Centralization/Decentralization) while the other two are independent. To combat the middle feels useless issue I propose the following. For the items that match don't change anything; for the items that do not match I propose that they extend 25 into the other size. This overlapping gives some non-zero effect at near the middle of the road.

Example using the Offensive/Defensive

At the zero point you are getting 1/5th of the independent modifiers instead of nothing

 

[LordThanatos]

First, I would say that the +50% Crown power does not add to the relative state/estate power but affects the raw crown power which is used to determine the state power. This would still take someone that is at 50% crown power to 60%. This is how estate power +y% effects work so it would make sense that this is the same format.

That's how I read it, yes. I think that taking 50% to 60% crown power far outweighs +5 max war exhaustion.

Looking at the provided panels you can see that two values are shared(Maximum War Exhaustions and Counterespionage for Centralization/Decentralization) while the other two are independent. To combat the middle feels useless issue I propose the following. For the items that match don't change anything; for the items that do not match I propose that they extend 25 into the other size. This overlapping gives some non-zero effect at near the middle of the road.

Example using the Offensive/Defensive

At the zero point you are getting 1/5th of the independent modifiers instead of nothing

To me having bonuses even at 0%, where your population is not particularly inclined toward one side or the other seems to miss the point of your society valuing a certain approach. It makes +2% assault and siege ability the default. Why should you have 4% cheaper fortification maintenance if your nation is neutral on the issue of offence vs defence? Why are you paying less for defence, and getting better siege abilities for simply not having an opinion?

My position is that I'd rather see more negatives that make it worth staying neutral in some cases. Rather than reduce fort maintenance at 0, increase it at +offensive, for example. Or better yet, make there be a good reason to stay at the sub lower range on either end of the spectrum, as the negatives get worse the more extreme you go. If you pick defensive, why should you not go to 100%? Right now there is no real reason, even with the example numbers you gave. What's -5% more speed for +25% more fort defence, moving from 50% offensive to 100%? I can't see people saying "In France's early game, you'll want to stick below 50% offensive, until (...)" It's far too simple for that sort of thing right now, you either go 100% one way, or 100% the other. Why wouldn't you? (And offence vs defence is even simpler, with the numbers we have right now, because unless for some reason -10% movement speed is a breaking point, the answer is always to go 100% defensive)

You have two choices which just take some number of months to reach full effectiveness as things stand, and a maximum effectiveness in the form of a maximum value, that's all.

 

[mason531]

Hello developers I love seeing the progress of everything going on so far I have some ideas and concepts for the Yuan Empire Obviously it claims the mandate to heaven but I was curious about what type of flavoring are gonna give it for it being Mongol? You should have it where instead of being like the Empire of China from EU4 which is mostly a Chinese thing maybe have it where if a Mongol culture took the Mandate they can can create, another institution/power block where you can create “Empire of the Great Khan” where you hold vassalage over other Khanates and you establish more Khanates in other regions around the world as in Genghis Khan vision where all under a Blue Sky/Heave is there domain.

 

[jfgkenya11]

I see people making a lot of suggestions about how societal values should work. I agree with some of them, especially the ones asking for changes to make them more immersive and believable to the real world. The modifiers we get should make logical sense, and they should try to avoid false dichotomies.

That being said, I don't think we should presume to know how it feels to use this system until we play the game. They might not be balanced on release, and that's ok as long as they release balance updates soon after. I'm sure they'll try to balance them before release anyway, but I imagine they'll rely more on testing, rather than speculation on the form. Regarding the societal values decay suggestions, I'm sure they considered it and decided against it because it felt bad. Societal values are passed from one generation to the next, so I'm ok with them being more stable and take longer to change. It's not like prestige, which is quickly forgotten.

 

[LordThanatos]

I see people making a lot of suggestions about how societal values should work. I agree with some of them, especially the ones asking for changes to make them more immersive and believable to the real world. The modifiers we get should make logical sense, and they should try to avoid false dichotomies.

That being said, I don't think we should presume to know how it feels to use this system until we play the game. They might not be balanced on release, and that's ok as long as they release balance updates soon after. I'm sure they'll try to balance them before release anyway, but I imagine they'll rely more on testing, rather than speculation on the form. Regarding the societal values decay suggestions, I'm sure they considered it and decided against it because it felt bad. Societal values are passed from one generation to the next, so I'm ok with them being more stable and take longer to change. It's not like prestige, which is quickly forgotten.

This has me very curious, and I have to ask why you think the forum is asked for feedback, and why our feedback is taken seriously when none of us have played the game and we're all presuming to have some idea of how the mechanics we've been told about will play out, regardless?

I can't speak for every user on the forum, but I always try take into account that 'perhaps this thing I'm commenting on feels very different in game'. That said, if we assume that every mechanic or setup which seems wrong to us, or seems like it could be improved is actually fine in game or will be improved before release why would we ever give feedback? Sure, everything can be improved or rebalanced after release, but why should it wait that long? Why do you think that Paradox is instead asking for feedback early, this time?

What makes this issue different to give feedback on than all the other topics we've given feedback on, and sometimes changed as a result? A fair amount of this very post and the one prior is about what was changed based on feedback, after all.

 

[LSF]

I didnt like so much the solution to the Societal Values...

It would be much better if there was simply a negative change based on the actual Societal Value.

Taking the DD example, if +0.75 should lead to a stable value of 75, we could simply add a permanent change of -1% of the actual value. So 75 would be the equilibrium value and the speed of change would decrease as the actual value approaches its equilibrium.

The idea presented in the DD that, if the Societal Value change drops below +0.75 but still positive, the Societal Value should remain stable at 75 sounds as weird as the Societal Values going all the way to +100 or -100 as before.

With a permanent change of -1% of actual value, if the change went from +0.75 to +0.6, the equilibrium value would drop from 75 to 60 and the first month after that would see a drop in the actual value of -0.15, going from 75 to 74.85.

The stable (or equilibrium) value should not be independent of the actual rate of change, even if it is still on the same direction.

The solution the DD presented is too gamey and allows too much manipulation.

 

[GUILDAM]

What happens if you take a the province with the parliament building in a war? Can you integrate it into your country or does it get salvaged for resources?

 

[AYOUB HADI]

Very interesting, thanks for the presentation, I have some stuff to suggest and I hope also the community comments on them:

1 - Regarding the Estate Privileges, I was thinking about something that will represent social inertia which can be presented by Long-Term Consequences, essentially the penalty of removing a Privilege scales with the time that it was enacted for, as with time those privileges start to seem more of a right then a granted privilege to the estates. Like have a starting penalty that then grows with time to stagnate at some reasonable level. this will make the timing of when to give or remove those privileges important to the player.

2 - I was thinking that some conditions will give some estates more influence, at time of war maybe its the nobles, but if its a religious war then its the religious faction, if you in debt then maybe its some combination of estates.

3 - Estates are good way to represent the internal functions in a state, however I feel and I wish the the figures elements will be also there, there are countless individuals who shaped their state, characters hopefully will be relevant too. (maybe and surely not CK3 model but some way!)

 

[Polesie Admiral]

Proximity now traces along rivers, where it's even easier to propagate proximity and market access downstream

Only major rivers? or small rivers as well?