Tinto Talks #56 - 26th of March 2025

[mr_willock]

If you look at how rivalrys work in reality, you would rather get a debuff in diplomatic relations and trade towards them and their allies. Rivalrys breeds and justifies hostile actions and your rival and its allies knows it. The benifits would be that expanding and doing hostile actions at the cost of your rival would be more accepted by your own people and your allies. You would also have the opportunity of befriending your enemies enemy, it would not happend automatically like in eu4.

On the other hand having no rivals should come with its own benifits. If you dont have any rivals you would be seen as a more peaceful country and thereby more trustworthy. You would probably be seen as a more trustworthy trading partner and other countries would likely be more open to diplomatic proposals from you since they consider you less likely to be engaged in a war that could disturb their trade or disrupt their balance of security. Perhaps you could be more likely to be let in to international organizations if you are seen as less belligerent.

All in all the EU4 model of rivalry captured the benifits of having a rival well, but left out the benifits of not having a rival. You where also forced to rivaling someone by basically getting a debuff if you didnt. Hopefully we will get to see the benifits of having no rival and more choice in the matter in EU5.

This new game has already added a lot of features I have been dreaming of in many of the previous games in the EU series. Looking forward to the finished product and Great work!

Seems like this could tie in with a societal value pretty well, if there was a "war-like" (or w/e) to "peaceful" societal value. Having rivals would push you towards warlike, giving you some military bonuses, army cost reduction, etc., versus trade power benefits or development bonuses for being peaceful.

 

[wargamer22]

it would be a really cool and useful feature if your troops could enter into friendly forts prior to the arrival of an enemy army. This would allow your small army to maybe stand a chance against a much superior foe. This would come at a cost of increased supply loss within the fort though. idk though that would be a cool and realistic QOL mechanic.

 

[Yai Miko]

Why not implement port size mechanics? It's not logical that a fleet of 100 battleships can be accommodated in a cove.
Each fleet should have its own home port.
And each port must have the appropriate infrastructure and equipment to provide the necessary fleet.
Why not allow
a Small Power in diplomacy to request infrastructure development, technology transfer, and the construction of buildings that the country itself cannot provide for patronage, security, and the opening of markets for a great power, the right of passage, and supplies?
Thus, a great power wins by expanding its sphere of influence, while a small power develops faster.
However, both will lose relations with another great empire, because another power is competing in its sphere of interest.
Also, a system of spheres/zones of interest would allow bots in peace agreements between themselves not to create chaos on the map, but to surgically accurately draw the boundaries of peace treaties. And also not to make absurd demands in peace treaties (when Austria, in a peace treaty with Britain, instead of seizing a province in Europe, demands the liberation of Sri Lanka)
Bots would know where the interest of one is, where the other is, and peace treaties and hostility would become logical and close to reality.
In the same eu4, a small power (10k army) could refuse a great power (500k army)
In the passage of the troops. It is difficult to imagine such a thing in a real example of history. Of course, later, in the gaming sense, it entailed a complete seizure (out of anger)
Why not create a mechanism where a great power promises support to a small one, but asks to deny diplomatic contact to another power?
This would make it possible to realize, as in reality, the spheres of influence of countries where one power would fight the other not only militarily, but also by fighting for markets, for territories that do not belong to both sides, for resources that one wants to control and not share.
You can also consider this issue using the example of a ban on the construction of buildings for England (any other power) in order to avoid its merchants in the market. But

 

[Irishman845]

It doesn’t have to be when the game is released but in a future DLC I would like to see spy networks that allow you to see the supply lines of the enemy so that you can cut them off easily. I also think it would be interesting if you could make a battle plan in advance for invading a country where you plan out logistics so you start moving food and supplies to the rally points and during that time the enemy has the ability to discover those plans. Maybe give small buffs against attrition or increasing war score if you stick to your plan. You could go even farther and use fake plans to throw off the enemy. Depending on your spy network or counter espionage is how effective you are at hiding your plans are discovering the enemy’s.

I also think it would be interesting if you could use your diplomats to drum up antagonism in other countries towards another country and you could use your current system of diplomatic capacity for that model. For example, I’m playing in Italy and France is making advances towards my borders. I could then use my diplomats in countries friendly to me and near France to build up antagonism with it growing faster in countries threatened by France. The larger the country the more diplo capacity it takes. Just something so that small countries can take a proactive approach to curbing the power of larger countries without waiting for them to reach a magic number so that others join a coalition. I don’t know the effect on the AI but just a thought.

 

[Irishman845]

Concerning generals, admirals and overstacking/doom stacks, I was wondering if there was a way to give command capacity to generals and admirals? Mainly for navies but there could be a benefit for armies as well. A “leader” depending on their skill level, advances, drilling, societal values and such can have X amount of units that they can effectively command. Going over gives penalties. An admiral can have “X” capacity and that is filled up by different types of ships each with their own effect on capacity. You could also give them a ship type they are most effective with, which could then mean they either have higher capacity for that type of ship or give those types a slight buff. You could also do drilling for ships. The more the admiral drills the ships the better they become at managing more ships so over time they can effectively add more ships to their fleet. Similarly with armies the more the general drills the more troops they can command effectively.

If you were feeling so inclined you could even create a grand admiral or chief of army cabinet position. They could give bonuses to your generals or admirals. You could make military academies buildings that give better officers. Those academies could also specialize in specific units. Then you recruit officers from those academies. So if I wanted to focus on siege pip generals I could recruit them from a siege academy. If I wanted to focus on admirals with light ships to get better trade I recruit from that academy.

This gives the player more control over how they want their country to specialize. Plus it makes expansion more interesting late game because maybe you focused on galleys the first half of the game when you were a coastal/inland sea empire but now you have to adjust to take on England or Spain with their heavy ship focus.

 

[Oglesby]

I feel like the cost of hiring a new general/admiral shouldn't just scale directly to the economy of the country, because if your country is huge the cost would be ludicrous. There should be a soft cap to prevent a general from costing 5 bazillion ducets if you are playing China.

I also feel that the larger (higher economy) countries will have more armies. If the general pool is arbitrarily limited that just forces large inefficient armies (or heavily penalized armies due to a lack of general).

 

[Nezgovorov G.S.]

There are still questions about the supply of armies. As we know from history, supply was an important part of the success of military campaigns. And in history, it was clearly not just a supply depot in one place, city or port. Armies were often supplied on the spot, from wagon trains, from the local population, food traders, as well as local lands, villages, etc. And the relationship between armies and local residents was also different. In some cases, armies were met with open arms (liberation wars, protectorate) and local residents were happy to give up provisions, horses, cattle, etc., and in other cases they hid everything in cellars. In the latter case, soldiers had to use force, or even looting, to get "bread and horses." All this, of course, depends largely on the culture, religion of the first and last, and, in fact, on the purpose of the war, and I would like this to be reflected in the future: in new patches or additions - because the topic is quite difficult to implement and requires special attention. The main thing in this matter is not to overdo it, so that it does not become too complex mechanics.
Also, the scorched earth tactic and other interesting manipulations with supplies would fit in well here, but for the corresponding penalties and debuffs, of course. Something like this already existed in EU4 in the form of the so-called "Devastation" modifiers and the "Scorch the Earth" army action. But in this project I want to somehow better and more interestingly play with these mechanics.
Well, something like that)

 

[sassa de sa]

Don't like the idea of diplo stuff being tied to how much money a nation makes. The action should have mainly a fixed cost, maybe with small increases due to size, but with caps. A diplomat would cost about the same for a nation, no matter its size. The difference is that bigger ones could employ more of them. Like the stuff in vic, that a small nation can search the source of the Nile for 1k and a big nation will spend 1 million, based on eco size, with same chance of sucess. The cost should be the same. If you can't afford them, your problema.

 

[livebythecreed77]

Hello and Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we give out information about our super top secret game with the codename Project Caesar, so that you can give us feedback!

Today we will talk about some of the changes to the diplomacy and warfare mechanics we have done since we started doing these Tinto Talks.


Diplomatic Expenses
As you may have seen, in some previous Tinto Talks we added another expense to the economy to give more control to the player. The cost for this Diplomatic Expense is based on the tax base of your country, and the more you spend, the greater benefits your diplomatic corps gets.

View attachment 1271790
If you play France you may have this maximized, but may not if you play a smaller country without subjects unless you you want to be able to maintain an alliance with a bigger and stronger country.


Antagonism
In older GSGs we made, we had a concept called ‘Badboy’ which impacted how badly you had behaved and other countries would treat you more harshly according to it. This evolved into the Aggressive Expansion systems we used in Eu4 and Imperator which had a direct impact on opinions that also allowed Coalitions to be formed.

While these were useful systems, they all were a bit limited;as a global variable in your country it was too broad, and as merely opinion impacts, it was rather hidden and hard to get overviews.

In Project Caesar we developed a new system called “biases” which has static impacts and temporary values that change over time, like opinions work in most of our games. We had this for Opinions and Trust, and when we were not happy with AE and neither were you, we decided to scrap AE and instead make a new bias, which we call Antagonism.

Antagonism indicates how other countries are likely to view us. If they feel a lot of antagonism towards us, countries that consider us as relevant to their interests will be less inclined to engage in diplomacy and may act against our interests. Antagonism is caused by basic differences between countries' societal values, government types, religion, culture and language, and actions can cause an antagonism 'bomb' in a location that affects the countries near it to varying degrees depending on how much they care about that location and about the antagonistic country. Antagonism 'bomb' effects will generally dissipate with time. Antagonism also affects a country's opinion of you.

Of course, a country needs to have caused a certain amount of Antagonism against you before you can join a coalition. The overall effect of this is that you can get away with fewer antagonism ‘bomb’ effects against countries that have a baseline of antagonism for you before they start thinking about forming coalitions against you, and countries that are more similar to you will probably allow a bit more to slide.

View attachment 1271791
Ottomans will always have a base antagonism to Byzantium..

Independence Movements
Trying to become independent as a subject is usually a tough life. In some previous GSGs you could ask another country to support your independence and they could help you in a war. To make this better, we took inspiration from Crusader Kings where subjects usually band together to fight for independence. As we have the International Organization code, we made a new type of it, called Independence Movements. Any subject with a loyalty below 50% can start such a movement, and any subject can join it. Other countries can be invited as well, and the goal of the war is to get independence for all subjects!

View attachment 1271792
Probably need some more members for this..



Civil War Surrenders
Sometimes you are in a civil war and you know you are about to lose, and it's just a matter of time, so we added in an action to surrender in a Civil War when the other side is more than twice the size than the other.

And as some of you pointed out, losing a civil war as soon as possible to avoid it, may or may not be an exploit, so currently there are some penalties to jumping to the new country.

View attachment 1271793
At least Scotland will be free!


Naval Combat
During testing, we discovered that with all types of ships having the same frontage made it so that you wanted to stack almost purely the biggest ships and the rest were not useful. So instead they now have different frontages, so the categories have different roles.

Heavy Ships have a frontage of 2 and a combat speed of 0.5 & Galleys get 0.5 frontage, but their combat speed is 1. Light ships get higher initiative and combat speed, and have a frontage of 1.

New Objectives
When we talked about the military objectives, there was a request to add automated rebel suppression, and this was something we definitely added in. We have now also added a Hunt Navies that works like the Hunt Armies, and tries to engage and destroy enemy navies when spotted in the designated areas.

We are also looking into adding a few more objectives, like defending the coasts or focused sieges, and will tell you when more are implemented.

Logistics Improvements
While we were very happy with having a logistics system in the game, and where food mattered, it was a little bit limited in that you could only trace supply two locations away at most. So we introduced a concept called Logistics Distance, and now every single army traces a path to the closest valid supply source. The length that can be traced can be extended through advances in several of the later ages.

A valid supply source is a Supply Depot, a port or seazone with a navy carrying food that will distribute it to you, or a province-capital that is under control of a country giving you food access and actually has food.

Supply paths can only be traced through friendly controlled territory, but not through any location that belongs to the Zone of Control of a hostile fort.

We also made it so that armies can only carry a single month's supply of food with them, except for the auxiliary units, which can carry many months for several regiments each. This means that even if you can march deep into unprotected territory or have the ability to ignore the Zone of Control for forts, you need to get a supply path to the source you can get food from.

Of course, you can always see the path your armies trace supply from when you have selected an army, as a thin green arrow goes from the supply source to the army.

View attachment 1271794
Here I walked past the Lithuanian armies (I used the remove fog of war cheat code, as they would have been hidden for me otherwise), and tracing supplies from Goriadz, and they will easily be able to cut my supplies by movingmy moving into Lipsk. This is the paper-map-mode where everything is icons on the map.



Monthly Attrition Losses
One thing that was requested by you guys was the ability to see how much attrition a unit has taken recently, so we added some history to it, so you can see how many died in the last year.

View attachment 1271795
My army lacks food to continue the siege… a few more months at most..


Recruit Admiral/General
Another worry that was pointed out by the community was the potential lack of generals or admirals for your units. So we added two new actions where you can recruit either a general or an admiral for your country for gold. The price is based on the economy of your country, but the price is reduced by the military ability of the ruler.

The abilities of the new commander depends on the current army or navy tradition, which is also reduced a bit by recruiting a new commander.


View attachment 1271796



Next week we’ll go through the mixed collection of all other major changes we have done..

If there is a war declaration on you or by you, is it possible to bring up your miliary screen to help you raise levies/mobilise? This mostly came to mind with the new automations. Say you get declared on and you have armies on rebel suppression, if an option to open a military menu/screen that let's you get your levies in order immediately and automations like rebel suppression. I think this could be a decent QoL suggestion.

 

[livebythecreed77]

Another thought I had was that can cultures hold opinions? Say if China is unstable in the late game and Europeans had the ability to partition China amongst themselves could chinese cultures have a distrust or dislike of foreigners or west Europeans? More realistic the meso Americans and American indians. This obviously would also make sense in say In Ireland let's say Irish people shouldn't be happy that if they are conquered by the English so a negative cultural opinion could be a thing maybe?

 

[livebythecreed77]

And last thing could estates have opinions of foreign countries? Say your nobles are desatified with your rule giving too many privileges to the lower classes could they have a opinion of you and opinions of neighbours where they may side against you? We have that different countries have antagonism against you for your societal values. Surely this would be an extension of that. Trying to enforce a type of government that's suitable to your neighbour.

 

[livebythecreed77]

Agreed, religion was way more important than culture/language in this time period. That's why large numbers of French protestant migrants were welcomed in protestant countries and integrated just fine, and why multinational empires only started to fall apart after nationalism became important during the 19th century.

While it may have been of a lot more significance nationalism as a concept in the 19th century, nationalism was still a belief that people held regardless. People in this century formed cultural unions like a Russia or a France a uniting force of the national will. In the time span of the game French became a unified cultural country and you can argue lots of other European and non European countries also held this ideal too.

 

[jfgkenya11]

Another thought I had was that can cultures hold opinions? Say if China is unstable in the late game and Europeans had the ability to partition China amongst themselves could chinese cultures have a distrust or dislike of foreigners or west Europeans? More realistic the meso Americans and American indians. This obviously would also make sense in say In Ireland let's say Irish people shouldn't be happy that if they are conquered by the English so a negative cultural opinion could be a thing maybe?

Cultural opinion is a thing (see TT#36). Cultures can like or hate other cultures. However, it doesn't say under what circumstances this opinion can change. Hopefully an oppressive occupation would be one such circumstance.

 

[livebythecreed77]

Cultural opinion is a thing (see TT#36). Cultures can like or hate other cultures. However, it doesn't say under what circumstances this opinion can change. Hopefully an oppressive occupation would be one such circumstance.

Thank you

 

[VoodooDog]

View attachment 1271885

I feel like -5 for language is very harsh, especially since Religion is only -4, which I feel should have a bigger impact relative to language

No, obv not... Not being able to comprehend what they're speaking weighs much heavier than not understanding their believe.

 

[jfgkenya11]

No, obv not... Not being able to comprehend what they're speaking weighs much heavier than not understanding their believe.

History suggests otherwise. Especially in the timeframe of PC, countries often banded together across language divides to oppose a religious enemy. It was common for elites to speak many languages. Even in distant lands, finding a translator was often possible. Religion, however, can stir strong feelings of animosity far beyond a simple lack of comprehension.

 

[Giatros]

Would be good to see food management tools for supply depots, get to choose between food for people or food for army, imagine the decisions!