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Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

Welcome to the sixth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design and features of our not yet announced game, with the codename ‘Project Caesar’.

Hey, before jumping into todays topic, I would like to show something very fresh out of the oven, based on your feedback last week. This is why we are doing these Tinto Talks, to make Project Caesar your game as much as ours...

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Today we will delve into three concepts that are rather new to our games, but first, we’ll talk about locations a bit more.

Not every location on the map is the same, especially not in a game of such scope as Project Caesar. By default, every ownable land location is a rural settlement, but there are two “upgrades” to it that can be done. First, you can find a town in a location, which allows you to increase the population capacity of the location and allows for a completely different set of buildings than a rural settlement. Finally, you can grant city rights to a town, which allows for even further advantages. Now you may wonder, why don’t I make every location into cities? Besides the cost and the population requirement, there is also the drawback that each of them tend to reduce your food production, while also adding more nobles, clergy and lots of burghers to your country.

Stockholm, Dublin and Belgrade are examples of towns at the start of the game, while cities include places like Beijing, Alexandria and Paris.

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Here you can see the control that Sweden currently has.

Control
Every location that you own has a control value, which is primarily determined by the proximity it has to the capital, or another source of authority in your country. There are only a few things that can increase it above the proximity impact, but many things that can decrease it further.

This is probably the most important value you have, as it determines how much value you can get out of a location, as it directly impacts how much you can tax the population in that location, and the amount of levies they will contribute when called. A lack of control, reduces the crown power you gain from its population, while also reduces the potential manpower and sailors you can get, and weakens the market attraction of your own markets, making them likelier to belong to foreign markets if they have too low control.


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Proximity
So what is proximity? It is basically a distance to capital value, where traveling on the open sea is extremely costly. Proximity is costly over land, but along coastlines where you have a high maritime presence you can keep a high proximity much further. Tracing proximity along a major river reduces the proximity cost a fair bit, and if you build a road network that will further reduce the proximity costs.

There are buildings that you can build, like a Bailiff that will act as a smaller proximity source, but that has the slight drawback of adding more nobles to the location, and with a cost in food for them.

Maritime Presence
In every coastal location around your locations, or where you have special buildings, you have a maritime presence. This is slowly built up over time based on your ports and other buildings you have in adjacent locations. Placing a navy in the location helps improve it quicker, but blockades and pirates will decrease it quickly, making it absolutely vital to protect your coastlines in a war, or you’ll suffer the consequences for a long time.

As mentioned earlier, the maritime presence impacts the proximity calculations, but it also impacts the power of your merchants in the market the seazone is a part of.

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Stay tuned, next week we’ll be doing an overview of the economy system, which has quite a lot of new features, as well as features from older games.
 
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with no bailiff or similar, you won't have control.
Does this include areas that aren't technically legally enclaves, like separate territories within the HRE?
 
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I am curious as to what constitutes a major river in the game?
whats the cut off point, the vistula, the seine?
or will every river that is depicted in the terrain on the map count as a major river that impacts proximity?
 
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I really don't understand that argument. A Dhimmi estate would make playing a muslim state different from a christian state. That gives more variety and replayability.
You can still dislike a Dhimmi estate - or other special estates like the Cossacks - for different reasons, but the replayability argument makes no sense.
Yeah, now when I have looked at it again, I completely agree that the replayability argument makes little sense.
My hatred towards the Dhimmi estate is still there, so here's a reworked idea:
Dhimmis in EU4 were very bad (relatively worse than the other estates). I don't remember interacting with them more than once every playthrough, so I think that Dhimmis are an abstraction that is unnecessary and limiting to the game.
How do Dhimmis even fit into an estate category? Nobles own land, they are the elite of a society. Clergy are the people overseeing the organized religion of a society. Burghers are the merchants and those pursuing money. Peasants are the common people farming the fields. Cossacks and tribes would be more independent/nomadic people. And then there are Dhimmis - literally meaning protected people. How does that make sense as an estate? It was literally made for the ottomans in EU4 so that they would be realistic. There is no need for the Dhimmi estate now that project Caesar has population.
 
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First of all, I do like the IR-esque 3 tier location system, but I hope the food system is improved. It's weird and a micro hell in IR when you only have a single city in a province so it can't get any food, even when an adjacent province had a lot.

Second, I think having high control and centralized can have certain drawbacks. I read Chris Wickham's work on early medieval age (not this period I know, but I think the point still stands), and he argued that Egypt seldom split when changing hands among foreign invaders because it was too centralized through the Nile river network. When the central authority crumbled, the provinces would flock to the new invaders rather than establishing their own because they depended too much on the existence of a central authority. Conversely, in a feudal system, it's a pain to conquer the whole region because the local lords can simply rule independently.
 
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Hello,

First of all, thank you for creating such wonderful games. I really appreciate your game design.

I'm curious about how much historical events are enforced in Caesar.
Since I live in East Asia, I'm wondering if there are triggers or systems that enforce events like the
transition from the Yuan Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty or the transition from Goryeo to Joseon Dynasty.
 
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I'm very excited for the dev diary. Now I'm anxiously waiting for revelation of diplomacy and war system which can make or break the game. I really hoped that it ties into this control system, where it's easier/harder to trade low/high control lands. Multi-controller lands would I think be helpful to establish this system where you can start to wrestle control of a land be it peacefully or through occupation until it flips to you. Though I'm not sure if this can be implemented by this stage of the game.

I also hoped that there'd be more things represented, but also run on its own automatically. Things like city can upgrade/degrade itself for some reason if the conditions are right. Low control may make taxes to instead go to peasants making them burghers/nobles, making them upgrade things but also weakening crown estate, etc. I'd like to see the control map mode, if there'll ever be any, to breath by itself even if I don't do anything.
 
Will project Caesar have the ability to make custom nations?

I've really enjoyed custom nation theory crafting in eu4 and have played custom nation games on my own and w friends. I've spent more time on custom nations then France and Spain put together. It's amazing how much impact choosing your own government, religion, and ideas and it's a lot of fun to be able to try whacky nation ideas. And by that I mean stack mil modifiers and watch AI run away.

Anyway, I'd love to see custom nation support return in Caesar, especially if there are similar nation-specific mechanics like national ideas to customize.

Speaking of: how will different nations be given their own unique flavors? A major strength of eu4 is the way the games systems layer onto each other. Modifier stacking has drawbacks from a game design perspective for sure, but it's also what made it so fun to play Prussia and take mil qual ideas, or play Ottomans and stack more CCR from admin ideas, or play Poland and go espionage aristocratic. The ability to stack specific modifiers incentivized unique play styles for different nations. What will incentivize unique national playstyles in project Caesar?
 
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I think that the difference between cties and towns should have something to do with Control.

In start up, the maximum of control of cities could be much higher than towns, simulating the lack of administrative power of traditional state / feudalism. And, the age of absolutism could make it possible for players/states to reach their hand deep into towns/villages so that it could be much stronger that those who are not absolutist states.

Anyway, it's glad that we get another piece of map for PjCsr. Now we know what's going on in Livonia and Finnland now.

Two "Riga"s because that they have same name but, if the Islanmic country names were dynamic, how to deal with the situation that two tag sahre one same dynasties? The way CK3 dealing with it (by ranks) seems to be not that suitable here.
 
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As a player, I really like the art styles of eu4, vic2, and ck2 because the art styles of these games are in line with the characteristics of their eras, but the art styles of vic3 and ck3 are too modern. I'm sad to see that Project Caesar is still in this modern style.
 
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Can we conquer/claim individual locations? Rather than only being able to conquer a full state like in Vic3 unless taking a treaty port
 
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The game mechanics seem very promising. As an long years fan of EU4 (it's the only game that I come back to and probably play too much) I am excited about upcoming project Caesar. I just hope that the UI and maps will look more like EU4 or Hoi4, and less than Vic3, Ck3 or Imperator. I don't play the last mentioned titles mostly because of the chunky and hard to work with UI, with large pictures for everything that take too much space, sometimes too much scrolling, full screen tech trees.

Event the 2D portraits in EU4 or HOI4 for me look more AI generated 3D. However, you did some nice work in the 3D portraits in the recent CK3 patches and I am starting to like them.

I still consider EU4 to be the best looking game from Paradox with the most flashed minimalistic UI and practicality of game features, sharp text styles and vibrant colors with lot of contrast.

Good luck with the development!
 
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With statements both "exclaves have no proximity without special buildings" and "Voltaire's Nightmare is a good example to follow", those seem contradictory to me. Plenty of hre states had exclaves that did not have specific infrastructure to govern them.

Which of the two will give? Or is the hre somehow an exception to the exclave-proximity-rule?
I'm assuming those countries had good enough relations with whoevers territory their messagers needed to pass through. If so, that should be a mechanic.
 
You've squeezed those sailors in again......... you know, people didn't buy DLC because of this, and here it is again:
quote
"..Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?
Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change...
That. Is. Crazy.
The first time somebody told me that, I dunno, I thought they were bullshitting me, so, boom, I shot him. The thing is... he was right.
And then I started seeing, everywhere I looked, everywhere I looked all these fucking pricks, everywhere I looked, doing the exact same fucking thing... over and over and over and over again thinking: "This time is gonna be different. No, no, no please... This time is gonna be different." ..."

/quote
 
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