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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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Not gonna lie regarding the update to last week's stuff, but the dhimmi icon looks somewhat out of place. Can't put my finger as to why exactly, but it is a nagging feeling.

eventually there will be a bit more.
So are Cossacks also on the table here? Rather hard to cover them through the base estate types.
 
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@Johan Is it possible to move my capital? And if so, what would be the cost/conditions?
And BTW, in regards to the 1337 start date, can you reveal what the end date for Caesar is?
Keep up the good work!
 
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Not gonna lie regarding the update to last week's stuff, but the dhimmi icon looks somewhat out of place. Can't put my finger as to why exactly, but it is a nagging feeling.


So are Cossacks also on the table here? Rather hard to cover them through the base estate types.
What's wrong with it? It is is only right and proper for unbelievers to wear triangles for hats like the misguided fools they are. ;)
 
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Do nations like Lubeck and Venice work on a basis of: cities/towns -> tax & trade income -> import food. And if you can import food from colonies and other countries can you effect a famine on someone by using various means to deprive a nation from food supply (blockade/Annex rural areas/embargo etc)
 
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Great feature.

Will there be any drawbacks to moving your capitals aside from a small 1-time fee (like 200 admin in EU4) ?
Otherwise people will just constantly move their capital to the new "middle" of the counntry.

Also, will the AI move their capital? For example England might move their capital to York instead of London, or France might move their capital South.
 
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Greeting Mr. Johan and Tinto Team,
Thank you all for the hopes and dreams of Project Caesar ( not EuV or Eu5), at last for me Wednesdays become something to look forward to.
As Eriksgata was mentioned by the Mr. Johan, i was going to ask you; what are you planning to do with 2 concepts. I would like to first specify that I am in no capacity of a history expert and haven’t checked everything that has been written on the forums.
1. What do you think about the effects and usage of old roman roads in old roman empire lands? For instance would you include some location modifiers for maybe a discount to building roads or would you consider them having some kind of roads? Because if I am correct about my understanding of the history, many roads were build on top of these roads and some were even actively used around l33t (Again not an expert and couldn’t help myself). I think this would benefit you as well. Specially, if you are planning an AI model in which an AI values the location for cities and towns historical use of this map (maybe assigning them some weights for choice, not an software expert as well) may provide us with historical outcomes when it comes to city building.
2. Secondly as roads were mentioned and if i recall correctly you have told us that you are going to talk about trade in a later date. So I am just going to ask this; will roads have an impact on the flow of the trade? Specifically speaking historical trade routes with partial roads? (Also please dont forget about Caravanserais)
I want to ask you many question regarding laws, existence of national ideas or are they included as special laws, concept of formables etc.., but again i believe that you are going to somehow talk about specifics in time so I will wait for these. I have a suspicion that you have planned nearly every weeks’ topic beforehand or at least have general plan laid out. So against my inner child screaming at me “ask more learn more about not so eu5” i will try to wai... Just let me indulge him again a little bit; “when warfare and armies?”
Finally some suggestions;
- Firstly i would like to make a few suggestions as you were kind enough to share the map Anatolia. One thing i hate about the current EUIV is the forming Rum. In which you have to conquer not historical lands etc., destroy ottomans and Byzantium(a.k.a. ‘Eastern’ Roman Empire) etc. I hope that any Anatolian Beylik including ottomans can choose to go west for an empire named after themselves or technically to east to follow the road of Seljuks or in this case Anatolia “seljuks” of Rum. If I recall correctly many of those beyliks if not all were some kind of claimants to the Rum.
- Secondly historically speaking we had buffer states whose existence was generally protected and tolerated by surrounding large empires (in the case of Anatolia please check the history of Dulkadir). I hope that your team checks those out as well.
- Lastly, thinking about the Timur i hope the game is going to have some wars about raiding/pillaging as they kind of loved to do this (Georgia) instead of technically conquering.
This has become too long and I am sorry for that. I just hope that I have given you some food for thoughts.
I wish you and your team* best of the lucks in this project.

Edited * missing word.
 
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Are food local on a province level where 1 province can have a surplus while another province can starve?
Or will it be natinoal where the entire country is in a surplus or starving?
 
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PLEASE dislike this post if you consider wikipedia/reddit images for the same region 60-100 years away from the start date as a good source...
(I'm actually really curious)
Wikipedia or not.. all the maps look the same or at least very similar wherever you find them. Also, there is no map of 1337 because no border change happened during that period. Only change took place in 1346 when Danish Estonia was sold to Livonian Order. Expecting to have a map made for every year is just stupid. And similarily stupid is to distrust wikipedia maps without any proof that show that they have mistakes.
 
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Regarding the map, which standard meridian have you decided for ?

Greenwich (which was only used by the British until the modern period),
- Isle of Ferro (Grand Canaries, which was more commonly used in Europe for the time period)
- abstract, so as to separate Russia From America (anti meridian in the Bering strait)

The second also works much better for Random New World, which I would like to see in Project Ceasar, although without EUIV crashes
Edit : now confirmed there is not gonna be RNW, but my question remains for the standard meridian.

Also, will there be a seamless 180° border, or are we gonna sea like in EUIV / HOI4 a straight vertical line between locations ?
 
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If I occupy enemy's Capital, would that influence enemy's proximity and control of their provinces? And also would there be a concept of capitulation- where I occupy enemy's capital and get 100% war score? ( It would be historically correct and strategically interesting in game ).
 
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It strikes me…

Clearly we won’t have two tags RIG, and considering Johan’s words, “Riga”s’ coexistence is not expected, so…

Maybe these two Rigas are not defined by two different tags, but by two different locations, just like CK3?

I can’t figure out other reasons why there are two Rigas and Johan doesn’t expect them.
 
I really hope that if a location reaches 0% control, it passively breaks away and forms an independent state as if separatists had enforced demands.
At first it sounded like a nice idea (similar to Imperator where provinces were declaring war of independence when loyalty was reaching 0) but then I imagined a situation where state lost a bit of control overall and was surrounded by bunch of independent microstates around the entire border.

Perhaps I missed it - but I don't see any info that control is directly linked to loyalty, so maybe it'd be possible to have a province with 0 control and still belonging to the state. Plenty of problems with economy and revenue for the owner, but no revolt. That would be nice.
 
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At first it sounded like a nice idea (similar to Imperator where provinces were declaring war of independence when loyalty was reaching 0) but then I imagined a situation where state lost a bit of control overall and was surrounded by bunch of independent microstates around the entire border.

Perhaps I missed it - but I don't see any info that control is directly linked to loyalty, so maybe it'd be possible to have a province with 0 control and still belonging to the state. Plenty of problems with economy and revenue for the owner, but no revolt. That would be nice.

It would work if it wasn't immediate, and x years needed to pass with the province at 0 so you had time to turn things around.
 
It would work if it wasn't immediate, and x years needed to pass with the province at 0 so you had time to turn things around.
That's not logical though. If you have a countdown going to zero - that zero is the final value. Bombs explode at 0:00, they don't wait some unspecified number of seconds after reaching zero, that would make little sense.
 
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How will control work for states with isolated inland exclaves with not direct land connection to the capital (think euiv cologne or the presumed archbishopric of Riga in the screenshot)? Will those states be locked into perma near zero control levels until a direct connection is made? Or is it still based off distance to capital? Or is there some sort of minor (or major) malus, and if so is this modified by hostility of states in between?
 
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At first it sounded like a nice idea (similar to Imperator where provinces were declaring war of independence when loyalty was reaching 0) but then I imagined a situation where state lost a bit of control overall and was surrounded by bunch of independent microstates around the entire border.

Perhaps I missed it - but I don't see any info that control is directly linked to loyalty, so maybe it'd be possible to have a province with 0 control and still belonging to the state. Plenty of problems with economy and revenue for the owner, but no revolt. That would be nice.
unrest and control are not directly related.

control can make it easier to reduce unrest.
with no bailiff or similar, you won't have control.
there is a correlation there, but low control in it self is not the reason for rebellion.
From these replies by Johan it looks like 0 control does not equal immediate independence (or even a delayed independence). Which makes total sense. People can live in a very remote location that no government official visited for years and be fine with that situation. Unless they have a reason to dislike their formal overlord (wrong religion, oppressive laws etc.) why bother fighting an independence war when you can enjoy protection while not paying any taxes?
 
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No they are not.

Its a bit hard to have a naval battle involving a few dozen ship of the lines on them.
Since control over land may depend on proximity, and that proximity may be lowered for land connected to a river, is it safe to assume that blockading a river's estuary may decrease control of the upstream land, or at least bring some sort of devastation to it (simulating inland raids) ?
I do not know if I'm clear though
 
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