• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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...

1712136748556.png




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.

EaMX4E1GNzy0P9fHqbFWuoyX3mTUo0i8He3V3QHENQ5s7GCgU534Pg30YtA5_9AeZZn1wTdCFUc1n5Pl88qbfm1YOW3BsFDQQkRjvlDWr2ydETNKCk9_3zNeRVQ8YQuznfJXxTdsIgZLE8GBuecztX0

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.


1712141069161.png


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.

LkfBoN7Vx3MIHx2sSqcN7jYlJFbRYR6EzczGu3xlsixWZ-jSIxbGI_cC2i64-13G3SrtT0wVZ8XeXZDI8pXnpPlUBw2ZGPmYVqwoVfXEsu1kkQf3TAia9shMDkEf6oE83ihwG2VtA_CCydlJeXuaULM


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.
 
  • 385Love
  • 210Like
  • 21
  • 9
  • 3
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Why do we need navies when it seems like maritime presence always ticks upwards? Im patient, i rather have money and take a couple of more years to fill up.

I'd rather if it trended towards an equilibrium and you had to actively use navies to keep it at a 100%.
I'd imagine that navies are for contesting other countries' naval control, or setting it up when it's low, rather than for passive generation. Protecting your trade from pirates, privateers and blockades, or setting it up in a new colony, that sort of thing; from what's been said, I think that buildings are likely an alternative strategy, being less flexible and resilient in war but without the cost and risk of destruction by foreign navies.

In all fairness, navies are extremely useful in EU4- if you have enough transports to take your troops by sea, you can save massive amounts of time and the opportunities for a lot of rampaging rebels, a good fleet of light ships can make things so much easier, and protecting your coasts from devastation with a scary fleet is always nice. However, blockades are too finicky to be useful outside of situations like 'I am launching a blockade war on Ming as a sea power', and naval invasions tend to be slow and costly, so they often aren't worth investing in during wartime.
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
  • 38Haha
  • 15Like
  • 7
  • 6
  • 3Love
  • 1
Reactions:
Will there be any incidental advantages to having low control?

I know that you play the crown, so of course having higher crown control is good for the crown, but it would be nice if the mechanic were complex enough that low control isn't just pure bad. That feels too simplistic to be immersive.

It might mean, say, that nobles hold a lot of power in the area, which then makes their support more effective in wartime or something. Or a trade node with low crown control could have strong burgher control, which helps them to monopolize the trade on behalf of your nation vs other tags.

Indeed, a low control and decentralization should give some boosts for the economy - for example, higher production efficiency and more wealth for the estates, who can build improvements on their own.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
  • 67Like
  • 22Love
  • 8
Reactions:
I hope lower taxation doesn't just mean money disappearing into the void, but rather that the local population gets to keep it for its own use.
Guess it would go to the estates?

But it seemed to be like estate taxes are a fraction of the money that actually reaches you, so maybe not ô.o
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
EaMX4E1GNzy0P9fHqbFWuoyX3mTUo0i8He3V3QHENQ5s7GCgU534Pg30YtA5_9AeZZn1wTdCFUc1n5Pl88qbfm1YOW3BsFDQQkRjvlDWr2ydETNKCk9_3zNeRVQ8YQuznfJXxTdsIgZLE8GBuecztX0

2 (Maybe up to 4 depending on what those are on the bottom right) Rigas!? Is this a teaser to what civil wars might look like? Does anyone know the history of this region at this time?
The Virgin Riga VS the Chad Riga

Riga VS the Cooler Riga

Riga VS the Riga your Overlord State told you to not worry about

Squishy Riga VS Square Riga
 
  • 22Haha
  • 2Like
  • 1Love
  • 1
Reactions:
This sounds very interesting. When you talk about tracing proximity via major rivers, I assume this is something the game does automatically always calculating the shortest proximity via any applicable route right?

Will major rivers that count for proximity purposes be navigable by ships and subject to the maritime presence effect in the same way as coastal provinces, and with the same proximity effect for being linked via a river or a coast? If not, how do the proximity effect from rivers differ from that of coastal connections?

If the effective control of Kalmar is only a bit more than 50%, what happens for colonies on the other side of the Atlantic? Will there be some form of building or colonial capital to reduce the effective distance or will you just have to wait until tech improves your effective range enough? I guess we will probably have to wait for a colonial Tinto Talk but any hints would be appreciated.
 
  • 11Like
Reactions:
This is amazing.

Will locations independently develop into towns and cities if certain criteria are met, ala Imperator?

And does this mean that converting a rural location into a town will destroy all the previous investment, as before?

On pops and estates, will all clergy, regardless of actual religion belong to Ulama? All clergy, Christians and Muslims, act effectively as one bloc?
Logically, the distinction between Ulamas and dhimmi is based on the "national" or "heathen" religion.
So in this case all muslim (or sunni / shii) would be ulama, and dhimmi would be all christian catholics / orthodox / coptic
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I cant believe this game is still using such an arcaic and abstract concept such as manpower when you have a beautiful population system.

sigh...Please give it a thought...Manpower should be the population not some magical pool of men that always regenerates with no consequences for the local pops
Why can't these systems work together? Maybe manpower could be a part of the total population which represents the recruitable males and when units are replenished from the manpower pool, the population of the locations goes down?
 
  • 7Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
I imagine this increases the value of having subjects who will have their own capitals to control areas from.

Especially in the early game where your proximity range is far smaller.
 
  • 115Like
  • 52Love
  • 12
  • 1
Reactions:
Nice! Now that we finally see some of the North: Will Norse mythology exist? Norse paganism. I remember when taking a uni course in Norwegian medieval to modern history that some documents described the farmers in the region of Telemark as unruly, with paganism or folk religion existing in some ways in the period of this game and even perhaps to the 1700s in some elements. They would take care of justice themselves the old ways, as in a case where one farmer had called another farmer's wife ugly or something and then killed him for it. Documents also showed that this region alone had more murders than the rest of Norway alone.

A article by Jørgen Løvland from 1878 describes høysetestolper as shown in the image, poles with pagan symbols that farmers respected and saw as holy long after the age of vikings. Both Telemark and Agder regions had these, as well as figures (Fakser) that are likely tied with paganism used in this region up until 1850, where in Setesdal mid-1800s, people worshipped figures, trees and hills as well. Until they were destroyed if i remember correctly.


With the pop system, I therefore imagine some pops could realistically be be pagan?
I do hope they at least add pagan minorities for eastern northern europe. In the east most ruthenian peasants were either pagan or had some sort of syncretic faith between paganism and christianity in 14th century, only the urban populations and upper class citizens were truly mostly christian.

I do wonder how religous conversion state-wise will work, this would also make some really fun alternative scenarios possible.

Also on side note I hope there will be some leftover cathar minorities in france, that could make for some interesting playthrough down the line too. Which there should, they only got eradicated in around 1350
 
  • 13Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Thanks for the new Tinto Talk, but did West Sweden really have such a low control?

in theory we should add the eriksgata as a road :)
 
  • 57
  • 29Like
  • 2Love
  • 2
Reactions:
Some questions about estate power and maps! Though they won't really relate to THIS tinto talk :C
- It was mentioned estates can have local modifiers. Is there a map type planned to see where estates have power? Like a heat map or something maybe?
- We've seen a total population map mode but is there also a map mode to see it per 'location'? Similar to the heat map in imperator rome?
- How will local estate modifiers change or stay with conquest? For example, nobles in Northumbria have a lot of power for various reasons and now scottland takes it. Will modifiers instantly change to those of scottland, change over time or stay the same?
- Perhaps more of a suggestion but will there be a culture specific map mode? Not the general one as shown before but one where I can say select french culture in the culture map mode and it shows me where all the french pops are. Even if they are a minority in italy for example.

A question that is a little more relevant to this tinto talk, is it possible to support pirates, pay them off or privateer yourself?
Also, I am guessing from the wording that a location can switch markets? Is it possible to actively entice foreign locations?
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
Can control sort of behave like EU4 Autonomy, where you can consciously reduce your control in a location in exchange for less unrest?

no, there are different mechanics for that
 
  • 87
  • 47Like
  • 4Love
  • 2
Reactions:
I am personally not a fan of manually upgrading rural lands into towns like in IR. I prefer the MEIOU & taxes approach of it happening organically over time. Or like you mentioned, through privileges that has effects on your estates.
 
  • 15Like
  • 3
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions: