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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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Nice! Hopefully this will help Tall countries. I'm also glad that you added the Dhimmi Estate.

I also like how the Livonian Order is represented. I would have one suggestion though: Add more lakes in Finland and Lake Võrtsjärv in modern Estonia.
 
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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
could be defined as a (modifyable) fraction of the population in the location.
 
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Will culture and religion affect control, or do they only affect unrest and do high control means less chance of unrest or just about getting more resource?

Maybe some religions that are more hierarchical add more control, assuming you get along with the heads of that religion (Catholicism and the Pope). Certainly, a heresy spreading would lower control.
 
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so its settlement > town > city is this something we control directly or can it gradually happen over time due to policies or whatever, can it also happen in reverse due to war/pillaging or migration over time so that a city can become a town.

would terrain like mountains, forest or marshland also effect proximity?

what would be the conditions for a location or area to gain independence, would no control and bad proximity trigger a revolt or would they simply automatically become independent, could a different country take that land without a war (although giving the other country a war goal to take it back)
 
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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...

View attachment 1110176
So there will be more estates than the 'original' 5 after all? That would be great, especially since Tinto is ready and willing to make these changes based on community input! :) Now just waiting for Cossacks to be confirmed...
 
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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?
It's two Rigas. The City of Riga and the Archbishopric of Riga. But they're too small or too low rank govt (I think), so their names both get shortened to Riga on the map. You can also see Sweden's full name being the Kingdom of Sweden but shortened to Sweden on the map for the same reasons (I think). As opposed to the Byzantine Empire whose full name is shown because it's a max govt rank country (I think).
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OG Swedish flag is making a comeback.
Which also makes me wonder, will the flags change over time, like how in EU4 Revolutionary would change your flag to tricolour?
 
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This is awesome!! I'm super excited about both these features, especially Control.

I hope that we'll have access to Covert Actions that can reduce Control in enemy locations, causing Colonies to rebel or for civil wars at home. With the hopes of being able to join into a war on the side of the rebels >:)

This also makes me think about the Loyalty mechanic in Civ 6. Which essentially boils down to your Settlements exuding Loyalty, and if another Civ settles too close to you, you have the ability to overpower their Loyalty, and flip their settlement into joining you. That could have a lot of potential in a game like this as well.
 
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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%.

Ps: Its a genuine question, stop disagreeing with a question and answer it instead lol
 
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Will control change depending on the era, low control under feudalism, but high under *whatever the late game era*? For example, new buildings, laws, and so on could be unlocked.
 
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