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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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@Johan

Is there a way the player or AI can increase food production themselves (buildings or investments) or is it mostly attached to technology and land ownership/land control?
 
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Does terrain type also affect control--like mountainous locations being more remote having less versus a flatland having more?

What happens if a territory is an exclave? Will it have any control at all without a bailiff or just a big penalty?
On top of that. Is it possible to change terrain type?
Like with forest terrain, you would remove forest and turn it into farmlands.
 
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So there are Dhimmi! Does it mean there are other special estates? Cossacks? Janissaries? Jews (please, at least in Iberia and Poland)?

What about catholics in protestant nations and protestants in catholic nations?
Jews, catholics and protestants should not be estates but pops based on religion ? I guess, since you grant a religious freedom or not, based on religion and not on the social class.
Unlike popular opinion, there were protestant burghers, protestant commoners, as well as jews burghers and commoners after all. In Rome for example, there were a lot of poor Jews during the Borgia.

Edit : to extend along this idea, I hope we will see, much like estates privileges, some religions privileges (unlike EU4 « tolerance » of -3/+3) : freedom of practice (ie Edit de Nantes, dhimmies…), authorized or banned from administration (catholic Ireland under Britain)…
 
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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?
Now I could be wrong but I believe the city of Riga itself was under condominium between the Archbishopric of Riga and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. So perhaps the city itself is distinguished from the Archbishopric?
 
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*Frantically maxes out centralization slider for 100% control.
 
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It can be very interesting to see how technology and others change that control system from feudalism to absolutism during the last years of the Middle Ages. I hope there is some way to invest resources in improving the general infrastructure of the nation to gain control and so on without having to resort to the nobility.
 
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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.


View attachment 1110187
Topic of Discussion is bolded

This is very interesting "belong to foreign markets" sounds like even if you have nominal control over a region, they might economically join another market, in order to feed themselves and survive. I am liking the sounds of this. It does make me wonder about what "markets" are, if they are some form of dynamic trade zone, if they act more like in vic3, but with each location dynamically joining another market based on market accessibility to basic goods or not, etc. Very interesting.
 
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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%.
I guess that will be the case, if constant threats exist, like piracy.
 
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Will vassal loyalty and enemy aggressiveness be affected by control and proximity of your lands neigbour to them?
 
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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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Ah I see, thank you for the information. I guess this might be the one place where that name shortening would get confusing, with 2 nations with the same "name" next to each other. I wonder if there mught be others like this to have a need for some kind of additional clarification?
 
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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.


View attachment 1110187

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.
 
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Yes, I like this feature. Finally, it will become difficult to control territories that are very far from your core. I can see this mechanic become a way to control blobbing.
 
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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.

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.
create vassals then
 
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Question: if we are playing as a colonial power, will we be able to build factories (feitoria) in locations, and if so, would that give us access to those markets and add to maritime presence in the area?
 
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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.
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.
 
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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.

You beautiful so and so's

This makes my week

Communication efficiency BABY - M&T gang stays winning
 
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I understand the idea of the tiered settlement types, but the way you described it sounds a bit strange. In history, the town rights were granted to really small settlements of a few thousand people and were all over Europe, so to mechanically put them on par with some kingdoms' capitals just feels odd. At the same time, I'm not going to argue that a mid XIV century Stockholm was as big as Paris or Beijing, but maybe there should be a fourth tier? Something like rural-town-city-metropolis?
 
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