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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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ok so if control can reach 0% (as you said in responses) does it mean that for example you could "unlawfuly" take control of locations from other states, as in, they are the one technically in control but youre the one that the people there are actually paying taxes because of your cultural, economic (you said something about foreign markets) pressure?
 
The Bailiffs acting as a smaller proximity source would boost proximity in that location, as well as nearby locations right? So one option would be to place them strategically, so that their proximity spread affects more locations. Do they stack with each other?
That being said, will there be a limit to Bailiffs? Or can I just slap Bailiffs in every province and call it a day?

Because then it will just be a matter of coin to circumvent blobbing maluses via proximity.. Other than the aforementioned boosts into the estates, it should cost something to make it prohibitively reasonable in number so they can be placed strategically.
 
Extremely low control in a location bordering another country means that the location can defect to the other country?
It would be very appropriate to Mandala System governments in Southeast Asia.
 
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First, incentivize them with decentralization policy to develop their region quickly on their own and boost their economic output without tax and administrative burden and afterwards tighten the control and reap the benefits later in the game?
Perhaps, altough you would be robbing yourself of your own earnings up to that point, as well as it would limit the conscriptable population for levies and armies. Additionally id imagine the burghers would be incentivized to build buildings necessary for trade, for example roads which increase control. Additionally Johan mentioned last time they dont invest all of the money that isnt taxed. Which would result in a loss of mony for you.
 
I love everything I have read in this tinto talk, the mechanic shown have great potential! Especially the control system, wich limit snowballing out of control.

Do you think it will be possible to built our on road like in imperator rome? That was a great system!
 
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That being said, will there be a limit to Bailiffs? Or can I just slap Bailiffs in every province and call it a day?

Because then it will just be a matter of coin to circumvent blobbing maluses via proximity.. Other than the aforementioned boosts into the estates, it should cost something to make it prohibitively reasonable in number so they can be placed strategically.
He mentioned they strengthen your estates (nobles), so you need to be careful to not lose power in that regard.

And I hope otherwise there is simply the massive opportunity cost of having limited money and a lot of ways to spend it.
 
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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.
Valid, however, I think it's also right to think that "major" rivers are harder to cross for armies and should warrant say more penalties when crossing into an enemy army also a nation should be able to set up trade buildings there.
 
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I'm sure it will be shocking to hear that I also love updates on estates and this news on cities and control! Knowing that you won't just build cities everywhere without consequences is a huge plus!

I've also got a quick question if this hasn't been asked yet. I like the idea of the big early game challenges that will impact big chunks of the Old World like the Black Death and rise of Timur, so I was wondering if there will be similar big early game challenges in big chunks of the New World like what the Cahokians and Puebloans were facing?

Regardless, thanks for the update. I love the direction Project Caesar is going in!
 
Perhaps, altough you would be robbing yourself of your own earnings up to that point, as well as it would limit the conscriptable population for levies and armies.
This can give a chance for different strategies. For example: tighten control from start, get more manpower and wage wars to expand your territories early in the game, but at some economic cost VS give more economic freedom to your subjects to develop their regions on their own at the expense of manpower and tax income.
 
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ok so if control can reach 0% (as you said in responses) does it mean that for example you could "unlawfuly" take control of locations from other states, as in, they are the one technically in control but youre the one that the people there are actually paying taxes because of your cultural, economic (you said something about foreign markets) pressure?
Would be interesting as a mechanic since that's how Aragon and France feuded over counties like Toulouse and would lean into the Burgundian dominance of the Lowlands as well.
 
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I'm so hyped by not-EU5

Wonder if they already have the recommended PC specs for this game, i need to upgrade my toaster anyways, so...
 
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Did you mean 'found' a town rather than find one?

Anyway I think the system is interesting, I like that it's iterating a bit on Imperator Rome, I felt that system was sorta half-baked, particularly in that you didn't have a lot of options to develop rural areas. I wonder though if maybe there might be an option to make a 'megalopolis' like in Imperator, it'd be interesting to be able to develop 'super-cities' in a sense. Though it sounds like maybe you rebranded 'megalopolis' as cities and cities as 'towns' in this. So I'm wondering where the boundary lines are.

'Control and Proximity' sound very intriguing. I hope that rivers and canals help boost it, I think many people have pointed out how river navigation was essential to project central authority in several states. I wonder also if this incentivizes decentralization- if you a region is beyond your control range if establishing a vassal solves all those problems or not. I like that ports can extend the zone of control- and it makes me think Naval gameplay will become way more important. I can see it becoming very important to control certain islands and develop them as ports so that you can maintain control of colonial possessions.
 
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Will control matter regarding how easy is to conquer a place?

Historically, places with strong control were very hard to take over, so in order to take over them a lot of raid campaigns were usually needed first in order to make the other state slowly lose control over it.

In the other hand, you have big examples like the Byzantines barely having reinstated control over the Levant and Egypt losing it all very fast to the Arabs. At the same time, they were holding on to coastal Italy and Balkans thanks mostly to their navy.

So in addition to economically, will this matter militarily? It would be a great way to simulate how pre-industrial war worked. And I mean for both in the actual military conquest (with armies lowering control of raided lands and more easily taking over ones with lower control) and for lose control provinces being cheaper in peace treaties.
 
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