Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

[Karalis123]

Are location names editable?

 

[CerealSugar]

if the names of estates change depending on the country/religion, will the icon change as well? I have the impression that it would add more immersion to different countries and religions

 

[Pełpeł]

@Johan please, hire more people for UI. Interface is pretty much 65% of the grand strategy games, it deserves more love

Burghers symbol should be changed, its dominant color is the same as frame. Yellow pouch becomes less readable on yellow triangle. Silver coin, merchant ship, anything would do better, even making pouch just stylized as dark leather.
Another big issue is 3 separate styles of UI within the image. First, the dominant one (frame and estate symbol) should be the primary style of whole interface. meanwhile the "loyalty piechart" :

1. does not have shadows outlining its borders (contrary to estate icon)
2. mask symbol is simplified (flat color, silhouette; contrary to detailed estate icon)
3. the colors are much more vibrant than rest of ui (ofc it's good for readability of just that icon, but I assume there will be more there and it can become overwhelming visually)

• the black "base: is not centered properly behind the piechart icon, making black visible
• making dominant strip wider and small gap between red and green makes chart more visually interesting, whilst giving on glance overview which value is higher (important for values nearing 50%)

Then we have this

Yet another style which makes edges dominant feature by making them high contrast black. It's more cartoon or stained glass style appropriate. Note that I am not saying black has no placehere - if borders were much thinner andpluss was not so contrasting it would probably be okay, but IMO borders, as established in main UI, should be golden, not black.

Last thing about this is that I noticed that golden border for estates overlap. I have no issue with this as long as they are designed to be that way, without change in color. There is also spill of background, which is inexcusable.



And my main issue is this... Tooltips:

After working on M&T I understood how important the design of text and displays in seemingly unimportant places can be. In my honest opinion most of tooltips should be designed by hand. I know shortcomings of meiou ui better than anyone and probably EU4 by extent as well. I would raise few issues:

• minor but there is dot after market protection
• the values are repeating, making it possible to group those together, there is no point of displaying -43.85% three separate times
• tax base is listed as value but is not within the points, which is inconsistent
• there is too much "padding" in terms of text. Ofc it should be considered that without full explanation players can feel confused, but it's entirely solvable, such as "condense tooltip" option that is togglable by a player
• most importantly why is there no text alignment? it would increase readibility by significant amount by itself, make the values when listing start (or end) in the same place horizontally

Here's my scuffed proposition:

I know its ugly, the borders are super simple the text size (current, max, change) can be smaller, Alot can be improved, but look how simple it now looks. The size of image did not change, You can place piechart on the right side and it will still have room left... or add actual control explanation there, as separate part from actual info display

I also made some suggestions for interfaces for earlier tinto talks

I know my suggestions are far from perfect and are not solutions, but I implore the dev team to take time and consider how can we improve data display design as it's a core of grand strategy games

 

[vGruntyv]

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.

Will proximity be reduced during a war if an enemy occupies part of a road or part of the river? This would effectively mean that your officials would no longer be able to use that shortest route.

 

[Brynjar]

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.

The coexistence of folk religion and Christianity does not necessarily mean pops should be considered pagan in the game. Some people would still worry about upsetting creatures such as elves well into the 20th century, and still very much consider themselves Christian.

That said, in 1337 there should probably be some pockets with pagans in Norway (and other places).

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.

That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being pagan, but could just as well be a result of lack of law enforcement not ensuring a change of "tradition". Also, people still do that all over the world for all kinds of reasons, be it law enforcement being too far away, people being drunk, or just not caring.

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.

My understanding is that the modern (after 1959) interpretation of fakser is that they are believed to be depictions (icons) of saints from before the reformation, and not necessarily a pagan remnant themselves. Their descriptions often resembles figures which can be found in stave churches. Some figures which can still be found in stave churches does also have resemblances to known pagan gods, such as Odin, and it is not unlikely that some pagan traditions were merged into the christian worship. The way fakser were "worshipped" are one example of something which has more resemblance to folk religion than the Catholic church. There are also sources saying the reformation which was forced from the top down was badly recieved in the Setesdal area, indicating that Catholicism was fairly well established at the time.

Paganism and Christianity is believed to have coexisted for a long time in Norway, especially in the inner parts. For Setesdal specifically the first mention of a church in Bykle is from 1327, so Christianity should absolutely be present there in the game, especially in the upper classes. Paganism was however forbidden by law in Magnus Lagabøte's "Landslov" from 1274, and "Bylov" from 1276, less than 70 years prior to the game's start, so there still being pockets with pagan pops in the game would make sense. It also shouldn't be out of the question to have mechanics which causes paganism to gain some (not too much) traction during the black death, as there are some stories (although the believability is arguable at best) of supposed human sacrifice performed in an attempt at preventing the disease.

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

Manpower being a thing does not make it a magical pool of men. If population represents men and women of all ages, there absolutely should be some kind of pool of people other than the population itself which soldiers can be recruited from. That pool should however be "extracted" from the population, which from my understanding it is.

Historically maintaining a big empire as Ottomans was hard, so it should also be hard in eu5

Hard does not mean it should be tedious. If we have to build roads in every single location to connect two important locations, that is tedious, not hard. Games should be fun, not tedious.

 

[vyshan]

with no bailiff or similar, you won't have control.

How will places like the austrian netherlands be handled. and the various statelets of the HRE which are disconnected by land?

Would this lead to the thing of vicky3 about "taking states around the market capital of enemy AI to sink them forever"

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I dont, we wanted a better EU4, not Victoria 3 but 14th century

This is what EU4 is about tho

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

Manpower being a thing does not make it a magical pool of men. If population represents men and women of all ages, there absolutely should be some kind of pool of people other than the population itself which soldiers can be recruited from. That pool should however be "extracted" from the population, which from my understanding it is.

Thats assuming too much. We thought they would get the manpower from pops in IR when they introduced levied and they didnt, and manpower remained completely removed from the population numbers and regenerating magically.

 

[Kipsta]

@Johan *effort post*

Imagine spending this much time on an effort post instead of reading the OP (the relevant information contained in every single TT OP).

 

[Me_]

I don't like the idea on basing things on distance to capital as it leads to capital jumping.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

How will places like the austrian netherlands be handled. and the various statelets of the HRE which are disconnected by land?

Would this lead to the thing of vicky3 about "taking states around the market capital of enemy AI to sink them forever"

I suppose bailifs and stuff? Even the screenshot has a country with three exclaves, they couldn't be dumb enough to ignore that

 

[FantasticFwoosh]

A quick question, i don't think i missed anybody else having it answered, but are there 3d wrapped gui models present in this game?

My worst fear from the current early presentation, please try not to take this the wrong way. Is that this title could be a smartphone game (an extremely advanced one) because the UI is very flat for that kind of format that would fit finger-pinching click actions and large UI buttons.

 

[Ulu Kai]

ottomans and moscow are 2 great examples for my question; will small nations (which became empires later on) will high likely become empires as they did in real life or will we see a similar unrealistic randomess in ck3?

 

[Dragoonity]

Amazing Tinto Talk, Johan.

If I am reading this right, the closer it is to your capital the more proximity and control you have while the further it is from the Capital, the less proximity and control you got.

 

[Álvaro Núñez de Lara]

How will places like the austrian netherlands be handled. and the various statelets of the HRE which are disconnected by land?

Would this lead to the thing of vicky3 about "taking states around the market capital of enemy AI to sink them forever"

I hope thats where diplomacy comes in and if there is some sort of market shame agreement you can keep some sort of control. I still think though you should be heavily penalized on your control. Like you should never have full control if youre not connected

 

[Dylanwaw]

No they are not.

Its a bit hard to have a naval battle involving a few dozen ship of the lines on them.

that is not a very good argument in my opinion
1. you would not be a very good admiral if you attempted this it's like trying to put a nail in with a sledgehammer wrong tool for the job.
2. that is the strategic advantage of rivers and shallow seas, ships with a deep draft cannot enter them.
3. it's why having access to a deep water port is important you need one to build ships with a deep draft.
4. it's why you need ships with a shallower draft that are more manoeuvrable for blockades and entering shallow areas.

also does this mean that the zuiderzee and the waddenzee will be impassable for ships because they are to shallow for ships of the line?

 

[Being Earnest]

Do rural buildings disappear once the location is upgraded to a town?

 

[diglosgr]

Will pops that are of not primary culture reduce effective control of Cities and Towns? Also Cities and Towns who are made up of unaccepted cultures will they work the same as those that are accepted?

 

[AvatarThomas]

It looks great and fantastic, but my only criticism as of now is, the UI style, it is too bright and feels naked? Hope it will be addressed

 

[CaosRL]

Loving everything here, just hope that there are non tedious ways to protect our coasts in peace times or otherwise, wouldn't mind some abstraction there.