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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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Could we hope for a Jews estate for European and some Muslim nations?
Also, I wish there was a vanilla way to bring back other Pagan religions back like Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, and Hellenic without having to mod the game.
Jews would fall under the Dhimmi estate in Muslim nations. And in Christian nations they never held significant political sway to be considered an Estate of the Realm.
 
I want to ask something important. First of all, will we see Turkish language support in your games (in every game)? (Because paradox com is too much in Turkey) Secondly, are you planning to release different DLC for each feature? I will follow the game accordingly. (If you look, I play every game of yours except Vic3 and now it is my right to ask for Turkish language support.) Also, I wish you good work and thank you :) Good luck.
 
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This looks really good and I am loving how you are reacting to feedback so I feel that project Caesar is in safe hands. Only one minuscule worry and that is the AI, in some Paradox games the AI is not always the best at handling the grand strategy of it and when project Caesar is so ambitious I worry a bit how it could handle all cogs in the machine so I would love to know how you handle that department of the development.
 
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Not sure on 3 since we haven't seen how religion mechanics work in general. But in regards to Hellenism, Hellenism was sadly long dead in 1337; there probably shouldn't be anything for that outside of mods.

However for two yes. Lithuania is still pagan following their baltic gods and goddesses. They didn't convert officially to Christianity till 1387. I believe the Sami and the Finns still have followers of their faith but could be wrong. Depending on how you define Europe, then further east you go the more pagan people, such as the people in the Urals like the Mari. I also think that even though the lands are being christianized or Islamized, the people of the Caucauses still have a number that follow their ancestral pagan religions.
Europe is a geographical Europe all way long to Urals for me, so yeah, I hope it will be possible to go back to slavic paganism, for instance. Slavic paganism was still very popular until XIII century (even christians still believed in spirits and other non-Christianic deities), so I think there can be a way to make it happen.
 
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Given the increased importance of ships in this game compared to, idk eu4 for example, which is really nice to see, will there be increased importance of ships for transporting troops? It's kind of ridiculous that unless you're England or Malaysia, anyone anywhere in the old word can basically just march 1M troops across the world to siege you down. Even islands that should be able to hold on like Rhodes against the Ottomans, most of them have straights armies can just walk across. Would be nice to see logistics and boats be necessary. Would also balance warfare better so it isn't just "bigger alliance wins." Or calling in Ashikaga to fight Prussia.
 
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I'm really liking the things being revealed in these "talks".

But regarding the new estates I've got some mixed feelings. (Quick caveat: We only have partial information on the mechanics, so I might eat my words later.)
1. It's obviously nice to see developers listening to feedback. I appreciate this is the case here, so I feel kinda bad for not liking that specific change.
2. I'd rather see unique (but not necessarily superior) privileges to give the original estates, than have more estates. Based on parameters such a tech group, culture group, religion, or special circumstances (Like The Mamelukes). I'd like Western European nobles to generally give me one kind of headache, and Indian Muslim nobles to give me another kinda headache. I find (with few exceptions) that in EU4 I always end up picking the same privileges for my estates regardless of what tag I'm playing. I'd love to see some more actual choices here, with mutually exclusive privileges, instead of a limit on the number of privileges. I realize that not granting a privilege is also an option. The goal should be to make regional flavor play a role in my choices, rather than be an extra estate to exploit.

Yet in spite of the above point, I do actually have some suggestions for additional estates. Temporary Estates.
1. Pretender factions. Might be really nice for stuff like War of The Roses, and could be a framework for spicing up that "In the arms of a maid, I find solace..." type of situations. (Iberia is kind of a mess in this earlier start date?) For when your nations is not actually in a state of civil war. Granting it concessions (privilegies) might avoid or postpone a civil war. (I'm assuming that those have quite the punch here as compared to the rabble that is EU4 rebels. So we might be willing to accept some bad modifiers to postpone such a conflict. Who knows, maybe someone goes hunting for that white stag and an opportunity to end such a crisis might present itself.)
(I'm calling it here first! First expansion will be named "Succession" and be all about those juicy disputed inheritances. ):)
2. Religious schisms. Specifically the protestant movement in Catholic Europe. When the protestant movement gains a foothold in your nation a new estate might be added. And when you reach a convention of Thorne situations you could make a "final" choise regarding your religion, removing the Clergy if you go full "Henry VIII, dissolution of the monasteries", or removing the protestant block if their demands are met and doctrines adopted. "Syncretic" religions might also use this system. To signify that their popultation actually has rights in a nation.

Regardless, I'm actually starting to get excited for Project Ceasar!
 
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Denmark exists! Yes!!

It will be a mess in 1337 however, with no king, with the future king only owning Schleswig, and the rest mortgaged out to others due to his father's debts or occupied by foreign powers. Danish Estonia as shown here will be under the protection of the Livonian Order, for example.
 
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This looks so good! Regarding exploration, I would love to see a system more like EU3, where you physically have to click on provinces to explore. It felt more natural and more exciting than the current EU4 system where you click a button and its done for you. Will exploration be different in this game?
 
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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?

One will be the city government itself, and one will be the bishopric, which did not outright own the city. This happened quite a bit in the era, especially in the HRE.
 
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Is it possible to make it so that Hordes essentially decimate populations during wars/occupation so that in case you are attacked by a horde nation your people tend to flee in larger numbers, especially if, for example, an Asian steppe horde manages to raid more 'civilized' nations to the west, this would probably instill fear in them moreso than nations which live near hordes (like the russian principalities) @Johan Paying attention to balance of course.
 
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1)Question about river proximity cost reduction: will it reduce proximity cost for for reaching all neighbouring locations, or only for reaching locations that are actually connected by the river?

2)Question about food supply: will food supply be just a value that a nation has, or will transfer of food between locations actually be simulated in some way, or will it work in some other way? Asking because the former would imply that you could sustain a city of millions in a nation with no infrastructure, provided the nation is large enough, wich to me would seem unrealistic. On the other hand, actually simulating food supply may be too computationally expencive.

2.5)Will food be tradeable between nations? (For example for the purpose of sustaining a city state that cant fulfill it's ow food needs?)
 
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