• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Talks # 7 -10th of April

Welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Talks, where we talk about really super secret stuff, that is hidden behind the code name of ‘Project Caesar’.

Today we’ll look into what makes up the economy in Project Caesar. Obviously, we’ll go into much more detail on some of these aspects in later Tinto Talks. Right now though, we’ll go through the incomes and expenses of a country in the game.

Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.

And with balancing incomes and expenses, of course there are sliders. Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.

PPVyAPKRbkGNi9xIYE5C6NOVXDxOaKswGQxu3b9gcCc5b8PaXSO_4sODLXCE9t-2sCfSwMaYbao8Y8IpjpMcZ-3Li3cjmXxnCuQHY888ARMvCKmuZeZi9YONLLwVmt6lqVB8kIxvg2TKYmGp4hQuBro


Incomes

If we start with income, you have trade-related incomes, which is a system we will delve deep into in early May, as well as diplomatically related income. You also gain gold from provinces (not locations) that sell surplus food they can not store in their local market. Neither of these you directly control with any slider though.

The bulk of most countries' income will come from taxes though, and taxes in Project Caesar are really different than before. First of all, every estate has a possible tax base, a concept we will delve into much more detail next week. This you can attempt tax from them, but every estate has a maximum tax you can take from them, which depends on your laws and their privileges, and how much power they have in your country. The higher the tax you take from them, the lower their satisfaction equilibrium becomes. Some examples of tax affecting things include the Catholic religion which limits the taxes on Clergy, and also the ‘Auxilium et Consilium’ estate privilege for the nobles, which reduces the tax they pay.

Finally, for something that has existed in some older of our games, we have minting. Now what is that you may ask? Minting is the possibility to get more money by printing more coins. It just has the slight drawback of increasing your inflation the more you do it.

mcArWw0iiueMRbtuRVgr3tLJUkvlZI-4vzXpCOFRgy7tlJ95fi9Ul9F_NgppYsABpYjJhR5M4JOoFIVmdhU5hoPFnmSFkPQRswUoYAr4dDXFYK9zZmS9jr1q8YQmfKv1XoSmTwnR0t27uOq3NINFcDE

Here we have the possibility to tax the commoners a fair bit more…


Expenses
We all do love gaining gold, but sadly we also have to spend it, and while we can reduce some of the spending, we can not completely avoid all of it.

First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

Then we have the cost for your standing army and navy, where spending less reduces their fighting capability. This is nothing new to our GSG games, so I am not sure why I need to mention this here.

Fort Maintenance is another common economic expense from our games, which is here as well. If you don’t pay, garrisons don’t tend to stick around.

Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.

You can also decide how much you wish to spend on your colonial charters, which is a new system we will talk about later this year.

Finally, the last thing you can impact with a slider is your investment in stability. The cost for how much your investments are needed depends on the size of your country, with different laws and societal values impacting it as well. Stability in itself ranges from +100 to -100, and will decay towards 0 on its own. There are two other ways to impact your stability gain, besides investing gold as mentioned here. One of them relates to the cabinet system, but another is a more long-term impact from how your country is built up, as it is based upon how many clergy pops you have of your state religion compared to the total population.

There are other expenses as you can see below, but one important thing to mention is that provinces that lack food will try to buy it from the local market.
2yQQjfeKu7xLnxbIQDUCpaLaDWxRaVY8r0ZloXbKvnsq3_jT82Ld10Zz_HlNw6AsPb2SLX3Gs2uZoac7oPPXpuJtQlw2FlhL0y5RZOf7vI7sKd2t7PcMBeg-sQi9H_BCSAU2EAlNEn6wP6ybQI4mmYE

Maybe maybe we should cut down on our fleet, and maybe we don’t need ALL those forts. Our standing army of 200 brave footmen is enough!

Next week we’ll talk more in depth about how the tax base functions, how the food system works, and some other related issues.
 
  • 223Love
  • 200Like
  • 26
  • 6
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
For all our differences, this is one thing I actually agree with Vic3 team. Slider in Vic2 feels useless and sometimes I just want it to snap to a certain position. Also not even modern state have this much of power to change tax by 0.1% on daily basis.
I'm pretty sure it will be something influenced by a modifier, and the stronger your administration and tech is, the more accurate you can tax and more efficiently while doing so.

Basically, a tax rate should have a very wide margin of error at the start, where if you charge like 5.1% and change it to 5.4% you basically get no change because it's the early game and the margin of error is high, trending towards lowballing you at all times. Except the lucky situation every decade or so when someone gives a little more than they should have
 
  • 3
Reactions:
I'm pretty sure it will be something influenced by a modifier, and the stronger your administration and tech is, the more accurate you can tax and more efficiently while doing so.

Basically, a tax rate should have a very wide margin of error at the start, where if you charge like 5.1% and change it to 5.4% you basically get no change because it's the early game and the margin of error is high, trending towards lowballing you at all times. Except the lucky situation every decade or so when someone gives a little more than they should have
If there'd be any kind of false/misleading information in this game, or at least incomplete ledger, it'd be very based for them and this game will the best. Sometimes in CK I want my spymaster to outright make me think that a person exist when he actually isn't or vice versa.

But I'm 99% sure they won't implement that.
 
One thing that the newly released Millenia does, which is really in my opinion, is slowly introducing features over the duration of the game. This helps with the learning curve, as you don't need to learn all game mechanics at once. You mentioned that culture will become available in the age of renaissance. Is that for the same reason, flattening the learning curve, or is that for historical accuracy?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
@Johan

Will the console be available inside the game e.g. EU4, or outside the game e.g. VIC3, or not at all?
I sincerely hope you move the console out of the game like VIC3 did, to make it a bit more bothersome for cheaters
(Using the console for fun is of course perfectly acceptable i.e. not claiming gameplay is legitimate when it is undoubtably cheated).
Also, I hope there isn't any console command that makes the achievment symbol yellow like there is for EU4...
Thanks.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
@Johan do you plan to integrate LLM (chatgpt et similia) in project Caesar ?

And now when you will provide more information about pops and how they interact each other, outside of player control ?
 
  • 9
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I don't know if this has ben asked so here goes.
Since the expense has no group for "development" does that mean that when we attempt to upgrade a village to a town or a town to a city it will not cost extra?
Will that instead be a one time lump sum that you pay and the location will be less productive as the improvement goes on?
 
I wish everyone who's thirsting for drama would find themselves some 'influencer' to follow on asocial media and stop trying to insert drama between the staff at Paradox. It gets old quickly.
I don't think making this connection is thirsting for drama. I just found the difference curious and noted it, because Victoria 3 is also a GSG deeply focused on economy and a different decision was made. I'm sorry if it makes you feel that way.

Differences of opinions and their reasonings are not negative or the reason for drama, but instead open the door for very interesting debates in game design. I don't have a preference on this topic, when I play Victoria 3 I just use the buttons without thinking about that.

I love reading Tinto Talks (and DD of other games) because of the insight on game design they provide and in this case that comment of sliders vs buttons have raised my attention on this topic. Now I would love to know the reasoning in both cases and the different considerations each team has made, not to insert drama or to compete but to learn.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
@Johan do you plan to integrate LLM (chatgpt et similia) in project Caesar ?
I can't imagine why or what the use of a language model would be here?

Anywho. Long time EU4 player though I haven't really played since 2020. I caught up on some of the modern DLC and started playing again because of these Dev logs though.

Wow! This is spectacular. I'm very excited for the evolution from "board game with extra steps" to simulation. I've always been a huge fan of simulation games even if current EU4 has its charms with how it's played.

I'm excited to see more economy and more emergent systems. I really hope this adds a lot of variety while at peace time too. I like the idea of feasibly building tall and prosperous as a trade nation and not being quite as focused on conquest. EU4 to me seems to have a bit of an issue that no matter how you want to play it's always more efficient to be aggressive. It's definitely a "map painter" because of that. Still at amazing game though!

Investing in the estates is wonderful, too. I like the idea of giving possibly giving back later down the line. The different tax brackets for the estates makes me very excited for the potential of different play styles favoring different estates that build different things.

Currently in eu4 estates feel very abstract.a little more trade power cause the traders like you or a lil more this or that depending on who (or who doesn't) like you and their relative influence.

I have one question for @Johan, since there is a population system with immigration, will "locations" culture be homogenous or will you have essentially a pie chart or other representation of the makeup of the population?
 
I don't think making this connection is thirsting for drama. I just found the difference curious and noted it, because Victoria 3 is also a GSG deeply focused on economy and a different decision was made. I'm sorry if it makes you feel that way.

Differences of opinions and their reasonings are not negative or the reason for drama, but instead open the door for very interesting debates in game design. I don't have a preference on this topic, when I play Victoria 3 I just use the buttons without thinking about that.

I love reading Tinto Talks (and DD of other games) because of the insight on game design they provide and in this case that comment of sliders vs buttons have raised my attention on this topic. Now I would love to know the reasoning in both cases and the different considerations each team has made, not to insert drama or to compete but to learn.
You may not have been the most valid target for my ire, my apologies. I think there has been a rising trend of people using Project Caesar design choices as "proof" that their negative opinion of Vic3 is objective truth or something. I read your questions as part of that trend, sorry.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
It might make sense to have a slider to be able to pay to increase tech speed.

Good example from Roger Crowley's book Conquerors is Portugal's monarchs sponsoring not just exploration but the evolution of sailing, navigation and naval gunnery technology advances.

It also talks about how this government sponsorship drew experts in these fields from all over, including from Germany, Jews on expulsion from Spain, and Italians.
 
Generally speaking: Please don't ditch the Eurocentric theme of Europa Universalis, given heightened and ideological political sensitivities in popular culture currently. History was actually Eurocentric for a time on this actual planet in actual human history.
 
  • 8
  • 5
  • 2Haha
Reactions:
History was actually Eurocentric for a time
How can history be Eurocentric? Historical scholarship may certainly be, but not history itself.
 
  • 7Like
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
Welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Talks, where we talk about really super secret stuff, that is hidden behind the code name of ‘Project Caesar’.

Today we’ll look into what makes up the economy in Project Caesar. Obviously, we’ll go into much more detail on some of these aspects in later Tinto Talks. Right now though, we’ll go through the incomes and expenses of a country in the game.

Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.

And with balancing incomes and expenses, of course there are sliders. Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.

PPVyAPKRbkGNi9xIYE5C6NOVXDxOaKswGQxu3b9gcCc5b8PaXSO_4sODLXCE9t-2sCfSwMaYbao8Y8IpjpMcZ-3Li3cjmXxnCuQHY888ARMvCKmuZeZi9YONLLwVmt6lqVB8kIxvg2TKYmGp4hQuBro


Incomes

If we start with income, you have trade-related incomes, which is a system we will delve deep into in early May, as well as diplomatically related income. You also gain gold from provinces (not locations) that sell surplus food they can not store in their local market. Neither of these you directly control with any slider though.

The bulk of most countries' income will come from taxes though, and taxes in Project Caesar are really different than before. First of all, every estate has a possible tax base, a concept we will delve into much more detail next week. This you can attempt tax from them, but every estate has a maximum tax you can take from them, which depends on your laws and their privileges, and how much power they have in your country. The higher the tax you take from them, the lower their satisfaction equilibrium becomes. Some examples of tax affecting things include the Catholic religion which limits the taxes on Clergy, and also the ‘Auxilium et Consilium’ estate privilege for the nobles, which reduces the tax they pay.

Finally, for something that has existed in some older of our games, we have minting. Now what is that you may ask? Minting is the possibility to get more money by printing more coins. It just has the slight drawback of increasing your inflation the more you do it.

mcArWw0iiueMRbtuRVgr3tLJUkvlZI-4vzXpCOFRgy7tlJ95fi9Ul9F_NgppYsABpYjJhR5M4JOoFIVmdhU5hoPFnmSFkPQRswUoYAr4dDXFYK9zZmS9jr1q8YQmfKv1XoSmTwnR0t27uOq3NINFcDE

Here we have the possibility to tax the commoners a fair bit more…


Expenses
We all do love gaining gold, but sadly we also have to spend it, and while we can reduce some of the spending, we can not completely avoid all of it.

First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

Then we have the cost for your standing army and navy, where spending less reduces their fighting capability. This is nothing new to our GSG games, so I am not sure why I need to mention this here.

Fort Maintenance is another common economic expense from our games, which is here as well. If you don’t pay, garrisons don’t tend to stick around.

Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.

You can also decide how much you wish to spend on your colonial charters, which is a new system we will talk about later this year.

Finally, the last thing you can impact with a slider is your investment in stability. The cost for how much your investments are needed depends on the size of your country, with different laws and societal values impacting it as well. Stability in itself ranges from +100 to -100, and will decay towards 0 on its own. There are two other ways to impact your stability gain, besides investing gold as mentioned here. One of them relates to the cabinet system, but another is a more long-term impact from how your country is built up, as it is based upon how many clergy pops you have of your state religion compared to the total population.

There are other expenses as you can see below, but one important thing to mention is that provinces that lack food will try to buy it from the local market.
2yQQjfeKu7xLnxbIQDUCpaLaDWxRaVY8r0ZloXbKvnsq3_jT82Ld10Zz_HlNw6AsPb2SLX3Gs2uZoac7oPPXpuJtQlw2FlhL0y5RZOf7vI7sKd2t7PcMBeg-sQi9H_BCSAU2EAlNEn6wP6ybQI4mmYE

Maybe maybe we should cut down on our fleet, and maybe we don’t need ALL those forts. Our standing army of 200 brave footmen is enough!

Next week we’ll talk more in depth about how the tax base functions, how the food system works, and some other related issues.
Is 'stability' really something you can simply spend money on it and magically improve? Would it better to named it ad 'bureaucracy' or 'administration' and make it relevant for other things, such as stability, your capacity to govern far provinces, etc?
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
How can history be Eurocentric? Historical scholarship may certainly be, but not history itself.
Yes, but with reference to the era of the renaissance, colonialism and the "great divergence" a focus on those as a central theme is necessary to understand human history generally for several centuries. So it is "Eurocentric" in a real sense.
 
  • 2
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
Welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Talks, where we talk about really super secret stuff, that is hidden behind the code name of ‘Project Caesar’.

Today we’ll look into what makes up the economy in Project Caesar. Obviously, we’ll go into much more detail on some of these aspects in later Tinto Talks. Right now though, we’ll go through the incomes and expenses of a country in the game.

Every month you have running incomes and expenses that need to be balanced, and if your balance is positive, your gold is increased and you can use that gold to invest in other things.

And with balancing incomes and expenses, of course there are sliders. Having some buttons for just a few possible options for taxes or expenses, like in Imperator, is not really fitting for a GSG with deep economical gameplay.

PPVyAPKRbkGNi9xIYE5C6NOVXDxOaKswGQxu3b9gcCc5b8PaXSO_4sODLXCE9t-2sCfSwMaYbao8Y8IpjpMcZ-3Li3cjmXxnCuQHY888ARMvCKmuZeZi9YONLLwVmt6lqVB8kIxvg2TKYmGp4hQuBro


Incomes

If we start with income, you have trade-related incomes, which is a system we will delve deep into in early May, as well as diplomatically related income. You also gain gold from provinces (not locations) that sell surplus food they can not store in their local market. Neither of these you directly control with any slider though.

The bulk of most countries' income will come from taxes though, and taxes in Project Caesar are really different than before. First of all, every estate has a possible tax base, a concept we will delve into much more detail next week. This you can attempt tax from them, but every estate has a maximum tax you can take from them, which depends on your laws and their privileges, and how much power they have in your country. The higher the tax you take from them, the lower their satisfaction equilibrium becomes. Some examples of tax affecting things include the Catholic religion which limits the taxes on Clergy, and also the ‘Auxilium et Consilium’ estate privilege for the nobles, which reduces the tax they pay.

Finally, for something that has existed in some older of our games, we have minting. Now what is that you may ask? Minting is the possibility to get more money by printing more coins. It just has the slight drawback of increasing your inflation the more you do it.

mcArWw0iiueMRbtuRVgr3tLJUkvlZI-4vzXpCOFRgy7tlJ95fi9Ul9F_NgppYsABpYjJhR5M4JOoFIVmdhU5hoPFnmSFkPQRswUoYAr4dDXFYK9zZmS9jr1q8YQmfKv1XoSmTwnR0t27uOq3NINFcDE

Here we have the possibility to tax the commoners a fair bit more…


Expenses
We all do love gaining gold, but sadly we also have to spend it, and while we can reduce some of the spending, we can not completely avoid all of it.

First of all, we have the Cost of the Court. This is something that is directly correlated to the economic base of your country, and if you spend less gold than expected, your legitimacy, or equivalent applicable government power, will decrease over time, and the more you spend, the more legitimacy can increase. There are advances, laws, and other things that impact how much you need to spend here.

Then we have the cost for your standing army and navy, where spending less reduces their fighting capability. This is nothing new to our GSG games, so I am not sure why I need to mention this here.

Fort Maintenance is another common economic expense from our games, which is here as well. If you don’t pay, garrisons don’t tend to stick around.

Culture, this is an entirely new concept, which will become available in the Age of Renaissance, where you can invest money to get [TO BE TALKED ABOUT LATER], while also impacting your prestige.

You can also decide how much you wish to spend on your colonial charters, which is a new system we will talk about later this year.

Finally, the last thing you can impact with a slider is your investment in stability. The cost for how much your investments are needed depends on the size of your country, with different laws and societal values impacting it as well. Stability in itself ranges from +100 to -100, and will decay towards 0 on its own. There are two other ways to impact your stability gain, besides investing gold as mentioned here. One of them relates to the cabinet system, but another is a more long-term impact from how your country is built up, as it is based upon how many clergy pops you have of your state religion compared to the total population.

There are other expenses as you can see below, but one important thing to mention is that provinces that lack food will try to buy it from the local market.
2yQQjfeKu7xLnxbIQDUCpaLaDWxRaVY8r0ZloXbKvnsq3_jT82Ld10Zz_HlNw6AsPb2SLX3Gs2uZoac7oPPXpuJtQlw2FlhL0y5RZOf7vI7sKd2t7PcMBeg-sQi9H_BCSAU2EAlNEn6wP6ybQI4mmYE

Maybe maybe we should cut down on our fleet, and maybe we don’t need ALL those forts. Our standing army of 200 brave footmen is enough!

Next week we’ll talk more in depth about how the tax base functions, how the food system works, and some other related issues.
Also, rewarding taxes/trade revenue. In that phase of history, polities were subject to many internal duties and customs (you enter another duchy, even in the same kingdom: you pay taxes on goods; you cross a bridge, you pay taxes). This whole system was surpassed only during the Revolution age. It would be interesting to have something similar: taxes that maybe reduce the cohesion of your kingdom and that you can drop at a certain point for a more unified realm, but less money. Also, over time the people tasked with revenue collection changed. Again for most of this epoch, polities relied on private financers to collect taxes... with many inefficiencies. The more you develop your administration, the more you should be able to centralise tax collection.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
the renaissance,
what does this have to do with anything? The Renaissance was exclusively Western European, and at the time had no effects on the larger world.
colonialism
In the New World, sure. It took the Europeans until the tail-end of the EU timeline to actually engage in imperialism proper, though. Just because you have a fort in a city to trade does not mean you have any superiority over the city.
the "great divergence"
an event whose start date is extremely controversial. Again in tangible terms we only see a difference beginning in the 1700s. I certainly do not see why this needs to be railroaded, since in 1337 there was certainly no indication that (Western) Europe would come out on top. Unless you are implying there were certain conditions that made such a divergence guaranteed in the 14th century itself - in which case, list them out.
 
  • 10
Reactions:
I really hope there will be no fantomatic loans out of nowhere. it would be so cool to take loan from the filthy rich Florence and be forced to pay or take -1000000 aggressive expansion + economic disaster if not payed or something like that (or decide to pay later with a big increase in rate cumulating !)

The money from the loan paradise in EU4 is insanely broken.

I also hope to have some soft and hard blocks like in EU4 where nobody can skyrocket in one domain like in stellaris when you can boom in science and never be caught anymore. In stellaris the start is pretty balanced but the game tend to unbalance, in EU4 the start is unbalanced but the game mechanics are balanced making impossible to have 20 tech advantage on other nations and that's what make the multiplayer really cool in my opinion !

I also hope for corsairs and piracy omg !

I hope a lot D:
 
  • 2Love
  • 2
Reactions:
will there be hellenic renments at the start date. because historicly the last followers of the hellenic faith converted in the 14th century
Did it? My understanding was the last Hellenic holdouts were rural shepherds in the 9th/10th century, with a Syrian desert town keeping their Hellenised pantheon until the 12th century when the town was razed. I'm not aware of any other holdouts by 1337.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Abstract expense named stability, probably exists for gameplay reasons.

And, no, reducing taxes and "invest" in an estate it's not the same, especially if you have 0 tax policy for certain estate, as shown in the pictures above. If the estate is still dissatisfied, the way to change it, could be through stability expenses, helping them in some way. In the example from the yesterdays DD, that could mean giving them money to build a cathedral, or monastery etc.

Should the name of that expense be changed, sure. Could it be less abstract, of course, but it would maybe complicate the game too much, so they decided to simplify it a bit.

Anyhow, what I would want to know, what kind of goods will exist in this super secret game, we have no idea what it's gonna be called, and how will they be presented, one per location, several per province from which you can choose for a location, or several per location, depending on historic and geographic criteria?
Are there going to be raw goods, and manufactured goods, like wool, and cloth, or grape and wine, etc? What about goods extracted from mines, like gold, iron, salt etc. Would there be any difference between size of the deposits, and development of the mine itself in the specific location (something like mine levels from 1 to 5)?
What about mines owned by the crown itself, where are those incomes shown, in the "other income"?
Is the fertility of the land be a thing, like not having the same food production with same technologies and population around river Po in Italy and in Sicilian hills for example?

Are we gonna have more buildings existing in the game compared to other PDX games? From taverns and brothels, to lighthouses and storehouses, and later on, theaters and museums.
 
  • 1
Reactions: