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Tinto Talks #9 - 24th of April 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, this is the 9th of its kind, where we talk about our very secret game using the codename Project Caesar. And today we continue with the 3rd of the 4 talks we have now about the economy systems of the game. So lets start..

Constructions
In the previous development diary, we mentioned constructions and how you needed lumber for expanding the mines. In this game, almost all constructions require different materials to progress, and if that material is not available in the local market, then that construction is stalled until the material is available. This includes things like road building, shipbuilding, recruiting regiments, building buildings, or expanding R.G.O’s.

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Not sure why you want another monastery?

For example, building a light ship in the Age of Renaissance requires Naval Supplies, Lumber, Weaponry, Copper, Tin, and Metalworks, while moving your capital requires Paper, Books, Stone, Lumber, Marble, and gold.


Buildings
Buildings are rather important in Project Caesar. There are hundreds of different types of buildings, some can only be built in rural locations, and some require a town or city. Some can only be built in ports, and some can only be built in other countries. Some you can only build when there is no owner of a location. Lots of buildings are unique to cultures, regions, religions, or even to specific tags.

Some buildings can only have 1 level, some have a fixed cap, and some have a cap that scales with the population or development, and so on.

Buildings can also be categorized into three different categories: buildings that can produce goods, buildings that only give effects, and buildings that can only be built by the estates. Those pure estates usually have a drawback to them as well, and it's not easy to remove them

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Definitely not something we are all that keen on having in here.. it does increase demands for some goods though..

So what about producing buildings then? This is where the truly fun parts of the economy start. Project Caesar has a large amount of different goods. We currently have about 70 different ones that have different needs, some are needed for the military, some are needed solely by pops, some are needed for buildings, and so on.

Producing Buildings in towns and cities go from guilds and workshops to manufactories and mills at the of the game. These include everything from Paper Makers Guilds to Foundries. A producing building outputs one or more types of goods.

Finally, we have buildings that are purely giving an effect. These include Granaries that increase how much food you can store, libraries that increase literacy, different types of forts, buildings that train manpower, port buildings to help with shipbuilding, and much more.

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Some claim you can build Stockades of wood, but we trust only stone!

Almost all buildings though, have a production method, which impacts how they work.

Production methods
All buildings have at least one production method slot with one production method, but many have different methods in each slot, and there are plenty of buildings with multiple production method slots.

What is a production method then?
A production method is a list of goods that are required for a building to function. There are two categories of production methods, those that produce something and those that do not.
As an example, a Castle does not produce any goods, but it still requires Stone, Metalworks, Weaponry, and Tar to function, and if it does not get those goods, then the Castle will not function properly. The effectiveness of a building is based on the lowest available percentage of goods present, and it will only purchase and use required materials in that percentage required. If the market cannot supply enough resources, then it will not work.

The output of the producing building is also scaled by the percentage mentioned above.

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There are a few options here, but only wood pulp would be profitable here, probably because of the great supply of lumber in this market..

And of course, you can automate the production method selection, which will adapt it on a monthly basis based on what resources are available and what would be profitable. The UI also allows for macro decisions regarding production methods

Other important aspects
Every building requires employed pops to function as well, and those that require “upper class” pops like burghers, clergy, and nobles, also increase the potential for them in the location, making pops slowly promoted. This can be slightly awkward as powerful nobles or clergy construct more buildings that make them more numerous and powerful.


Producing buildings that are not profitable will be closed, and pops will work in other buildings, however, you can always subsidize a building if you require the goods or other benefits it gives.

Speaking of profit. The profit of a building is added to the Tax Base of a location, split among the power of the population in the location.

You can always close and open a building, if you want to manipulate prices, or if you want your pops to work with other things, and you don’t want to destroy a building permanently.



We mentioned last week about different ways to get raw materials, and one way to get it, besides trade, is through a set of rural buildings. These include Lumber Mills that you can build in any wood or forest location to produce lumber, sheep farms, stone quarries, and many more.

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Yeah, this requires some input.. Might be worth it..


There are stockpiles of goods, but those are in the market. There are buildings you can build that increase the amount they can store, as if you do not have the goods required for a building, unit, or construction, those will not function.

Speaking of markets, that is something we will talk about more next week when we delve deep into the trade system.
 
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Also, will all buildings be useable by all people's? e.g. if I conquer a location with a building I may not normally be able to build, would I still be able to operate it?

Most yes
 
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Coal and iron to make steel?
Would be quite ahistorical.

I don't think coal should have any use unless you have a coking technology, tbh. China did it very early on, but not really at a large scale, and it wasn't until the 18th and 19th century that European used coke as a fuel on a large scale.

The fuel of choice for wrought iron/steel production should be charcoal for most of the game's timeframe.
 
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will the resources also be affected by control? Like if a paper mill is in an area that are around 50% control, would only 50% of the paper enter your market? Or maybe would the paper become 50% more expensive?
 
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I suggest automating effectiveness of production method depends on corruption and advisor skills :D
Actually, will we see in a seperate corruption diary how will corruption affect all these systems? Will corruption be important for economics?
 
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Would be quite ahistorical.

I don't think coal should have any use unless you have a coking technology, tbh. China did it very early on, but not really at a large scale, and it wasn't until the 18th and 19th century that European used coke as a fuel on a large scale.

The fuel of choice for wrought iron/steel production should be charcoal for most of the game's timeframe.
The demand for coal was high enough by the early 18th century that the English were digging coal mines underwater. This is what prompted Newcomen to build his atmospheric steam engine.
 
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Rules are more similar to Imperator, which was a 2.0 of the system.

Of course, in the Napoleonic Age, you can freely ignore ZoC if you got the tech for it.

Will it be possible to have special rules for chokepoint fortifications, that block passage and can't be starved, only undermined/bombarded and assaulted (e.g. a fort wall blocking a mountain pass in the Alps)?
Because starving it would require blocking off all accesses, and that could not be done in this scenario (unless the location directly behind got occupied by another army that got in by marching in from a different route, I guess...)?
 
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I don’t know if this has been requested yet as I just discovered these Tinto talks, but I would love to have a dynamic map like Imperator and Victoria 3 where as I zoom in it shows terrain and biome and when I zoom out it shows political. Will Project Caesar have this?

While I love EU4, I can never play on the terrain map, as it is so difficult for me to discern where the political borders lie, particularly during war.
 
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Will there be a fix for the issue in EU4 where the AI would go through player-built fortresses? These guys are fine with pushing carts with owls through the blockade of provincial fortresses, I hope that won't be a problem in Project Caesar.

the AI can't cheat ZoC in Project Caesar, and the rules are less arcane than eu4, so it will be less confusing
 
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Sorry, just to confirm, is it possible to make the default setting ‘automated’ for new buildings / new locations? Or will I have to click the automation button each time for each new building?

One thing I hated in Imperator was running through the list of provinces everytime I conquered anything to find it and then automate trade.

currently we use one global setting for your country
 
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