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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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Hi Johan & All,

I posted this in a thread a few weeks back. I’m not sure if the devs read this, but in the hopes that I can have some positive impact on the game I wanted to post it again here hopefully somebody who has an influence on the game design can see it:

I just wanted to say a few thoughts as someone who has been a loyal paradox supporter since I bought EU II & Crown of the North way back in 2003 and as a shareholder since 2020. Hopefully I can provide some tiny part in making my favorite game of all time be the best it can be.

Firstly I would like to mention I am going to take on many topics so please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things I say. Thanks.
Also I will say many of the things I was going to point out have already been confirmed or implied as in the game and I am very excited about the progress in what I assume is going to be Svea Rike IV aka Crown of the North III :)

Okay here we go:
  • The rise and fall of great powers: I think we need to make it so great powers have the struggles they really did in the EU II timeframe. This will make plalying to the mid or even late game more viable. With great power comes great usurpers, powerful nobles, foreign enemies, civil war etc. In another thread I said how I would sum it up here:
    • "Lets have a new more nuanced EU 5. Attempting to hold the big empire together will be more fun when its not whack a mole rebels but a real challenge. Also real big empires had real big collapses in the EU timeframe: Golden Horde, Yuan, Ming, Serbia, Delhi Sultanate, Timurid, Mameluke, Poland-Lithuania, Mali and so forth."
    • Also look at China in this timeframe as an example. The catastrophic fall of a foreign great power. The dramatic rise of a new local great power. The catastrophic fall of that power, the dramatic rise of a foreign great power. There are many such examples.
  • AI: Please don't neglect it. I made a thread here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/please-dont-neglect-the-ai.1661839/
  • Playing tall: Playing tall should be more viable. A more nuanced and slow paced game would make that more possible. The EU IV timeframe was one where smaller nations often dominated larger ones. Oftentimes these had much smaller populations. Think the Dutch, Manchu, Early Ottomans, the unlikely survival of many small states for many centuries. There are lots of examples. This can be achieved in many ways:
    • Development (but not via mana please)
    • Buildings
    • Technology
    • Recruitable population and the motivation of those recruits and many other methods
  • Power Creep: Please no whatever you do no power creep. I'm looking at you HOI 4. Power creep means a shorter and shorter playthorugh. It means you need hegemonies just to get the game over with. Its fun to look at, maybe it sells DLC but its not fun to play. This goes hand in hand with "the rise and fall of great powers".
  • Limited wars: not every war in EU's timeframe was a total all out annihilation war some smaller conflicts with smaller land grabs will make the game last longer.
  • Diplomatic relation limitation: Strict limits on relations is not an ideal mechanic. I want to deal with many nations of the world. There can be other ways to limit players taking advantage of this.
  • Types of alliances: There should be more types of alliances. Some more specific and others more broad allowing for more complex diplomacy.
  • Vassal types: It would be nice to have more vassal types in game. In this time period there were many more overlord vassal relationships than just the basic all in do as I say relationship. A vassal that perhaps contributes a levy or two to a war rather than joining all in or vassals that will join only for a promise of pillage or gold for example. More dynamic options and types would be great.
  • Technology: In EU IV technology evens out as the game progresses. Exactly the opposite of what happened historically. It throws off emersion when you have cannon foundaries in the middle of nowhare. Some parts of the world were still effectively in the stone age/iron age in EU's timeframe. Technology should diverge over time not the other way around.
  • Balance of power: There should be a balance of power not just aggressive expansion. Don't get me wrong I think AE is realistic and needed but nations get nervous and will unite against a perceived large threat even if they are not the bully as of late. This is especially notable in the mid to later part of EU's timeframe.
  • Province transfer: Not sure how this could be implemented but there were many cases of land being absorbed without a treaty especially in the early EU timeframe.
  • Something beyond "Cores" please. What is a core anyway? Just as an example the people in Aquitaine were loyal to the English in the 100 years war though cultural and linguistically different. They were loyal through hundreds of years of shared leadership and economic interests etc. I really really really don't like the abstraction of cores.
Okay all, thanks for hearing me out. Again please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things and hopefully this somehow makes its way Johan's desk.
 
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Cube stone block for stone and a red brick for clay unless clay has other uses than brick-ish ones.
Also yes the numbers are still very much maya, impermanent, but i strongly suspect the output needs either a doubling or the input a halving or the medieval economy will be in semi-permanent depression even under the best of times. Especially as labor is included, not merely a machining process to turn lumber, iron and leather? to stone

That parish church better have a peasant happiness modifier, not merely a power alterer. Afterall there is God on their terms and beer and pretty prismatic glasses. Oh and summerlabor, for kids born too early compared to the date of marriage. Such fathers get to work on the parish church roof! lol
 
Some claim you can build Stockades of wood, but we trust only stone!
A question that has been bouncing around in the back of my mind since you started discussing production a few weeks back:

Is there any possibility of having flexibility on what resources are used to build building? I appreciate why stone vs. wood in fortification is of particular importance, but for most buildings, its not as important. You can travel around and see plenty of churches built of stone and plenty built of wood.

I appreciate that this would potentially add a bunch of complexity and might not be worth it on first glance - though I would argue that having the flexibility to build based on what you actually have locally is, in itself, worth the added level of granularity. I also appreciate that, if something like this would be incorporated, it would almost certainly wait until after release.

Perhaps it would work best by having a 'construction material' trade good that can be produced through various combinations of wood, stone, brick, marble, etc. (whatever the possible list of such goods is), similar to how paper mills can rely on various raw materials for paper. Or perhaps it make more sense to have specifically wood vs stone versions of various buildings. Wooden churches and stone churches could be identical in most respects (maybe a cost bump for a stone church with some benefit to balance).
 
yes, its included in the PM for it.
Sorry to ask again but I'm really curious about the answer, but when you say yes, do you mean just that maintenance costs are built into the production method or also that buildings will decay if not turned on/maintained.

And if buildings do decay, will they require extra resources to bring back up to working condition? Will they be destroyed if left to decay for long enough?
 
Hello Johan, do you have any idea for an achievment right now? Like any single achievment? Did you think about it already or is it too small of a detail at this stage of development? I'm really into achievments and love all the cool names and backstories behind them. Cheers Johan Al Gaib.
 
This is good. It did not feel good to build cavalry as Australian natives before Europeans arrived. I had to headcanon riding emus
 
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Are you saying that as a dev or as a player? I min-maxed my build for PDX GSGs, but so far with 16GB of RAM the worst bottleneck I've had was with the graphics card, or lack thereof. Upgrading to a GTX 960 (this was in 2021 for reference) fixed that though.

Eitherway, what I'm asking is, all else equal, could I expect significant performance improvements from doubling my RAM at this point? Or is that for running Excel spreadsheets and two dozen browser tabs on another screen? I don't need a concrete answer for this game, but for the rest of your catalogue I'm genuinely curious.
their recent games all work far better than the old ones who all were lagging on late game till updated later .
i dont think this game will run any different than ck3 or vic3 . ram also is cheap i mean a regular16gb ddr4 should cost around 20 dollars ? i assume if someone can afford buying games then a Ram should be way easier to afford than an SSD or a graphic card . and with pdx games all you need so far is Ram , even a gtx 960 or 1050 can run their games fine
 
In a previous dev diary you indicated that surplus food would be sold to the market and that the state would profit from this sale directly (based on control). Given that every other resource now selling to their local market funds the population directly based on estate power in that location, does that mean that food also works that way now, or is food still directly profiting the state as opposed to all other resources?
 
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What will be the balance of power between European and Asian states? The thing I didn't like most about Eu4 was the pip issue and the European states gaining superiority over the Asian states as time went by even Asians reach highest technology level. If the Caesar project will be realistic and we consider that it will start in 1337(dark age of europe), I think it should be quite easy to conquer European states with such as the Golden Horde, Timurids etc.
That's fun because what I miss the most about early EU4 was how powerful the European nations were. Back when India was 1/3 the amount of provinces and only one culture, that felt very colonialist. I don't think the British cared much about the different subcultures of Africa, India or Southeast Asia. They just wanted to know what goods they could steal and sell off back home.
 
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Hi Johan & All,

I posted this in a thread a few weeks back. I’m not sure if the devs read this, but in the hopes that I can have some positive impact on the game I wanted to post it again here hopefully somebody who has an influence on the game design can see it:

I just wanted to say a few thoughts as someone who has been a loyal paradox supporter since I bought EU II & Crown of the North way back in 2003 and as a shareholder since 2020. Hopefully I can provide some tiny part in making my favorite game of all time be the best it can be.

Firstly I would like to mention I am going to take on many topics so please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things I say. Thanks.
Also I will say many of the things I was going to point out have already been confirmed or implied as in the game and I am very excited about the progress in what I assume is going to be Svea Rike IV aka Crown of the North III :)

Okay here we go:
  • The rise and fall of great powers: I think we need to make it so great powers have the struggles they really did in the EU II timeframe. This will make plalying to the mid or even late game more viable. With great power comes great usurpers, powerful nobles, foreign enemies, civil war etc. In another thread I said how I would sum it up here:
    • "Lets have a new more nuanced EU 5. Attempting to hold the big empire together will be more fun when its not whack a mole rebels but a real challenge. Also real big empires had real big collapses in the EU timeframe: Golden Horde, Yuan, Ming, Serbia, Delhi Sultanate, Timurid, Mameluke, Poland-Lithuania, Mali and so forth."
    • Also look at China in this timeframe as an example. The catastrophic fall of a foreign great power. The dramatic rise of a new local great power. The catastrophic fall of that power, the dramatic rise of a foreign great power. There are many such examples.
  • AI: Please don't neglect it. I made a thread here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/please-dont-neglect-the-ai.1661839/
  • Playing tall: Playing tall should be more viable. A more nuanced and slow paced game would make that more possible. The EU IV timeframe was one where smaller nations often dominated larger ones. Oftentimes these had much smaller populations. Think the Dutch, Manchu, Early Ottomans, the unlikely survival of many small states for many centuries. There are lots of examples. This can be achieved in many ways:
    • Development (but not via mana please)
    • Buildings
    • Technology
    • Recruitable population and the motivation of those recruits and many other methods
  • Power Creep: Please no whatever you do no power creep. I'm looking at you HOI 4. Power creep means a shorter and shorter playthorugh. It means you need hegemonies just to get the game over with. Its fun to look at, maybe it sells DLC but its not fun to play. This goes hand in hand with "the rise and fall of great powers".
  • Limited wars: not every war in EU's timeframe was a total all out annihilation war some smaller conflicts with smaller land grabs will make the game last longer.
  • Diplomatic relation limitation: Strict limits on relations is not an ideal mechanic. I want to deal with many nations of the world. There can be other ways to limit players taking advantage of this.
  • Types of alliances: There should be more types of alliances. Some more specific and others more broad allowing for more complex diplomacy.
  • Vassal types: It would be nice to have more vassal types in game. In this time period there were many more overlord vassal relationships than just the basic all in do as I say relationship. A vassal that perhaps contributes a levy or two to a war rather than joining all in or vassals that will join only for a promise of pillage or gold for example. More dynamic options and types would be great.
  • Technology: In EU IV technology evens out as the game progresses. Exactly the opposite of what happened historically. It throws off emersion when you have cannon foundaries in the middle of nowhare. Some parts of the world were still effectively in the stone age/iron age in EU's timeframe. Technology should diverge over time not the other way around.
  • Balance of power: There should be a balance of power not just aggressive expansion. Don't get me wrong I think AE is realistic and needed but nations get nervous and will unite against a perceived large threat even if they are not the bully as of late. This is especially notable in the mid to later part of EU's timeframe.
  • Province transfer: Not sure how this could be implemented but there were many cases of land being absorbed without a treaty especially in the early EU timeframe.
  • Something beyond "Cores" please. What is a core anyway? Just as an example the people in Aquitaine were loyal to the English in the 100 years war though cultural and linguistically different. They were loyal through hundreds of years of shared leadership and economic interests etc. I really really really don't like the abstraction of cores.
Okay all, thanks for hearing me out. Again please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things and hopefully this somehow makes its way Johan's desk.
I think that as a whole can be a great new thread to discuss!
 
Hi Johan & All,

I posted this in a thread a few weeks back. I’m not sure if the devs read this, but in the hopes that I can have some positive impact on the game I wanted to post it again here hopefully somebody who has an influence on the game design can see it:

I just wanted to say a few thoughts as someone who has been a loyal paradox supporter since I bought EU II & Crown of the North way back in 2003 and as a shareholder since 2020. Hopefully I can provide some tiny part in making my favorite game of all time be the best it can be.

Firstly I would like to mention I am going to take on many topics so please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things I say. Thanks.
Also I will say many of the things I was going to point out have already been confirmed or implied as in the game and I am very excited about the progress in what I assume is going to be Svea Rike IV aka Crown of the North III :)

Okay here we go:
  • The rise and fall of great powers: I think we need to make it so great powers have the struggles they really did in the EU II timeframe. This will make plalying to the mid or even late game more viable. With great power comes great usurpers, powerful nobles, foreign enemies, civil war etc. In another thread I said how I would sum it up here:
    • "Lets have a new more nuanced EU 5. Attempting to hold the big empire together will be more fun when its not whack a mole rebels but a real challenge. Also real big empires had real big collapses in the EU timeframe: Golden Horde, Yuan, Ming, Serbia, Delhi Sultanate, Timurid, Mameluke, Poland-Lithuania, Mali and so forth."
    • Also look at China in this timeframe as an example. The catastrophic fall of a foreign great power. The dramatic rise of a new local great power. The catastrophic fall of that power, the dramatic rise of a foreign great power. There are many such examples.
  • AI: Please don't neglect it. I made a thread here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/please-dont-neglect-the-ai.1661839/
  • Playing tall: Playing tall should be more viable. A more nuanced and slow paced game would make that more possible. The EU IV timeframe was one where smaller nations often dominated larger ones. Oftentimes these had much smaller populations. Think the Dutch, Manchu, Early Ottomans, the unlikely survival of many small states for many centuries. There are lots of examples. This can be achieved in many ways:
    • Development (but not via mana please)
    • Buildings
    • Technology
    • Recruitable population and the motivation of those recruits and many other methods
  • Power Creep: Please no whatever you do no power creep. I'm looking at you HOI 4. Power creep means a shorter and shorter playthorugh. It means you need hegemonies just to get the game over with. Its fun to look at, maybe it sells DLC but its not fun to play. This goes hand in hand with "the rise and fall of great powers".
  • Limited wars: not every war in EU's timeframe was a total all out annihilation war some smaller conflicts with smaller land grabs will make the game last longer.
  • Diplomatic relation limitation: Strict limits on relations is not an ideal mechanic. I want to deal with many nations of the world. There can be other ways to limit players taking advantage of this.
  • Types of alliances: There should be more types of alliances. Some more specific and others more broad allowing for more complex diplomacy.
  • Vassal types: It would be nice to have more vassal types in game. In this time period there were many more overlord vassal relationships than just the basic all in do as I say relationship. A vassal that perhaps contributes a levy or two to a war rather than joining all in or vassals that will join only for a promise of pillage or gold for example. More dynamic options and types would be great.
  • Technology: In EU IV technology evens out as the game progresses. Exactly the opposite of what happened historically. It throws off emersion when you have cannon foundaries in the middle of nowhare. Some parts of the world were still effectively in the stone age/iron age in EU's timeframe. Technology should diverge over time not the other way around.
  • Balance of power: There should be a balance of power not just aggressive expansion. Don't get me wrong I think AE is realistic and needed but nations get nervous and will unite against a perceived large threat even if they are not the bully as of late. This is especially notable in the mid to later part of EU's timeframe.
  • Province transfer: Not sure how this could be implemented but there were many cases of land being absorbed without a treaty especially in the early EU timeframe.
  • Something beyond "Cores" please. What is a core anyway? Just as an example the people in Aquitaine were loyal to the English in the 100 years war though cultural and linguistically different. They were loyal through hundreds of years of shared leadership and economic interests etc. I really really really don't like the abstraction of cores.
Okay all, thanks for hearing me out. Again please don't downvote if you disagree with one or two things and hopefully this somehow makes its way Johan's desk.
this post alone will make the game release until 2027 ( joking)
 
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Would as an example of specific culture/tag buldings, the Dutch culture/tag get to build polders as unique building option for them in wetland/marsh locations to improve food and/or agricultural production at that location?
 
All pretty good stuff, but the hefty list of trade goods necessary to build buildings gives me pause. Developing a nation is one of my favorite aspects, but requiring a bunch of materials to both make, and then maintain a building sounds like it would punish small nations. I understand the idea that maybe it slows production, but if say I need a bunch of materials to maintain my forts that I can't import it sounds like it makes it real easy for big nations to conquer me.

I wonder then how trade will function- will it be like Imperator Rome where I have to invest in trade routes and then import the materials from a specific locale? I always found that too micro-managing. Or will it be more abstracted like EUIV where trade flows automatically from one zone to another?
 
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Jokes aside. I love the dedication and feel. This is what we expect from modern day pdx titles. Keep up the amazing work!
This is where I want to use both the laughing and disagree reactions. Victoria 3 is awesome and will continue to get better. Not-EUV is allowed to take inspiration from an older game and tweak its mechanics to suite the new project's needs.
 
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