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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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One thing that is tedious about CK3 is that even if you have the tech for it, you still have to build buildings from the start. Maybe it would be better if we can build advanced versions of the buildings but of course you can stack the build times of the other levels and their costs as well? Like, it's not worth it to build a 14th century castle in the 16th century?
 
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Will there be building slots like in EU4/CK3? I can foresee myself being absolutely livid if these autonomous estates waste a limited slot on some random building I don't actually want.

I'm already not entirely sold on the idea of estates building things on their own. And that would make things 1000x times worse.
 
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Oh yea, detective columbo returning, old capitals?
New capitals requiring all the fancy gold and marble and stuff. This would leave behind a "old capital" building? Some prestige maybe, but its there. Better be, as the marble and gold stays in the old building otherwise you would merely have a lot of labor moving the old marbles, gold and such. No chrysoelephantine? Or maybe such fancy artwork is for cathedrals with a love of the arts.

And as for neglected special buildings. Remember Lazarus? The fellow Jesus thought worthy of resurrection? His second life in Cyprus.
 
I can barely wrap my head around the "hundreds of buildings", especially given that PMs were added to avoid having yet even more buildings.

And the resources! So many resources!
 
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I love this, it provides a much deeper simulation and hence gameplay for peace time.

Quick question though: Say a paper mill produces 1 unit of paper. As I understand, the profit from the mill is added to the locations tax. But only if the unit of paper is sold on the market to another country? If all of my buildings and pop require a cumulative total of 1 unit of paper, the mill would not provide profit?
 
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Will there be building slots like in EU4/CK3? I can foresee myself being absolutely livid if these autonomous estates waste a limited slot on some random building I don't actually want.

I'm already not entirely sold on the idea of estates building things on their own. And that would make things 1000x times worse.
i think its more like imperator . this mean unlimited slots but have a cap dictated by something like population in case of imperator but i could be wrong
 
and so what ? the old games are 10 years old should we really just keep playing the same thing over and over ? isnt it wise to add to the game the best mechanics ? isnt this system good for globalisation and trade with cultures to make it feel authentic to history ? didnt the arabs go all the way to china and indonesia just to bring what they want since the 700s ?
you sound like the EU2 players when EU4 was announced
No, changes are good and they have to be. But it seems like everything that works best in other paradox titles is thrown in here. And that seems too wild to me.
 
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or maybe doable in the Napoleonic Era.

The two main personalities behind the invention of paper production from wood pulp, Friedrich Gottlob Keller and Heinrich Voelter, were born in 1816 and 1817, respectively. Which students of history might note is after the final deposition of Napoleon in 1815.

Unless Johan meant Napoleon III ...
 
Will buildings also be locked behind Tech? And how different would be buildings that Tribals, Nomads and etc. can build? Because I doubt that tribals could build stone castles or some other building that requires Late Medieval tech to build.
 
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How common will it be to see the big players of Eu4 and general history pop off? IE can we expect Russia, Brandenburg, or the Ottomans to do well frequently, or are they going to be semi-rare appearances?
 
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The two main personalities behind the invention of paper production from wood pulp, Friedrich Gottlob Keller and Heinrich Voelter, were born in 1816 and 1817, respectively. Which students of history might note is after the final deposition of Napoleon in 1815.

Unless Johan meant Napoleon III ...
To be fair given the "maybe" I think it's a matter of... whatever systems that are in place for technology that we don't know about yet.

Technology isn't static, after all. Drastic changes in the course of history can cause drastic changes in the course of technological history.
 
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For example, if you are undecided between 16GB and 32GB of RAM, stating that 8GB of RAM will not be enough will avoid disappointing people
8GB is barely enough for windows, chrome and steam at the same time, let alone any games.
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.
I would hardly call a PC without a dedicated GPU min-maxed for any post EU4 GSG, possibly not for EU4 either.

The process to produce paper from wood pulp wasn't invented until the end of the 18th century and did not become widespread until the 19th. Why is it available here?
Because it is a game, and it runs for about 500 years, which means it runs at least until towards the end of the 18th century. It is not a history book, under the right circumstances it should be possible to make use of some inventions which were not widespread until a few decades later.
 
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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.
Yeah, one of Swedens big advantage for metal production during the time were the huge forrests for charcoal.
 
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Is saltpeter a trade good? Will I be able to create the saltpetermen, the objectively funniest cog in the war machine of that era?
 
No, changes are good and they have to be. But it seems like everything that works best in other paradox titles is thrown in here. And that seems too wild to me.
well i see no issue in that .
- they are proven to be good
- the game dont need to create totally new mechanics for something that work fine elsewhere nor copy past them , they feel inspired without being the same like how this one feels similar to the imperator rome way but also like anno1800 way .
- it give depth in game so we can be busy in peace times and not just go after wars . the game have now the vic/anno element that is a genre on its own and give the game a whole new layer
- the game being like this makes it now the best game for modding , it already have a vanilla middle age era in it so if you want and EU&CK mod its possible , it have globalisation , ressources , industry , science , so if you want an antiquity mod thats possible . bronze age same . fantasy ? even better.
i personally have plans for a big mod that i tested on ck2 but wanted to make on ck3 and vic3 but realised that both games doesnt have the mechanics i want . this game does

i also dont think it will be as intimidating or complex as it sound and its too early to judge we have yet to delve onto gameplay all of this for now is just basic teases like they show us how they look but we still dont know how its blended in the game and how we will use it
 
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