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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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Gentlemen developers. You said that, for example, lumber can be extracted only in provinces such as forest. What about minerals such as various metals, coal, oil maybe? I mean, for example, can I mine Iron in any, say, hilly area, or can I mine Iron only in some specific, pre-defined locations based on real world and geology, independent of randomization, like you did for Coal in EU4?
 
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View attachment 1123384View attachment 1123386

Something's off about this art, Im sure its not final or anything but still
The painting is very clearly man-made - you can see the individual brush strokes. It's definitely an unfinished work though. Seemingly, the artist is trying to imitate the art style of EUIV and make a smooth oil painting. So at first they draw with regular digital brushes, which can be clearly seen in the close-up people on the painting. But then they need to make it nice and smooth, and I'm not sure how they do it. Regardless of the techniques involved, this part of the process is still not finished, which results in the mess you see on the first picture - the crates and barrels (as well as the rest of the background) are blurred while the man standing on them is not. The second picture points to another man's hand, I guess it kinda looks like it has a 6th finger but on the full painting you can see that the hand is turned a bit sideways and it's just the extension of the man's pinky finger.
 
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Does building cost money beforehand like in eu4 or is there a variable cost each month for the goods consumed by the construction like in vic3?

Do buildings have ownership or is that abstracted by the splitting of profit as tax?
 
Wow. Johan really brings the best features from multiple games and stitch together in this Imperatoria Universalis project. Keep up the good work!

One question though. Is it possible that I can strategically occupy a goods producing location in order to disable military buildings of my enemy e.g. occupy stone query and blockade their port so the castle is now useless?
 
I would hardly call a PC without a dedicated GPU min-maxed for any post EU4 GSG, possibly not for EU4 either.
Okay, it wasn't a good min-max as is, but what it was was that I had a limited budget, and this was right when the GPU shortage struck. So getting a beefier CPU for the money I would have spent on a GPU, while drastic, felt like it would get me the best performance down the line - I could afford to live without a GPU, but a lesser CPU would always be bad. And honestly it ran quite well. The resolution was painful to look at, and there was an issue in EU4 where I had to pause the game to open the sidebar, but otherwise this was how I enjoyed GSGs for a good year or so. Of course once I got a dedicated GPU the load it took off the CPU was noticeable.
 
Can you tell us what the techs will look like, will it be a simple linear tech tree with three different types like EUIV or will it be more complex and granular tree where you can pick a path through the tech tree to match your play style?
 
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no

I suspect it would have been if we had been based in the Netherlands.
Preposterous! We must have stroopwafels as a compensation. They were invented in 1810 so go well with the paper pulp invention!
Alternatively, you get meatballs, we get tulips, deal? They're supposedly both Turkish anyways, so that might appease the call for Turkish language until you can confirm its inclusion, winwinwin ;)
 
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The main reason for introducing it, was to reduce the amount of buildings required.
@Johan
You mentioned here production methods are about reducing the number of buildings, but in the DD you mention "there are hundreds of different types of buildings".
Does the "hundreds" mean the max permutation of production methods X building types? Or purely buildings types alone?
 
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?

yes

Why would someone need to be TAG = NED or Dutch to build polders? That's exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't be TAG (or in this case, even culture) specific.
 
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Will buildings only ever produce a single good? I really would prefer if it worked this way. The Vic3 system in which some later production methods reduce the amount of the "primary" good produced in order to produce another new good that you can't produce in any other building (like Engines & Cars) is really annoying to me.
 
Are the UI design fixed or Will it be changed?
Are they gonna be Simplistic like newer games or Detailed/sophisticated/Old looking or smth like the older games?

IMO, I like the Older UI design better, Because I think they feel More Immersive.

Suggestion, Something in the middle Would be Perfect.
 
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Question: I wonder Does Johan like Victoria 3 or is Project Caeser meant to be the true sequel to Victoria 2 like some such as @Lord Lambert have suggested?
There were no Master of Orion 3
There were no Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight
There were no Heroes of Might and Magic IV
There were no Mass Effect Andromeda
There were no Dawn of War 3
There were no Dungeon keeper Online
There were no Victoria 3
 
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Do the games use GPU for simulation calculations or only for drawing stuff? There might be some wishful thinking for a simple flat map mode with simple 2D icons or counters.
It only uses it for drawing stuff, but an integrated GPU uses the system RAM, which with 16GB or less you will want available for other stuff when playing some games (like Vic 3).
 
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