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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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What about when the castle is besieged
Since the invaders will block the supplys how will castle get access to goods which requires him to function properly?
So, it needs to use weaponry and stone in his stocks I guess, so will we be able to store production method goods in castles?
Also, will castle weaponry and stone usage increase during the siege since they will be using and repairing
 
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I think it could be interesting if sheep and other livestock (maybe wildlife) would also use a population system. And the amount of fully staffed sheep farm would increase a local population limit/ceiling. This could synergies with animal specific diseases and could so give economic fluctuation without to much influence in Manpower. This could also create a more nuanced food production and emergency actions. There would also implications for army supply's and looting especially if normal supply had an spoiling factor. Animal raids would not impact current wealth but also wealth generation. It could also influence the introduction of Animals in new regions like horses in north amerika. About horses they could also serve as a more player influenced Manpower for Cavalry (and Artillery). So maybe you could steal some Manpower ...
 
This is probably going to get buried, but are precious metals (gold, silver) converted into money directly like in EU4, or are they extracted into their respective trade good first? Is Silver group together with Gold?
 
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Please can we have vic 3 lite style resources? Multiple potential resources per territory would fit so much better than 1 fixed resource per territory
Locations in Project Caesar are much more granular. Each location has only 1 raw material, but each province has many locations. In the end, each province will have multiple raw materials.

For example, a province has 5 locations, each producing a raw material. So this province will produce 5 raw materials, 1 from each location.

Then, with buildings, you can produce/manufacture many other "non-raw" materials, like cloth and weapons on top of the already extracted raw materials.
 
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I may have missed out something. I remember last week tinto talk we had the UI showing Kalmar's raw material was stone, but today's talk seems to show that we can construct multiple rural buildings to extract raw materials in a location.

So was the UI only showing the predominant raw material being produced? Or we can only have one type of producing building in a location?
Each location has, "naturally", only 1 raw material that can be extracted.

Each province has multiple locations. So, for example, 1 province has 5 locations. 2 produce gold, 1 produce sheep, 1 produce silver, 1 produce fish. This province, without having to trade with any other province, has access to the raw materials produced in each of the 5 locations. Then, when you include trade, this province may have access to paper, stone, iron, grains, etc.

Now, with the raw materials produced in each location of this province + the goods traded with other places, you can build and produce other stuff. For instance, in the location that produces gold, you may build a furnace that can mint coins, for instance. But you can mint the coins with the gold you produce there or with the silver from the neighbouring location that is within the same province. You can also build a church with the wood you import from another province. You can build a lumber mill to process that wood into other goods, and so on.

Just because that location only naturally produces gold, doesn't mean it can't produce other stuff through buildings/manufacturing, or have access to other goods through trading.
 
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Johan, you mentioned moving the capital requires marble. Is this the same for all regions and cultures?

For example, will moving the Japanese capital require marble? Won’t this restrict certain regions from moving their capital arbitrarily, even if historically they used little marble, if there’s little marble in the area?
 
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i like the fact that govt, mil, colonial, etc buildings require inputs and generate outputs. i'm also down for a more industrialized economy as well and can see how it will make "playing tall" more engaging. but will the new economic model be able to represent the cottage industry that prevailed throughout the world for much of this time period? is that a goal of the nation, to move away from a decentralized cottage industry into a more centralized industrial economy?
 
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If there is a special place for "Allows zone of control" in the description, does that mean there are many other types of defence buildings? Possibilities for the Great Wall of China?
 
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The ages might overlap for some countries in this game as opposed to being hardcoded in EU4.

Late Middle Ages (1337-1450)
Renaissance (1450-1550)
Reformation (1500-1650)
Absolutism (1600-1800)
Enlightenment (1700-1800)
Napoleonic (1780-1836)
 
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Johan, you mentioned moving the capital requires marble. Is this the same for all regions and cultures?

For example, will moving the Japanese capital require marble? Won’t this restrict certain regions from moving their capital arbitrarily, even if historically they used little marble, if there’s little marble in the area?
I would like to think that there are multiple production methods you can get for that. It would make a lot of sense.
 
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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.

(in response to: "does the goods give a bonus like in eu4? for example cloth -10% local dev cost and wine -1 local unrest")
no
Let's talk alcohol:
  • Will pop needs (like for alcohol) be dependent on details like religion and pop-type (e.g. clergy)?
  • If I flood the market with cheap alcohol, can I drown my people's sorrows and thus keep "local unrest" (or whatever Caesar equivalent) down?
  • Are there buildings which take alcohol as an input good to produce intangible effects?
  • Do some goods have basic vs luxury variants? Like fine wine vs bad booze?
  • Will "ship maintenance" include goods for the sailors? What happens if you can't buy rum to put on the ships before sending your fleet on a long voyage?

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.
If a hostile army occupies the province/location where the market is centered, can they pillage those stockpiles? There's a lot of trade/market questions I'm saving up for next week but this one jumped out at me.
 
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Are horses a RGO? If on the contrary they are "produced" by a building that itself requires horses to be built, you can organically simulate the introduction of horses in the new world.
 
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The ages might overlap for some countries in this game as opposed to being hardcoded in EU4.

Late Middle Ages (1337-1450)
Renaissance (1450-1550)
Reformation (1500-1650)
Absolutism (1600-1800)
Enlightenment (1700-1800)
Napoleonic (1780-1836)
If this is the case by the gods above please make them region-specific.
 
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Are horses a RGO? If on the contrary they are "produced" by a building that itself requires horses to be built, you can organically simulate the introduction of horses in the new world.
Better yet at least 2 different horses. If not 3. Heavy horse and steppe horse? Or heavy/light/steppe? One isnt much good for knights in heavy metal and the others are either brilliant or servicable for hussars & horse archers. Wouldnt recommend hussars on stots or actually trained destriers as a experiment.