• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.

nlnBA02bZrw0bZsQH2GVQ0NpqxwwqiqgAoGW8JE_z9_MPDb8uJqXKLR14woyynDUPeon8s17kdwhKN6yq8-GRi6XL_lOdSAmcPRHzWI7Qv9MeyWuCtCwWDEasEuPdXrRAxv6m6DljsMhYyDNtxpuGy4

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

hcdHZO0m2kTU61RRPUWubpP98X7Mo0HI_XzTVd7mvmsaX9ntlTsCF_rFfmIErrOEjhfzQDEo1CedZ-iJCDHEA5tPnh01pr0NT0t5RPss-BWKJKDJW_i-doFBMmwDQseSu1uzF2CeDQ2SIWIvBtdNtz4

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.

AQk7XaO7abty_VVuMxlVqH48WY7zk666GbEW-VD7PvyV9C3CSPJuaOyMm46XojJU1OOW-kLgVbzcg7dx_5WpNX-d0nujGC_PuifwF0hp3fc27nPzkLl_6xKOpBT9ABoFl5XREaDDVLOm053eUX8QpXw

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.

h_Uu_FZ1_xAAsG_36S0nz-4DEdR_gFQ7Jzd5wKCIMFcUW5YfQvEhN58LNAedWFUIXUb8OBl3_5U-tJD8w01KS4lHWkVdV1lQXn83jFDnEw-Cjc8nx16PRkhro6XrR79VqshTn8rvqc7zdcOc26VwRws

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.

7IdmnyGvDXdUqUelM-C2IsaoWecdW31FC7Q1GQgsLgn_esuLEfu8DIgmnntSusTIYkK9BGB8-CQdguA5q_oWzJWvE-85kqNC-yWSym1tC3haBqiZkg_lXMTXUJM9NcKqNVKSETizdqfmKW2bj4-auIo

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.
 
  • 371Love
  • 173Like
  • 17
  • 14
  • 7
Reactions:
However, a game where there are no differences between the cultures and tags and where everyone can use all features is, in practice, a less replayable game.

In Victoria 3 maybe. Really though, this kind of thinking just incentivizes the devs to start adding tons of mission trees and the inevitable feature bloat and power creep and they inevitably impoverish the game they're supposed to enrichen instead.

I guess commenting on this in the Tinto Talks threads is kind of pointless anyway since even the slightest criticism of the proposed features (which is what Johan was soliciting) are just met with downvotes just like dev diaries are for the released games. Kinda funny/sad that dedicated threads to potential issues have a significantly different show of support/digression than similar comments on these threads.
 
  • 6
  • 4
Reactions:
  • 40Haha
  • 5Like
  • 2Love
  • 2
Reactions:
I came here after watching the latest Ludi video summary, specifically to say this to you: Stay your course, don't try too much to appeal to people, they usually don't really know what's good in a game and whenever game devs listen to the community too much the game ends up shit in my experience. You have an awesome set of passionate developers who really know what's good and I think you guys should make the best possible game to your own standards. AND THE GAME LOOKS AWESOME SO FAR

This! We have seen what trying to appeal to normies who dont actually enjoy GSG gets you! (IR and Vicky 3 releases).
 
  • 4
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I'm not exaggerating when I say that I have literally been waiting for 20 years for you guys to borrow Vicky pop and economy systems for EU. Looking great so far but I'm also somewhat worried if AI will be able to play the game properly as it has troubles keeping up with the player the more complex these systems get.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
In Victoria 3 maybe. Really though, this kind of thinking just incentivizes the devs to start adding tons of mission trees and the inevitable feature bloat and power creep and they inevitably impoverish the game they're supposed to enrichen instead.

I guess commenting on this in the Tinto Talks threads is kind of pointless anyway since even the slightest criticism of the proposed features (which is what Johan was soliciting) are just met with downvotes just like dev diaries are for the released games. Kinda funny/sad that dedicated threads to potential issues have a significantly different show of support/digression than similar comments on these threads.
Is it all criticism or just your criticism? Could it be that people just don't agree with you?
 
  • 1
  • 1
Reactions:
Is it all criticism or just your criticism? Could it be that people just don't agree with you?

No. It's easy to throw out a comment like this as if it has some truth to it, but when you look at past dev diaries etc. you'll see tons of red Xs on posts criticizing systems that the devs themselves had to revamp due to massive community backlash after they were released. If you don't believe me, look at Imperator and V3 prerelease diaries.

It's just a weird celebrity effect in which people have strange (almost parasocial) relationships with prominent figures in a community...anything that isn't just gushing support is often downvoted.
 
  • 2
  • 2
Reactions:
Know I am late but I've got a question about the Construction system. It reminds me alot of how Imperator's works, so does that mean that specialty buildings/custom buildings can be made? Like, can I decide to build a Cathedral gives me religious buffs? Or a giant manse that boost royal prerogative? Or a great castle that boost defense stats? I'm curious now!
 
Is it all criticism or just your criticism? Could it be that people just don't agree with you?
lol
me suggesting hundreds of buildings.. nonstop X
Or armies capturing more than a single location. Even more X
Probly forgot something for now.

Curiously Johan repeated the belief the forumites would love to adjust the construction methods manually.
This despite the adjustment of hundreds of thousands of such across a modest couple thousand location eurasian empire. And no havent played a big empire. What was it 2 hours of play a week? People didnt like manual clicking tens of thousands of times in v3 nor in imperator while seeking to manually balance a somewhat dynamic situation. At least the little people DO build stuff now and can manage their own lives somewhat. I fear someone believes the nameless player will want to manually import stuff from abroad... one clay pot at a time thousands ot times a month.

One can only wonder why anyone would think there should or even COULD be a -90% on activity in franglestania in ordeer to warp this area out of space for a century.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Are there going to be seasons in the game? Seasons that would actually have some effect. It would be cool if the baltic sea could freeze in the winter, changing troop movements. It obviously could also have a huge impact on food growth and combat in general.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Was there any interest in bringing back the newspaper feature from Vicky 2 in the game? With the amount of stuff going on internally in each nation, it may be interesting to get a generalized picture of what is happening elsewhere. If so, what about using a LLM to give it fluff? It could take in recent goings-on and spit out a newspaper that, at the very least, isn't the exact same thing every time.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Not sure if this was already said or not, but:

Will it be possible to have separate alerts based on missing resources for buildings, or are they all grouped together? So lets say I'm lacking paper, and also lacking iron, and I'm in a war and need to reinforce my troops, paper presumably takes lower priority. Would there be one single missing resources alert, or would the alert be more 'severe' in nature, and/or would there be an iron alert separate from the paper alert?
 
please, if we are to import stuff from other markets, give it an option for everything to happen automatically with no player intervention, and the estimated cost to construct something to be shown somewhere. imperator's system where you manually import goods and they give a bonus to your nation, is very horrible, very boring and i have PTSD from it
 
  • 2Like
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
If the prices of the goods used to make the paper is less than the price it get from selling the paper at the market (to whomever, your own pops, buildings or a trader or another countries pops in same marker or whatever.), then that difference is the profit.​
I am confused, so building doesn't pay any wages? How do workers pay their bills then...
 
Will we have some regional flavor in terms of resources and starting buildings?

Since regions are smaller will we have more variety in terms of resources per region?

Will we have historical modifiers for regions,?
 
If the prices of the goods used to make the paper is less than the price it get from selling the paper at the market (to whomever, your own pops, buildings or a trader or another countries pops in same marker or whatever.), then that difference is the profit.​
I am confused, so building doesn't pay any wages? How do workers pay their bills then...

In Feudalist Russia, workers pay YOU!
 
  • 1Love
  • 1Haha
Reactions: