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Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

Welcome to the sixth Tinto Talks, where we talk about the design and features of our not yet announced game, with the codename ‘Project Caesar’.

Hey, before jumping into todays topic, I would like to show something very fresh out of the oven, based on your feedback last week. This is why we are doing these Tinto Talks, to make Project Caesar your game as much as ours...

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Today we will delve into three concepts that are rather new to our games, but first, we’ll talk about locations a bit more.

Not every location on the map is the same, especially not in a game of such scope as Project Caesar. By default, every ownable land location is a rural settlement, but there are two “upgrades” to it that can be done. First, you can find a town in a location, which allows you to increase the population capacity of the location and allows for a completely different set of buildings than a rural settlement. Finally, you can grant city rights to a town, which allows for even further advantages. Now you may wonder, why don’t I make every location into cities? Besides the cost and the population requirement, there is also the drawback that each of them tend to reduce your food production, while also adding more nobles, clergy and lots of burghers to your country.

Stockholm, Dublin and Belgrade are examples of towns at the start of the game, while cities include places like Beijing, Alexandria and Paris.

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Here you can see the control that Sweden currently has.

Control
Every location that you own has a control value, which is primarily determined by the proximity it has to the capital, or another source of authority in your country. There are only a few things that can increase it above the proximity impact, but many things that can decrease it further.

This is probably the most important value you have, as it determines how much value you can get out of a location, as it directly impacts how much you can tax the population in that location, and the amount of levies they will contribute when called. A lack of control, reduces the crown power you gain from its population, while also reduces the potential manpower and sailors you can get, and weakens the market attraction of your own markets, making them likelier to belong to foreign markets if they have too low control.


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Proximity
So what is proximity? It is basically a distance to capital value, where traveling on the open sea is extremely costly. Proximity is costly over land, but along coastlines where you have a high maritime presence you can keep a high proximity much further. Tracing proximity along a major river reduces the proximity cost a fair bit, and if you build a road network that will further reduce the proximity costs.

There are buildings that you can build, like a Bailiff that will act as a smaller proximity source, but that has the slight drawback of adding more nobles to the location, and with a cost in food for them.

Maritime Presence
In every coastal location around your locations, or where you have special buildings, you have a maritime presence. This is slowly built up over time based on your ports and other buildings you have in adjacent locations. Placing a navy in the location helps improve it quicker, but blockades and pirates will decrease it quickly, making it absolutely vital to protect your coastlines in a war, or you’ll suffer the consequences for a long time.

As mentioned earlier, the maritime presence impacts the proximity calculations, but it also impacts the power of your merchants in the market the seazone is a part of.

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Stay tuned, next week we’ll be doing an overview of the economy system, which has quite a lot of new features, as well as features from older games.
 
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Ireland Mentioned!!! Also Major Rivers have an actual impact, Please tell me they'll be navigable, that would be the perfect cherry on top. We already know that the Caspian Sea and The Great Lakes/Sanit Laurence will be navigable, so why not go all out on Having major rivers be navigable tiles.
 
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Will colonial nations be present in the game? I imagine it will be very difficult to maintain control of locations on different continents.

Yeah, they are something you actively want to set up, even if you are not forced to.
 
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Nice TT with nice things, thanks.

There are buildings that you can build, like a Bailiff that will act as a smaller proximity source, but that has the slight drawback of adding more nobles to the location, and with a cost in food for them.

How are the nobles added? Player moves or promotes them manually, they are moved or promoted automatically, they appear from thin air?

Does control affect military operations?

The map seems to be missing some islands like Brändö and Kumlinge between Finland and Åland. How come?

Below are my top three questions about Project Caesar, which I have not yet seen covered. Assuming you can't answer them now, but remembering you have TTs planned a long way ahead. When will TTs cover them?
1. Are there plans for platforms besides Windows? Linux, Mac, consoles, whatever.
2. What kind of minimum and recommened hardware specs will there be?
3. End date?
 
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Is it just me or is the HoI4 map more detailed and accurate with finnish lakes than Project Caesar? Or well maybe inland lakes aren't the highest priority with the map and will be fleshed out later.

And yes, lakes are serious business for us finns.

Edit: Also, I hope someday PDX games will not forget to add east Karelian lakes lol
 
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According the way proximity and control currently work, is it the case that if I say, start a game as France, then use the console to grant myself all of Spain, Britain, the HRE, and Italy on the first day, I still won't be much more powerful than the starting France because the tech limitations on my proximity reach and control over these new lands will be so weak as to render them useless for tax and manpower?
 
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Some UI that has been shown, looks nice but some looking kind of bland(?).
Especially compared to EU4 UI, which is very unique to EU4 and defines that game, while here it is somewhat similar to Victoria 3 UI.
I believe its placeholder ui, they probably just copy ui from another game while gameplay mechanics still evolves, and will fix aesthetics it once they know what they need to display
 
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Does control interact with Estate power? Intuitively it feels like it should
 
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Is Hanseatic League a dynamic name for Lübeck or is it one of those "countries not based on owning land"? i.e. a trade league acting as one country for the purposes of trade?

Its not a dynamic name for Lübeck :p thats all I will say now
 
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Hello Johan!

Super excited for the future of this project! I am very curious how the game will handle revolts, over extension and other systems of "player push back". They can be really difficult because they have to strike that balance between being engaging and interesting while simultaneously forcing the player to properly engage with the games other systems while limiting wild map painting.

It is something that I personally think a lot of other Paradox games struggle with, Eu4 in particular. In Eu4 revolts are incredibly tedious and often becomes a game of pausing and sending around dozens of armies on wild goose chases. Victoria 3s revolutions could be really interesting, as they are directly influenced by the politics and actions of your nation, and feel a lot more grand and impactful than Eu4 revolts. I do however think they didn't quite stick the landing, as they are often easy to avoid and aren't quite as devastating or perhaps rare as I think they should be.

So my question to you, how will Project Cesar manage revolts? I would really hope for a system that focuses on rarity but scale, as I think that is the best way to avoid tedium while still forcing the player to really manage their realm carefully.

Greetings from Sweden!
 
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Are rivers navigatable or at least the big rivers like Danube River?

No they are not.

Its a bit hard to have a naval battle involving a few dozen ship of the lines on them.
 
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Thanks to Maritime presence mechanic, We will be able to destroy Spanish Colonial Empire with one war :D, destroy its navy and their entire colonial provinces will be worthless :D
 
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On pops and estates, will all clergy, regardless of actual religion belong to Ulama? All clergy, Christians and Muslims, act effectively as one bloc?

For Muslims, only muslim clergy belong to ulama
 
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