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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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I really like the maritime presence system, and I think it can be linked to slider mechanics (if not already)

When Venice’s coasts are being blockaded and Crimean Khanate’s coasts are being blockaded should not result in same control drop.
Naval focused nations should be more vulnarable to not having maritime presence, I mean who cares whether there are some ships when Crimean tatars are riding horses in steppes.
Also, Naval focused nations should get more proximity and hrey should regain maritime presence faster with their navy.


Same with centralization-decentralization

Decentralized(slider) nations could get some estate satisfaction from their low control locations. Meanwhile, centralized nation has nothing to benefit from low control
 
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In my opinion, proximity should also be reduced by terrain (or alternatively it's harder to build roads in certain terrain). Otherwise Bengal will conquer central asia as happens all the time in eu4.

Overall best dev diary yet though.
 
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You speak of roads, very exciting will they show on map??

Will rivers have crossing points or can you cross from any province over a river? Will rivers be borders or can a province have a river in middle of it? This always annoyed me as its hard to tell if you are attacking into a river etc.
 
Ah I see, thank you for the information. I guess this might be the one place where that name shortening would get confusing, with 2 nations with the same "name" next to each other. I wonder if there mught be others like this to have a need for some kind of additional clarification?
ArchBishopric of Bremen, city of Bremen
Free city of Koln, archbishopric of Koln.
Free city of Augsburg, bishopric of Augsburg…
The HRE was a really nice place for such issues, I guess that’s why it became Voltaires nightmare after all :D
 
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@Johan

Are there different levels for roads (path, cobbled, highway, etc..)? Do get affected differently if there is a settlement/town/city in the location? And how long does it take to build a road? Do they have infrastructure upkeep? Can you technically put roads everywhere?
 
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In my opinion, proximity should also be reduced by terrain (or alternatively it's harder to build roads in certain terrain). Otherwise Bengal will conquer central asia as happens all the time in eu4.

Overall best dev diary yet though.
perhaps distance is « modified » by terrain type, like in eu4 (hills +50%, mountains +100%).

Mountainous terrains were much harder to control, as we have seen some minor countries or at least ethnicities (even if absorbed in bigger countries) endure for centuries.
I’m targeting specifically Tibet, Georgia and other Caucasus ethnies (Circassian, Ossetians…), Afghanistan, Nepal…
Even after centuries of occupation or neighboring very powerful empires (Yuan, Qing, Russia, EIC, Mughal…) they maintained traditions, religion and autonomy
 
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I really don't understand that argument. A Dhimmi estate would make playing a muslim state different from a christian state. That gives more variety and replayability.
You can still dislike a Dhimmi estate - or other special estates like the Cossacks - for different reasons, but the replayability argument makes no sense.
I'm thinking Iberia might need Military Orders Estates.
470px-Orders_of_knighthood_Iberia.svg.png

In Portugal eventually the Orders fell under the Royal Family control.
 
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"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."

Does this mean that Project Caesar will not have bureaucrats, but that nobles will be a stand-in for them? One of the best parts of MEIOU is the struggle between the estates and the state bureaucracy, so would like to see something like that being a game mechanic.
 
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For people complaining about the UI, do realize that the game is likely barely in alpha stage, if even that. The current UI was likely slapped together with a regard only for functionality and not looks. The font was likely chosen so the devs can read it easily rather than being pretty. Wait until development has advanced more and we see something closer to what the intended look is.
 
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With all the potential estates being suggested I wonder if it would be a good idea to differentiate traditional "estates" from just "interest groups". The later being a pseudo estate category with maybe less/different gameplay options, but still a useful category to add all the interesting and flavorful groups being suggested...
 
Is the estates power symbol (a lightning bolt) a placeholder? I feel it makes little to no sense to connect the power (of estates) to power (like electricity) given the time period of this game. Personally I think a fist or something else would be a better symbol.
 
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After a siege, plague or other cause of depopulation, do pops migrate from suitably nearby, overpopulated locations? Can resettlement be 'encouraged' to put preferred cultures/religions in the aftermath of depopulation?

If an estate is wealthy and unhappy, will they use that wealth to buy mercs during a rebellion? Could they use that wealth to undermine the government in other ways if they feel direct confrontation is unwinnable?
 
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I hope Jutland has its 'Ox road' (nowadays known as "Hærvejen" in Danish) as a starting road. Historically it was useful for Denmark, but as its biggest use was for the southward livestock trade, it also strengthened Hamburg and Holstein's influence in the region.
 
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You speak of roads, very exciting will they show on map??

Will rivers have crossing points or can you cross from any province over a river? Will rivers be borders or can a province have a river in middle of it? This always annoyed me as its hard to tell if you are attacking into a river etc.
Roads can already be seen on the map of Sweden Johan posted with the OP. They are the dotted lines leading out of Stockholm.
 
After a siege, plague or other cause of depopulation, do pops migrate from suitably nearby, overpopulated locations? Can resettlement be 'encouraged' to put preferred cultures/religions in the aftermath of depopulation?

If an estate is wealthy and unhappy, will they use that wealth to buy mercs during a rebellion? Could they use that wealth to undermine the government in other ways if they feel direct confrontation is unwinnable?
Just an FYI, you can click the +Quote button at the bottom of a post to add it to your reply, rather than copy-pasting the URL link to it.