Tinto Talks #6 - April 3rd, 2024

[Gurtannon]

I hope land proximity will still be considered inside other nations in the Hre, otherwise German states would be in trouble

 

[darcler]

I'm not "accusing" you of anything! I just wanted to confirm that we are on the same page regarding the information that's been shared about this project - it wasn't entirely clear from your posts if you know about the project's chosen direction (focus on simulation and society building as opposed to abstraction and map painting of previous EU games) or you assume this is EU4 2.0 and give your feedback based on that. Thank you for confirming that it's the former.
Now, I don't know if further discussion about levies makes sense, because your concerns about the game are much deeper. Essentially, you don't like the whole direction of this game on a fundamental level, and levies are just relatively small secondary feature. Removing it would make no sense for a game where managing population and estates is the main reason to play. It's kind of like removing different types of goods in Victoria 3 and making all buildings produce "money" instead, as in EU4.
Of course, you are free to raise your concerns about the direction of the game, and they are understandable. But I doubt the developers will make a U-turn on their design at this point.

Thank you for getting back on track. While I feel that my understanding or lack of thereof about the game's direction is irrelevant to this discussion, since it's the mechanics that truly matter, I do realize that by making comparisons to the earlier games, I might've suggested that Project Caesar should be nothing more than war-oriented map painter. But, to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't mind deeper systems all across the board, in all the aspects of empire-building. In previous EU games, warfare was by far the main focus, but it's because there just wasn't all that much to do beside it, and all the other systems ultimately served the purpose of simply influencing expansion. And when you were not fighting a war, but chilling after decades of land grabs, the majority of time was just waiting, with the occasional click here and there to build a building or a new unit. Even the entire condottieri mechanic is all about letting you participate in a war without really being in a war, just to break the monotony of being idle. So, if there would be plenty things to do apart from waging wars, if I could busy myself in the internal workings of my country, I would be overjoyed.

BUT, that's precisely what I have concerns about. Levies, although they may be just a relatively small aspect of the game, nevertheless suggest that, exactly as you say, warfare will be demoted from being the game's focus into just one of various tools you have at your disposal. But, at the same time, I fear that it would make warfare clunkier and less fun to engage with - which would mean that one of the tools at your disposal will become that much less fun to use. Why should that be the case at all? If you want to focus on other aspects of running a country, then by all means do so - but that should not mean that other systems should become more annoying in the process. It's not that the mechanic is bad in and of itself, but the way you use it can be rather unsatisfying. And if it will be supplanted by professional armies later in the game, as the manpower pool visible on one of the screens would seem to suggest, then I question the point of even having a mechanic that would only serve as an early-game system. To compare it with a similar concept in I:R: why bother with levies if you have strong and battle-hardened legions under your command, able to mow down levy armies 3 times their size? It just makes levies redundant, and yet all the other numerous systems within the game, from economy to technologies, must support levies as well as legions, which only serves to unnecessarily complicate things for the sake of complicating things, without really giving anything worthwhile in return.

Naturally, the mechanic might be implemented in a completely different way in PC, but until I have more information to go on, then I will assume that it will be something similar to what we have in other games: I:R and CK specifically. And if so, then I don't think it would be a good addition to the game - just the opposite, in fact. And I believe warfare simply will still be a major part of the game, no matter the overarching design and the direction it would go, so a misstep here could easily impact the overall enjoyment of the entire game. CK3 or V3 are not war-oriented games, but warfare is still one of their key features, is it not?

 

[TheNoobNoob]

No they are not.

Its a bit hard to have a naval battle involving a few dozen ship of the lines on them.

Will losing (the naval cycle) still be meta in project ceasar?

 

[Promethium555]

Will provinces be able to breakaway and form their own countries if their control stays very low for a long period of time?

 

[Hennomg]

I don't know if this has been answered before.. but can we have 100 nerdy map modes and a highly detailed ledger in the game, please?

 

[Das_Derp]

with no bailiff or similar, you won't have control.

Does this mean if we were to encircle early in the game (potentially before Balifs) Toledo, Castillian control would nose dive in iberia making them a cakewalk in the future?

 

[Aart]

I guess the Exclaves are screwed without special buildings?

Maybe control should be passable through other countries if your relations are higher than 0? And be scaled according to the relationship factor. Like for+100 you won't receive any penalty at all (but provinces of other country still counted when finding the limit of the range), while+1 would be barely enough to jump over one province of separation

 

[ExonValdez]

I assume there will be a "patrol coastline" mission for navies in that case, microing navies to bump up maritime presence would be tedious. Also very happy to hear about pirates.

I hope so, and I hope the navy system will not be like the HOI4 one

 

[Brynjar]

Johan, I love the settlement/city mechanic you guys are pulling from Imperator. As a more recent Imperator player however, I'm not familiar with much of the early criticisms of that game. Was the settlement system a major issue for the community and, if so, what changes will be made to it this time around based on what you've learned?

Apart from the manual pop management, I can't remember much criticism about it. Unfortunately pretty much every reasonable complaint about that game drowned in mana tears and complaints about the lack of dual consulship at release.

spring for normal people or swedish?

Australian people, obviously.

Jokes aside, having seen the outcry on the European wow forums when an expansion for wow classic had been announced for release "this summer", and it turned out to be released in early June, I have no idea what people considers "normal" when it comes to seasons. Apparently early June was a couple of weeks too early or something for some people, because according to them the only reasonable meaning of summer would be the astronomical season, and not the meteorological one used in the northern hemisphere.

In this case, I would expect spring to mean some time between the statement being made Johan's/Tinto's summer vacation, whenever that will be. That should allow for some flexibility due to delays or change of plans. Tune in every week and you will see.

 

[PrazzleRazzle]

I think you are correct that saying Stockholm and Belgrade are "just" towns would be a incorrect comparison. But since Paris, at the time of 1350s, had over 100k population, I think you could think of it more like Imperator. Where you had city and metropolis. So there will probably be a cut off where a population center stops being a mere town and starts becoming a city, in this case it seems that Belgrade starts below that cut off. That would be an explanation for this I guess. You are correct at pointing out this difference, I also did not know that Belgrade was that big for the time, but even taking the size difference between Beijing and Paris into account then saying that they are both cities is a bit silly. Just my 2 cents

This does make me wonder if the cut offs will change as the game progresses?
Cities did grow larger and larger throughout this time period.
For example Edo by 1700 had a population of about 1 million and was the largest city in the world until London overtook it a century later.
What constitutes a city in the 1300's might not even constitute a town in the 1700's in some places.
That being said I do think adding a higher category like a metropolis would make a lot of sense for the end game or for some of the early game cities that could experience rapid growth, like Constantinople if the Byzantines manage to recover themselves enough or if it becomes the capital of a Turkish state etc.

 

[HighQualityPink]

@Johan Is it possible to have the name of a tributary (or other external subjects) on the map be overtaken by their suzerain's name like in CK2 with tributary names disappearing and the name of their overlord growing on the map in size, proportionally to the land of their tributary.

 

[TheRedLightning]

manpower is 100% connected to pops.

will pops be separated into m/f Old/young ? because losing levies and such would heavily effect male population compared to woman.

 

[ibvfteh]

What can be the reason for not changing your capital after every n-th conquest to tune your control for better money extraction? Will the cost of movement be so high? Or maybe other negative consequences?

Also on the side note, from a control point of view, some historical capital movements, such as the Russian Empire changing from Moscow (centre) to St. Petersburg (which is on the sea near the empire border), are highly unbeneficial (unless there are more mechanics, such as technology spread). I guess buildings will change the control spread at such a late game time.

 

[rysownikpl]

Im sure this was asked before but im out of the loop... will the UI stay as it is for Project Ceaser or will we have an entirely new UI in comparison to other Paradox games like EU4 or Ck3?

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

@Johan Is it possible to have the name of a tributary (or other external subjects) on the map be overtaken by their suzerain's name like in CK2 with tributary names disappearing and the name of their overlord growing on the map in size, proportionally to the land of their tributary.

Only, if it's optional, please.

 

[Ghassenjb]

Will carthage or punic state/culture exist in some way in projet cesar, maybe as a formable

 

[EU3NOOB]

@Johan

So, Mr. Johan, Sir, would you argue that all the abstracted systems introduced into EUIV to introduce some sort of dynamism to provinces (including, but not limited to, Development and Autonomy) have been removed in favor of more simulationist systems?

Also, I don't like the trade system in EUIV (never felt very engaging, basically never played with it), would you say the same?

 

[mathuser]

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...

View attachment 1110176



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.

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.


View attachment 1110187

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.

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.

Is that an actual Confederation in Livionia? I hope to see whether Switzerland will be able to function as a confederation, too. Since the Hanseatic League may not be tied to a location, I wonder how these federations will be portrayed. The HRE setup will be a sight to behold.

It's two Rigas. The City of Riga and the Archbishopric of Riga. But they're too small or too low rank govt (I think), so their names both get shortened to Riga on the map. You can also see Sweden's full name being the Kingdom of Sweden but shortened to Sweden on the map for the same reasons (I think). As opposed to the Byzantine Empire whose full name is shown because it's a max govt rank country (I think).
View attachment 1110243

yes, this is a problem.. two countries with the same name is not ideal. (I call it a bug in an earlier reply)

Without the bug, is it supposed to show C. of Riga or 'C. R.' and A. of Riga or 'A. R.' like how Eastern Roman Empire becomes 'E. R.'? I guess things like 'Empire' are dropped from abbreviations.

Borders of Livonia look absolutely awful. I can't fathom how someone can look the historic maps and draw up something so abyssmal. It is especially bad in Latvia. Borders of Riga archbishopric are just utter nonsense. Also Southern border of Danish Estonia is just a random scribble. For better understanding I made pictures below that show historic borders on the game map and bogus borders that Tinto devs made up from nowhere. As a reference I added all the Hansetic towns and 1 office (aka kontor) onto the map.

Nonsensical map by game devs:
View attachment 1110509

Historically more accurate version:
View attachment 1110503

I don't expect that it would be a perfect rendition of historic borders. Mistakes and changes happen when historic maps are brought over to a game. But what we have now is just bad. I don't expect to see all the exclaves of Livonian Order in Ösel-Wiek, because they would be way too tiny on the map. But rest of the changes are simply inexcusable and make no sense what so ever. Courland bishopric was in 3 parts... not 1 big blob. Probably because of this separation of lands, Courland bishopric was the first to disappear and while it excisted it usually played a minor role compered to other 3 bishoprics. Riga archbishopric held massive lands north and east of Riga.. while currently in game it is an union of small exlaves. This doesn't do justice to a state that was a rival to the order and sometimes even waged war against the order. I hope that when game releases we see Livonia with borders that are more closer to what they historically were.

Dear Tinto devs. I know that you can do better.

They may have used the Swedish and Polish province borders following the Livonian Order's dissolution to make a composite setup. The southern border of Danish Estonia indicates that Järvamaa is not used as a location, so the level of granularity may still be limited, although better than in EU4.

There's a detailed 1422 map that shows the divisions of the Teutonic Order together with Livonia in case you want more granularity.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:TeutonicOrder1422.png

I would prefer that Sakala have its own province for Pärnu (Pernau) and Vijlandi (Fellin), but province setup is probably balanced by something like population, similar to how EU4 balanced its province setup using development.

If some more refinement can be done on the map that would be great. Maybe by the time of EU10 we will be able see people's houses

Overall Livonia has less blocky provinces than before (or they are hiding them), while the feeling of being a bit of a conservative setup is there.

However, comparing the shown setup with EU4's, there is the shape of Estonia that still looks like a water nozzle pointed at the Baltic Sea

 

[Dairoth]

1) Wow! With the control mechanic! I really hope that will make revolts/rebellion's so much better and more impactful and important to not just trigger to deal with for XP. Like if Finland have lets say 20 000 manpower and you have 90% control a rebellion will only be able to have 2000 soldiers. Sure maybe not all 2000 want to revolt? So some added % split thing can happen. lets say it's the religious that are mad? Maybe only half the public of Finland are zealous which leaves 20 000*0,1*0,5 = 1000 (Total manpower of revolt area * control * aspect of the revolt, nobility, taxes ect.) so only 1000 will rebel. However killing these 1000 will lower your population by 1000 so you don't want the rebellion to happen.

2) Also why don't Crown have popularity? I think it should, if the crown have low popularity you will have a harder time than if you have high popularity. It should also show Legitimacy/Influence. If you have high crown popularity and high influence/legitimacy then you have a quite easy time enacting new reforms/decisions, drafting manpower for wars, collect high taxes ect. However with low popularity and high influence/legitimacy you are decently safe or able to make changes to help with your popularity. While having low legitimacy and high popularity makes it hard for you to make changes but you are still popular so people don't have any interest to object/revolt. I think that balancing act will be really fun if you can make that into the game.

 

[a25440403]

It's been a while so I don't expect any answer but a few questions:
1. Most important - specs? I know they aren't final but can we get an idea if potato will be able to run it?
2. Will we be having dynamic/custom religions/cultures/countries like CK3? It would be cool to see players make all sorts of fantasy nations.
2.b. Portugal will form Spain or something else?
3. Will there be more diplomacy options when interacting with nations like Daimyos/Japan or Chinese? In EU4 you could (as Portugal for example) get Macau/Nagaski but otherwise not much else to do; you would just war. Daimyos were basically non-existent outside of something like a rebel revolt/release when they get the gov type that let's you do basic interactions (you couldn't even agitate for liberty or get involved in Gekokujo/Sengoku despite the introduction of firearms and trade in general reshaping Japanese warfare and society).
4. New CBs and Peace treaties? e.g. I wish EU4 had a CB when you get raided (e.g. North African nations against Mediterranean) and Peace options like "stop raiding" (instead of conquering the entire coast or worse - dumping large amounts of navies on pointless missions) or even transfer goods. Will peace treaties be similar to EU4 or HOI4?
4.b. Will the AI stop signing peace treaties at terrible times, causing your armies to get exiled when they are 1 province away from the enemy?
5. Will there be alternatives similar to the HRE like Factions from HOI4? Very excited if yes, imagine the possibilites, especially if you could "diplo-unite" countries like when you form the HRE (country).
6. You said cities can be depopulated but will there be any "hard" culture conversion/population moving/genociding options? It may be a touchy topic but I want to know what level of control we will have over our countries (since so far it seems very population driven like Vic3 which I found to be one of the more "idle" PDX games). I admit I've made custom "population slaying" scripts in Vic3 and my 12+ years non-gaming CRAPTOP can run the game amazingly when half the population in the world is gone (and there are less pops to manage).
7. Is there "hard" religious conversion like EU4? If so I would suggest the Religious Zeal or equivalent modifier to be a decaying one (ie going from -100% to 0% over time) so you don't have to wait 30 YEARS to convert and can do it earlier if you have better missionary strength. In fact this should be changed in EU4, it's easily one of the worst features and I wish the "attack natives" button would work
8. What will colonisation be like? Colonial regions? Colonial nations? Can you choose not to form them? Victoria style? Can we form multiple per region e.g. 13 Colonies or early Colonial Brazil. FEITORIA?
8.b. Wastelands like Amazon/Central Africa? Will colonisers be able to cut through Kongo into Kilwa, dominating Africa early or will we see things like the Malaria modifier from Vic3/EU4 mods, being limited to the coast, "uncolonisable until <tech>/date", hard to colonise?
9. Any new map modes? "Opinion Of" is sorely needed (and I guess EU4 could have used a "Centralization" one but let's not talk about that mechanic).
10. How is the game looking for modders so far?
Not going to ask about dynamic trade since it seems like we will be having a "market system".