Tinto Talks #8 - 17th of April 2024

[Nikn of Calvessia]

The drawback here is that when you conquered Goa it probably cost you lots of warscore. For someone else when its close to 0% control, the conquer cost is close to 0% as well, so unless you can quickly get back there, you'll get a peace enforced on you rather quickly.

Then the control should be determined much more by the geography, culture, religion, buildings and present pops then pure distance, so the map doesn't turn into a voronoi diagram after 200 years of random ai wars

 

[gladiator138]

yes

Will they be playable?

 

[Gurtannon]

If you have wood shortage, but you have one building and one ship in queue, which one will the game prioritize? Will you manually select, or is it the one which requires less wood, or the one which clicked earlier?

 

[mcmoor]

A province with 0 control is like it is not part of the country therefore the estates of the province do not contribute to the country. Since the estate pool is “country level” it cannot get wealth from estates that don’t contribute. Basically I imagine that those estates are not controlled and not part of the country and will do their own things (potentially rebels?) that cannot be captured by the country’s estate wealth.

I guess this is fine if this implies that all estates that's stated in your UI are ones that are loyal to the crown, which means they can't rebel, ever. The one that rebels are not shown or counted and will only ever show up (as belligerent state) when they actually rebels.

It depends on the UI and how the gameplay actually works, but I think it'll hurt if these definitions are not consistent. It has to be explicitly stated what and who we actually controls.

 

[Johan]

If you have wood shortage, but you have one building and one ship in queue, which one will the game prioritize? Will you manually select, or is it the one which requires less wood, or the one which clicked earlier?

Its which location has the highest market access first... and in those, military has higher priority than civil constructions

 

[mcmoor]

For sure, we as readers don’t know the exact extent of the game design implications, only the part which has been unraveled so far. Which is why I was asking for clarification.

However, with the given information so far, if the nobles/ burghers/ clergy/ peasants in the colonial regions of the British empire or the polish Lithuanian Cossacks indeed lack wealth to develop their economy because they are located in areas remote from the crown capital, then perhaps there is indeed an issue with the model. We will have to see how it turns out in future TT when we have more info.

The Cossacks or British oversea precisely had more money available to spend on local development because the crown was less involved in their economic taxation due to distance, which is the contrary of the afore described model where the higher the control, the higher the estate revenue

Yeah, the exact reason why control is inversely correlated with unrest should be this. Less money goes to the capital means that more money is circulating in local are, enriching them. You can be conquering the world in name only with 1% control everywhere and still have the world develop on its own.

Of course this will still raise chance of an (or tons, because they're rich and you're not) uppity province to try to rebel, and this is why you shouldn't try this extreme.

 

[Valentin the II]

I think the "value" of a location is contingent on the infrastructure it has built up and the preexisting population, independent of any amount of control. Control is just the extent that you can realize this value.

And base tax should be a handy way to approximate that value, it also works better to represent province value on a map mode.

 

[GenericType]

I find it interesting that people are so against the concept of local economies ceasing when the government does not have control.

Wait, is control equivalent to the crown's control of the area, or is it an indication of how lawless an area is? Because I'm confused. I assumed the first, but looking at the comments it seems to be more of the second.

 

[humbleacadie]

yes, and they use it for themselves locally, which is just local minor stuff not simulated.. and the rebels use money to fund their secession

Just « local minor stuff » such as 40% of the local economy not participating in the estates developing their land.

This will completely unbalance the amount of economy re-injected in the infrastructure build up in high density minor countries versus major countries, since lots of HRE « OPM » will have 100% control in their capital and almost 90% control in nearby locations, hereby giving a lot of money to the estates to pursue their agenda. While in Ming / Ottoman / Mughal, roughly half of the country economy will disappear into rebel funding.

This sounds very much like the issue of EU4, where HRE OPM had 50 dev everywhere by the end game, while Ming ended up a barren undeveloped 12 dev everywhere

 

[humbleacadie]

I love loans of Project Caesar and can't wait to start taking them. Now I hope there will be a way to increase efficiency of them so i can have more of them and base my economy on debt.

Beware ! while this has always been a way for the country to inject more money into developing its infrastructure, it also has the side effect of generating inflation… which the peasants don’t like

 

[H.A.S.E.V.I.R.]

Im starting to see how liberating the greenland vikings from the need to make their own decisions by hoisting my own flag over some corpses is a humanitarian act: just the shortage of wood for any boating for starters.

Also there is that certain logic in someone showing up to collect all the excess money if control is lacking. Lack of control is a lac of the reach of the hand of law and as uch enables all kinds of sven-görans with a big axe that will need insurance payments else he might accidentally swing the axe at some nonpayer. Terrible tragedy. For the little people to have anything to invest you need ACTIVE benevolence. having all the mayors, knechts and taxcollectors and garrisons in some fort against bandits. But you choose to allow freedom.
..which may end up creating a slowly growing sentiment of no-kneeling freefolk... that just might be A LOT of pain for some more authoritarian minded ruler to rule over.

 

[posadugh]

Hello thank you for the weekly updates.
Is there going to be a system of "trust" when it comes to loan? For example, if you don't repay the loans to a certain creditor, will other creditors refrain from lending you money, or give you higher interest rates?

 

[mcmoor]

I think the point is that the second case is represented by you taking the province and releasing it as a subject. There's no "central authority" insomuch that you're deferring to local control.

A location with 0 control isn't ruled by local authority. It's you refusing to let it be ruled by local authority despite not having the power to rule it yourself, leaving it ruled by effectively no authority at all (or at least, no legal authority). To release as a a subject is to defer to local authority, giving them whatever veneer of "we're okay with this and not fighting it" that you need to do so while still being able to claim the territory as your own in some capacity.

I see it as 0 control where the local authority is not official and subject where local authority is official. They may have different power because of their status or not, but they should still be there, rejecting metropole's total control.

 

[H.A.S.E.V.I.R.]

Wait, is control equivalent to the crown's control of the area, or is it an indication of how lawless an area is? Because I'm confused. I assumed the first, but looking at the comments it seems to be more of the second.

Both, nature abhoring a power vacuum.

 

[humbleacadie]

I find it interesting that people are so against the concept of local economies ceasing when the government does not have control.

This isn’t ahistorical at all. Areas that had armies move through them were devastated as the armies ate and stole everything in sight. Additionally, especially in rural areas, actual money was not prevalent. Payments made by peasants were often payments in kind, meaning there was not money to tax a lot of the time. Additionally, due to the spread out nature of the time, an area without a government was less likely to develop itself and more likely to stagnant as they did not have easy/safe access to resources from other areas. A lack of control implies bandits and lawlessness on the road.

Going to Johan’s other point about rebels. A territory that is conquered and abandoned is a territory that is not held long. Local nobles or bandits would establish areas and either hoard wealth or call themselves independent. Additionally, there’s the risk of villages/towns declaring themselves freeholders with no financial commitment to the crown.

One comment was interesting though. Johan responded and said that having 0 control implies a country moved their army away too. This implies that you can create some level of control with local garrisons, in addition to buildings

No. Actually, this game is advertised as covering the transitional period from feudalism to modern states.

This forgets a completely essential part of the era : decentralization. At the start of the game period, nations were still largely reliant on local estates, including nobles, to collect taxes and implement law. This is precisely why the assumption of a « national » estate based in the capital is wrongfully depicted. This is almost a confusion between the crown and the estates. The estates should be built up in opposition to the crown, the larger their power the lower the crown control of the economy where the state can not reach.

This is in contradiction to the depicted model : a large part of the economy does not exist (apart from funding rebellions). When control increases, the crown gets more out of taxes, but so too do the estates who get a more important share of « potential » tax_base. The higher the control, the more economically powerful the estates.

In the late game, estates had almost disappeared as the hand of the state was now more extended, communication infrastructure more developed, and not to forget, they were actually replaced by a state-sponsored administrative class of bureaucrats / governors. This is gradual shift from feudalism to centralized state, where only now in the late period can the « centralized control » based on capital distance be effectively accurate.
Although, again, why in 1800 should remote British Canada not provide any money to its own development ?

 

[mcmoor]

I think imagining that sort of thing as handled via releasing a subject does really square away the problem. A low-control province is effectively trying to have your cake and eat it too: you want to have direct administrative control despite not having the means to, and refuse to relent and cede administrative control to any other sort of local administration. You're effectively leaving it lawless in that you both lack the capacity to enforce such things yourself and refuse to let anyone else do so for you. Hence why whatever fills the vacuum is going to exist outside any sort of "legal" system.

To let it develop on its own would be to defer to local administration (i.e. release as a subject) rather than trying to manage it yourself.

It's nice if it really is simulated like that. But if it is, I'd like it to be automated a bit. It means that if I forget to turn a province with < 10% control into a subject it'd be a disaster and not something that's desired by the game designer either, and it's very likely that I do forget!

 

[H.A.S.E.V.I.R.]

..those feudal decentralizations are vassals. Not crownland. They too have control. Evet if its just a single province of half a dozen locations.

 

[humbleacadie]

I guess this is fine if this implies that all estates that's stated in your UI are ones that are loyal to the crown, which means they can't rebel, ever. The one that rebels are not shown or counted and will only ever show up (as belligerent state) when they actually rebels.

It depends on the UI and how the gameplay actually works, but I think it'll hurt if these definitions are not consistent. It has to be explicitly stated what and who we actually controls.

But. Then it also means that the actual split between the pop types based on estates ceases when, due to lack of control, money goes only into the rebel pool.

Now, the loyal dhimmies are collecting and investing money for their agenda. So do the loyal Cossacks. So do the loyal nobles.
However, disloyal Cossacks AND dhimmies AND clergy AND nobles, no matter their diverging interests / religions / cultures, now all drain money out of the economy to fund a common rebellion, although this rebellion is made out of competing interests as peasants (who want less taxes), nobles (who would more autonomy), clergy and dhimmies (who have different religion and thus should desire different countries)

The disloyal nobles cease to inject their money into building their defenses (precisely to defend against the king’s authority), the disloyal burghers cease to fund their trading ships which would precisely give them more economy to combat the kings authority, etc…

 

[iputusatyena]

Small note for the presented map: The province marked as Jepara was actually an island- separated by the Muria Strait. The strait dried up in the 1650's, and even now, the region is plagued by frequent flash flooding. There are talks of reviving the strait for economic reasons, but is has been deemed as unfeasible.

Will be fun if this is reflected in game, maybe by a province modifier and a mini event for whoever holding it in the 1600's.

 

[Komandor353]

The question of resoursrs. Will metals and minerals be fixed in some locations, not like in eu4, where when you put a colony and the resource is determined randomly?