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Tinto Talks #15 - June 5th 2024

Welcome to the 15th Tinto Talks, where we ask for feedback on our extremely crazily top secret game which has the codename Project Caesar.

One thing that many have asked for has been a more in-depth dynastical gameplay, so here it is.

Characters
Before we delve into the dynamics of dynastic gameplay, we must first talk about their building blocks, the characters.

european (1).jpg


Here is a European King with an early 18th century background.

While not copying the Crusader Kings mechanics, a Character in Project Caesar is a bit more alive than in let's say EU4. A character is born, lives, and eventually dies.

Every character has Administrative, Diplomatic and Military Attributes ranging from 0-100. Of course, these attributes will not add any sort of mana, but they will impact how well the character will perform certain roles. One example is that the diplomatic ability of an admiral impacts the morale of the navy he leads.

Newborn characters start with 0, but that grows until they are adults depending on what childhood trait they have. You can also assign your rulers’ children and grandchildren a specific education during their childhood

gifted.png

This is a trait that when on the heir of the player it increases the chance of hunting accidents by 200%.

Characters ruling a country will gain up to 3 traits, depending on how long they have ruled.
They are gained while ruling a country. Characters that are generals or admirals will also get traits after combat. There are also unique traits for characters that are REDACTED or OTHER_SECRET_THING.

Characters also have a culture they come from, a religion they follow, they keep track of where they were born, and where they currently are living. They belong to an estate, which for most characters tends to be the nobles estate.

Many characters will have a father and/or a mother as well. For some historical characters at the start of the game that will not necessarily be true.

The number of spouse(s) a character can have depends on religions and laws, but the number of children they get depends more on the fertility of the parents.

So what can you do with characters? Well, this is not Crusader Kings, so the characters themselves are not as important, and there are no character specific events like in Imperator either. In this game, characters are tools to be used for the greater good. If that means marrying off your daughter to secure an alliance with France, then that's what you have to do. You can arrange marriages in your country, send less useful characters into convents, ennoble great people, and much more.
ashanti (1).jpg


This is an African ruler, in his throne room, which while beautiful, is just a background image…


Speaking of marriages, royal marriages in Project Caesar are not just sending a diplomat, here it is far more limited, as you have to actually marry real characters, and often this is a vital action. If you can’t arrange a royal marriage with a country of enough prestige, that has a young consort, you may be forced to marry a local noble from your country, or worse, even a lowborn.

A Royal Marriage between two rulers will immediately form a union between those two countries. Every country has its own inheritance laws, which if they differ, may cause a Union to break, as the rulers would be different. This is probably not the audience where I need to explain the difference between Salic Law and Semi-Salic Law right?


bjälbo.png

And who was the founder of this dynasty?

Dynasties are important, as they impact diplomacy in direct and indirect ways. As some inheritance laws prefer their own dynasty, and having the same dynasty can improve opinions between countries.


As in almost all previous GSG, the game will keep track of who has ruled that country before, just so you can go back and admire them. We have tried to get in as much history as possible here, even if my heathen content designers refuse to have Odin as the original King of Sweden!

ruler_history.png

Of course regnal numbering and actual names depend on many different things..


Stay tuned, next week we’ll be back and we will then talk about how the cabinet will work.
 

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"a Character in Project Caesar is a bit more alive than in let's say EU4"
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"Every character has Administrative, Diplomatic and Military Attributes"
1717593126261.png


"This is a trait that when on the heir of the player it increases the chance of hunting accidents by 200%"
1717593126261.png


"Characters ruling a country will gain up to 3 traits "
1717593126261.png


"Well, this is not Crusader Kings"
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"there are no character specific events like in Imperator"
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There are many clues that point to the obvious.

BTW are we going to be able to interact with the characters minimally, such as committing murders?
 
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I hope the family tree don't get buggy in the late game like in ck3 with hundreads of kids

Yeah, would not be good would it
 
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It's a tradition.
 
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A small nitpicking question, but why is the portuguese dynasty "da Burgundy" and not "de Burgundy"? I'm asking this because in portuguese the preposition "do/da" means the geographic origin of something or someone (like the town of Moimenta da Beira); meanwhile the preposition "de" is more focused on the intrinsic characteristic of something or someone, like a name. I know that Burgundy is both a name and a geographic localisation, but the same happens with the other portuguese royal houses, as both Avis and Bragança are portuguese names and geographic locations, being the names said as "de Avis" and "de Bragança" respectively.
 
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What happens if your dynasty ends because all the characters die?

it depends on who inherits the throne.

you continue playing, but may get another dynasty.
 
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How much agency will characters have? Does the mechanic design of the gameplay loop have a phase where characters make actions independently of the nation they are affiliated with (if any)?

Or are nation-states the only things that have actions under the current game design?
 
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Can character 3d models be turned off? I would like to use 2d instead...

pretty sure you can mod it to have no portraits.
 
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if another ruler looses their throne due to a coup will we ahve the choice to put them back or do our children get claims to that throne?

most likely yes
 
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Looks great & just the right level of detail for PC!

Can there be a game rule for semi-obscuring character attributes as well, similar to the ledger options? Rounding to the nearest 10 would be just fine. I think knowing a ruler's attributes on a very granular 0-100 scale is a tiny bit immersion breaking.
I had similar thoughts. Do you imply three options when you speak about semi-obscurring? Or just default and obscurred in a way like: "King Johan is said to be a diplomatic genius." Or something of the sorts.
 
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By the way, will there be other historical rulers/characters besides those in the starting date

Some characters that appear will be historical, but almost all new rulers come though mechanics
 
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i think 3d models for characters are a bit out of place, and not really elevating to the degree where it deserves such a big portion of the UI

I think its never really bigger than a small fraction of the screen.
 
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Is something like the Miracle of the House of Brandenburg going to be possible? A ruler ascending to the throne completely changing the AI's foreign policy, even mid-war? EU4's ruler personalities already influence AI behaviour but maybe this could be taken even further here to make the AI more dynamic, unpredictable, and fun.
 
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