• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.
 

Attachments

  • european (1).jpg
    european (1).jpg
    387,3 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
  • 335Love
  • 183Like
  • 73
  • 16
  • 10
  • 7Haha
Reactions:
A small correction for the Portuguese-Burgundian Dynasty:

"da Burgundy" the mix of portuguese and English doesn't sound nice, but since it is a French dynasty I think it would be better if the name was written in French "de Bourgogne" or to create a fully portuguese branch of that family "da Borgonha".
I'm loving the project, so please take this into account!
 
  • 10
  • 2Like
Reactions:
How will it work with republics? Will the Doge have a family you can royal marry with?

no, republics dont do those things
 
  • 61
  • 24Like
  • 6
  • 5
Reactions:
I am impressed by how the characters look so much better than in Victoria 3. Every Tinto talk makes me realize how much Victoria 3 missed the mark. I hope PDX has a good hard look at how they assign their leads in the future.
 
  • 5
  • 3
Reactions:
  • 55Like
  • 5
Reactions:
How are the colors of houses defined? By history files and dynamic both? Or the color of the contry can be of some factor?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Will there be a name equivalence system? Like if King Juan in Spain becomes also king of England, will he have the next regal number in the line of Johns or will he be Juan the first of England?

An equivalence system for names could also be expanded to include different spellings of the same names. I like when things are ordered.
 
Last edited:
  • 4Like
Reactions:
Oh it has portraits?
Yeah, yike, cringe, finally found a bad thing about this game

I honestly do not get why y'all feel the need to do this with all of your recent games, like
beyond CK3 where it's a core feature, what does it contribute beyond 10 more minutes of loading screen?
I dunno but some players, like me, have a thing called "immersion". And having portraits and 3D Characters does boost the immersion for me by a TON. I almost have 0 immersion in EU4 compared to CK3. Not saying that EU4 is bad tho. Just very little immersion for me personally
 
  • 19
  • 14
  • 1
Reactions:
Do you have something In place to make sure characters count don't increase drastically in end game for performances?

Or is number of characters not that important for performances?
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Do inheritance laws include matrilineal vs patrilineal succession and matrilocal vs patrilocal family structure? Are there laws that require marriages with people of a particular social class? And if the answers to any of these are "no" can it be modded?
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Having diplomacy affect how well someone leads a navy feels really weird. Shouldn't mil stats affect military leadership, both naval and on land? Unless diplomacy generally affects the morale bonus they give to the troops they lead (both on sea and on land) I can see that. With maybe their administrative score giving bonuses to their logistical capabilities?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Having diplomacy affect how well someone leads a navy feels really weird. Shouldn't mil stats affect military leadership, both naval and on land? Unless diplomacy generally affects the morale bonus they give to the troops they lead (both on sea and on land) I can see that. With maybe their administrative score giving bonuses to their logistical capabilities?
I think the problem is that under that logic you wind up with diplomacy for generals/admirals meaning nothing and their military stat meaning everything.

Need to have all three stats weigh in somehow.
 
  • 3Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I'm really pleased to see more involved dynastic mechanics in Project Caesar.

However, the portraits are awful. They look so naff and out of place, just like a repeat of Vic 3. They work in CK, but I don't think they belong here.

It would be much classier with 2d portraits rather than these naff plastic abominations.

Edit: Okay, the bigger 'full screen' versions have loaded for me now and they look okay, but why would we need them? The other shots with many on them still look terrible, though.

Are we going to have enough 3d models to represent 500 years of fashion across the planet? Or will we have Vic 3's technicolour Sgt. Pepper people?
 
Last edited:
  • 20
  • 17
  • 5Like
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
I don't like this. It affirms that these Mount and Blade looking mobile game smelling potatoheads will flung around charmlessly through every Paradox game from now to the end of time. It also shows that the rustic visual vibe of EU4 will be lost, in my opinion. And of course it will greatly increase the amount of time needed for mods to have an equal number of assets to vanilla, which is a deathblow when they already do not have any 3D artists. Fantasy mods for Victoria and CK did their best but still looked very much corny. The general level of character involvement seems good, hands-on and immersive though, not many complaints there, unless one of the [REDACTED] thingies is Imperator-style researchers, which I would really really dislike since it is a gamey, senseless, weird system. I also am not very keen on all the education stuff and hope we can automate it away. Overall, I could say these Simlish speaking sims are the first red flag for me, but I understand there is no turning back.
On second thought and leaving the exaggeration aside, they are at least CK3 tier rather than Vicky 3 tier. I would like smaller backgrounds, more regal looking clothing, and an absolutely robust naming system, especially for East Asia, where there are many cultural traditions centered on names.
 
  • 6
  • 1
Reactions: