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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 few things.

As much as it pains me to say, because i am from that region, Moldavia shouldn't exist in 1337, especially not as that form. If anything as a compromise it should probably own some land right over the Carpathians and should be a vasal of Hungary. The timing still isn't perfect but it would make more sense.
The second problem I have is with the dynasties in the region. The Movilesti dynasty became part of the high-nobility somewhere in the late 1400's close to 1500, definitely not in the 1300's.
The first ruling dynasty of an independent Moldavia (1356 was when Moldavia was officially independent) was called Bogdanesti and it eventually became the Musatin Family a few generations later.

Also for Wallachia the dynasty should be named Basarab not Basarabs.

And lastly I think the Principality of Karvuna or Despotate of Dobruja in the Dobruja region was a thing in 1337.
Moldova is a placeholder for the time being, wait for the TM on the topic. That said, both the Bogdănești and Drăgoșești will be unfit given they originate from Marmaros. What should be on the map remains to be discussed later.

The Despotate of Dobruja doesn't pop up until later in the century.
 
In the previous Dev Diaries, I've noticed that despite starting united, Georgian Patriarchate has actually four entities under it. Now In the Dynastic Ledger, I see that the ruling house of the United Sweden has Several flags next to it, most of which, IIRC, resemble some of the Swedish Duchies in CK. Does this mean that Countries will actually have CK style internal subdivisions and autonomous entities, or are those flags something else? If so, then will these entities be changeable (changing the borders of the duchies inside the kingdom) or will they be fixed?

Its Sweden & Norway as a Union

Skåne is a Dominion of Sweden.

Iceland and Greenland are Norwegian Dominions
 
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How much can the player interract with other characters? Like if a country has an old ruler with only one child, can I try to assassinate the kid to cause an inheritance crisis?
 
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I forgot the Wittenbach's ruled Brandenburg in this time.
Will there be a event for the hollernzollen's to get on the throne?

"Brandenburg will have multiple dynasties available to pick from, both old and new dynasties, some maybe even fake."
 
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I remember from doing research for the mod Voltaire's Nightmare, that European theocracies actually had complex dynasty systems too. While maybe out of scope for the vanilla version of the game, are there intentions to also tackle these theocratic dynasties at some point?
 
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Is there a genetics system in the game? How does it work? Is it binary like in CK2 where a only a few things like hair colour are being kept track of and a character can only be of one "race" (portrait style). Or is it like ck3 where I could have my english character marry a princess from ethiopia and their children would be of mixed race?

EDIT: Also the ck3 team (working on the most important issues in that game) apparently recently started tracking the genes for pattern male baldness, will project caesar's genetics system keep track of that as well? Will I be able to create a dynasty of bloodthirsty judge holden wanna-be's?
 
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Will the AI understand strategic marriages? And regardless of that will there be some mechanics to encourage the more notable historical outcomes, such as the Hapsburg Empire? Also how will succession wars work?
 
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While this isn't CK3, dynastic claims were so critical to this period.

Look at British history alone, how much of that has been based on the different royal marriages and in turn conflicts.

The fight between the religion of the monarch and the people.
The claims given by different kings e.g. the glorious revolution.
 
Do you have more sprites for catholic crowns? Or do you have only the crown of Saint Wenceslas?
The crown shown on the main portrait image is the crown of François I of France, and we plan to make some more.

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?
He will become Juan II of England; behind the scenes he is actually called name_john so its very easy for the game to translate in different contexts.
 
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Not gonna lie,the 3d models do look quite good and considering your words that they don't take large part of the UI,are moddable and won't tank performance i'm quite satisfied.The only one that looks kinda off to me is the African ruler one.The portraits of rulers in game seem to resemble paintings in some ways and actually look kinda badass.

Most people here complaining about the 3d portraits are just reacting based off of previous experiences,any criticism at the models in PC itself would be welcome so the devs can possibly fix it before release.
 
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doesn't even reach top 200 performance issues atm.
Out of curiosity, what are the biggest performance issues at the moment?

With every new feature announced somebody asks "But how will it affect performance?". It would ease a lot of minds to know what actually can cause performance issues.
 
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will cadet branches of dinasties be a thing? like for example the Habsburg-Lorainne, and how it will affect relations with countries with the main branch? also, you said that your sons can be married to local nobles, does this mean that, at least in the first years of the game we'll have some feudalism mechanic or it's only a thing for marriages? third question, are dinasties customisable, like names, haraldy and so on?