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Tinto Talks #16 - 12th of June 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, you know, the happy Wednesday, where we talk about the top secret and very much unannounced game we refer to as Project Caesar. Today we’ll talk about another rather new, and more or less, unique system.

The Cabinet is one of the core functionalities in the game, covering areas which in previous games have been handled by envoys or mana, or may not have scaled nicely. The Cabinet in Project Caesar is a core part of many aspects of the game.


Last week we talked about characters, and we inferred roles like generals, admirals, rulers and regents. We also mentioned two roles we were not ready to talk about as well. Being in a cabinet, while being a good use of a character is NOT one of those roles, so you still have two other things to look forward to regarding characters.

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Can you trust Sir Robert???

The size of your cabinet varies depending on several factors, the most important though, is how advanced your country is. At the start of the game, most countries will have a cabinet size of two, while every age will add at least one. Some government reforms or laws may also grant a bigger cabinet size, for some other drawbacks.

Who you pick for your cabinet matters as well, as each cabinet member from an estate gives +10% power to that estate. And it may not always be ideal to have a cabinet member of the wrong religion or bad culture, no matter how great they are. One example, includes the fact that the Pope might be upset if you employ an heretic as a Catholic ruler.

There are currently 45 different actions that can be assigned to a cabinet position, and more are added as the game develops. Some of these are always available, some require more advances, and some are unique that only a few have access to. Each action belongs to one of three categories, administrative, diplomatic or military, which determines which attribute is used for it.

Some actions impact the entire country, and some impact a province.

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Increasing control in a single province may be good, but it's but a single province…



How efficient is a cabinet action then? The relevant attribute from the ruler and the cabinet member has a big impact, but your societal values, laws, reforms and even some estate privileges can affect it. Not to mention your crown power.


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If you want people to leave Stockholm, winter is not enough.

Speaking of migration, next week we will talk more in detail about how the pops function when it comes to migration, growth, how they change, and what they need.
 
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I'm keenly reading the DDs for project caesar and I'm starting to worry, how in all of these absolutely great mechanics like cabinet do you make nations feel different?

What I've been reading so far I am worried that PC will suffer from some of the issues Vic3 and IR tend to struggle with in that so many nations kind of play so similarly and I'd feel like that would be such a huge shame for a game with such great promise and I am so excited about.

After the confirmation that things like English monarchy won't exist, how are countries going to feel unique?
 
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Seeing the development increasing overtime really worries me as someone who has played ck3 a lot. It's not interactive at all, just put your councillor on dev task and in 200 years without you paying attention at all its the highest dev province in the world. Hope its different in Project Ceasar
 
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Can the king please be just another cabinet position? It feels weird that the full bonus of the king applies to an assignment he delegated to someone else. Maybe give it a limited effect or let king do a separate action please
 
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Does this mean that development is proportional to population? So if you have 100k pops in a location you need X development to be 100% developed, while a 200k pop location might need 2X dev?
Given another post buried somewhere in here, it's the other way around. That is, population is limited by development, and that the sole role of development is to act as a limiter to population.
 
One example, includes the fact that the Pope might be upset if you employ an heretic as a Catholic ruler.
How does employing a ruler exactly work? Can the ruler or whole ruling house be changed via events or even decisions? Like when my ruler dies and he doesn't have any suitable heir, will I be able to choose a ruler out of some pool? is there a way how I or the other countries may get involved in this?
Or even employing a ruler for other countries, like putting a puppet or your relative on the throne?
 
Well, after the mechanics presented the last couple of dev diaries it should at least be pretty easy to wait for a big sale or free week(end) before trying the game...
 
I sincerely hope the only way of affecting migration isn't via characters. If it is, this game will feel as politically deep as CK3 and I do not want that. I also really dislike the UI, and Johan saying this is the style they will go with really damaged my hype for the game. I hate console accomodation and scalability by the way! I do not like the way any modern Paradox game looks. Imperator will be the last Paradox game that looks somewhat satisfying. I know they will never change the modern UI or the weird 3D models but meh, I can still play it, graphics aren't important. I played CK3 and loved it before they added all the meaningless disconnected extra screens and minigames.

Still I liked everything so far until the last two weeks. This won't be my dream game, but it will still be a great game to me. Hyped about the migration TT, as POP's and POP movements are the one thing I love in all PDX games. The migration and culture TT's might still turn this game into the best game ever made.

Not writing this to cope or hate, but I just want you guys to know:
  • I DO NOT want characters being a mandatory way of interacting with other mechanics. I would very much prefer national foci over this. I will never care about any of these guys, and they will die every twenty years and have annoying events about them. This is a hateable and pointless system. The "cabinet size" represents nothing in real life, all of them are Swiss army knives able to do the same job and it is all really pointless.
  • I WANT a more rustic, more readable and less Victoria 3/Crusader Kings 3 looking UI. This one is terrible, and I hope the release version is as far away from this as possible. At the very least stop making everything navy or blue, I would play CK3 or V3 if I wanted that samey UI. Even different forums on this site have more variation, geez.
  • I STILL DO NOT LIKE 3D models, I hope they will get better, since it's obvious that you guys are deep in the sunk cost fallacy and we will never ever see them scrapped. So just letting you know that you have a long way to go and a million assets to make for it to be as good as possible, and I hope the throne room stuff will get smaller too.
No offense to any of the developers or artists, you are quite crushing it, but I think these are important for a lot of the fans. The visual things are moddable and not that important, but characters being way too important will move this game too far away from the tried and loved Europa Universalis formula, and it will make the game a lot more similar to other strategy games, removing one of the things that makes this series unique. Victoria did all three of these mistakes too, and I think not all of your games have to be Crusader Kings 3.
 
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Ideas and Questions:

Another mechanic that should be examined is where Cabinet members come from within the
kingdom as they would play a role in the experience in government and a bust in loyalty (prevent rebellions). Electing a Cabinet member from a rebel area might help quell revolts or hinder a greater change of a revolt from occurring. Also, do you guys consider education a topic of interest for EV? Still, it would be interesting to see cabinet members' educational backgrounds in what university they attended within the kingdom, where universities are tiered into three levels (public, private, and crown/imperial universities). This is only an idea if you are considering education.
 
Who are the cabinet members in actuality? Advisors that are open to any assignment (like in CK3) or do they have fixed positions (or just head of cabinet like was mentioned before)?
 
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I hate scalability.
I do not like the way any modern Paradox game looks.
POP's and POP movements are the one thing I love in all PDX games.

You hate UI being usable on computers with a larger screen than a Macintosh Classic, you hate being able to play the game without searching on the wiki which parts of the UI is actually a button, and you absolutely love a feature (pop movement*) PDS never got right? What?


*Stellaris pop movement took years of complaint by players to become ok-tier, imperator slave pops spend most of their time leaving their province and disrupting the production of goods, and vicky 3 migration is changed with every update because it sucks. I've not played vicky 2 but I hear it works (-ish) only because its basically hardcoded.
 
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