Tinto Talks #16 - 12th of June 2024

[Ninking]

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.

View attachment 1147476
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.

View attachment 1147475
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.


View attachment 1147474
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.

Awesome stuff! But that makes me curious, are peasants able to migrate in non-feudal states?

 

[Vlad123]

I wish the trait "immortal" are already in the code for allow modding

 

[NosgothKingdom]

Great DD as usually.

2 questions:
1. Does development directly influences metrics such as manpower or the revenue generated at the province (that the states share based on their power)?
2. Or is it more of an andirect influence on them by allowing more advanced buildings and a higher population?

 

[olivenkranz]

This isn't Vicky

Hmmmm... you also said that about Glitterhoof. Who is PC's spirit animal? We need someone.

 

[Lindaegan]

The h is silent

It isn't. Well, it depends on the dialect, I suppose, but in most "standard" Englishes the <h> is pronounced.

 

[Kotyk-durkotyk]

currently only in tooltips.

religion and estate are easy to show as icons.. culture not really

You can show an icon if his culture is "good" or "bad". The full name of the culture can be then shown in the tooltip.

"Good" cabinet member cultures do not give negative modifiers (accepted cultures, close cultures of the nearby friendly states if in peace with them).
"Bad" cabinet member cultures do have some negative effects (cultures of the rival states or some distant cultures).

 

[Caracus]

character stats tend to be a bell curve yes.

So will rolling a new cabinet member be accompanied by a ringing bell noise with sounds akin to V2 railway spam or intro ear damage?

 

[Rhaegar1]

I'm not sure if I really like the design choice to make more numbers go from 1 to 100. for example in the last picture we see the effectiveness being dependend on the skills of the ruler and the cabinetmember. In EU4 that would be a number of 1 to 6 with a very clear and direct relation to how much (in that case mana) you would generate. Now appearently the 33 of the king gives 9.9% and the 50 of the cabinet member 15%. It's probably explained really well in a tooltip but the result is a much more vague relationship between a characters talent and how well the task is performed where rolling that 6/6/6 king in the past or hiring the +3 adivser yielded a very clear result and (in case of the advisor) tradeoff.

Playing it again for a bit I now feel that Imperator suffered heavily from this as well. Basically everything involved in and endless stack of percentile modifiers that added up to a number from which it at a glance really wasn't clear which actions you could take to improve it effectively.

The thing about these games, and I know Johan knows this very well because I'm more or less quoting him I think (or I'm mistaken and it's a random forum remark), is that a GSG should be about intresting choices and tradeoffs between short and long term. Going cheap on advisers was precisly such a choice and because it was so clear in what it meant yet so deep in which results it would yield It was actually pretty great (disregarding the RNG aspect I guess).

I hope that in a quest to 'perfection' we are not going to hurt the clearness in these choices.

 

[bokorthedust]

It isn't. Well, it depends on the dialect, I suppose, but in most "standard" Englishes the <h> is pronounced.

It was supposed to be a convoluted joke about the French origins of the Plantagenets and the famous Swenglish (though in Tinto's case I guess mostly Spanglish) dialect Paradox devs speak.

 

[chriserit1]

1- is the actions that a cabinet member can do correlated to the culture/religion/whatever of the cabinet member or of the country it is in?
2- do the cabinet member stats get influenced by the instruction in your provinces/country (maybe by having university buildings) or is it random? i would imagine that the average stats of cabinets members in say tuscany would be higher than in say magreb.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I'm not sure if I really like the design choice to make more numbers go from 1 to 100. for example in the last picture we see the effectiveness being dependend on the skills of the ruler and the cabinetmember. In EU4 that would be a number of 1 to 6 with a very clear and direct relation to how much (in that case mana) you would generate. Now appearently the 33 of the king gives 9.9% and the 50 of the cabinet member 15%. It's probably explained really well in a tooltip but the result is a much more vague relationship between a characters talent and how well the task is performed where rolling that 6/6/6 king in the past or hiring the +3 adivser yielded a very clear result and (in case of the advisor) tradeoff.

Playing it again for a bit I now feel that Imperator suffered heavily from this as well. Basically everything involved in and endless stack of percentile modifiers that added up to a number from which it at a glance really wasn't clear which actions you could take to improve it effectively.

The thing about these games, and I know Johan knows this very well because I'm more or less quoting him I think (or I'm mistaken and it's a random forum remark), is that a GSG should be about intresting choices and tradeoffs between short and long term. Going cheap on advisers was precisly such a choice and because it was so clear in what it meant yet so deep in which results it would yield It was actually pretty great (disregarding the RNG aspect I guess).

I hope that in a quest to 'perfection' we are not going to hurt the clearness in these choices.

Personally I'd also prefer any stats to be simple integer scales. 0 to 5, or 1-10, or -3 to +3 etc. Rather than 1 to 100 scales. I just like the simplicity of small numbers.

But I understand the design choice. There is a large subset of this fanbase who go crazily angry about simple integers. They will accuse paradox of using "mana" and predetermine that the game is doomed.

But people don't have the preconceived connection between 1 to 100 scales and mana - they will instead evaluation the game on its actual merits as information is released. Its amazing what a significant figure can do

 

[Dukedase]

I'm not a huge fan of the 3D models but it isn't too bad here, I guess. That said, I hope the "develop province" isn't just some arbitrary method. Developing a province should be a result of money being spent there, buildings, population migrations, and trade.

 

[Jesfey1]

If you (as a ruler) employ a heretic (as an advisor)

Oh, thanks. I probably wished it would work like that so I changed meaning of the whole sentence.

 

[Gavyco723]

Yes, thats true

Does this mean we have baronies as tier 1? I assume 2 would be duchy, 3 kingdom and 4 empire? Would be awesome if there was something above empire like hegemony but I guess that’s a separate mechanic. Just read an alt history book where Henry VIII inherited the Portuguese empire and they started calling him the “Biarch” or ruler of two empires.

 

[Mambaking]

Love it! But there is so much more potential with cabinets! Made a suggestion post about it here
Suggestion to spice up cabinets: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/cabinet-member-position-names.1687736/post-29694363

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

I'm confused at this request. Generic national foci like you see in HOI4 when you run out of unique ones? Are you saying you would prefer to see it even more like a button you set and forget?

I understand criticising a feature that doesn't go far enough depth-wise but when a feature offers more than you want (even if the extra stuff doesn't mean much to you personally) I don't understand the request for less features. It seems like Cabinet Actions function exactly the same how you would want a national focus to work but PC's is wrapped up in a "ministers taking action" aesthetic with more depth like minister skills and the potential for storytelling/events.

Even if the extra stuff isn't for you, it seems weird to request the devs to offer less for players to interact with.

Oh, I don't know what a national focus in HOI4 is but from your comment I am like 90% percent sure we aren't talking about the same thing. I mean Vicky 2 national foci, which is like Vicky 3 edicts and EU4 decrees I think? You know, the encourage development type of stuff that you choose on the province menu.

 

[Dongerino]

Oh, I don't know what a national focus in HOI4 is but from your comment I am like 90% percent sure we aren't talking about the same thing. I mean Vicky 2 national foci, which is like Vicky 3 edicts and EU4 decrees I think? You know, the encourage development type of stuff that you choose on the province menu.

So lemme get this straight.
In Victoria 2 you have National Focus slots. You click on a state to activate a "Boost RGO production" focus. This is good and immersive.
In Victoria 3 you have the Authority electricity. You click on a state to activate a "Boost resource extraction" edict. This is good and immersive.
In EU5 you have guys in the Cabinet. You assign them to a location/province to perform a "Boost RGO production" action. This is somehow the worst thing ever?

 

[Immortal Impi]

I thought more people would agree with me, but apparently not. It seems people love seeing characters and doing stuff with them, but to me the depersonalization of history and rejecting individual centric models is the charm of EU4. Well, what can I do. I hope the devs don't get hurt or anything, I really like what they are doing but the last two dev diaries made me a salty old man.

To be honest, while this character system and cabinet is hardly an elegant way to represent ruler policies I am not sure I understand the love for that kind of style of history. Grand historical forces remain important but few historians are committed to so structuralist a position nowadays that they think it erases the individual. In an era of small governments and personality-based rulership persons do actually matter a lot. I always thought national foci were, like 'the spirit of the nation' very cartoony. So much of actual history in this period is defined by the lack of information and agency leaders have to act on their domains and the challenges to make their mark or expand their tools while relying on subordinates and their abilities.

An amorphous edict meant nothing without someone to enforce it. EU4's lack of characters was, frankly, a big mischaracterization - a failure to capture a period where powerful individuals counted for a lot. I don't think the cabinet system is that much better but it is a more concrete acknowledgement that rulers were not geists imposing themselves on the country but had to act through subordinates.

 

[Zarnek]

This is the style we are going with. A classic style of graphics, but made so that they can scale nicely.

Does that mean that the UI is finished already and that is the finished/almost finished product?

 

[Pyoro]

I know this is futile, but what I primarily about the UI isn't even that I don't like it ... it's that I don't like it and it looks to be entirely static again. Especially with a game like Project Caesar I'd really, really like to finally put the information I want where I want it in a way that I want it.

Recently been playing Bundesliga Manager Hattrick. It's a football manager game from 1994. EVERY button on your main screen you can freely arrange, or remove. With additional display and folder options. You can even layer them above one another. It's hardly perfect, but also it's done by two guys in 1994! Meanwhile modern games have entire UI department and what you get out of that is "here's this static screen with no options and you better like it. If we are feeling generous, we might allow you to sort this list. But probably not in the way you like to."

I don't get it, and it continues to be a disappointment with 9 out of 11 games I play these days ^^