Tinto Talks #16 - 12th of June 2024

[Kaspar Osraige]

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?

I do not like it, because all the guys are the same guy who can do all the things and there has not been any effort to connect this to real life governance and gamify it. The guys are arbitrary, as is the cabinet size. I would much prefer authority mana as in Vicky 3 lol. This is just turning national foci slot into a bunch of dudes because they paid for the 3D models.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

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.

NGL this is pretty convincing and you make a lot of sense. I will now act like a Fallout New Vegas villain who encountered a high speech courier, and reduce my list of complaints to "maybe do not make all these dudes swiss army knives, but give them official titles and stuff and limit their uses"

 

[gcpt]

I’m out of the loop. Mind explaining the reference?

Sir Robert felt that his inheritance was unjust, so he forged the will of his late father, got was exposed in court, exiled and then later went to serve the enemy of his liege lord, aka the king of England. The last part was just a gimmick about the eu4 event about your produced claims being false and you needing to pay the guy to retract his claim of falsehood ;D

 

[Immortal Impi]

NGL this is pretty convincing and you make a lot of sense. I will now act like a Fallout New Vegas villain who encountered a high speech courier, and reduce my list of complaints to "maybe do not make all these dudes swiss army knives, but give them official titles and stuff and limit their uses"

That is a stirring endorsement! To be clear the cabinet system doesn't feel super impressive to me, it is a more developed advisor system, but it is IMO a step in the right direction. If you think about how important someone like Colbert was to the financial policies of France, it feels absurd that in EU4 such people existed as a +50% trade propagation advisor at half-price. I hope future DLC do genuinely flesh out the cabinet/court because episodes like Sultan Suleyman's execution of Vizier Ibrahim or the conflict between Eastern and Western Factions in Imjin era Korea were important events that affected their countries. But for now it offers a scaffold for a more involved court system that is not a carbon copy of CK. It is much improved over the advisors it is replacing and more concrete than them - so a step in the right direction.

I personally remain much more concerned about the implementation of big systems - diplomacy, colonization, migration, landless countries, warfare, vassalage, technology and institutions. These are the make or break subjects for me.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

That is a stirring endorsement! To be clear the cabinet system doesn't feel super impressive to me, it is a more developed advisor system, but it is IMO a step in the right direction. If you think about how important someone like Colbert was to the financial policies of France, it feels absurd that in EU4 such people existed as a +50% trade propagation advisor at half-price. I hope future DLC do genuinely flesh out the cabinet/court because episodes like Sultan Suleyman's execution of Vizier Ibrahim or the conflict between Eastern and Western Factions in Imjin era Korea were important events that affected their countries. But for now it offers a scaffold for a more involved court system that is not a carbon copy of CK. It is much improved over the advisors it is replacing and more concrete than them - so a step in the right direction.

I personally remain much more concerned about the implementation of big systems - diplomacy, colonization, migration, landless countries, warfare, vassalage, technology and institutions. These are the make or break subjects for me.

Me too, especially culture, colonization and migration.

 

[Dongerino]

all the guys are the same guy who can do all the things

This is something I and many others have written suggestions for as an area of improvement. I hope they look at that part because it's what I feel is what's keeping the system from being truly great, instead of just pretty good.

 

[alexkowal123]

That is a stirring endorsement! To be clear the cabinet system doesn't feel super impressive to me, it is a more developed advisor system, but it is IMO a step in the right direction. If you think about how important someone like Colbert was to the financial policies of France, it feels absurd that in EU4 such people existed as a +50% trade propagation advisor at half-price. I hope future DLC do genuinely flesh out the cabinet/court because episodes like Sultan Suleyman's execution of Vizier Ibrahim or the conflict between Eastern and Western Factions in Imjin era Korea were important events that affected their countries. But for now it offers a scaffold for a more involved court system that is not a carbon copy of CK. It is much improved over the advisors it is replacing and more concrete than them - so a step in the right direction.

I personally remain much more concerned about the implementation of big systems - diplomacy, colonization, migration, landless countries, warfare, vassalage, technology and institutions. These are the make or break subjects for me.

I’d like to see the transition from court to cabinet modelled, even if it is just a change in name

 

[Oglesby]

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.

Isn't it obvious that the with the current balance settings that the 0 to 100 <==> 0% to 30%? (Multiply the value by 3 and divide by 10)

The benefit here is the value is used for more than one thing so the 'weight' of the value can be adjusted individually amongst the different things it affects. If the value isn't going to be used directly the set and range can be anything so picking something that has typical endpoints and enough steps makes sense.

Back when all it did was provide a currency the weights were applied to the use of the currency, that is no longer possible.

 

[Johan]

What's the reasoning behind capping it at 100%? Shouldn't they be able to develop infinitely, as you can always imagine higher and higher density?

gamebalance

 

[Johan]

1. Can the rulers wife/husband join the cabinet?
2. And will we have advisors like in eu4 or will the cabinet completely replace them.

1 - in some cases
2 - no

 

[Johan]

That's not really accurate though. The USA for example, would be unfathomably poorer and less developed if it was 50 totally independent states.

I understand why we may not want that type of thing in a game. But we should acknowledge the fact that larger states are often more effective at developing their country.

Yeah. gameplay and balance is too important

 

[Johan]

Will there be a role of prime minister/chief advisor? Giving an advisor some more power in exchange for better bonuses

yes that exists

 

[Rhaegar1]

Isn't it obvious that the with the current balance settings that the 0 to 100 <==> 0% to 30%? (Multiply the value by 3 and divide by 10)

The benefit here is the value is used for more than one thing so the 'weight' of the value can be adjusted individually amongst the different things it affects. If the value isn't going to be used directly the set and range can be anything so picking something that has typical endpoints and enough steps makes sense.

Back when all it did was provide a currency the weights were applied to the use of the currency, that is no longer possible.

Yeah it's clearly deductible and I assume explained a tooltip as well. My point is that this is a design choice that leads to these kind of needs to calculation and deduction instead of that a +1 advisor gives a +1 bonus. I kinda understand that it probably allows for more flexibility but that might essentially just strengthen my worry: that every number in this game will in the end be influenced by 10 different modifiers which in Imperator turned out to be something I loathed.

 

[Wagner Joy Division]

Damn this 3d garbage is ugly as hell.

 

[Oglesby]

Yeah it's clearly deductible and I assume explained a tooltip as well. My point is that this is a design choice that leads to these kind of needs to calculation and deduction instead of that a +1 advisor gives a +1 bonus. I kinda understand that it probably allows for more flexibility but that might essentially just strengthen my worry: that every number in this game will in the end be influenced by 10 different modifiers which in Imperator turned out to be something I loathed.

If the characters aren't just currency producers and we want these characters to have meaning (interact with various mechanics) I do not see how having a small range and strict 1 to 1 ratio will be beneficial. Forcing a binary no effect or full effect relationship between the character stat and things that it influences will be bad for the design.

I think if we want things to be meaningful and interconnected we will need to have weighted influences.

 

[Testerian2]

If the characters aren't just currency producers and we want these characters to have meaning (interact with various mechanics) I do not see how having a small range and strict 1 to 1 ratio will be beneficial. Forcing a binary no effect or full effect relationship between the character stat and things that it influences will be bad for the design.

I think if we want things to be meaningful and interconnected we will need to have weighted influences.

I'm just writing a post about it - but with the old system we had advisors that gave many different type of bonuses to many different things and it worked pretty well. I'm a little worry that percentages of percentages would be hard to understand for most players.

 

[wkscrombie]

you don't get more for being a bigger country.

Will the quality of characters available scale as you grow in population?

 

[Oglesby]

I'm just writing a post about it - but with the old system we had advisors that gave many different type of bonuses to many different things and it worked pretty well. I'm a little worry that percentages of percentages would be hard to understand for most players.

I was referring back to the +1 advisor giving a currency the Rheagar was talking about. I wonder if traits (like what were mentioned for generals) would cover the 'lots of varied' bonuses that were also attached advisors.

I do not feel that we will get percentages or percentages but rather the sum of percentages of values (or the sum of weighted values).

 

[Testerian2]

Will the quality of characters available scale as you grow in population?

It works like that in CK3 so I would guess it will.

 

[wkscrombie]

its called devastation

Will it permanently lower development/be more impactful than in EU4?