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Tinto Talks #17 - 19th of June 2024

Welcome everyone to the 17th Tinto Talks, in this Happy Wednesday, we will give you further information about the most secret game you could ever think of, the one with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will delve into the depths and mechanics of how the population system of the game actually works.

As a recap, we have 6 different social classes, with Nobles, Clergy & Burghers viewed as upper class, while Peasants, Tribesmen & Slaves make up the other three. Every location has a population, and each combination of social class, culture and religion creates a unique “pop” in the game. That Pop may contain 1 person, or 250 Million, but it is still referred to as a “pop”.


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Design copied from an old game I made a decade or two ago… UI is a bit placeholdery, but i like the browsing capabilities..


Population Capacity
Each location has a population capacity which depends on quite a lot of factors. The core of it is vegetation, topography and climate, while the amount of buildings and development increases it as well. If your population is higher than its current capacity, then there is a very large impact on its migration attraction and population growth.

While there are no restrictions on how many peasants, slaves or tribesmen there can be in a single location, the amount of upper class pops there can be is limited, and depends on what infrastructure there exists for that type of pop. Of course, if their estates have money, they tend to want to construct buildings that increase how many they are to further increase their power in the country.

There are reasons why you want upper class pops, and not just always creating an egalitarian “all are peasants” society, and that is when the capital economy developing during this era depends heavily on burghers, so you want to have a fair amount of those. You also want clergy of your national religion as they will help with stability, and having nobles of proper culture will help with your diplomacy and warfare.


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Having levies raised from a specific class, reduces the maximum population there can be for that certain class.


Promotion & Demotion
If there can be more pops of a certain social class, pops will promote to become that class over time. While there is a base value, promoting to some classes like nobles will just be a fraction of that each month. If you wish to speed this up in your country, you can use a cabinet member to increase it. There are many factors that impact how quickly pops can be promoted, some are affecting your entire country, some others are more local, like during Devastation or a Lack of Control. Demotion happens when you have pops over your capacity, and will happen much, much quicker than promotion.

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16 peasants will be promoted every month to become what is needed in Kalmar...


Population Growth
Only peasants and tribesmen grow organically on their own, but all types of pops can die off from negative growth.

Overpopulation, Lack of food, War exhaustion and Devastation have a significant negative impact on population growth, while having access to free land & lots of food increases the growth.

Not to forget, the population can die directly from diseases and warfare as well.

pop_growth.png

Peaceful and nice, the population should grow nicely here…


Assimilation
Assimilation is a very slow process, and pops will assimilate to the primary culture in core locations if they belong to a culture that your country does not appreciate. Societal Values and Lack of Control have a significant impact on this, but there are buildings and other things that can impact it. In most majorly populated areas the natural growth of pops will outpace the assimilation. However, there is a cabinet action where you can increase assimilation in a specific province.

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Sadly this is a slow process in this location, 3 pops will assimilate next month..

Conversion
Converting pops works similarly to assimilation, but there are two major differences. First of all, there are mechanics and systems that sometimes change the religion of pops from what your country may desire. Secondly, there is normally no conversion, but you have to actively enforce religious conversion in a province by using a cabinet. The amount of the population that convert each month depends on what type of buildings you may have, your societal values, laws you can enact, or the privileges given to the clergy. If your clergy is very powerful as well, conversion is quicker.

monthly_conversion.png

103,26% of 0 base conversion is still going to be 0 pops.

Migration
There are several ways for pops to migrate, multiple ones regarding the colonization aspect of the game will be talked about in a later Tinto Talks. There is also content that does migration, where events, disasters or other scripted content will set up specific migration from one place to another.

However, there is also a natural migration mechanic, where the population will move between locations. Pops will move away from locations that have a negative migration attraction, and will go to one with higher migration attraction in the same market. Upper class pops are usually allowed to migrate, while not many countries allow their peasants to move freely.

As for other things, you can use your cabinet to control this, where you can have one member of the cabinet leading an effort to expel people from one province, severely reducing their migration attraction, while another one could attract people to another province. You can also construct buildings in lowly populated locations to attract pops to move there.

migration_attraction.png

The price of stone in Kalmar is not inviting, but it's calm and plenty of land is available..


Literacy
Each pop keeps track of its own literacy as well, and there are buildings, advances, laws and other things that impact how quickly it can grow and how high it can be. The average literacy of a country has an impact on the research speed of that country, and the literacy of a pop has some impact on its satisfaction. However, there is also an immediate impact on the location of the average literacy of all of the same social class. Amongst other things, the average literacy of the nobles in a location has an impact on how quickly control can increase there, and the average literacy of slaves in a location increases the unrest of the location.

literacy.png

Literate Burghers will definitely make you richer over the long term..


Population Needs
Each pop has its own needs for goods, and if they can’t get all of those goods, their satisfaction will be lower. The goods that a pop requires depend on their social class, their culture, their religion and where they live. They also may start caring about goods when they know about them, as the demand for tobacco will only appear in Europe when the pops actually know about it. Obviously people in colder climates want more lumber or coal, while a Jain pop is not wanting any fur at all.

pop_needs.png

I am not entirely sure why these burghers want mercury…

Satisfaction
The population needs impact their satisfaction in two ways. If they can't get the goods that they want, it's a penalty to their satisfaction. However, the prices of the goods also affect their satisfaction, as if the prices are high, then satisfaction drops, but if you can get the goods they require cheaper in the market they live in, their satisfaction will increase, but their literacy impacts how much they understand the price impact though.

Satisfaction also depends heavily on the status of their culture in the country, the religion they belong to, and how satisfied their estate currently is. There are other ways to make pops more satisfied like certain buildings, or the good old method of stationing armies.

Pops with low satisfaction will join and start supporting a rebel faction.


satisfaction.png

Of course, these poor pops lack one of the most important things in life.

Even though pops may not be upset enough to rebel, their satisfaction has other impacts, as the average satisfaction of all pops in a location has an impact on prosperity and control.


average_satisfaction.png

Here even the paradox maths check out!


Stick around, as next week we’ll be talking a bit about laws!
 

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how do culture works? Like, I'd really really would love to see a cultural integration process.

Like, let's make a stupid example. I, as Holland, conquer East Anglia from England at the start of the game. After 200 years though my population in Holland will start to anglicanize, and the one in East Anglia will start to dutchify (if I don't go for a cultural expulsion policy that is). Thus a new culture will be created and gradually expand in my glorious country) In which culture group will that culture be? I'd say both British and Germanic. And the Burgers in port towns will probably be the first ones to adopt it. Will a mechanic of this kind be implemented?

Like, I feel that 1337 is definitely a far too early date to railroad the cultures that will be developed in the next 500 years. Like, if I play as Naples and I focus soly on the Med and to integrate and absorb people of different cultures, I want a "pan Mediterranean" culture to slowly develop in the span of centuries, I don't want to still be just "Italian". Like, even in our own timeline, a pan mediterranean language popped up (mainly used by merchants) and was a thing up til the 19th century, even though the Mediterranean was culturally saw in 3 halves. (and same would happen with Indonesia if Majapahit managed to not fall apart). Like, I would like if culture groups worked kinda like passive IOs.

so, will we get eventually mechanics that will try ro simulate this kind of stuff?
 
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Joining the clergy was the only major path for social mobility in the Middle Ages - even sons of peasants could become popes - so I do think it makes sense to view clergy as Upper Class compared to peasants.

this
 
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Mightn't it still make sense to have assimilation be more impactful on upper-class pops? I believe that would hold historically for most of the world. [Edited question after reading replies] Will pop class/estate *also* be able to affect assimilation, along with religion/culture?
 
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nice. do you lack any good to make it 100? :p
Dev diaries are worth only 50% for the forumite pop, sorry. The game itself is worth 100%, subject to modifiers such as bugs and balance.
 
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Is Pop Assimilation also an active decision like Pop Conversion? For cases in which we want to create a Multicultural nation rather than spreading our Culture everywhere?

yes
 
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No joke, 10/month base assimilation in cores seems a little high, I feel you could reasonably drop that down to 5 or 4 as the base number.
 
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Will the natural decay in the number of people in Catholic clerigy pop be higher than in that of nobles or Orthodox clerigy ?

no, as 3rd sons always go to the church.
 
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You mentioned that literacy will impact research speed. That made me curious how research will work in general...

Will it be more like Victoria 3, where you have tech trees, or like EU5 where you only have three linear paths? Or maybe like stellaris?
 
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I feel very strongly that the research speed scaling with average literacy is a mistake.

As a rule, more people doing research = faster research. For the same level of literacy, a populous country should research faster than a small one. Moreover, doing it this way, like in Vic3, leads to a strange effect where having a large illiterate rural population inexplicably nerfs your research, even if you have a large highly literate upper class. This is to say that a China which invests heavily in the research capacity of its upper class should not be kneecapped by its huge population of farmers.

My alternative suggestion would be to have research speed related to the combination of (the number of pops in a class x class literacy percent x the value of that class) for each class. Number of pops probably shouldn’t scale linearly for balance, and the value of the class modifier is to say that the clergy and burgers should matter more than the other classes, perhaps depending on government type. There are probably more elegant solutions, though.

Is this something you might consider reevaluating?
 
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