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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.


burgher_capacity.png

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.

monthly_assimilation.png

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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Will the speed of religious conversion differ between different target religions? Like will converting pagan pops be faster than converting pops of an organized religion like in EU4? Will the Christians and Jews of a Muslim nation convert faster if the Dhimmi estate has high loyalty, or will it depend more on the strength of the Ulama? Also, will there be a moral authority system like in CK2/CK3, and will it affect pop conversion? Do pops of the same religion convert to the host nation's culture faster than other pops of a different religion?
 
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Hi Johan, realy nice TT. I really like what you and your team have been revealing as base mechanics and the amount of communication with the players is unbelievable for an unreleased unannounced game
I have a questions about the promotion of pops - If for example there is a need for some noble pops in a location with unaccepted culture, will the promoted pops be from the same location i.e. will they belong to the unaccepted culture or will the state "transfer" nobles from somewhere else? Will this be governed by law or some other mechanic?
 
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After seeing this I have a feeling that Project Caesar takes manners of text from both CK3 and Victoria 3, so I have a question that may have already been answered, but I may have missed it. Will there be a full localisation in Russian? And thanks for another great diary.
 
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Very good DD, I like what I see a lot.

It is still unclear to me how the game aims to balance supply and demand, especially how it plans to deal with and solve too high good production (vs demand).

If we produce more than the pop consumes, besides price dropping does the excess just expire and we do not generate that income (sale)?

Does the game have any feedback loop to deal with "overproduction", especially late game?

In real life if we become too good at producing a good, prices drop and people consume more of it or producers shift to producing something better. Since pop demand is seemingly fixed and RGO is assumed to be fixed (or is it?), does having over abundance of a good cause some feedback correction by any of the games system?
Is the pop migrating away from low price RGOs the main way to correct this? Are there other ways, especially for non RGO goods?
 
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If we produce more than the pop consumes, besides price dropping does the excess just expire and we do not generate that income (sale)?
What income do you mean? Buildings don't have any income. They generate tax base which afaik is just goods produced x goods price.
The 'excess' goods are stored in the market and can be traded for profit somewhere where they're needed.
 
Makes it easier on performance other logics rather than calculating every month that 20 nobles MIGHT get another noble
What about slave populations? The growth of those populations, the economic ‘activity’ from it, and the overall ‘situation’ were major factors in some historical events.
 
What income do you mean? Buildings don't have any income. They generate tax base which afaik is just goods produced x goods price.
The 'excess' goods are stored in the market and can be traded for profit somewhere where they're needed.
By income I mean base tax from the Estates,
i.e. their income. Once stockpiles are full does the excess production just goes to waste? That was my maybe poorly worded question.
 
Very cool pop system, I like the way the UI looks.

It is mentioned briefly that:
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.

Will it be possible to see and play as a peasant revolt, or revolutionary government later in the game?
In that case, will there be nations that remove power of nobles or clergy, and will they suffer problems because of their revolution removing parts of the society that were valuable to state power?

For example, if the Bundschuhbewegung somehow ended with some territory governed by the peasants, will they rapidly fall apart because without nobles nobody is collecting taxes, making governing hard for the player/AI, even though life might be better for the peasants who had fought?
 
By income I mean base tax from the Estates,
i.e. their income. Once stockpiles are full does the excess production just goes to waste? That was my maybe poorly worded question.
"Producing buildings that are not profitable will be closed, and pops will work in other buildings, however, you can always subsidize a building if you require the goods or other benefits it gives."

Sounds like it'll rarely get to that point. I wonder if you can subsidize your buildings in a market shared with other countries to flood them with a good, causing their own unsubsidized buildings to shut down as they become unprofitable...

But yeah, I'd also be curious as to what happens if you subsidize to the point where stockpiles fill up completely.
 
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Was it common for peasants in this period to spontaneously promote to nobility? Pop promotion makes sense in Victoria for instance, as people change profession often, but social class in this period was much more rigid I'd imagine.
 
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Was it common for peasants in this period to spontaneously promote to nobility? Pop promotion makes sense in Victoria for instance, as people change profession often, but social class in this period was much more rigid I'd imagine.
Where else would new nobles come from? It obviously wasn't "common" but this promotion only requires a handful of people out of tens or hundreds of thousands.

I think there is an argument to be made for many places around the world to start out with a high number of nobles already, so that you wouldn't promote many more during the game. Or that it doesn't make sense for nobles to require buildings to exist, which certainly isn't historical.
But it looks like this poptype capacity from buildings thing is set in stone as a core mechanic of the game.
 
I think elites should assimilate way faster than rural pops. A good historical example would be the Mughal Empire. The rural folk overwhelmingly stayed Hindu, but a large part of the nobles and "burghers" became part of a Persianate elite culture. Similar things happened with Arabisation (in medieval times), the Ostsiedlung, the French in Occitania and with cities like Lviv/Lwow, which at first had a german majority, gradually became polis-dominated and remained so despite the influx from the Ruthenian hinterland.New people moved into the town and assimilated to its culture. I think this could create really interesting (and very historical!) situations where your culture has a majority in urban locations surrounded by countryside of the native culture.
 
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Please get rid of "tribe" and "tribesmen" denomination, those are just derogatory terms used by the ENLIGHTNED EUROPEANS to describe the SAVAGES LEADERS and their peoples from Africa and Asia that obviously canno't be described as kings and emperors, that would be insulting to our great good and advanced rulers to be put on equal foot as them.
Politically correct woke garbage, this nonsense is everywhere.
 
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Hi, Johan. How will the literacy look like in India? I imagine the Brahmin caste and the nobility will have high literacy and the lower castes will have very low literacy? How will the casteless people be shown in the game if at all?
 
Knowing our playerbase, I expect to see a "Norse one-religion WC by 1355" thread eventually.
I'd be disappointed if I don't see that thread within an hour upon release
 
I know that this may not be the proper forum just yet, but I wanted to through out the idea or special mechanic when it comes to other countries regarding cultures and governments; the Middle Kingdom (China) and Japan probably should be a more drastic setup when it comes to government structures that should differ form the central core government types.

Japan had a Shogunate system or militaristic setup to the government where the Emperor had little power, but the Shogun had all the power.

Ming and Qing had the imperial set of the mandate of heaven and the centralistic objective of governing.

How would royal marriages work for Japan and the Middle Kingdom? Will noble families fill in the purpose of royal marriages? Will noble families play a greater role in domestic and foreign affairs?

Will there be special or selected places that would reflect the unique design of a country's historical methods of government?

In a later Tinto talk, please talk about these two places!!
 
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.

No middle class, just upper and lower class in this game.... I sense anti-middle class bias in Johan. ;P J/K

Here even the paradox maths check out!

I love history. I hate math. ;P
 
i like it how this generation of eu is shaping up having some more depth. The goods values seem a bit odd, are the values meant to display its cost or the amount?
As such jewelry dominates above anything else is kind of .. Maybe nice to tie tonnage value to amount of good and than with a tooltip hover over or value behind the total value per 1 unit 1 tonn trade cost of such unit