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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.

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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.

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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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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
I believe it represents amount, and right now all the amounts are unitless floating points.

I imagine only by the end of the development cycle, when these values are far more concrete and set in stone, will we see goods be given actual units.
 
I'm guessing they probably don't have a proper starting setup for buildings yet, which would greatly impact the numbers of nobles and burghers at the start.

The only reason that I brought it up was Johan's comment that 20 noble births did not move the needle. If you actually believed there were 160 nobles in all of Sweden, then maybe you do get 20 nobles being born per year.

I do think that having available land should still have some impact for migration, but it should be way more important for peasants that are migrating than for upper class pops. If no or only few peasant are migrating, available land should matter very little and pop satisfaction or tax base per capita in the target location should be the crucial factor.

Agreed. I'm still mulling over the difference between free land - as in farmland that is not being used and a peasant could just walk right up and start farming - and land that would take some elbow grease to clear wastes. Those shouldn't be treated equally. Also, if you give too high a negative modifier for population capacity, then does that discourage waste clearage? Would peasants prefer to stay local and clear wastes or travel away from family/friends to work on free land? How far would they travel? I'm still thinking about those things and how they fit into the system

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.

It depends on what you think of as a peasant.

The people who "promoted" to nobles were typically wealthy, politically connected individuals. These were not peasants in the traditional sense. They acted like nobles to a large degree. They owned some land - just not land that endowed them with noble status. They were either wealthy business owners (urban or rural) or elite lawyers/members of the bureaucracy. From what I have read, the latter were actually more likely to become nobles in France. They would purchase a venal office that granted 'robe nobility'.

Here is a breakdown:
1) Start off as well-off burgher, be very successful and make lots of money until you are very wealthy, then purchase rural land (or a financial venal office - my understanding is that this was uncommon - you needed very extreme levels of wealth to get into financial venal offices) that granted nobility. burgher -> noble
2) Start off as well-off peasant farmer, be very successful and buy lots of property until you are very wealthy, then purchase rural land that grants nobility. peasant -> noble
3) Start off as children of wealthy burgher/peasant farmer, go to school to become elite lawyer/bureaucrat, then purchase venal office that grants nobility. This was the most common path. burgher -> noble or peasant -> noble depending on parentage.

#1 and #2 most likely took multiple generations.

One thing to note is that the ruling class did have some involvement in this process. At various points, nobility was "closed off". I don't recall much about that decision, why it was made, etc. Maybe it was vibes. At a certain point, it just felt like nobility was losing its exclusivity. Anyway, the people who were not nobles, but were wealthy and powerful were none too happy to be excluded. If the conditions were ripe for resistance to the crown, those people frequently were the ringleaders. The successful uprisings in history almost always had a component of elite leadership.

Anyway, long story short, peasant -> noble did happen, but you need to think of the "peasant" as something that we don't think of as a peasant.

About to hit post, then recalled that you could gain noble status through military service as well. Someone else can comment on that. I don't know as much about it. I think they came from the same class that became elite lawyers/bureaucrats. The second and third sons of wealthy families (urban or rural) who were non-noble, went to school for a military education, then started off as officers and rose in the ranks through "great deeds" until they were recognized by the crown with nobility.
 
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I believe it represents amount, and right now all the amounts are unitless floating points.

I imagine only by the end of the development cycle, when these values are far more concrete and set in stone, will we see goods be given actual units.

ok i understand now a bit better, so there is even a chance things can get measured in universal metric tonnage?
 
It depends on what you think of as a peasant.
Unfortunately too many people think of peasants as starving mud-dwellers in rags, when there were plenty of peasants that were well-off. It also depended on laws, time period and region as well, of course.
The only reason that I brought it up was Johan's comment that 20 noble births did not move the needle. If you actually believed there were 160 nobles in all of Sweden, then maybe you do get 20 nobles being born per year.
I believe he was talking about individual noble pops with size 20 who would each roll a dice each year to see if they maybe grow by 1. That's quite wasteful in terms of performance for very little impact.
 
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No middle class, just upper and lower class in this game.... I sense anti-middle class bias in Johan. ;P J/K

Once upon a time, I used to argue on the M&T forums for "middle class" pops. A peasant-proprietor class for well-off rural pops who owned some property. A judicial/legal profession class for well-off urban pops who provided legal services and assisted with running the bureaucracy. A merchant class for shopowners and 'poor'-burghers. A craftsmen class for master craftsmen who were not wealthy enough to become burghers (this was most master craftsmen). A lesser noble class for 'poor'-nobles.

Always shot down because of processing power.

I still think they would be nice additions. Each of these groups had their own issues and conflict between the groups would be some of the tasks that a player would have to deal with as part of ruling the country.

Just need to wait for quantum computers, I guess. ;)
 
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Question: Will Jewish pops resist conversion? Historically Jewish populations in Europe resisted conversion in a way where it would be unrealistic for them to convert as fast as, say, the Baltic pagans.
 
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Japan had a Shogunate system or militaristic setup to the government where the Emperor had little power, but the Shogun had all the power.

Japan probably shouldn't be that different, IMO; "Emperor" creates pictures in the mind of course but IIRC the earliest European reports described those titles as "Pope" and "Duke" and it matches the HRE (at least in those aspects, not so much many of the others) surprisingly well.
But also, it's already been mentioned that it's going to be treated as an organization, and the other organizations listed tend toward "vassal swarm with special rules", so.

Incidentally, 1337 start means that both the Avignon papacy and the Yoshino court are not only on the table but locked in. You could double the... well, hopefully double the amount of subsystems made very flexible for modders by not only having a structure that supports both HRE and Shogunate, but also a structure that supports both antipopes and rival courts. (Though of course in that case it is the exiles who are considered the legitimate succession.)
 
Three thoughts:

1. There should be advantages and disadvantages to allowing pop promotions beyond just the disadvantages inherent in high estate power. A simple example would be the greater stability that Tokugawa sought when he cemented Japan's caste system. A more complex example would be something like guild monopolies, where reducing the promotion rate would make Burghers more happy, not less happy in the early ages, because it would mean there's less people to split the money between.

2. Demotion should also be a thing, where a certain % of upper class pops a month will demote depending on the wealth/pop ratio of the estate. Defecting to the other wealthy pops would be the most preferred option, for example Nobles either becoming Burghers or Clergy, but in truly desperate times they could drop straight into being peasants. As with suggestion #1, banning pops from demoting could also be a thing, as they did in Edo Japan. Having lots of poor nobles may lead to unrest, but it would also bring them down a peg, and maybe even help bolster the mercenary population.

3. With some slight tweaking, you could combine the Assimilation mechanic with the often-suggested hybrid culture mechanic in one relatively simple system. Assimilation would work in two ways: For a similar cultures (i.e. ones in your group), you would slowly convert them into your primary culture; for extremely dissimilar cultures (i.e. indigenous peoples, imported slaves) assimilation would instead first work towards making them into a more similar culture in your group, whether this be an existing culture on the map or a hybrid culture like Creoles or Mestizos.
 
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I'm pretty sure Holsatian are Germans from Holstein
true dat, but that's way too few, IMO. I've glanced over some of the papers in the google scholar results window that I've linked in the OP, and it seems that across Sweden at least a quarter of the urban population around-ish the start date (the 14th century) would have been Germans. Now it does seem that the urbanization level was very low at the time too, but just 500 people seems to be very low still.

I laso don't remember how eu4 separated low german cultures, but if those Germans really did come from Hansa one would assume they'd have come from towns like Lubeck, Rostock, in modern Germany's north-east, or possibly Hamburg/Hannover in the North-West, neither of which (and this is true), are in Holstein
 
true dat, but that's way too few, IMO. I've glanced over some of the papers in the google scholar results window that I've linked in the OP, and it seems that across Sweden at least a quarter of the urban population around-ish the start date (the 14th century) would have been Germans. Now it does seem that the urbanization level was very low at the time too, but just 500 people seems to be very low still.

I laso don't remember how eu4 separated low german cultures, but if those Germans really did come from Hansa one would assume they'd have come from towns like Lubeck, Rostock, in modern Germany's north-east, or possibly Hamburg/Hannover in the North-West, neither of which (and this is true), are in Holstein
I wonder if the bulk of the German pops will be in Scania, then, which is treated in this game as a separate TAG?
 
true dat, but that's way too few, IMO. I've glanced over some of the papers in the google scholar results window that I've linked in the OP, and it seems that across Sweden at least a quarter of the urban population around-ish the start date (the 14th century) would have been Germans. Now it does seem that the urbanization level was very low at the time too, but just 500 people seems to be very low still.

I laso don't remember how eu4 separated low german cultures, but if those Germans really did come from Hansa one would assume they'd have come from towns like Lubeck, Rostock, in modern Germany's north-east, or possibly Hamburg/Hannover in the North-West, neither of which (and this is true), are in Holstein
Stockholm was somewhere between 30000-4000 at the time, total urban popultion probably was under 10000, so fine maybe 2000 would be a better number.

Could also be that the game only has count German burgers.
 
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Wondering if it would be better to use adjective forms here, sice it's the population of each religion instead of each religion.
 
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Would the goods needed by different pops change depending on where they are? For example, Norwegian pops may want more furs, coal etc, but if a Norwegian pop existed in an equatorial region, would their needs for furs, coal etc then reduce down to a "baseline" level more in keeping with the local population?
 
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It's beautiful but I do have a doubt... Isn't unrealistic to have easy access to all of this precise information on pops, their satisfaction, needs etc...? We're in the Middle Ages, so I believe it would be more realistic if you had a general idea about this type of stuff: for example it could say "there are between 10k and 12k people in this location" or "their satisfaction is between 47% and 55%". It would also make sense and improve peace time gameplay to have a system of laws, societal values and buildings, institutions etc that improve the preciseness of these values. What do you think about this?
 
Hope you change the fact that there is normally no conversion it makes conversion feel to artificial to me. Maybe make it just like base 2 or 2.5.

So it remains slow but you won't need a cabinet to enact conversion. It feels too much like 1.0 Imperator.
 
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