Tinto Talks #18 - 26th of June 2024

[RaccoonCity]

literacy kind of does that already, as it impacts how they view price changes etc

And its well thought.

But I think Free Press should have another malus modifier to stability/unrest whatever.

You are already representing that people are smarter so they get mad more easily because they have more awareness of things, but also the fact that government scandals reach the public opinion VS are hidden to the public opinion should be represented someway, maybe with stability malus or unrest malus or something like that.

 

[Eskalante]

Can this system be used (and would be?) to apply local laws, such as privileges for free cities or duchies?

 

[Ispil]

With each new dev post I'm becoming more and more unsure as to what exactly "no modifier stacking" is going to mean in practice. You started off with a very concrete statement originally, but we've seen a number of modifiers pop up as the time goes on. Here you even remind us that the policies are not meant to be just for modifier stacking, and yet the naval policies have... just the exact same modifiers you'd stack in EU4. Is there something I'm missing, or is navy going to be the red headed stepchild of the combat system again?

No modifier stacking doesn't mean no modifiers. It just means you're not doing "play country A, do mission tree that gives you a permanent modifier, tag-switch to country B, do mission tree that gives you a permanent modifier bonus, embrace culture C and religion D to get more modifiers..."

Since policies are exclusive, it's a trade-off rather than just being able to add more and more permanent modifiers ad nauseum.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

I hope naval “doctrines” get another pass. Most of these aren’t even mutually exclusive, and perhaps that’s a flavor problem rather than a mechanical one, but the two (should) go hand in hand.

 

[Rudolf Nechvile II]

I presume that "Monthly Pogress to Decentralization/Quality/Quantity" is related to the EU4 idea group replacement?

If I had to guess, it's probably similar to how military tradition trees work in Imperator Rome, which I think would be cool. Branching makes ideas/traditions a lot more flexible (you can also add unique ones), and it also ties traditions you choose to the "history" and trajectory of your country in your game.

It also means that theoretically you don't actually need static national ideas like EU4. You could just have countries start off with varying ideas/traditions selected based on their history before the game start. No longer would Prussia be predestined to have the strongest army, nor would a continental focused Britain automatically be a naval super power!

 

[RaccoonCity]

I can't take credit for the "laws, privileges, etc should take time to implement" idea, as that was the idea of one our content designers, Markus, who suggested it during it during one of our weekly brainstorming sessions.

Well that guy is a genius. Because changes taking time to implement is one of the most important things for strategy.

That's by far one the worst things in EU4, most things are instant. You can turn a small village into the biggest city in the world in 1 day.

So thank you, Markus.

 

[Dankpeas]

Is serfdom a law and does sweden have it?

 

[Pavía]

Will culture specific Nobility build xilture specific buildings? Like Dutch nobels building polders, even while under Spanish control?

Potentially, yes, although most of the culture-specific buildings that we currently have are buildable by the player.

 

[KarkinostheAssClapper]

My lord those 3D models are abhorrent, unfortunately, 3D models are the MO of modern Paradox for some god-forsaken reason. You people cannot look at that picture showing the succession candidates and tell me with a straight face that those portraits look better than clean CK2 portraits. My problem with it isn't even really how it looks, which don't get me wrong I think it looks bad and objectively worse than CK2 2D portraits, my problem is that to me it displays misplaced priorities. You said yourself in an earlier Tinto talk that the reason for not having more crowns or something is because you haven't had the time to produce that content or something along the line, making these 3D models and portraits and modeling the accouterment and clothing seems to take a good deal of resources, and I would assume that it takes quite a bit more time, effort, and money than 2D models. I just don't understand why you would waste the time and money to focus on 3D models that look worse. Not to mention the increased workload that it inherently causes as well. Due to the decision to implement 3D models, you now have to properly model variations of fashion within cultures throughout various time periods. Do you want Ottoman Turks wearing traditional Berber clothing in the 16th century? Of course not. You also can't have everybody wearing the same clothes either, there must be variation in the fashion from the 3D models you see even within the same culture and time period. You also have to model loads of different crowns on top of the variety of fashion/clothes that you'll have to model for each culture and each time period, as well as various backgrounds that also change with time and cultures/locations. If you fail to do these things by the time you release the game it will have been done lazily and poorly, and will feel shallow. I pray that you guys don't make the horrible decision of not developing this properly by the time of release and deciding to expand the models with DLC instead. To me, it just seems like the workload required to properly do the 3D models isn't anywhere near worth the time and effort for something that fundamentally isn't particularly important to the functioning of the game, it feels like misplaced priorities in regards to the development of the game. Perhaps I'm wrong though and 2D models are actually very intensive to implement? The only way that I can really understand the decision to do this is if the workload is barely increased in going from 2D to 3D even with proper development and implementation in regards to the 3D models, but I can't really see or rationalize that being the case. Whatever though, it's your guys' game, but if other areas seem underdeveloped on release I will 100% be partially blaming the decision to implement 3D models for seemingly no reason. The laws look good though, the only concerns I had were about numbers which could easily be modded, as well as centralization and decentralization which are concepts that I understand will be covered by a Tinto talk at some point, so good dev-blog all around. I also think a character's traits/stats/history should influence their support for their succession. For example, if 1 son is a successful battlefield commander who's won battles and campaigns for me I think that should influence his support for his succession. Having the only things that influence the succession we saw in this screenshot be age and gender feels extremely shallow and lazy and a lot more effort could be put into adding further depth to that mechanic.

 

[Oglesby]

I presume that "Monthly Pogress to Decentralization/Quality/Quantity" is related to the EU4 idea group replacement?

I thought it was affecting the sliders.

 

[Pavía]

this is honestly so very cool

just to know, how many policies will we be able to stack for same law? Will policies be culture specific and / or affect cultures as well?

also, will we have one day a tinto talk about the culture system? And what about a talk about the character system?

1. The design is one policy per law, so the player has to make a decision, and can't stack infinite policies per law.
2. Yes, there will be culture-specific policies.
3. We'll talk more about the culture system in a future TT, yes.

 

[Metz]

@Johan

I think the more commonly used name for Traditional Law is Customary Law. You could also add Religious Law with dynamic changes based on the religion of the country like Sharia Law or Halakhah Laws, etc.

 

[Promethium555]

I'm hoping to see laws being able to have a direct influence on the power of different estates, and to see different mechanics/flavor for countries with different laws. For Example:
- a theocratic state could be able to convert disbelievers more easily and use religion as a CB, but has worse relations with heathens and heretics, and more penalties for having heretic/heathen provinces, not to mention a stronger clergy estate.
- Fuedal nations having a stronger nobility estate, and weaker peasantry.
- Trade and economy laws influencing the power of the burgher estate.
- Absolutism being represented by a stronger Crown estate rather then just modifiers (I still don't understand why Vicky 3 devs/players don't like the idea of government being represented by an IG group)
Good work so far though!

 

[alex5050]

Welcome everyone to another Tinto Talks. This is the time of the week where we will be focusing on gathering your helpful feedback on how to shape this secret game with the code name of Project Ceasar together.

Today we will get back into politics, and discuss how Laws function in this game. Sadly, when this is going live, I’m technically on vacation, so might not be able to reply. The good news for you though, is that @SaintDaveUK and @Pavía are more than happy to reply.

We have had various forms of laws in previous grand strategy games, everything from deciding how the Upper House in Victoria 2 is composed to simpler things like decisions “The Education Act” in EU3 that gave you a permanent bonus. In Project Caesar what we define as a Law is something that has 2 or more policies to choose from, and where you can change the policy for a cost.

Many Laws have lots of unique policies that are available for certain tags, religions, cultures or other unique restrictions.

Currently most countries start with about 12-15 laws that they have policies on from the start, and there are about 40 more laws that appear over the ages.

View attachment 1151302
Four different administrative laws here, all for the ideal way to run our country.

Enacting a policy for a new law is merely a cost in gold, but changing a policy is far more costly. At a base cost of 100 stability, it's rather costly, and while a high crown power reduces it, having low crown power, which would be very common in the early part of the game, would increase that cost further.

So how do you pass a law then without plunging your country into chaos? Call in the Parliament and convince them to approve law changes! How that works in detail we will talk about when we talk about parliaments.

Also to take into account is that while you immediately will lose the benefits of the previous policy, enacting a new policy takes time. Depending on your administrative efficiency it can take several years until you reap the full benefits of a +1% Tax Efficiency, just like in real life..

Not only countries have laws, many international organizations have laws as well, where in some of them it's something the leader like The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire could enact on their own, in some there are specific countries that can vote on the policy being approved or not, and many more options possible. We will go into details about those when we talk about specific International Organizations.

So what type of policies do we have in the laws? Well, they are not just modifier-stacks like many things in previous games, but they enable and disable mechanics, they make estates happy or unhappy, and have impact on your societal values.

Here are a few examples of laws.

The Levy Law here is an interesting choice. 2% more of the peasants is a fair bit more than 20% of the nobles, but over time it has an impact over what your military focuses on.

View attachment 1151297
Or is it a way to kill nobles more efficiently?

Naval Doctrines was a concept in EU4, and here it is a law with lots of different options depending on who you play as.View attachment 1151298
Wooden Wall, the best for England right?

Your Legal Code has many different options depending on who you play, but as England you definitely have the important choice.

View attachment 1151303
More efficient government or more happy estates? or just the traditions?

In the later part of the game, the Press Laws is something you have to decide upon..

View attachment 1151304
This is a tough choice, isn't it?

If you go with free press, the burghers might start building these in different towns and cities.
View attachment 1151307
There should be no drawbacks to this... right? right???

Here is an example of a religious law, about what religion your heirs can belong to.
View attachment 1151309
Clearly the clergy are not as tolerant as they need to be.



Speaking of Heirs, the “Succession Law” mechanic is not technically a law, but uses another mechanic, primarily because we want to always ensure that it's valid, and enforcing a country to always have one. This Special Law is very much dependent on government type.

We have lots of unique ones, like the Papal Conclave, where when the pope dies, the cardinals gather to debate who will be the new pope. This can be quick, but sometimes it may take several years. We have different election methods for republics, and of course the old classic Salic and Semi-Salic Laws as some of the options for Monarchies.
View attachment 1151310
A difference on view of this will never cause any wars I'm sure..

For all of you that like to modify games, all of these are 100% controlled from textfiles.

Stay tuned, because next week we will finally talk about ages and institutions, which is something we have hinted at for many weeks.

Wow !

 

[eightarmed_willy]

There should be no drawbacks to this... right? right???

I think press should amplify the stability effects in this location (so it can be good/bad depending on the stab)

I hate the idea of just clicking a button for stab.

 

[Testerian2]

There is an Inquisition Law, with [checks the script] 5 different policies, of which some are common for all the Catholic countries, and some are unique (and, of course, there's a Spanish one, as everybody expected!).

Is there a difference between the Holy (Papal) Inquisition and the Secular (like the Spanish) Inquisition - or are they both implemented as laws of the state?

 

[guinea prince]

So free press so our burghers all build local newspapers on their own dime, then "nationalize" them through a sudden imposition of a Censored Press law to dampen individualism somewhat and encourage communal values?

The individualism-communalism dichotomy piques my interest. I always worry that places like Micronesian areas might end up being "here be unplayable natives to subjugate" at start, and tribal being "pops who don't engage with the economy" has me worried which direction it's going to go. But a focus on communalism isn't a bad way to represent things, things like kin-based land ownership or wealth distribution within or between clans are common in more tribal societies.

Could be cool trying to maintain said values and effective independence as individualist-leaning explorers, conquistadors and mercantilists start filtering into the ocean.

 

[Rudolf Nechvile II]

I thought it was affecting the sliders.

Do you mean economy sliders? If so, they're not in TT #7. Or did I miss/forget about another set of sliders entirely?

 

[Niptium]

How the Dutch system of stadtholderate be implemented in Project Caesar since stadtholders weren't really kings, but appointed by the provincial states (Zeeland, Friesland, Gelderland, Holland, etc.), but they still acted like ones (royal marriage, inheritance, leading the army) when the provincial states let them ? Would these be a unique system of law for the United Provinces/Dutch Republic tag ?

 

[Walpoleon]

I may have missed a comment or two about it, but how will this be implemented for Native American and East Siberian + any other tribal tag?