• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Talks #18 - 26th of June 2024

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.

law_categories.png

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.

levy_law.png

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.
naval_doctrine.png

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.

common_law.png

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..

press_laws.png

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.
local_newspaper.png

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.
heir_laws.png

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.
salic_law.png

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.
 
  • 225Love
  • 173Like
  • 9
  • 8
  • 3
Reactions:
An excellent, meaty dev diary. I love how laws are going to work in Project Caesar.

I was a bit worried that people would complain, as I'm only talking about a single feature this time..
 
  • 25Haha
  • 3Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I kind of like it.

Usually, we have "playtime" from 15-17 on wednesdays, and after people gather in the meeting room or the garden depending on weather and start discussing gameplay feedback or a topic from the backlog. I usually don't attend for the first 35-40 minutes, as people may listen to me a lot, and I don't want to bias the creativity, and then I enter for 5-10 minutes to listen to what they have come up with and go "doable, "not doable, "you have to think about X or Y", and then let them continue for 30-45 more minutes talking, and then eventually we get notes at maybe 1/2 to 2 pages that often enough gets into the game.

My team has become really good at ironing out what will work and what will be good now after a few years of this.. And it makes me, who is soon 50 years old and maybe have 2 decades left working, happy to know I got so many great people here at Tinto that knows how to make good game design decisions..

I so LOVE my team at Tinto, so talented and great individuals!
This is entirely what I wanted to see. Wonderful game design philosophy :)
 
  • 4
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Damnn you guys trying to make game with 600 years range . 1337-1936 . Im sure news paper are not even for napoleonic era . this game will contain ck3/eu4/vic3/hoi4 combined

I actually based the design of 18th century sweden, and saw it was applicable to most of europe during that time
 
  • 35Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I kind of like it.

Usually, we have "playtime" from 15-17 on wednesdays, and after people gather in the meeting room or the garden depending on weather and start discussing gameplay feedback or a topic from the backlog. I usually don't attend for the first 35-40 minutes, as people may listen to me a lot, and I don't want to bias the creativity, and then I enter for 5-10 minutes to listen to what they have come up with and go "doable, "not doable, "you have to think about X or Y", and then let them continue for 30-45 more minutes talking, and then eventually we get notes at maybe 1/2 to 2 pages that often enough gets into the game.

My team has become really good at ironing out what will work and what will be good now after a few years of this.. And it makes me, who is soon 50 years old and maybe have 2 decades left working, happy to know I got so many great people here at Tinto that knows how to make good game design decisions..

I so LOVE my team at Tinto, so talented and great individuals!
This is amazing
 
If we are going from Same Religious group (-10%) to Any Religious Group (-50%), on change of the law do we (a) reset to 0% and 'grow' to -50% over time (or ~2% per month assuming 24 month 'enactment'); or (b) go start from -10% 'grow' to -50% (~1.66% per month)?

you will lose the -10% immediately.

but then you start at (iirc) 10% of the next bonus so its -5% or so.. so for a short period they have a better target satisfaction.
 
  • 18
  • 8Like
  • 4
  • 4
Reactions:
@Johan Please, I'm really begging for an answer, is there an option to have the name of the overlord sprawl over their subject lands like in CK2?

to not show the subject name at all?

sure, I guess its doable.
 
  • 28Love
  • 8Like
  • 4
  • 3
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
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.

He is great, but so are all at my team. I am so in awe of what they are creating.
 
  • 42Love
  • 10Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
Will there be “constitutions” which mean that certain laws cannot be changed (or not easily).
The only example I have (I'm French) is "Les lois fondamentales du royaume" (The fundamental laws of the Kingdom), which even the king could not change, they appeared over time, and included in part:
-The ban on abdicating
-The ban on designating an heir is always male primogy.
-The ban on ceding part of the kingdom, this could translate into prohibiting the creation of vassals (other than appanage), or the sale of provinces like EU4, or the transfer of states like in Vic3
-The king is still Catholic.

Currently I would like to know how the game will take into account the succession "catastrophe" in France in 1589, where a law prohibited Henry IV from becoming king because of his religion, and the others from becoming king because he was the one elder.

Thanks for reading me
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
I have to agree on this. Communist countries had probably highest literacy growth rates during 20th century, since state forced everyone to go to school, but there was no freedom of press.
How is this controversial? What are the people downvoting this thinking? Is DPRK a freedom of media haven or do they not have nearly a hundred percent literacy due to well enforced mandatory schooling?
 
  • 4
Reactions:
Can specific cultural laws be unlocked if my country controls a large part of the provinces of this culture, or if the culture becomes an accepted culture?
Example: If I play Korea, and I own all of England and/or English culture is an accepted culture, could I pass an English cultural law?
 
buddy did you not read my post? the reason i posted was because they said its what theyre going with, they said that last week. after weeks of saying its a placeholder.
yeah and this game is in between beta/alpha.
 
Please change colour of background or font of debuffs/minuses. Current red on green (? - (I am colorblind to some degree) in unreadable.
 
How do you decide what's to be a unique law tied and locked to a certain tag, and what's to be broadly available but locked behind stringent requirements? I like the looks of things but would prefer it if the implementation of a "unique" law might be tied to a rare opportunity and perfect combination of skilful advisors and cultural & environmental circumstances, so to enable the RNG machine to produce super rare circumstances of e.g. a "non-Ottoman" adopting some rare extra good "Ottoman" law?
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions: