Tinto Talks #18 - 26th of June 2024

[Aethilias]

Which unique laws would you expect?

It might be better represented by a Burgher privilege, but Norway (and maybe eventually Denmark depending on how you represent Norway's time under Danish rule) should have a law/privilege banning upgrading rural locations in Northern Norway to towns or cities and reducing the population growth of the region, in return making the burghers happier and more powerful, giving Bergen market attraction, and increasing the max population of burghers in Bergen. Name it something like "Bergen's trade monopoly".

Historically the Hansa traders were not allowed to trade in the region so that Bergen could monopolize the trade of stockfish from especially Lofoten and Vesterålen to Europe and Bergen exercised a fairly direct control of all or most of it for almost all of the timeframe of the game; the citizens of Bergen lobbied hard to keep this privilege. This made Bergen a wealthier city than it would otherwise have been, but also should be seen as a very significant reason that the power centres in Northern Norway from the viking age didn't translate into actual cities for this era and that some resources that reasonably could have been exploited in the region such as a Fauske marble quarry and Sulithjelma sulphur/copper mine were left undeveloped for its entirety. Around the 1780s I would say towns were allowed and full on cities from the early 1800s.

 

[Immortal Impi]

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.

This is true, but this is due to universal schooling. This is only just appearing as an idea at the end of this period in Europe. For most of the time we're talking about, state press only was associated with literacy suppression and a suspicion of universal literacy, as well as societies which were generally less literate.

 

[alexkowal123]

This is true, but this is due to universal schooling. This is only just appearing as an idea at the end of this period in Europe. For most of the time we're talking about, state press only was associated with literacy suppression and a suspicion of universal literacy, as well as societies which were generally less literate.

I would’ve thought literacy was supported so that more people could read the state’s propaganda?

 

[AHumpierRogue]

If we can spitball some laws, a good one for China would probably be "Empower/Weaken the Imperial Princes". Where having empowered imperial princes would give them more power and influence over the court and military, and ensure you have figures who are loyal to your reign ostensibly. This would increase the power of the crown I imagine, representing the Imperial Clan. However it'd be at the cost of perhaps drifting to decentralization and of course more importantly potential succession disputes if these princes feel too big for their britches. While having weak imperial princes would increase centralization but reduce the power of the crown/imperial clan over all.

This would be relevant both for the interactions between the Mongols and their own "Princes of the Blood" who could be a thorn in the side of the Imperial house while still ultimately being relied upon for defense against the native chinese, and when these relations became fraught, as they already were by 1337... well, you already have the Red Turban rebellion researched so I don't think I need to explain what happened next. For the Ming, the initial system as designed by the Hongwu emperor was for the Imperial princes to be powerful and act as the swords and shields of the capital region(at Nanjing, it must be remembered when he ruled, not Beijing). However this ultimately resulted in the Jingnan Campaign and the rise of the Yongle Emperor. But overall this balance between empowering the imperial clan vs limiting its power features again and again across many dynasties, so I think making it a law would be good.

The only issue is that this would require some potential for inter-estate conflict which I imagine would be difficult to model, and very atypical, unless "Imperial Clan" was its own estate separate from the Crown(which would be odd in its own way, and hard to define).

 

[Immortal Impi]

I would’ve thought literacy was supported so that more people could read the state’s propaganda?

No, that's not why Communist parties supported literacy. They supported literacy because they believed genuinely in the idea of a mass-educated population which, importantly, would be far more capable of operating the kind of machinery and contributing to the science they saw as essential to modernization. Communist parties were obsessed with the idea of modernization and development and saw mass education as part of a formula for developing educated, industrially trained, and technically skilled workforces. Mass Education also worked well with the kind of universal programs state socialism was good at providing, unlike say, end-of-life care or computer R&D, which was far less collective and harder to work within the same model. They also thought the educated masses would, by the nature of materialism, support state socialism and its messaging, which turned out to be less true in the long-run.

The countries with state press only within the game's period like the Russian Empire had extremely small literate populations and strong autocratic rule which associated newspapers with revolutionary liberalism and wanted to suppress them totally among the nobility and small burgher populations. They did not really care much for the idea of mass literacy.

 

[Eturion]

Regarding Laws, if they take time to enact fully, why not also fade out old laws over a couple years?
Maybe even enact the new law when the old law is only half faded out.

 

[nswag]

In eu4 culture/tag specific government reforms were almost always just superior to the generic options. If culture specific laws are going to be common, hopefully this won’t be the case as it would remove any interesting choice for that law; always just pick the special one (though ig it would also feel bad to ignore yout specially flavored law in favor of generic options…) There should even be some undesirable culture-specific laws that some nation start with.

 

[Hawk123456789]

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.

Enacting policy will cost money, but where does those money go to? Do they disappear in the air?

 

[wowlock]

Which unique laws would you expect?

Devshirme system for one. How will the Ottoman Janissaries gonna be handled?

 

[Xero_99]

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?

Because the law is about *press* not *schools*

 

[Metz]

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!

In your long history of working at Paradox, what is the worst idea someone has ever had (for any game) that they were completely serious about?

 

[L'impérator Tyrus (FR)]

Should we give duchies and create new appanages in the next generation with the new children of the King for France? To show the decentralization of France at that timeAnd those until a law or a government reform changes?

 

[Sulphurologist]

@SaintDaveUK
The red text on a green background is illegible for me as a colorblind person. I thought at first there was no modifier there!

 

[SafS.99]

3 - good idea, something we could add to later ages

why restrict abolition to later ages like EU4?
It should be a law available since the start especially since many nations banned slavery very early like Poland that banned it in 1347 or Ragusa in 1416 or Japan in 1590.

Abolitionism shouldn’t be something available at the very end of the game, allow us to ban it whenever we want, it’s one of the things that bothered me in EU4, being forced to wait until 1700s to ban slavery

 

[Anonim97]

if its +0.1 and it takes 2 years for it to be effective, then

1st month it will be like +0.1 * 1/24
2nd month it will be like +0.2 * 2/24
etc..

Does it also get implemented in the entire realm/country once it's done or is there another process from the literacy of the higher class?

 

[SafS.99]

The base is using the Heathen group, but we're planning to have some more granularity about this.

Would the Granularity be able to represent the animosity between different sects while keeping tolerance of heathens?
For example different branches of the Reformation tolerated each other while being hostile to Catholics even tho in EU4 mechanics all Reformation branches are the same as Catholics.
Or for example in many Islamic nations, Christians and Jews were tolerated while Shia’s and Sunni’s persecuted each other.

 

[Ispil]

why restrict abolition to later ages like EU4?
It should be a law available since the start especially since many nations banned slavery in the middle ages, like Poland that banned it in 1347 or Ragusa in 1416 or Japan in 1590.

Abolitionism shouldn’t be something available at the very end of the game, allow us to ban it whenever we want, it’s one of the things that bothered me in EU4, being forced to wait until 1700s to ban slavery

The reply isn't about abolition, but enforcing abolition through war.

 

[Pierfrancesco]

Hello devs, Pier here, I am a PhD Candidate in Law with a focus on comparative law. I think that the concept of Civil law is a little too simplicistic and it may represent well the evolution of this systems. Before the 19th century it may be considered even premature. I would recommend a few changes and I am happy to write something more extensive and with the appropriate academic references.

-most Catholic countries deployed the so called Utrumque jus, "the one and the other laws", namely Canon Law and Civil (Roman) Law. The latter based mostly on the Justinian code. Canon Law was not limited to religious matters, but had the monopoly over many concrete aspects of life (from family relations to education, but also the limits to the sovereign's powers). At the same time, local customs were also legal sources to complement these two laws. In game, this legal system should reduce the power of the monarch and centralisation. The first major shift is the Reformation, with princes taking control also of the rulemaking of what was before under Canon Law. After all, national churches were under their control (is there a law in game for religious organisation and governance?). The Enlightenment brought the idea of codifying the law and therefore monopolising its production. On the one hand, the spirit of the encyclopedia and the desire to make laws understandable and predictable to cast aside the intricacies of multilayered legal sources (national/local/religious; written/customary). On the other, the centralising impetus in favour of the Legislator (be them an absolutist monarch or a Parliament embodying the nation). I think that only with the early codes (the Code Napoléon is the most prestigious of them) we have the civil law as we understand it today. In game, this should result in more crown authority and centralisation.

 

[SafS.99]

Question regarding Inquisitors, can we target specific religions and spare others? Like for example during the Spanish inquisition we spare the Jews and only go after Muslims?
Or is it applied to all non state religions?

 

[fortedidiocameraavolta]

Will tax laws be the main cause of civil wars in the late game? May they trigger(in concurrance with other factors) situations like the English,American,French revolutions ? I think that tax laws should have a huge impact on the game