Tinto Talks #18 - 26th of June 2024

[Johan]

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

To the same place the money building ships or roads or buildings go to.

 

[Johan]

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?

I don't recall ideas that I rejected.

 

[bokorthedust]

I don't recall ideas that I rejected.

That's a bit of an ambivalent statement though, either you don't remember bad ideas or you didn't reject any

 

[Johan]

That's a bit of an ambivalent statement though, either you don't remember bad ideas or you didn't reject any

I have the nickname "NO-han" for a reason.

 

[bokorthedust]

I have the nickname "NO-han" for a reason.

You are a Swede and not Chinese?

 

[Bozkurt]

Will differences of Islamic schools of jurisprudences be represented in legal systems?

 

[Mannock]

Great DD as per usual, however there is one part I don't really get. The naval laws, or whatever you would call them. They don't really seem like laws at all. For example the Ship boarding law (or if it's a policy of a law?) is really weird. I can't see a king or parliament pass a law that says "we will board ships!". It's just not something the political leadership would decide, but rather the admirality.

These "naval laws" are rather doctrine's of the naval academy. So all those examples of Naval laws you showcased seems out of place. I mean they are fine by themselves, but shouldn't really sort itself under laws. Rather there should be another, completely seperate, mechanic (or whatever you might call it), where you make decisions on the doctrines of your armies and fleets.

 

[nikkythegreat]

Which unique laws would you expect?

Philippine legal system is unique as well, as we use a mix of civil and common law.

Additionally those people of Islamic faith follow Sharia law for laws of personal nature.

 

[Mirdclawer]

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.

This looks like a copy pasta....

If you used the time it took you to write this badly structured wall of text to google "Is it easier to do 2D or 3D models?" you would have seen, that for most/many art asset production in game development, it is FAR more efficient, quick and less ressource itensive to do 3D models. rather than 2D drawing/models.


Look at Hades for example, the roguelike. All the assets are made in 3D, and are then converted to 2D sprites. If you want more details google it. This extremely wrong copypasta dump of your anger that could have taken 2 minutes to check is hilarious.

Don't get me wrong, gorgeous, hand drawn 2D art, and pixel art is beautiful, but extremely more ressource intensive, hard to iterate on, not easily adaptable, can't be reused etc. The modulable, "changing clothes/background" aspect you mention, is extremely easy to do with a 3D pipeline, and much harder to do in a 2D pipeline.

 

[TheRedNaxela]

pretty sure the appanage goes back to be a part of france then.

But it were not a French appanage, and just any other duchy/kingdom etc, then it would form a union right?

 

[Cooleatack]

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!

I can read the passion you have for it through your words, that is beautiful to see. I can only imagine they are happy to have you as their mentor

 

[Limyx826]

I wonder do non european nations such as Indian, Chinese, Islamic, African, America Indigenous, etc have unique laws or policies that are special to them?

 

[alexkowal123]

I wonder do non european nations such as Indian, Chinese, Islamic, African, America Indigenous, etc have unique laws or policies that are special to them?

Mali's constitution was the Kouroukan Fouga which has some interesting laws, I'm not familiar with others

 

[Pavía]

@Pavía Unrelated to today's TT, but what was the topic of your dissertation?

“The royal towns and the administrative structure of Castile and Leon. Power and society in the reign of Alfonso X (1252-1284)”.

 

[Pavía]

I just hope "unique" laws make sense (like the Papacy one), and aren't things that could easily be enacted elsewhere, but kept as "unique" for flavour reason.

'Unique' means 'non-generic', sometimes country-tied (e.g. Papal succession), and sometimes culture or region-tied (e.g. Turkish succession). The first uses a more restrictive trigger, while the second is more open.

 

[Pavía]

Why would the most Catholic majesty want to become an heretic? Please help me @Pavía

IDK, you can't even have a proper Inquisition in that case...

 

[Przaśny_Chlebek]

Looks very promising! However I'd like to offer some suggestions

I this time period civil law was not omnipresent on the European continent and was rather a domain of university studies and Catholic Church(the canonic law) but not so much for secular law.

Big parts of Germany as well as Prussia and towns and cities in Poland that has been settled by German migration ruled themselves by Speculum Saxonum/Sachsenspiegel/Zwierciadło saskie. compiled by Eike von Repkow- source Powszechna Historia Prawa Andrzej Dziadzio 2009. Chapter 4.3.1 page 84-87


Teutonic order would use Polish customary law to govern it's prussian(baltic) and polish subject. This was because characteristic for the period was the rule of legal personalism- where person's obligations and rights were derived from their ethnic origins and to which estate tghey belonged.-same book ch.5.1.3.1 p.93-95


Poland: Poland was ruled by Prawo ziemskie( the rights of the land) alongside "the German Law"(Prawo niemieckie/speculum saxonum and ius municipale) which was used by mostly German speaking dwellers of the towns.

Prawo ziemskie was never fully coddified but one of the most important attempts at coddification were Casimir's the great Statuty Piotrkowsko-Wiślickiewritten in 1360' that has taken the Polish customary/traditional law but also the rules of Roman and Canonical Law were added to the statutes as general rules of interpretation. (same book ch. 5.1.3.2 p.95). so I would suggest for Poland to start with traditional law and in 20-30 years there should be an event or decission that enable the introduction of Prawo Ziemskie.

Generally I hope for the legal code landscape of Europe to be quite divers and not civil law/traditional law all across the continent.

 

[squid_whisperer]

The babies in the Salic Law window definitely look like medieval renditions

 

[Pavía]

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?

This is a good question. Usually, our thought process is to identify first what could be considered unique flavor content; then, we think about the triggers for it to be applied and thus decide if it's something country-related, culture-related, religion-related, etc. If, let's say, the institutional combination that would lead to it triggering is deemed too complex, or simplified through other means, then it may be simplified in a certain way.

Let's put an example of something that I've already mentioned a few times in this thread (IDK why so much, but whatever). 'Inquisition Law', which is unlocked by [REDACTED], currently has two default policies for all the Catholic countries, 'Papal Control' and ''Local Courts'. There were a few institutional advances in some parts of the Catholic world that led to 'State Inquisitors'; one of the triggers of it is not being the Pope (obviously), and the other is culture-tied (as a way of simplifying those institutional advances), making it available, among others, to Iberian countries. But then other institutional advances made the Inquisition a key institution in early modern Spain, for several reasons; we've simplified those into being the country 'Spain', which is a formable one with its own set of triggers to be formed, which therefore has another policy, 'Spanish Inquisition', available to pick.

Obviously, the different sets of triggers, and what deserves to be content for country, culture, religion, etc. may be a matter of discussion, but I hope that I've clarified the way we work with unique content.

 

[Aart]

Wow, I just paid attention, that the rulers have epithets by their name. I suppose they are dynamically generated? How big is the base for the nicknames?