Hello Everyone and Welcome to another Tinto Talks! This is one of those Happy Wednesdays when we talk about the top secret game with the codename of Project Caesar, so that we can listen to your feedback.
This week we are going to take a look at how exploration will work in Project Caesar. In previous GSG games we’ve done, exploration has primarily been done by units, giving them manual orders to move, or sometimes automated orders, to explore places on the map to reveal. We have a new system that works separately to go away from this and separate the military from exploration.
Exploration in this game works entirely on Areas, and for those of you who don’t remember one of our earliest Tinto Talks, an Area contains a group of Provinces, and a Province contains a group of locations, so it should be about 25-75 locations in an area.
Explorations exist in the “geopolitics tab” together with colonization, maritime and privateering.
You need a proper helmet to be a good explorer!
To get an area explored you need to start an exploration for it. You can only explore areas that are adjacent to an area you have already explored, and if it is an inland area, you can only explore if it is adjacent to an area you own.
Starting an exploration mission for an area costs a significant amount of gold, but there is also an additional cost to start a mission depending on whether it's a land area or a sea area. For a land area, you need manpower, and for sea areas you need sailors.
You also have a constant upkeep cost of gold for your exploration mission, and during your explorations, you may get events related to the exploration.
Missions always have a risk of failure, resetting all progress, and the characters involved can die.
The administrative ability of the leader of the expedition reduces its upkeep cost, while diplomatic ability impacts the success chance, and military ability impacts how quickly the exploration can be done.
Incompetent at a lot in life, Matias redeeming quality was that he failed fast...
While most characters in the game can be assigned to explore an area, there are some characters that are far superior. These are ‘explorers’, which besides just being innately better at exploring, they also have different unique traits making them better or worse at certain aspects of exploring. While there are some explorers that join certain countries through historical events, there is also the possibility to recruit a new explorer. This requires the “Commision Explorers” advance in the Age of Discovery, that is early in the advances tree for the “New World” Institution.
Speaking of advances, there are a few advances throughout the game that speed up explorations, or make them less prone to failures. At the start of the game, at near range, an Exploration led by someone who is not an Explorer may take a few years to complete, but as you get more advanced, this will become shorter in time.
The trade winds on the sea lanes also have a significant impact on how quickly an area can be explored. We have designed the oceanic locations of Project Caesar to take into account the historical ‘sea lanes’ that were used by ships and fleets during the Age of Sail, taking advantage of their knowledge of winds and sea currents. These sea lanes shaped the way explorations were done, as their mastery was critical to the success (or failure) of an expedition.
A purple advance is a unique one, and this is one that is unique to anyone in the Western Europe sub-continent in the Age of Renaissance.
If you have built a spy network in another country, you can use it to steal some of their maps.
As an exploration mission is finished, the knowledge of its discoveries will start spreading to other countries that have the capital on the same sub-continent as the explorer. Currently, the map spread takes about 150 years.
Stay tuned, as next week we will go deep into how the combat for armies will work.
This week we are going to take a look at how exploration will work in Project Caesar. In previous GSG games we’ve done, exploration has primarily been done by units, giving them manual orders to move, or sometimes automated orders, to explore places on the map to reveal. We have a new system that works separately to go away from this and separate the military from exploration.
Exploration in this game works entirely on Areas, and for those of you who don’t remember one of our earliest Tinto Talks, an Area contains a group of Provinces, and a Province contains a group of locations, so it should be about 25-75 locations in an area.
Explorations exist in the “geopolitics tab” together with colonization, maritime and privateering.
You need a proper helmet to be a good explorer!
To get an area explored you need to start an exploration for it. You can only explore areas that are adjacent to an area you have already explored, and if it is an inland area, you can only explore if it is adjacent to an area you own.
Starting an exploration mission for an area costs a significant amount of gold, but there is also an additional cost to start a mission depending on whether it's a land area or a sea area. For a land area, you need manpower, and for sea areas you need sailors.
You also have a constant upkeep cost of gold for your exploration mission, and during your explorations, you may get events related to the exploration.
Missions always have a risk of failure, resetting all progress, and the characters involved can die.
The administrative ability of the leader of the expedition reduces its upkeep cost, while diplomatic ability impacts the success chance, and military ability impacts how quickly the exploration can be done.
Incompetent at a lot in life, Matias redeeming quality was that he failed fast...
While most characters in the game can be assigned to explore an area, there are some characters that are far superior. These are ‘explorers’, which besides just being innately better at exploring, they also have different unique traits making them better or worse at certain aspects of exploring. While there are some explorers that join certain countries through historical events, there is also the possibility to recruit a new explorer. This requires the “Commision Explorers” advance in the Age of Discovery, that is early in the advances tree for the “New World” Institution.
Speaking of advances, there are a few advances throughout the game that speed up explorations, or make them less prone to failures. At the start of the game, at near range, an Exploration led by someone who is not an Explorer may take a few years to complete, but as you get more advanced, this will become shorter in time.
The trade winds on the sea lanes also have a significant impact on how quickly an area can be explored. We have designed the oceanic locations of Project Caesar to take into account the historical ‘sea lanes’ that were used by ships and fleets during the Age of Sail, taking advantage of their knowledge of winds and sea currents. These sea lanes shaped the way explorations were done, as their mastery was critical to the success (or failure) of an expedition.
If you have built a spy network in another country, you can use it to steal some of their maps.
As an exploration mission is finished, the knowledge of its discoveries will start spreading to other countries that have the capital on the same sub-continent as the explorer. Currently, the map spread takes about 150 years.
Stay tuned, as next week we will go deep into how the combat for armies will work.
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