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Tinto Talks #25 - 14th of August 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the 25th one, the Happy Wednesday where we give you lots of information about our upcoming, still secret and unannounced game, with the codename of Project Caesar.

Today we delve into the mechanics of colonialism, another aspect of painting the map.

Power Projection
One important factor that has a big impact on the colonialism game is Power Projection. Each country has a power projection value, and it is primarily to allow a country to be able to exploit those with a lower power projection. Power Projection is very dependent on how advanced a country is, where each age has an advance that gives you about +10 of it. It is also modified by societal values, rank of the country and more. One important aspect is that the +10 advance for Age of Traditions is in the advance tree from the Meritocracy.

You do not gain Power Projection by doing specific actions, like in EU4, but it's entirely based on your country's current setup.

power_projection.png

Sadly, the “Sweden is properly balanced” modifier has not been developed yet..


Colonial Charters
So, how does colonization work in ‘Project Caesar'? Well, you colonize by starting a colonial charter in a province for an upfront fee in gold. Then each month some of the population will be moving from the homeland to the colonial charter, until all locations that can be owned are owned by you.

In almost all cases, there are people living in a location you want to colonize, so for you to be able to have a charter to flip to your ownership there are a few rules. A location needs to have at least 1,000 people living there, and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.

colonial_progress.png

Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged!

This percentage depends heavily on the difference in power projection of your country and the countries in the location. Yes, I said countries in plural, and next week you will understand what we are talking about. This has the implication that at the start of the game, Yuán could in theory start colonizing Europe, if it only had been closer and discovered. How the countries and pops already present in a location react to your colonization is something that will be clarified in a later Tinto Talks.

As long as you have a colonial charter, people from your owned locations will start moving to the locations in the colonial charter. The amount of people moving is rather low in the beginning of the game, but there are advances that will increase it in later ages. Societal values have an impact on it, and so does the distance to the colony.

One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country.

monthly_migration.png

Full speed ahead! Only 40 months per location to get to 1,000 pops!

Colonial Charters are not free, and moving people are definitely not free, and countries need to support them. The higher the population in the target province, the more expensive it is to colonize, the distance also has an impact, but colonizing in the same area or region as your capital is significantly cheaper. You can always cut costs to your charters, but that will also reduce the amount of pops moving every month.

colony_cost.png

Not too expensive, so we can easily afford it..


Colonial Nations
When a colonial charter is finished, and all possible locations in that province have become yours, you have multiple options for what you want to happen to that charter. If the province is close, and you think you can get decent enough control over it, you may want to just keep the locations as a part of your home country. You also have the option to have the province form a new colonial nation, or have it join an adjacent colonial nation.

Colonial Nations are a subject type that can not be annexed, but has a few advantages, or disadvantages depending on your point of view, in that while they start transferring less gold than a vassal would, they also grant some manpower and sailors, while also giving part of their merchants to their overlord.

To clarify, you can make colonial nations anywhere on the map where you can colonize.

Supporting the Colonies
If you feel that your charters or colonial nations are not growing enough, there are two tools you can use in the cabinet. Both of these become available from advances in the Age of Discovery

With ‘Supporting a Colonial Charter’ you will move pops from a province you decide upon and to the colonial charter you decided. The amount of pops getting moved depends on your current colonial migration capacities, so when you use it you can about double the migration to a specific

With the ‘Supporting Colonies’ you can move 100 pops every month from a selected province to a target province in a colonial nation subject. This can be useful when you want to boost a colony and you have overpopulated provinces at home, or when you think your country would be in a better situation if you could expel some minorities.

Restrictions on Colonization
There are several ways which can block other nations from colonizing certain places, including diplomatic treaties. At the start of the game, Norrland, Finland, Karelia and Kola are under the claims of Sweden and Novgorod who have divided the area between them.

We also have the situation ‘Treaty of Tordesillas’ where the New World will be split among two Catholic powers, causing lots of interesting dynamics.


Next week we will be back to talk about the difference between countries, and why owning locations is not all there is to life…

fun_map.png

And what is this teaser for next week about?
 
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Shouldn't the number of people who want to migrate be based on more realistic factors, rather than just being based on technology, societal values, and a cabinet missions? People migrated to new lands because they believed that doing so would result in them having a better life than they had at home in some way. So shouldn't how poor or discriminated a particular pop is determine the likeliness of them migrating? This was a major factor historically. And some countries should have difficulties colonizing if their people have no reason to leave home. Moving away from the life you knew to start a new one in an unknown place can be daunting and dangerous, people generally don't do that just because some king's cabinet member told them to.
 
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What is stopping me from making every province a different colonial government? keeping them spreadout and with high control of their land
 
Didn't you explicitly mention expecting minorities as a way to boost a colony

I don't understand. Which institution and how does this institution relate to colonisation? See also my earlier question if France can colonise Andorra or German minors.

Institutions affect power projection. If Asia has meritocracy, my understanding is that the region will have high enough "baseline" power projection to prevent colonization from their neighbors
 
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I got a feeling not only Europe will colonize America or other parts of the world, but the entire world will be colonizing, wish there was a historical option in the settings.

Edit: So now Aztec can just colonize Africa with ease
 
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Hmm. I am really doubting the validity of all of this. I think it would be extremely lame if France really could colonize a HRE minor which happens to have multiple religions and cultures and thus a low colonization threshold.
the colonization threshold would be based on overall population, not population of the plurality culture I’d imagine. Let’s say it’s 20%. And HRE minor would need to be 20% French catholic for France to take their territory. Upping the threshold doesn’t really solve the problem either, because the concern shouldn’t be France dumping thousands of pops into the Rhineland to colonize it, but France gobbling up locations which are already a majority French culture by getting said culture accepted. There a lower threshold helps is in places like Africa, where even the most low-pop locations have >4k pops, and European colonizers never achieved a majority population even in places they owned historically regardless.
 
"A location needs to have at least 1,000 people living there, and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country."

And

"One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country."

Well... Portugal?

Portugal with a small population had Brazil as a colony while Brazil's population was 90% composed of slaves of non-state religion and non-accepted culture.
Once your colony is set up you don’t need them to be above whatever thresholds were required for obtaining ownership in the first place, be that the religion, culture, or 1k pop threshold. So Brazil would be Portugal using its pops to colonize lightly populated locations in Brazil, then importing slaves to the colonial nation of Brazil to actually do most of the work.

Speaking of which this is another reason I hope we can consolidate colonial nations. If I colonize non-adjacent provinces and later fill in the gaps, I don’t want to permanently be stuck with two colonial nations when I’d rather merge them into a single larger one.

Also Portugal has a population of over a million. Considering that’s more than Mali, one of the leading powers at game start, I don’t think they’re considered “low population”.
 
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Can we automate the process of creating colonial charters in regions? Could I say select that I want to colonize as much of the eastern coast of North America as I can and just let the AI create new charters randomly in bordering provinces as old ones finish?
 
the colonization threshold would be based on overall population, not population of the plurality culture I’d imagine. Let’s say it’s 20%. And HRE minor would need to be 20% French catholic for France to take their territory. Upping the threshold doesn’t really solve the problem either, because the concern shouldn’t be France dumping thousands of pops into the Rhineland to colonize it, but France gobbling up locations which are already a majority French culture by getting said culture accepted. There a lower threshold helps is in places like Africa, where even the most low-pop locations have >4k pops, and European colonizers never achieved a majority population even in places they owned historically regardless.
Surely it depends on what the ruling class in that province are, not the general population
 
Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the 25th one, the Happy Wednesday where we give you lots of information about our upcoming, still secret and unannounced game, with the codename of Project Caesar.

Today we delve into the mechanics of colonialism, another aspect of painting the map.

Power Projection
One important factor that has a big impact on the colonialism game is Power Projection. Each country has a power projection value, and it is primarily to allow a country to be able to exploit those with a lower power projection. Power Projection is very dependent on how advanced a country is, where each age has an advance that gives you about +10 of it. It is also modified by societal values, rank of the country and more. One important aspect is that the +10 advance for Age of Traditions is in the advance tree from the Meritocracy.

You do not gain Power Projection by doing specific actions, like in EU4, but it's entirely based on your country's current setup.

View attachment 1174943
Sadly, the “Sweden is properly balanced” modifier has not been developed yet..


Colonial Charters
So, how does colonization work in ‘Project Caesar'? Well, you colonize by starting a colonial charter in a province for an upfront fee in gold. Then each month some of the population will be moving from the homeland to the colonial charter, until all locations that can be owned are owned by you.

In almost all cases, there are people living in a location you want to colonize, so for you to be able to have a charter to flip to your ownership there are a few rules. A location needs to have at least 1,000 people living there, and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.

View attachment 1174944
Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged!

This percentage depends heavily on the difference in power projection of your country and the countries in the location. Yes, I said countries in plural, and next week you will understand what we are talking about. This has the implication that at the start of the game, Yuán could in theory start colonizing Europe, if it only had been closer and discovered. How the countries and pops already present in a location react to your colonization is something that will be clarified in a later Tinto Talks.

As long as you have a colonial charter, people from your owned locations will start moving to the locations in the colonial charter. The amount of people moving is rather low in the beginning of the game, but there are advances that will increase it in later ages. Societal values have an impact on it, and so does the distance to the colony.

One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country.

View attachment 1174945
Full speed ahead! Only 40 months per location to get to 1,000 pops!

Colonial Charters are not free, and moving people are definitely not free, and countries need to support them. The higher the population in the target province, the more expensive it is to colonize, the distance also has an impact, but colonizing in the same area or region as your capital is significantly cheaper. You can always cut costs to your charters, but that will also reduce the amount of pops moving every month.

View attachment 1174946
Not too expensive, so we can easily afford it..


Colonial Nations
When a colonial charter is finished, and all possible locations in that province have become yours, you have multiple options for what you want to happen to that charter. If the province is close, and you think you can get decent enough control over it, you may want to just keep the locations as a part of your home country. You also have the option to have the province form a new colonial nation, or have it join an adjacent colonial nation.

Colonial Nations are a subject type that can not be annexed, but has a few advantages, or disadvantages depending on your point of view, in that while they start transferring less gold than a vassal would, they also grant some manpower and sailors, while also giving part of their merchants to their overlord.

To clarify, you can make colonial nations anywhere on the map where you can colonize.

Supporting the Colonies
If you feel that your charters or colonial nations are not growing enough, there are two tools you can use in the cabinet. Both of these become available from advances in the Age of Discovery

With ‘Supporting a Colonial Charter’ you will move pops from a province you decide upon and to the colonial charter you decided. The amount of pops getting moved depends on your current colonial migration capacities, so when you use it you can about double the migration to a specific

With the ‘Supporting Colonies’ you can move 100 pops every month from a selected province to a target province in a colonial nation subject. This can be useful when you want to boost a colony and you have overpopulated provinces at home, or when you think your country would be in a better situation if you could expel some minorities.

Restrictions on Colonization
There are several ways which can block other nations from colonizing certain places, including diplomatic treaties. At the start of the game, Norrland, Finland, Karelia and Kola are under the claims of Sweden and Novgorod who have divided the area between them.

We also have the situation ‘Treaty of Tordesillas’ where the New World will be split among two Catholic powers, causing lots of interesting dynamics.


Next week we will be back to talk about the difference between countries, and why owning locations is not all there is to life…

View attachment 1174947
And what is this teaser for next week about?

Thinking about specifically Finland which is so sparsley populated wont it all become Swedish and Russian majority with these mechanics? Or is like Finnish (finland proper Finns) laready accepted people that get sent to colonize by Sweden?
 
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How in depth is modding for colonization/migration?
  • Could modders make decisions that force migration?
  • Create custom treaties/systems that allow/disallow colonization in certain areas, like Sweden/Novgorod in Finland?
  • Change the vanilla requirements for fully colonizing locations (like instead of primary+accepted cultures, maybe just primary+certain culture groups, or allowing religions in same religious family instead of just primary religion?
 
The biggest problems I had with eu4 colonialism that I hope is fixed is;
colonizing is super cheap. Historically starting a colony was a very expensive endeavor and broke nations like Scotland when it failed. Colonization is also way too fast, most of the colonizable provinces are already taken by 1550 leaving no room for budding colonizers. Lastly no differences really between the types of colonial strategies. It would be nice to see trading ports around the world set up by Portugal rather than fully colonized territories.
 
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So this system could represent Ostsielung?
 
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Surely it depends on what the ruling class in that province are, not the general population
Realistically? Arguably not, since you want a critical mass of people who are loyal to your country, not just the local notables who are either their own country, or stateless. And what that critical mass is depends on difference in power projection apparently. Also we’ll learn next week how victims of colonization can respond, which I suspect will explain why France can’t colonize the HRE (you’re handing pops to the enemy just so they can screw you over diplomatically).
 
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Realistically? Arguably not, since you want a critical mass of people who are loyal to your country, not just the local notables who are either their own country, or stateless. And what that critical mass is depends on difference in power projection apparently. Also we’ll learn next week how victims of colonization can respond, which I suspect will explain why France can’t colonize the HRE (you’re handing pops to the enemy just so they can screw you over diplomatically).
But for that province to become yours, you need to be administrating it. I guess it's done by control and different countries can have control in the same location