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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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The thing about colonial treaties is that they are never followed, so what happens if someone violates a colonial treaty then? Do you have to break it off first? or can you just violate it and wait for another nation to call you out? What if a 3rd party comes in?
 
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Will vassals be able to colonize, or is that something that they aren’t allowed to do while specifically under another country?

If vassals are allowed to colonize, does the overlord nation have any say in where/how their vassals colonize? Do they get any oversight on the resulting colonies?

Would this also extend to our direct colonial nations in terms of being able to direct them to expand and colonize their surrounding provinces via their local population? Or is all of this process entirely self-contained and hands-off for overlord nations?

Related, but when in a PU with another country, and they are the junior partner, since technically our country is the one hosting the ruler, would we have any say over their colonization efforts for the duration of our PU rule under that ruler, as the senior partner in the union?

Will there be any mechanics to expel minorities from our vassals to our colonies to increase their loyalty toward us?

Does expelling minorities in general to our colonies basically mean nothing if we’re not already colonizing with accepted-faith-accepted-culture pops to then gain control of those provinces?

If we expel minorities without directly colonizing, and those minorities reach the threshold, do they form their own independent nation that is not a colony aligned with our country? If this minority was of a neighbor country’s culture, and they are colonizing the same province, will those minorities expelled from our nation basically give them a boost to reaching the 1000 pops despite having come from our nation?
 
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How does this work with Assimilation? I.e. if Yuan was close to Europe at the start of the game, and decided to colonise France, sending 20 pops a month onto a French location with a core, 100% control, and no spiritualist, would ten per month be assimilated?
monthly_assimilation.png
 
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How does this work with Assimilation? I.e. if Yuan was close to Europe at the start of the game, and decided to colonise France, sending 20 pops a month onto a French location with a core, 100% control, and no spiritualist, would ten per month be assimilated?
View attachment 1175579
One would assume yes, and for that reason colonizing the core territory of enemy states is probably a n niche strategy, with traditional conquest being the more effective choice in almost all cases.
 
What do you mean? How soon can you start colonizing? Immediately I imagine, given Mali starts with unowned locations on its borders.
I don't think we've been given enough information to determine that, much less whether attempting such is viable at the start date. Devs could confirm this, but even then, I'm curious how and how soon someone playing Mali could accomplish either of the objectives I named in Project Caesar when compared to EU4 and how efficiently they could accomplish them. You've pointed out the pieces to the puzzle that the devs have laid out; I'm asking if the devs can convey a picture of how they link together in this specific paradigm because while we have suggestions of how non-European nations will be gated from colonization, the picture is still very jumbled, especially where it comes to getting through the gate as a player.
 
Does the Attack Natives button still exist in case an uncolonized location has lots of natives and reducing their population would make it easier to flip over to us
 
So the colony with the biggest primary culture population is the 13 colonies. And the biggest non colonial war, as in a war that's not right on their doorstep, that England fought was the English Civil War. And what do you know, the colonies were very involved with that war. Like a sixth of New England's men went off to old England to fight for Parliament, while Virginia stayed loyal to the crown, although they sent far fewer men back to England due to being rather occupied fighting the Powhatan.
That's interesting, thanks for bringing it to my attention. Having done a shallow dive on the subject I'd still debate the significance of that event, to the extent of justifying bringing back the general mechanic of conjured manpower.
Screenshot_20240815-093558.png

I didn't screenshot it, but according to this article, the majority of the returnees did so after Cromwell's victory. Even if we disregard that, and work with the more generous numbers (17600 colonists, 1/4 return rate), and taking into account that these numbers include women and children too, I estimate at most around 1100 fighting age men (quarter of the whole population, out which one quarter returned) returning to England. That's a drop of a drop compared to the total population of England in the period, which was what, around 4,5 million? All I'm saying even with outlying examples such as this, for the intents and purposes of war outside the colonies themselves, the population of the colonies was essentially lost to the motherland, so a mechanic giving free manpower and sailors to the colonial overlord is anything but justified.
 
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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?
Will the 100 per month population transfer have a transit time, or will they appear on the other side of the world instantaneously?
 
Yes there can be multiple competing colonial charters in the same province. But it's not first-come first-served; rather the first country to reach their threshold of religion and culture in each location wins the ownership.
Seems like a great casus belli opportunity.
 
Not through the colony system, but there are various tools at your disposal including Cabinet Actions if you want to... adjust your country's population distribution.
Can you move recently conquered populations to other parts of your empire to quell unrest?
 
The focus is always on a specific target location until it flips, then it moves to another one. Currently it's weighted towards coastal locations of high population.
It’d be great (and especially realistic) if it could also be weighted towards provinces with better harbor suitability.
 
Just stop the colonial charter once you have your single location outpost flipped.
That seems problematic for colonizers who want to control specific, strategic locations. It’d be good to have an option to manually select the target location.
 
Greenland and Iceland count as their own countries and nothing is stopping them from exploring and colonizing Canada before anyone else. Except their tiny tiny economies that won't be able to reliably sustain exploration missions, colonies, or even themselves, I guess.
Can’t wait for the inevitable Greenland WC achievement
 
How does this work with Assimilation? I.e. if Yuan was close to Europe at the start of the game, and decided to colonise France, sending 20 pops a month onto a French location with a core, 100% control, and no spiritualist, would ten per month be assimilated?
View attachment 1175579
Even in this screenshot there are much less than 10 pops assimilating
You would probably have little control in France