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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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I'm just now realising that this mechanic and the hinted upon mechanic for unorganized tribes seems to become a pretty sweet baseline for an antiquity mod.

I can easily see this working very well for cities like Athens and Tyr to colonize suitable harbours in Iberia, Gaul and North Africa. Perhaps with a 'civilisation value' instead of power projection and limited to 1 location per province or something like that but damn that's great. And with what we've seen from vazzals, international organisations and situations and the way pops work could work very well.

Imperator 2.0, here we come.
 
I hope this system gets fully developed from release. What's shown here is a very good basis, but there have definitely been unanswered remarks here that make certain aspects seem ... incomplete.

Things like the '1000 pops ' hard limit making little sense in for example Iceland, limited (no?) player agency on either destination-location or colonizer-pop selection, power projection being repurposed as what looks like both a very important and a very abstract way, ...

Definitely hoping this becomes fuller-fletched before release, and isn't kept for an early dlc ...
 
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.
Does that mean there is no way for the player to specify which location to target/prioritize? If so, that makes it sounds like a colonial race with other tags would be rather boring.
 
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Nations that were colonized in this period were not colonized because they didn't have techs as good as the europeans but because they had lower population, population concentration and often lacked the means to push back the colonizers. Who can colonize who should really be a balance of power thing rather than a tech thing.

This system allows for it. You need to be able to move enough population over that you get close to a majority of the target location for it to flip. Not really something you would do in most places, except a columbian exchanged ravaged america, or later in the game where the european countries may have gotten a significant advantage.

Sure, getting a single location in west africa may be possible by 16th century, but with the coastal locations having about 8 to 15k pops in them, even with the very decentralized peoples living there then, would still require at least 40% of the pops to be your culture and religion, which is non-trivial to move in those amount, especially to areas with diseases killing you off.

Just colonising entire Ijaw in West Africa requires at least 60,000 pops moved there, not accounting for diseases and natives disliking it killing of someone. That is at least 50 years with all the techs of that age and a cabinet focuing on supporting it..
 
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One thing that came to mind: let’s say I’m france, and I’m at war with a England with many colonies, if my fleet were to fully blockade the uk, all of their coast’s blockaded, how would that affect their colonies and the trade that comes from their colonies? Can we fully cut an island nation from trade? Can we starve their colonies by blocking their overlord from sending stuff to them?

The speed of colonising depends a lot of maritime of your home region.
 
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This seems easily exploitable. Surely a player can get their pp much higher than AI and basically colonize everyone no?

You need to be at least one age ahead to do it.
 
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PS. questions:

1. As long as they meet the power projection requirements, can all coutries colonize? Or do they require some tech, law, etc?
2. Can landless countries colonize?
3. Considering the power projection requirements, is it expected that the major new world powers (Incas, Aztecs, Mayas) will be able or not able to colonize neighbouring countries at the game start?

1 - need advances for it that exists in the age of traditions
2 - no, they dont own land.
3 - expected, they will us the another great mechanic for painting maps, ie.. conquest!
 
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Is it possible for this action to target a specific minority within a province (eg send the Catholics of Liverpool to America, but not the Anglicans)? Or would it just send everyone in Liverpool to Roanoke without accounting for religion?

Actually, it will send any pop from it.
 
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Fantastic system!!

Is there anything in the works for trade posts and their very different status compared to settler colonies?

Yes, there are other mechanics for those that will be talked about "soon"
 
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Great a few questions:
1-Can you create colony tags on the same continent where you capital is?
2-Are there unique colony types like trading companies?
3-If for example I play as Poland and conquer Lithuania can I make create a colonial tag there or there are restrictions?

1 - yes
2 - thats something for next week.
3 - no, that is not a colony
 
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That's so cool. So in essence, this system could potentially support a sunset invasion scenario with adding extra mechanics?

yes
 
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We've all been waiting for this one! Thanks Johan.

What defines colonial range now? Is it just the monthly expense and affordability and the penalty on migration numbers or is there a distance cap set by technologies. And of course needing to have explored it first.

distance cap by tech, and ofc if you have explored it
 
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I wonder how countries with very tiny populations will colonize provinces. I'm thinking of Greenland, new colonial nations, many of the tribal countries like the Chukchi,...
Especially if power projection is a factor too, I wonder how playing with these nations will not simply feel awful because all you could do to grow stronger is being limited by factors which only get solved by growing.

They are much more challenging yes.
 
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1. Could you create a colonial nation in conquered land? For example, if you are playing as the British could you create a colonial nation in India, or even southern France...

2. Also, can you violate other nations' colonial treaties? Like, could I as France start colonizing Northern Scandinavia if I wanted to. And likewise, go to war to "enforce claims" on the land I colonize?

1 - only in overseas
2 - you need to fight a war for it.
 
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1. Since Power Projection is not gained through actions, it means it's semi-permanent (does not decay), right?

its permanent yes
 
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