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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.

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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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When your colonies are growing, is this growth simulated purely through movement of pops or will pops reproduce for "free" within the colony itself?

Pops also increase the old fashioned way. Boy meets girl, and 9 months later they get a +1 or so.
 
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I'm not a fan of the idea that it has to be your religion, was it considered that the requirement be just culture or perhaps religion group?

Its the thing when mechanics are designed by Swedes and Spanish people, who's colonial history was "heretics are burned, not shipped to colonies".
 
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Not really.
Personally, I think this is a significant drawback. It is reasonable that the distance to the capital should have an impact but it should be easier to colonise a location far away if you already have a core or fully fledged colony with excellent infrastructure much closer. Would it not be possible to e.g. make the penalty a weighted average between the distance to the capital and the nearest costal province with a harbour at a certain level of development? This would make the system more realistic in my view.
 
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So if Yuan could theoretically colonise France, what is to stop larger European countries colonising smaller ones, can e.g. England use the colonisation mechanism to take over Ireland?

Same religion group. And the likelihood of England being more than one age ahead in tech over Ireland is not likely.

You have to do it the historical way. Conquest.
 
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Its the thing when mechanics are designed by Swedes and Spanish people, who's colonial history was "heretics are burned, not shipped to colonies".
Could there be a way for heretics to flee by themselves to the new world, establishing a new country in the process?
 
Incredible! So happy to see pops-based colonization, much better than dev-based colonization in EUIV. One fun strategy from that game, though, was the new world exodus; under these mechanics, I can imagine it being possible as a small tag to move most or nearly all of your culture's population to a new world colony, and essentially relocate and play there. Would this be possible in the game mechanics? If so, would it be at all feasible to move 50%+ of pops from one location to another within, say, 100 years?

yes, if you are tiny you have to be careful, as you can easily get down to 1,000 pops in every home location .. (if you can afford extreme colonisation.)
 
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In other words, it's not gonna happen in this game either, unless the player pulls it off, because the game cannot simulate the reasons why the British eventually obtained the position that allowed them to do that. Unless (this is a gross simplification) I can trade with a ROTW country so much that they let me take over administering parts of their country? :D

We have other mechanics we will talk about during the next 2 weeks that will simulate that.
 
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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..
I really agree with what you're saying and I like how you seem to have balanced colonization to make it extra hard. But if everything your saying here is already a reality in PC, then why does it need Power Projection ? Is it something you had to implement for balance reasons in colonialism or is it a value that is already tied to other things in the game and colonization is only one of its aspects ?
My critique is that, with all the knowledge we have right now on PC, and in relation with how institutions and advances work, it really looks like Power Projection is mostly a way to make sure that European tags stay on top of the colonization game.
 
What if I accept the culture and religion of the province I am colonising? Say England accepting Irish culture, then trying to colonise ireland, how will that work?

You can't colonise someone of the same religion group..
 
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What happens to a colonial charter that's no longer a valid colonization target?

Maybe because the territory inquestion get's invaded by a third party or raises it's pp themselves. (Edit: or changes it's religion). What if my naval range drops because I lose a stepping stone province in a conflict?

Can I colonize colonial charters or colonial nations of other nations if my pp is high enough?
 
What happens when two countries with the same primary culture and religion colonize the same province? Which one do the locations flip to? Iceland and Greenland had the same culture and religion so if they both colonize the Vestribygd province in Greenland how does the game decide who gets the locations?
 
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they will unite yes

Do you want them strong and able to do more? or weak to control better?

These responses would seem to be somewhat mutually exclusive.

That said, the idea of your colonial nations being able to dynamically unite is very exciting.
 
Given the African polulation dissuades colonization, another aspect, how does the game handle small settlements like the Feitorias of Portugal, several key settlements across the African, Arabian and Indian coastline that worked as entreports for Portuguese trading operations in their "Mare Clausum" policy.

Does the game have mechanics to negotiate treaty ports? Or even enforce them with military might. For example, the Porruguese were always around a million strong in population. NO manpower to speak of. Their strategy relied on their naval might, that brought pretty much any coastal location to heel in Asia and Africa. They could never in any way colonize the African coastline in the traditional way the game presents of overwhelming the thousands of natives.

So are there mechanics for establishing trading entreports across the coast? Negotiating them with locals or even using gunboat diplomacy?
 
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