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Tinto Talks #28 - 4th of September 2024

Welcome everyone to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we talk about the top secret game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will delve into the most hated of all seasons, Winter. Luckily for us, we don’t have to live with it for the entire year…


Climate and Winter
So what impacts whether a location has winter or not? Well, primarily it depends on the climate, but also on the time of the year and the level of winter currently nearby. Of course, when there is winter it is different for the northern and southern hemispheres. Every day each location does its calculations for when it should be changing its winter level.

There are three levels of winter. Technically it is four, but “no winter” is not really winter is it. And during the course of a season, a location could experience all types of winter. We have mild, normal and severe winters.

What is common for all levels of winter is that they affect attrition for your armies, so winters will always kill off some of your soldiers.

Pops living in climates that regularly experience winters have a higher demand for fur.

Food in Winter
Food production is severely reduced when winter comes, while pops still eat normally. A mild winter is a reduction of 25%, while severe winters basically reduce food production to 0. So unless there is a lot of food stored in the province, a severe winter may cause starvation in your locations.

Constructions
One other drawback of winter is that normal and severe winters will impact constructions, and with impact, we are talking about stalling them completely. This affects everything from constructing a building to building a ship. It makes the gameplay experience in a country like Sweden or Norway a bit more difficult, as you have to plan around the fact that you lose several months of the year at times.

stalled.png

Placeholder icons for locking, but useful tooltips..


Freezing Seas
Narrows, Inland Seas and Lakes have the possibility of freezing over during winter. This can happen when a seazone has had severe winter for over a week, and will then last until winter is no longer severe in that location.

A frozen seazone can be traversed by armies and this allows greater military control over the lands it reaches; however, it will cause navies to get stuck until it thaws. Be careful when the weather changes, it can thaw with catastrophic consequences if an army is on the ice. Navies can also not enter any seazone that has frozen over.

frozen_over.png

When Storebælt and Lillebælt freezes, you don’t need navies to reach København…


Mountains
You already know that warfare during winter is a bit more risky, but Project Caesar adds another element to it. Any location with the topography of “Mountain” will be blocked for army movement during normal and severe winters. This can help create natural borders, and some interesting strategic gameplay.


winter_level.png


Tooltips are always helpful..

Sadly there will not be a Tinto Talks next week as we have a holiday that day, but after that we will be back and talk more about roads, development, prosperity and more..
 
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Will the time when each location enters and exits the specific degree of winter predetermined or is it somewhat randomized and some winters will be longer and some shorter than others?

Somewhat random yes
 
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Since we have had Map Talks for every part of Europe, would it be possible to see what Europe looks like with a Winter mapmode?

(Like when we saw the dynastic and natural harbors mapmodes for the first time)
 
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How is weather calculated? Is it random or deterministic, i.e. will the winter of 1337 always be the same length? Perhapse this could be a toggleable option. Also, how will weather modding work? It has always been a massive pain to mod weather.
 
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Maybe not right topic but it made me wonder, how does weather have effect in seas, especially in Oceanic seas, where there could be rough waters or calm waters, depending on RNG (days) or time of the year.

And also, will there be hurricanes in North America for example? That would do some damage to buildings? And I guess same for volcanoes, earthquakes etc. (I might be wrong but that last part has already been addresed before, but if not, then asking over just in case)
 
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Will player/AI army pathing try to avoid routes that take winter attrition. Especially for shattered retreats, it would be annoying if my retreating army took a shortcut through Hoth and died on the way home

yeah well :p

unfortunate maybe, but absolutely hilarious if it happens to your opponent in an MP game..
 
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1) Considering that pop consumption of fur is increased in winter climate, does that mean that the pop needs are completely scriptable using regular triggers? This would be really cool, as it's one of things that Vicky 3 is sorely missing (pop needs can only be based on wealth level).

2) Are there any other ways that climate, topography, or vegetation affect pop needs that you can share?

3) Can a building's production methods be affected by winter or climate? Such as making new production methods available? And if this isn't used in vanilla, could it be modded? And one thing unclear about production methods is if they can only add new input/output goods. Can they have other affects on the building, such as changing the elite jobs available (e.g. increasing number of nobles), or adding a modifier to the province?

4) Are there winter storms that are visible on the map (i.e. like the storms of Imperator, one of my favorite features from that game)?
 
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Will the impact of winter on the army and military in general be discussed in more detail (I hope I haven't missed anything in previous TTs)? one of the most irritating things in eu4 is that in winter you run a completely normal campaign, the supply limit just decreases a bit, while in real life there was almost never any warfare
 
Since Winter has such a big impact on food production and building, is there also a negative effect from the opposite weather? For example a hot summer in the tropics slowing down the building process or a very hot summer in arid areas leading to reduced food production?

Also wow to Armies walking over ice and fleets getting stuck, that's very cool!
 
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"A frozen seazone can be traversed by armies and this allows greater military control over the lands it reaches; however, it will cause navies to get stuck until it thaws. Be careful when the weather changes, it can thaw with catastrophic consequences if an army is on the ice. Navies can also not enter any seazone that has frozen over."

Hell yeah
 
not really
You could have the same things for summers in certain regions, except it wouldn't impact construction and sea zones but only attrition and food production. That way, challenging gameplay because of climate wouldn't be limited to the far north but would concern many more regions. You could even completely mirror the sever winter spreading by having an arid summer spread and cause attrition and food problems everywhere it goes.
You could even make those arid summers different from severe winters by making them impact durably the food production, therefor making some regions a lot less productive for a certain amount of time to represent the fact that the season has dried up the water reserves in a region (it could even potentially impact the population capacity).
 
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Narrows freezing is an awesome feature. But is does it end instantly or do you have any indicatives that its beginig to thaw?

graphically in terrain you see the ice change over time.
 
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Great DD, again more than I expected. Love it.

I only have one question:
Will winter impact population growth beyond the possible starvation? I.e. higher death rates due to exposure and such.
 
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Will a frozen sea zone also impact controll and trade propagation through the sea zone? I.e. if I rely on controll propagation through sea zones will my controll levels in coastal regions slip while the sea is frozen as ships can't patrol the coast anymore?
Similarly how will this affect trade? Will trade routes reroute as they can't use the frozen over port anymore?

yeah, the travel time for trade is worse.

and control/proximity propagation is far worse as well..
 
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