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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 we get a popup warning that ice is about to melt / winter is about to end? Or instead is there a rotating season dial so we can easily track the seasonal change? or do we have to rely on dates / visuals?
We have the Comet pop up event, don’t we? That should be a warning about bad things to come. How many warnings do we need?
 
Sounds great! The only aspect I don't like is that mountains are fully blocked off during winter. You should still be able to move an army through the mountains for a daring surprise manouver the enemy doesn't expect (like for example Hannibal) at the cost of massive attrition and maybe loosing your entire army if not prepared well enough. Would require a lot of number-tweaking, but I am not a fan of 'arbitrary' absolutes.

Another question on the same topic, what happens to an army standing in such a mountain province when winter comes under the current system? Do they get kicked out of the province, do they all die or what are the consequences?
 
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with extra attrition for elephants?
Hey if they made it through they made it through.

But question about fleets, if I have a fleet docked in a location, the adjacent sea tile freezes over, and then an enemy seiges down the location forcing the fleet out (presumably) what happens to the ships? Are they destroyed or stuck in the adjacent sea? Also, does having ships with cannons docked somewhere make that location harder to seige?
 
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"not moving into mountains during winter". Wouldn't it make sense for an except if all surrounding locations are mountains?

No rivers freezing over? Negatively impacting trade, positively movement speed. The Rhine comes to mind, and I'm sure there's more important examples in Scandinavia?
 
So will the specificities of pastoral societies be modelised ?

Resting in summer because herds give birth and men produce milk,
Conquering Russia in winter because the rivers are frozen and there is nothing else better to do ?
 
forgive me but.. how is several months of blocked construction going to be fun to play? it sounds more like a momentum blocker that punishes players who want to play northern countries. love the concept. but fear the execution and the result
 
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forgive me but.. how is several months of blocked construction going to be fun to play? it sounds more like a momentum blocker that punishes players who want to play northern countries. love the concept. but fear the execution and the result

we want to be confronted with problems kings of the past have been confronted too...
 
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forgive me but.. how is several months of blocked construction going to be fun to play? it sounds more like a momentum blocker that punishes players who want to play northern countries. love the concept. but fear the execution and the result
It's the historical reason, and not the most important thing to not forget by far in this tt

So everything mountain is blocked once its winter. Will you just be stuck on the Durres port as Albania the entire time?
At least Durrës is a port, there's landlocked locations with the same issue a bit east.
 
"not moving into mountains during winter". Wouldn't it make sense for an except if all surrounding locations are mountains?

I think that some exceptions should be worked out, especially for societies that live permanently in the mountains, like the Andean or Himalayan societies.

So maybe this could be the case for the base game, but some nations or cultures could have workarounds in regards to movement in mountains during the winter.
 
Does the game tell you ahead of time when a severe winter will end or can your armies just get killed by a thawing sea with no warning?

no, but you can tell by seeing nearby areas thawing
 
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Johan I have a question.

So when a journeyman game dev finishes his wandering, learning from the various masters, he has to produce his masterwork and present it to the Guild of Game Developers in order for them to recognize his mastery of the trade. Is that what we are seeing here? Have you finished your wandering over the hills of Medieval Europe, and is this going to be your masterwork?
 
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Will armies on the move automatically redirect if winter comes and they have to move through a mountainous area to reach their destination? Or will they stop dead on their tracks and lose their movement order?
 
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Okay, that's something I would like to know about. So, what war was this?
it was the conflict lasting between 1502 - 1505 in which Spain annexed the kingdom of Naples.

Before the conflict the kingdom of Naples was partioned between Spain and France and they went to war immediately after with each other... exactly because of what I said.

More specifically, every year enormous amounts of sheep went to the mountains ( that's Transumanza). Of course the shepards had to pay a toll for it. And we are talking about lots of sheep, so muy money. Thus both Spain and France claimed the toll for them. Thus the partition negotiations broke down and they went to war for sheep.

Which is funny as hell

but it also serves as a clear example that food production was affected by summer as well in hotter climates
 
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