• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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..
 
  • 275Love
  • 196Like
  • 7
  • 6
  • 4
Reactions:
Would islands in the North Sea like Greenland or smaller ones be completely cut off from their trade markets during a Severe Winter, thus rendering them unable to import something like food if they don't have enough? Similarly, would isolated continental places, like Siberia, be cut off from their trade markets or have their market access reduced during Severe Winters?
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Seasons and climate sounds like fun thing to mod.
You could add Cthulu mana to fisheries.
Once whole world fish enough you would have global increase in Cthulu mana.
As it reaches thresholds (with some delay) weather could get more erratic - maybe extra angry winters down south.
Or extra hot summers up north causing agriculture to struggle.
In worst case scenario whole world would turn into desert killing all pops, as agriculture fails.

You could try to survive it by doing some rituals, or try to influence fisheries of the world.
Or you could use Cthulu to dominate whole world.
 
  • 1Love
Reactions:
Seasons and climate sounds like fun thing to mod.
You could add Cthulu mana to fisheries.
Once whole world fish enough you would have global increase in Cthulu mana.
As it reaches thresholds (with some delay) weather could get more erratic - maybe extra angry winters down south.
Or extra hot summers up north causing agriculture to struggle.
In worst case scenario whole world would turn into desert killing all pops, as agriculture fails.

You could try to survive it by doing some rituals, or try to influence fisheries of the world.
Or you could use Cthulu to dominate whole world.
I have absolutely no idea what you're on about - but sounds fun
 
  • 4Haha
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Is this such a problem though?

How familiar are you with actual snow? With how little snow there is on the ground I would expect any snow landing on those roofs to be gone fairly quickly, either due to falling off the rather steep roofs, melting due to heat leaking through the roof or due to sunshine, or it simply having been blown off the roofs.
I've seen quite enough snow to know that even a small amount of snow would be visible on these roofs, even if actively meeting at places (the melting would also only start on the rooftops that are close to the hearths inside, so for example places like the stalls outside, the church's top and tower and at least the tops of the roof windows would still have some snow)
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Please tell us that there are also "partially frozen" seas, which are still navigable during winter, it's just that your fleet is likely to die trying to cross it, as partially frozen seas would give huge naval attrition and slow down fleets. Also, can non inland seas also freeze over, because I think there should be exceptions made for parts of the Arctic Ocean which are usually navigable in PDX games but do partially freeze during winter.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Please tell us that there are also "partially frozen" seas, which are still navigable during winter, it's just that your fleet is likely to die trying to cross it, as partially frozen seas would give huge naval attrition and slow down fleets. Also, can non inland seas also freeze over, because I think there should be exceptions made for parts of the Arctic Ocean which are usually navigable in PDX games but do partially freeze during winter.
Titanic simulator
 
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
Are there some sort of "upgrades" for troops to survive the winter or at least make for example, Russian armies have better odds surviving winter than, let's say, some French armies that found their way to Russia for some weird reason?
Why would the French ever show up in Russia? That's as absurd as the Mongols in Russia! Or the Mongols in Hungary! Or the Mongols in Iraq!
 
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
I just hope the micro won’t be obnoxious.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
not really
That seems problematic, given the fact that temperate-zone military operations were always timed around the need for labour during planting & harvest - all the way up until the mechanization of agriculture.
Not to mention importance of the wet & dry season to life in the tropics & subtropics.
 
  • 5Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I have some questions:
Have you taught the AI not to go to Russia in the middle of the winter?
What will happen if the AI is siging a fort? They will abandon the siege or commit?
Can I trap an AI army in a lake and wait until the end of the winter so it dies without having to fight?
To what extent can players trick the AI to go where there are no supplies or/and winter? I am thinking on what happened in EU4 with the strait and how you can abuse them to kill IA armys but adapt to the winter mecanic.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Food production should be decreased in hot seasons of arid regions too, and hot summer should cause attirition like cold winter

I feel like hot regions is kinda ignored with this update no hot, but cold there is I hope there will be danger of hot in hot regions similar to cold being a threat in cold regions
 
Last edited:
  • 6Like
  • 2
  • 1
Reactions:
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
Just speed up the game in the winter. That could even feasibly be a built-in feature.