Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesday where we give you information about our rather secret game with the Codename Project Caesar, so that we can get feedback to improve the game before launch.
As we mentioned last week, we are spending four weeks going through how your feedback together with internal testing have shaped the game in this last year. Today it is time to talk about the changes that are related to the political part of the game.
Estate Power
The power of the estates is one of the most important aspects of the core game loops of Project Caesar, so much so that we had to rearrange what we show in the top bar in the UI. We added so you can easily see each estate's current power and satisfaction, without having to go into a special screen.
As part of the gameplay loop is about breaking the power of the estates and strengthening the central state as you shape a modern country, basing the core power of the estates to how many pops they had made a gameplay where urbanizing and developing your country would weaken the central government.
The main change is that the amount of pops of a certain estate impact their power, but also impact the crown power with the same base value, before any privileges or laws give more power to the estate. This makes the relative power distribution between the estates feel logical, but the weakening of the crown is due to the privileges granted. This further ties in with advances increasing crown power and the increase of absolutism in later ages.
It's just a cost of a few hundred of stability to remove all those privileges. And maybe not give that noble with insane stats command over the army.. And go more plutocratic? Then we can reduce their power below 30%.. But the +0.17 military tactics is good… tough choices..
As characters all have an estate they belong to, it’s now also added in that giving characters command of armies or navies, or a place in the cabinet increases the power of the estate they belong to. A total of 25% for armies, 25% from navies and 25% from cabinet positions can be added.
Connected to this, the direct family of the ruler is now always considered to be part of the crown estate, so if you want to strengthen the crown you may want to risk them commanding armies.
Having a crown prince in the cabinet helps a bit..
Parliament
When it comes to the parliament we keep adding new agendas and issues from feedback and internal testing, but some important changes that come from you guys include the following.
First of all, we added the Dutch-style parliament with only nobles and burghers, which you currently have access to if you have the Low Franconian culture.
We also made it so that if you keep giving out the unique privileges for the nobles in Poland, you will end up in a situation where you need 100% of the support to pass anything in the parliament.
We also added a building that was requested by the community, which is available through an advance in the Age of Discovery.
Could be useful…
Societal Values & Government Reforms
While we were happy with how societal values were indirectly influenced by laws & privileges, they had the problem that eventually anything with a drift towards one direction would eventually get to the extreme. Now one could change this by lowering the amount it would drift, but that would make for rather dull gameplay, and eventually you’d get to extremes anyway.
So what we did instead was to make a sort of soft-cap for how far a value could drift, at 100 times the current drift. So if you manage to stack up to +0.75 monthly towards Naval then you could get the values all the way to 75 Naval before it stopped there. If you’d drop to less than +0.75 naval, you’d still be at 75 naval though, as you’d not progress to the other side until you get all the way to at least +0.01 to land! This has the added benefit of you being able to shape your country how you want over a longer period of time, and even if you want to be a humanist country, you may not get further than a 65 on that slider, as you may not be willing to give up other aspects.
If we increase our trade income, we can push it even further..
While working on adding content this year, we added government reforms to every age, and while doing so, we decided to tie some of them to societal values. So now about half of the government reforms that are available to every country require that a specific societal value at least 50 to be selectable, and if you drop below that, you’d lose the reform. Some examples include that Religious Tolerance requires a country to be Humanist, while Bank Ledgers requires a country to have a Capital Economy.
Proximity and Control
The proximity and control gameplay loop is one of the most beloved by our playtesting, and it has been tweaked a fair bit during the last year, so as to make it feel more natural.
Proximity now traces along rivers, where it's even easier to propagate proximity and market access downstream.
And where in the world are we now?
The buildings that act as proximity sources besides the capital, like the Bailiff, have been made a bit more powerful, but also far more costly.
We also changed how roads are built, slowing them down by 50% as default, and rugged terrain like Mountains makes road-building far slower. I guess the rest of the team did not like my Nidaros-Oslo highway..
We also tweaked how Maritime Presence works, with adding a decay to the current value, so that unless you invest in naval infrastructure and/or a navy, your control propagation over coastal seazones is limited.
We improved the impact from some buildings, and navies now also increase maritime presence in every seazone in the “seazone” province they are currently in. There is also an objective you can assign to navies to patrol any area/province you want and it will move around increasing your maritime presence.
A single galley does not provide much presence i guess…
Stay tuned, as next week we will talk about changes to Diplomacy and Military…
As we mentioned last week, we are spending four weeks going through how your feedback together with internal testing have shaped the game in this last year. Today it is time to talk about the changes that are related to the political part of the game.
Estate Power
The power of the estates is one of the most important aspects of the core game loops of Project Caesar, so much so that we had to rearrange what we show in the top bar in the UI. We added so you can easily see each estate's current power and satisfaction, without having to go into a special screen.
As part of the gameplay loop is about breaking the power of the estates and strengthening the central state as you shape a modern country, basing the core power of the estates to how many pops they had made a gameplay where urbanizing and developing your country would weaken the central government.
The main change is that the amount of pops of a certain estate impact their power, but also impact the crown power with the same base value, before any privileges or laws give more power to the estate. This makes the relative power distribution between the estates feel logical, but the weakening of the crown is due to the privileges granted. This further ties in with advances increasing crown power and the increase of absolutism in later ages.
It's just a cost of a few hundred of stability to remove all those privileges. And maybe not give that noble with insane stats command over the army.. And go more plutocratic? Then we can reduce their power below 30%.. But the +0.17 military tactics is good… tough choices..
As characters all have an estate they belong to, it’s now also added in that giving characters command of armies or navies, or a place in the cabinet increases the power of the estate they belong to. A total of 25% for armies, 25% from navies and 25% from cabinet positions can be added.
Connected to this, the direct family of the ruler is now always considered to be part of the crown estate, so if you want to strengthen the crown you may want to risk them commanding armies.
Having a crown prince in the cabinet helps a bit..
Parliament
When it comes to the parliament we keep adding new agendas and issues from feedback and internal testing, but some important changes that come from you guys include the following.
First of all, we added the Dutch-style parliament with only nobles and burghers, which you currently have access to if you have the Low Franconian culture.
We also made it so that if you keep giving out the unique privileges for the nobles in Poland, you will end up in a situation where you need 100% of the support to pass anything in the parliament.
We also added a building that was requested by the community, which is available through an advance in the Age of Discovery.
Could be useful…
Societal Values & Government Reforms
While we were happy with how societal values were indirectly influenced by laws & privileges, they had the problem that eventually anything with a drift towards one direction would eventually get to the extreme. Now one could change this by lowering the amount it would drift, but that would make for rather dull gameplay, and eventually you’d get to extremes anyway.
So what we did instead was to make a sort of soft-cap for how far a value could drift, at 100 times the current drift. So if you manage to stack up to +0.75 monthly towards Naval then you could get the values all the way to 75 Naval before it stopped there. If you’d drop to less than +0.75 naval, you’d still be at 75 naval though, as you’d not progress to the other side until you get all the way to at least +0.01 to land! This has the added benefit of you being able to shape your country how you want over a longer period of time, and even if you want to be a humanist country, you may not get further than a 65 on that slider, as you may not be willing to give up other aspects.
If we increase our trade income, we can push it even further..
While working on adding content this year, we added government reforms to every age, and while doing so, we decided to tie some of them to societal values. So now about half of the government reforms that are available to every country require that a specific societal value at least 50 to be selectable, and if you drop below that, you’d lose the reform. Some examples include that Religious Tolerance requires a country to be Humanist, while Bank Ledgers requires a country to have a Capital Economy.
Proximity and Control
The proximity and control gameplay loop is one of the most beloved by our playtesting, and it has been tweaked a fair bit during the last year, so as to make it feel more natural.
Proximity now traces along rivers, where it's even easier to propagate proximity and market access downstream.
The buildings that act as proximity sources besides the capital, like the Bailiff, have been made a bit more powerful, but also far more costly.
We also changed how roads are built, slowing them down by 50% as default, and rugged terrain like Mountains makes road-building far slower. I guess the rest of the team did not like my Nidaros-Oslo highway..
We also tweaked how Maritime Presence works, with adding a decay to the current value, so that unless you invest in naval infrastructure and/or a navy, your control propagation over coastal seazones is limited.
We improved the impact from some buildings, and navies now also increase maritime presence in every seazone in the “seazone” province they are currently in. There is also an objective you can assign to navies to patrol any area/province you want and it will move around increasing your maritime presence.
A single galley does not provide much presence i guess…
Stay tuned, as next week we will talk about changes to Diplomacy and Military…
