Tinto Flavour #11 - 21st of March 2025 - Ethiopia

[Pavía]

Off topic but it came to me when I read tooltips with estate names. I have no clue which estates are those and it's probably easy to figure out after a while but perhaps there could be an option to use standard/default names rather than localized? I would probably play with localized names for european/christian countries but outside of europe I would change it so I don't need to guess which estate I am dealing with (like Ulema/Umera have pretty similar names that mean nothing to me).

It may be a bit more difficult to identify in a random tooltip, but the estates have always the same icon, coloring, description, game concept, etc., independent of the flavour name. But we'll consider it, thanks for this feedback.

 

[Jjjace55]

Ethiopia flag variants? Formables?

 

[matfer13]

Can you show us the starting estate tab of Ethiopia?

 

[STAR7827]

Events have too much open space in their portraits. Its moddable right?

 

[matfer13]

are you sure Ifat is a vassal? The coins make me think of a tributary

 

[Pavía]

I was more asking in the sense of unique advances/ reforms/ privileges which require Ethiopia to have Coptic or another Oriental Orthodox denomination as the official religion.

Is there something like that and could you show us some?

Oh, yes. A bunch of the events require the religion to be Miaphysite (it's the name we're using for the entire Oriental Orthodox religious group), the Debere Meshwa'e building, the Double Sabbath estate privilege or the Fetha Negest also require it, etc.

 

[Pavía]

View attachment 1269280
are you sure Ifat is a vassal? The coins make me think of a tributary

Actually, yes, it is a Tributary, good catch. Correcting it in the post, thanks.

 

[hytth]

I don't like the writing for events and unique descriptions. It's like the writing for the codex and newspapers in Suzerain. Using big words to sound better even though they don't convey any new information. The flavor writing in EU4 was better; short and to the point, conveying useful historical context to the player.

 

[matfer13]

I don't understand, If this is not a capital only building(as there is no star on the top) then does that mean that i only get those location bonuses if I build it outside my capital?

 

[donbg]

Oh, yes. A bunch of the events require the religion to be Miaphysite (it's the name we're using for the entire Oriental Orthodox religious group), the Debere Meshwa'e building, the Double Sabbath estate privilege or the Fetha Negest also require it, etc.

Any chance you guys change Miaphysite to Oriental Orthodox? The term miaphysite isn't that preferred nowadays, and Christology is such a messy area, I'd rather the game not refer to the religion by this one belief category they had.

 

[matfer13]

Oh, yes. A bunch of the events require the religion to be Miaphysite (it's the name we're using for the entire Oriental Orthodox religious group), the Debere Meshwa'e building, the Double Sabbath estate privilege or the Fetha Negest also require it, etc.

Are there events for Ethiopia to become catholic like it happened historically for 10 years?

It would be a cool event for the age of reformation

 

[sofonias2000100]

Why isn’t the ark of the covenant an artifact? You should have the option to keep it hidden in a church for religious power or eventually put it in a museum later on for some cultural/institution spread.

Have you thought about taking less of a negative hit for civil wars that replace a ruler as Ethiopia usually didn’t mind a ruler as long as his last name was Solomon.

 

[Mef]

Our content designers have varied artistic tastes...

This is a topic that we want to balance a bit more, eventually. But take into account that different places in the world have different artistic styles, and what they consider a work of art.

Shouldn't the tiering be something like "cultural impact" rather than "art quality" then?

Ranking the quality of art is obviously somewhat subjective, but there are also objective standards... surely a large cathedral with all its intricacies and smaller works of art contained within is objectively "better" than a culturally significant stone?
Another example would be the paintings of Flemish or Italian masters, they are better than what most of the rest of the world could produce at the time period.

If "art quality" is what these works are ranked on, then I'm worried that historical flavor will be lost if works from all over the world are given equal ranks irrespective of the objectively measurable differences in quality.

 

[Zarnek]

Cool dev diary!
How dinamic will be the ethiopian Flag? Will we be able to get the cool Green yellow Red with the lion in the middle?

 

[Mef]

View attachment 1269281
I don't understand, If this is not a capital only building(as there is no star on the top) then does that mean that i only get those location bonuses if I build it outside my capital?

It's a unique building that is built by an event, so if you move the capital, you won't get the capital bonus.

 

[Pavía]

Is the wandering court gov reform really a thing only for Ethiopia? I know you guys already mentioned that there's a law/policy for it that some countries start with but it seems quite different from this reform, why don't countries like Castile and Aragon have the refirm as well?

We're fully aware of how Iberian monarchies acted in the Middle Ages. Since the Ethiopian court worked a bit differently, we decided to implement this feature here as a test case; if we end up expanding this feature to other countries, it will probably be in a different, more or less overhauled way.

 

[POD012]

I don't think that's what a miaphysite priest looks like

The clothing department is certainly suffering a fair bit in this TF, yeah. One can dream, but I suspect a lot of these awkward regions for clothing will only have properly-dressed characters well post-release.

 

[NorthernAlliance]

Is there any benefit to having the capital move with each new ruler or is it more for role playing?

Edit: Also how do capital only buildings work in regards to the moving capital mechanic? Do they mive with the ruler or do they just become useless now? Can we build them in multiple locations?

 

[Pavía]

I don't like the writing for events and unique descriptions. It's like the writing for the codex and newspapers in Suzerain. Using big words to sound better even though they don't convey any new information. The flavor writing in EU4 was better; short and to the point, conveying useful historical context to the player.

We're looking forward to revisiting some of the event texts. You may have noticed in previous TFs that we have a 'historical info' fluff in some of them, which is something that we're slowly expanding, to detach more 'gamey' descriptions from the historical flavour. This 'historical info' will also be a hoverable option, so the player doesn't have to read it if it's not their cup of tea.

 

[kicajos]

It may be a bit more difficult to identify in a random tooltip, but the estates have always the same icon, coloring, description, game concept, etc., independent of the flavour name. But we'll consider it, thanks for this feedback.

I was thinking about the event messages like the one you have shown - flavor_eth.200.d. Probably before getting to such event I would know the estate names. Also icons etc all are very good to help with it. But perhaps this is something small that can be added. I would guess that each estate has its properties and probably one of those properties are default name (i.e. default_name = "nobility") and for each country with flavor there is a flavor name (i.e. flavor_name_pl = "Szlachta"). My further guess is that whenever you are displaying an estate name you check if there is a flavor name for it and if there is not then you go with default_name. Same for other things that can have flavor name, like parliements. Perhaps a simple config setting could decide if player prefers to use default vs flavor names.