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Tinto Talks #25 - 14th of August 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, the 25th one, the Happy Wednesday where we give you lots of information about our upcoming, still secret and unannounced game, with the codename of Project Caesar.

Today we delve into the mechanics of colonialism, another aspect of painting the map.

Power Projection
One important factor that has a big impact on the colonialism game is Power Projection. Each country has a power projection value, and it is primarily to allow a country to be able to exploit those with a lower power projection. Power Projection is very dependent on how advanced a country is, where each age has an advance that gives you about +10 of it. It is also modified by societal values, rank of the country and more. One important aspect is that the +10 advance for Age of Traditions is in the advance tree from the Meritocracy.

You do not gain Power Projection by doing specific actions, like in EU4, but it's entirely based on your country's current setup.

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Sadly, the “Sweden is properly balanced” modifier has not been developed yet..


Colonial Charters
So, how does colonization work in ‘Project Caesar'? Well, you colonize by starting a colonial charter in a province for an upfront fee in gold. Then each month some of the population will be moving from the homeland to the colonial charter, until all locations that can be owned are owned by you.

In almost all cases, there are people living in a location you want to colonize, so for you to be able to have a charter to flip to your ownership there are a few rules. A location needs to have at least 1,000 people living there, and a certain percentage of the population needs to follow your state religion and be of an accepted culture of your country.

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Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged!

This percentage depends heavily on the difference in power projection of your country and the countries in the location. Yes, I said countries in plural, and next week you will understand what we are talking about. This has the implication that at the start of the game, Yuán could in theory start colonizing Europe, if it only had been closer and discovered. How the countries and pops already present in a location react to your colonization is something that will be clarified in a later Tinto Talks.

As long as you have a colonial charter, people from your owned locations will start moving to the locations in the colonial charter. The amount of people moving is rather low in the beginning of the game, but there are advances that will increase it in later ages. Societal values have an impact on it, and so does the distance to the colony.

One thing to take into account is that colonization does not magically create new pops out of thin air, and being able to create a huge colonial empire is not a feasible strategy as a low population country.

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Full speed ahead! Only 40 months per location to get to 1,000 pops!

Colonial Charters are not free, and moving people are definitely not free, and countries need to support them. The higher the population in the target province, the more expensive it is to colonize, the distance also has an impact, but colonizing in the same area or region as your capital is significantly cheaper. You can always cut costs to your charters, but that will also reduce the amount of pops moving every month.

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Not too expensive, so we can easily afford it..


Colonial Nations
When a colonial charter is finished, and all possible locations in that province have become yours, you have multiple options for what you want to happen to that charter. If the province is close, and you think you can get decent enough control over it, you may want to just keep the locations as a part of your home country. You also have the option to have the province form a new colonial nation, or have it join an adjacent colonial nation.

Colonial Nations are a subject type that can not be annexed, but has a few advantages, or disadvantages depending on your point of view, in that while they start transferring less gold than a vassal would, they also grant some manpower and sailors, while also giving part of their merchants to their overlord.

To clarify, you can make colonial nations anywhere on the map where you can colonize.

Supporting the Colonies
If you feel that your charters or colonial nations are not growing enough, there are two tools you can use in the cabinet. Both of these become available from advances in the Age of Discovery

With ‘Supporting a Colonial Charter’ you will move pops from a province you decide upon and to the colonial charter you decided. The amount of pops getting moved depends on your current colonial migration capacities, so when you use it you can about double the migration to a specific

With the ‘Supporting Colonies’ you can move 100 pops every month from a selected province to a target province in a colonial nation subject. This can be useful when you want to boost a colony and you have overpopulated provinces at home, or when you think your country would be in a better situation if you could expel some minorities.

Restrictions on Colonization
There are several ways which can block other nations from colonizing certain places, including diplomatic treaties. At the start of the game, Norrland, Finland, Karelia and Kola are under the claims of Sweden and Novgorod who have divided the area between them.

We also have the situation ‘Treaty of Tordesillas’ where the New World will be split among two Catholic powers, causing lots of interesting dynamics.


Next week we will be back to talk about the difference between countries, and why owning locations is not all there is to life…

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And what is this teaser for next week about?
 
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Are there any historical examples of this?
Not exactly as I depicted it, but an example of inland/river ports also - Look at Bremen in Germany. While it was a very inland city, and if only viewing where it sits in the Euro land mass on a game's map/board, it may not appear capable, but Bremen was one of the top Cross-Atlantic ports for passage from Germany to the USA, as evidenced by many Ellis Island arrivals with Port of Departure as Bremen. Many interior European powers had immigrants that departed via Bremen, and did not travel to coastal ports on the Atlantic Ocean.
 
Not exactly as I depicted it, but an example of inland/river ports also - Look at Bremen in Germany. While it was a very inland city, and if only viewing where it sits in the Euro land mass on a game's map/board, it may not appear capable, but Bremen was one of the top Cross-Atlantic ports for passage from Germany to the USA, as evidenced by many Ellis Island arrivals with Port of Departure as Bremen. Many interior European powers had immigrants that departed via Bremen, and did not travel to coastal ports on the Atlantic Ocean.
Bremen is a bit of an odd case since despite being nominally landlocked it acquired a dedicated port of its own, and had free passage to and from that port thanks to being in the HRE. The game represents this by just giving Bremen coastal access, and there isn't really a better way to represent it since Bremerhaven is too small to be represented as a location. And Bremen isn't that far inland, it's close enough to the coast that the game can just represent it as being coastal and the location still looks about right. What you're proposing would be for a place like Frankfurt or Switzerland, somewhere that can't be fudged as coastal.
 
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Bremen is a bit of an odd case since despite being nominally landlocked it acquired a dedicated port of its own, and had free passage to and from that port thanks to being in the HRE. The game represents this by just giving Bremen coastal access, and there isn't really a better way to represent it since Bremerhaven is too small to be represented as a location. And Bremen isn't that far inland, it's close enough to the coast that the game can just represent it as being coastal and the location still looks about right. What you're proposing would be for a place like Frankfurt or Switzerland, somewhere that can't be fudged as coastal.
Yes, I am, and that was possible if you bought your way out via hired ships/crews. The Swiss did have citizens that moved abroad btw, to include colonies in modern Russia and the USA (Pennsylvania).

Even better example - The Palatinate had many citizens emigrate, especially Mennonites, out to the Americas. Many went as far as modern Detroit, Michigan.

In a game where the Real World no longer exists after unpausing the game on day 1, it is entirely possible that land-locked kingdoms could have colonized externally, which in itself could have gained them an external port they lacked in their home country.
 
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Yes, I am, and that was possible if you bought your way out via hired ships/crews. The Swiss did have citizens that moved abroad btw, to include colonies in modern Russia and the USA (Pennsylvania).

Even better example - The Palatinate had many citizens emigrate, especially Mennonites, out to the Americas. Many went as far as modern Detroit, Michigan.

In a game where the Real World no longer exists after unpausing the game on day 1, it is entirely possible that land-locked kingdoms could have colonized externally, which in itself could have gained them an external port they lacked in their home country.
Ok but did these states establish overseas colonies, or did their population simply emigrate overseas? Because these are two very different things and while the latter should definitely be represented, I’m skeptical of the former.
 
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Ok but did these states establish overseas colonies, or did their population simply emigrate overseas? Because these are two very different things and while the latter should definitely be represented, I’m skeptical of the former.
I don't think it matters as much to consider them exclusive of each other. Both should be possible in EU5. Coding each of these could have mutually exclusive metrics/algo's to factor that out, and either occurrence should be possible (to formally colonize, and/or lose population that emigrates to other kingdom/nations' colonies, especially oppressed populations). This is a reminder that Johan himself has talked about the great debate of Population/Pops in/out of game design (and arguably, I do wish EU5 had a Pops system that had many algo's attached to it). Oppressed pops would emigrate, while Loyalist Pops would be part of formal Colonies.

England themselves lost many emigrating citizens while also establishing colonies for themselves, so it's a simultaneous occurrence but with two separate game concepts. Again - the Swiss did just this, with external colonies. They paid and funded their own external colonies, not merely emigrating citizens to other nations' colonies, so there are actual Real-World occurrences of this very thing happening (Land-locked kingdoms/nations establishing Colonies).
 
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Is it the case that Pops will never migrate to a Location that is unowned unless it is being colonized?
I was wondering if Swedish Pops would eventually grow to the 1000 needed in a Location to "flip" it to their control - but I suppose culture does not necessarily equal a tag, as many cultures are the primary in two or more tags...

EDIT: Assuming that Pops in unowned Locations can grow (since they seem to die from plagues) can they accrue tens of thousands of Pops and remain unowned/uncolonized Locations?
Also, what happens when a SoP grows to over the 1000 Pops threshold, will it form a country/tag in just that Location, or is the answer the same to the above question?
 
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Also, what happens when a SoP grows to over the 1000 Pops threshold, will it form a country/tag in just that Location, or is the answer the same to the above question?
A location doesn't become owned just because it has >1k pops in it, there are a bunch of locations that meet that criteria at the start and aren't owned, many with SoPs present. What causes a location to become owned is if a location is the target of a colonial charter and meets the conditions of having more than 1k pops, a majority religion the same as the colonizing country's primary religion, and a majority culture the same as the colonizing country's primary or accepted cultures. My one question is how this works if the local pops are already your primary culture and religion, which is the case for some african tags and indicates you could instantly colonize those locations once the game starts, which shouldn't be possible for obvious reasons of it having not happened before the arbitrary start of the game.
 
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A location doesn't become owned just because it has >1k pops in it, there are a bunch of locations that meet that criteria at the start and aren't owned, many with SoPs present. What causes a location to become owned is if a location is the target of a colonial charter and meets the conditions of having more than 1k pops, a majority religion the same as the colonizing country's primary religion, and a majority culture the same as the colonizing country's primary or accepted cultures. My one question is how this works if the local pops are already your primary culture and religion, which is the case for some african tags and indicates you could instantly colonize those locations once the game starts, which shouldn't be possible for obvious reasons of it having not happened before the arbitrary start of the game.
It's not instant, they have to make colonial charters regardless, which are expensive and probably still take time regardless.
 
It's not instant, they have to make colonial charters regardless, which are expensive and probably still take time regardless.
Colonial charters work over time as they transport pops from your territory to a target location. In this scenario the moment you unpause the game after creating the charter, which I don’t believe has an up front cost but even if it does is supposed to be more about upkeep, you will gain ownership of the target location/province. There should be a way to avoid this scenario without just putting arbitrary and probably still insufficient limits on colonization. I’d suggest making them all tribesmen and not having them count to colonization progress regardless of culture and religion, but I don’t know if that’s the case.
 
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That's an interesting problem.

I wonder what the plan is if SoPs become playable, if there's a way to turn your SoP into a regular CBC - and what happens then if you have more people of your culture in Locations already owned by a tag? It's bound to either be a binary result or a headache.
 
It's not instant, they have to make colonial charters regardless, which are expensive and probably still take time regardless.
Johan and the Dev's should reconsider the entire "Colonial Charter" system. The Vikings didn't need Charters to land and remain on-ground if they so chose. They stayed a bit longer in Scotland than other places they only raided (the dark haired, blue-eyed genetics are the same as Scandinavians btw, as we now learn with DNA testing of the modern era). Some less "cultured" nations could land a colonial force that is simply that - brute force, and it seems a bit silly to make a Charter part of the requirement to take over a piece of land. When you invade your neighbor, while you do have some "claim" - that isn't necessary either, as reminder (you can risk negative opinions in most Paradox games by simply invading a neighbor without Casus Belli). So think about that - if you can "risk" something by invading a neighbor without Casus Belli, why not also have a more diverse invasion/colonization system that enables carrying out the task without a Colonial Charter?

Just a concept (and complaint) as I've considered the entire Colonization process a bit broken since Sid Meier's Colonization game (few games ever get it right).
 
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