Grand Strategy Project Caesar - Paradox Tinto's New Game

[Fedora Master]

Start date will be the least of the games inevitable issues.

 

[Joggerino]

I don't care what they say, I'm not buying it (in both senses of the word). I will pirate it though, and if it's not complete trash buy it for 5$ in a year or two while continuing to pirate every dlc as I'm doing with hoi 4 and eu 4.

 

[GoblinMerchant]

EUIV has become bloated. The mission trees drive gameplay too much. There's a bunch of random crap like age bonuses, and hegemonies. Mana sucks as a mechanic. Despite all this, I do love the game, and seeing that they have improved aspects like estates gives me some hope (especially if I ignore the fuck ups).

Pops, potential removal of mana, and revamping mission trees could make for a damn good game. Only concern is content on launch, more so because it's apparently now a 500 year campaign.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I also dislike that they are now including this market goods system of trade and production into every game. It hogs the processor, and doesn't make for fun gameplay, it's like the old games' balancing sliders but without the sliders (a la Vic 3).

How prescient this post was in light of the last DD:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-9-24th-of-april-2024.1670510/

Welcome to another Tinto Talks, this is the 9th of its kind, where we talk about our very secret game using the codename Project Caesar. And today we continue with the 3rd of the 4 talks we have now about the economy systems of the game. So lets start..

Constructions
In the previous development diary, we mentioned constructions and how you needed lumber for expanding the mines. In this game, almost all constructions require different materials to progress, and if that material is not available in the local market, then that construction is stalled until the material is available. This includes things like road building, shipbuilding, recruiting regiments, building buildings, or expanding R.G.O’s.

Not sure why you want another monastery?

For example, building a light ship in the Age of Renaissance requires Naval Supplies, Lumber, Weaponry, Copper, Tin, and Metalworks, while moving your capital requires Paper, Books, Stone, Lumber, Marble, and gold.


Buildings
Buildings are rather important in Project Caesar. There are hundreds of different types of buildings, some can only be built in rural locations, and some require a town or city. Some can only be built in ports, and some can only be built in other countries. Some you can only build when there is no owner of a location. Lots of buildings are unique to cultures, regions, religions, or even to specific tags.

Some buildings can only have 1 level, some have a fixed cap, and some have a cap that scales with the population or development, and so on.

Buildings can also be categorized into three different categories: buildings that can produce goods, buildings that only give effects, and buildings that can only be built by the estates. Those pure estates usually have a drawback to them as well, and it's not easy to remove them

Definitely not something we are all that keen on having in here.. it does increase demands for some goods though..

So what about producing buildings then? This is where the truly fun parts of the economy start. Project Caesar has a large amount of different goods. We currently have about 70 different ones that have different needs, some are needed for the military, some are needed solely by pops, some are needed for buildings, and so on.

Producing Buildings in towns and cities go from guilds and workshops to manufactories and mills at the of the game. These include everything from Paper Makers Guilds to Foundries. A producing building outputs one or more types of goods.

Finally, we have buildings that are purely giving an effect. These include Granaries that increase how much food you can store, libraries that increase literacy, different types of forts, buildings that train manpower, port buildings to help with shipbuilding, and much more.

Some claim you can build Stockades of wood, but we trust only stone!

Almost all buildings though, have a production method, which impacts how they work.

Production methods
All buildings have at least one production method slot with one production method, but many have different methods in each slot, and there are plenty of buildings with multiple production method slots.

What is a production method then?
A production method is a list of goods that are required for a building to function. There are two categories of production methods, those that produce something and those that do not.
As an example, a Castle does not produce any goods, but it still requires Stone, Metalworks, Weaponry, and Tar to function, and if it does not get those goods, then the Castle will not function properly. The effectiveness of a building is based on the lowest available percentage of goods present, and it will only purchase and use required materials in that percentage required. If the market cannot supply enough resources, then it will not work.

The output of the producing building is also scaled by the percentage mentioned above.

There are a few options here, but only wood pulp would be profitable here, probably because of the great supply of lumber in this market..

And of course, you can automate the production method selection, which will adapt it on a monthly basis based on what resources are available and what would be profitable. The UI also allows for macro decisions regarding production methods

Other important aspects
Every building requires employed pops to function as well, and those that require “upper class” pops like burghers, clergy, and nobles, also increase the potential for them in the location, making pops slowly promoted. This can be slightly awkward as powerful nobles or clergy construct more buildings that make them more numerous and powerful.


Producing buildings that are not profitable will be closed, and pops will work in other buildings, however, you can always subsidize a building if you require the goods or other benefits it gives.

Speaking of profit. The profit of a building is added to the Tax Base of a location, split among the power of the population in the location.

You can always close and open a building, if you want to manipulate prices, or if you want your pops to work with other things, and you don’t want to destroy a building permanently.



We mentioned last week about different ways to get raw materials, and one way to get it, besides trade, is through a set of rural buildings. These include Lumber Mills that you can build in any wood or forest location to produce lumber, sheep farms, stone quarries, and many more.

Yeah, this requires some input.. Might be worth it..


There are stockpiles of goods, but those are in the market. There are buildings you can build that increase the amount they can store, as if you do not have the goods required for a building, unit, or construction, those will not function.

Speaking of markets, that is something we will talk about more next week when we delve deep into the trade system.

 

[AwesomeButton]

He says buildings go up to manufacturies. This obviously means the game ends before or just at the start of Vic 3's timeline. So 1337-1836. Five centuries.

 

[Fedora Master]

The building system already sounds like a huge mess

 

[Axioms]

I'm not sure there's a better way to do buildings and resources at the level of abstraction of EU5. I've done materials systems for several game genres and I think it is fine given the limitations of being a gsg map painter.

 

[Space Satan]

Markets

 

[Harthwain]

What are everyone's thoughts and expectations? Can Johan prove that he can still make good games?

I don't have any expectations of Paradox at this point and I have even less hope in Johan learning from his mistakes after not improving Imperator: Rome past being slightly reskinned Europa Universalis: Rome when it obviously had the potential to be much more than that. Stellaris was too bland to be interesting despite having an interesting premise. Crusader Kings 3 was nice, but not revolutionary (unlike Crusader Kings 2) and Victoria 3 I didn't even bother buying.

I'd rather like to see them doing East vs West kind of grand strategy game, where wars are short but expensive affairs and you really have to keep an eye on the economy in the long run.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm not sure there's a better way to do buildings and resources at the level of abstraction of EU5. I've done materials systems for several game genres and I think it is fine given the limitations of being a gsg map painter.

I'd rather they didn't include Vic3 style markets, because they hog the game, without contributing to the experience.

Buildings are currently not much more than permanent modifiers (country or province level), behind rather plain-looking icons.

I am going back to my point that a gsg game is as "good" as the memorable gameplay stories it produces through emergent gameplay. If out of 50 hours of gameplay you have one such story of a strategy executed in the span of years, of weakening the strategic position of an enemy, of striking at the right time, of luck being on your side, or anything else the player can narrate to a friend as a story, then the mechanics are fulfilling their purpose - the player got to feel like an absolutist ruler. These stories usually come to fruition in an hour or two out of those 50 hours, but the player feels it was worth it.

If they didn't, then the player is left with the "Victoria 3 effect": I played through the Victorian age, and all I remember is that I was managing a building queue while my gdp was going up. Not very enticing.

 

[Axioms]

I'm not sure there's a better way to do buildings and resources at the level of abstraction of EU5. I've done materials systems for several game genres and I think it is fine given the limitations of being a gsg map painter.

I'd rather they didn't include Vic3 style markets, because they hog the game, without contributing to the experience.

Buildings are currently not much more than permanent modifiers (country or province level), behind rather plain-looking icons.

I am going back to my point that a gsg game is as "good" as the memorable gameplay stories it produces through emergent gameplay. If out of 50 hours of gameplay you have one such story of a strategy executed in the span of years, of weakening the strategic position of an enemy, of striking at the right time, of luck being on your side, or anything else the player can narrate to a friend as a story, then the mechanics are fulfilling their purpose - the player got to feel like an absolutist ruler. These stories usually come to fruition in an hour or two out of those 50 hours, but the player feels it was worth it.

If they didn't, then the player is left with the "Victoria 3 effect": I played through the Victorian age, and all I remember is that I was managing a building queue while my gdp was going up. Not very enticing.

Well the Vic3 markets hog the game because the devs are idiots. Johan is at least a competent programmer. And he'll also be benefitting from the more powerful CK3 style multithreading that V3 didn't have when it was designed.

 

[Space Satan]

Euro borders. They added gaps to caucasus and added impassble to Spain. Ottomans is a mountanfest

 

[None]

One diary for armies.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-11-8th-of-may-2024.1675078/

Regiment manpower comes from buildings, no hard force limit (maintenance costs determines your army size), levies are in and draw their manpower from pops but don't reinforce when raised, three unit types: infantry cavalry artillery & auxiliary.


And another for maps.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-maps-1-10th-of-may-2024.1675505/

Plenty of map modes on display. Not a fan of the radial gradients that form in the middle of shapes but other than that I think it looks pretty decent.

Only thing I'm skeptical of currently is the supposed importance of buildings for many things, if only because it could become quite tedious managing them across so many provinces.

 

[what am i doing]

The maps look nice - paper instead of 3Dshit is always a good thing, and the borders look more detailed than EU4's horrible curves. Also, I think these are by far the best map labels I've seen in a Paradox game.

On the one hand Johan will probably do a better job than that redditor faggot wiz. On the other hand...
- It's Paradox, they always promise great things before a game actually comes out.
- Johan might be way better than wiz but he's still the guy who said he doesn't give a fuck about singleplayer, only multiplayer.
- The DLC kikery model hampers game design.
- It's Paradox, so I expect leftist anti-history such as Africa leading the enlightenment.
- I agree with None, the weird inner shadow effect looks bad.

 

[Fedora Master]

Ah yes, the famous medieval pearl industry of Den Haag

 

[Hace El Oso]

Not to mention the endless prairie ‘Grasslands’ of Belgium and northern France.

 

[None]

Siestaland (pre-siesta) map.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-maps-2-17th-of-may-2024.1678273/

Also a random tidbit I read from the last diary that might be interesting: vegetation type has impacts on fog of war and line of sight. So forests or jungle may block or limit sight, in addition to their usual impact on movement and supply. Would be cool (if the AI can handle it) to be able to hide an army somewhere.

 

[None]

Not to mention the endless prairie ‘Grasslands’ of Belgium and northern France.

Grasslands aren't strictly prairies (may even be counted as sparse), they can cover lightly wooded areas like heaths or semi-improved land. Not sure if that covers what those areas are supposed to be though.

 

[AwesomeButton]

From these maps I assume we will be conquering 10-20 tiles at a time, Imperator-style.

 

[Hace El Oso]

Grasslands aren't strictly prairies (may even be counted as sparse), they can cover lightly wooded areas like heaths or semi-improved land. Not sure if that covers what those areas are supposed to be though.

It’s a joke. Regardless, they aren't grasslands. It’s the classic Paradox map building where you get the feeling they put it together by playing ‘telephone’ with a chain a few hundred people long. It reminds me a bit of artists imagining life on Venus with Roman villas and aqueducts. I'm sure it's a contrivance for some slight variation in gameplay, but it's silly.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Siestaland (pre-siesta) map.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-maps-2-17th-of-may-2024.1678273/

Also a random tidbit I read from the last diary that might be interesting: vegetation type has impacts on fog of war and line of sight. So forests or jungle may block or limit sight, in addition to their usual impact on movement and supply. Would be cool (if the AI can handle it) to be able to hide an army somewhere.

And the pops map

 

[Malakal]

Not to mention the endless prairie ‘Grasslands’ of Belgium and northern France.

Grasslands aren't strictly prairies (may even be counted as sparse), they can cover lightly wooded areas like heaths or semi-improved land. Not sure if that covers what those areas are supposed to be though.

A lot of swamps and lowlands probably, not sure at this age tho as those got improved into yes grasslands or farmlands or whatever you call it.

 

[Fedora Master]

Being from that area IRL, I'm miffed Siegen doesn't produce iron. It's been a center of iron mining for over a thousand years.

 

[None]

Being from that area IRL, I'm miffed Siegen doesn't produce iron. It's been a center of iron mining for over a thousand years.

Bring it up during the relevant map discussion on the forums or wait for someone else to. The Netherlands already got a few changes from the discussions that took place.

before and after

 

[None]

Religion.

Each religion has a religious group it belongs to and attitudes towards other religions. Tolerance and religious unity are in, missionaries are out in favor of "slow" conversion, many religions already have unique mechanics.

"Calvinist countries will never reroll the dice in a battle, as everything is preordained" received an audible eyebrow raise from me. I'd like to think it is a joke but questionable design decisions aren't foreign to Paradox or Johan.