Tinto Flavour #4 - 31st of January 2025 - Mali

[Pavía]

Hello, and welcome one more week to Tinto Flavour, the happy Fridays in which we take a look at the flavourful content created for the super secret Project Caesar! But before we start, I want to share with you that we have a new job opening in Paradox Tinto: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/come-work-for-tinto.1727521/

Today we will be traveling throughout the Sahara toward the Sahel, where the Empire of Mali stands, ruled by the infamous Mansa Mūsā:

"The mighty Mansa Mūsā Keita of Mali astonished the world one decade ago, when he performed his Ḥajj ('pilgrimage') to Mecca. Such an event was recorded by chroniclers and chanted by minstrels, and it served to establish his fame as the richest man as he spread his prodigality, gifting Zakāh ('almsgiving') gold wherever his long and luxurious courtly caravan passed by.

This display of splendor might have reflected the richnesses of the Malian lands, after its Empire expanded and consolidated under the Keita dynasty. However, one day Mansa Mūsā will pass away, and his successors may not find it so easy to rule over his very diverse holdings..."

The mighty Mansa Mūsā is still ruling Mali in 1337 (we don’t know exactly when he died, so we decided to have him as the ruler at the start of the game). As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.​

And here are the lands of Mali:

Some more fun camera rotations this week! Today, with the flat map mode on again.​

Mali starts with one Vassal, which is Jolof:

Let’s take a look at some Government-related features of Mali, which can be checked in the Estates window:

There is one starting government reform for Mali, the Manden Kurufa:

You might also notice that all Estates start with a privilege with the same icon, as it’s a similar one, made to portray the religious diversity of Mali, a country ruled largely by Mande-speaking Sunni people, but with a fragmented, but tolerant, society:

The second screenshot comes from a tooltip on the Religious panel and shows the religious distribution of the country. Please note that we’ve already done the ‘Pagan’ split, but haven’t yet incorporated feedback from the West African Tinto Maps, nor reviewed the starting population.​

There are also a couple of unique privileges for the 'Umarā', the Nobility of the country, that may be available later on after an event triggers:

Mali also starts with a couple of unique policies enacted, the first for the Distribution of Power estate law, and the other for the Levy Law military law:

Mali also starts with 3 Works of Art:

Let’s now take a look at some unique advances:

This advance is the one that unlocks the Manden Kurufa government reform.

Mali is famous for its gold exports, yeah…​

Mali has a bunch of unique units, also:

Here are the Levy units unlocked by it:

You might note that the description of these two levy units refers to the Farari Corps, which is the following advance:

That unlocks the following Regular units:

Another unique advance:

That unlocks the Jonow Auxiliary, an Auxiliary unit:

Finally, another military advance, that unlocks one more unit, and two more buildings:

Let’s now take a look at the narrative content. This event will trigger while Mansa Mūsā is still alive, as an announcement of the potentially harsh time to come:

This is the disaster that may end up triggering for your country, ‘Decline of Mali’:

It will trigger a number of nasty events, such as:

This event allows you to start playing with Songhai instead of Mali if you select the third option.​

If you overcome the disaster, you’ll get a reward, in terms of Prestige, Stability, etc. (we need to do some balance tweaks on it, so there might be more!).

Nonetheless, besides the disaster, you can also get nicer events while playing as Mali, such as some about the development of Timbuktu:

And that’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed it! Next week we will travel back to Europe, to the lands of the Crown of Aragon! Cheers!

 

[Pavía]

How many states break away during the decline of Mali disaster?

Besides the break-away countries coming from the regular rebel mechanics, there are unique events for Tuareg, Fulo, Kaabu, and Songhai splinter countries.

 

[Pavía]

View attachment 1249409
I'm not sure if you're still gonna have that "Inflation due to gold reliance" factor from EU4 (perhaps not, since PC has a more Victoria style economy), but maybe a better way of doing this benefit would be to reduce the impact of that on Mali, rather than a straight, flat inflation reduction.

That way, if I conquer Zimbabwe with Mali, for example, its gold's inflation impact would also be reduced, but it wouldn't make it seem so like Mali is better against any and all sources of inflation just because it has "Gold drug tolerance"

There have been some recent changes to how inflation works in the game, @Johan will talk about them sometime in the future.

 

[Pavía]

Why Umara and Ulama are in inverted commas? Other unique names of estates don't use them.

Because it's how it's spelled in Arabic.

 

[Pavía]

Disappointed that Mali doesn’t start with more vassal states, especially since Europe is so granular

We haven't yet reviewed the setup feedback suggestions from the Western African Tinto Maps.

 

[Pavía]

I like the new icon for tools! The one for cooper looks like arm wrestling tho

What do the new top icons mean?

The one with the red banner behind it? It's the Building Category, which is 'Military' for the Sofa Barracks, and 'Defensive' for the Sofa Stockade.

 

[Pavía]

Are the mana stats final for the Mansa? I feel as though his Diplo isn't high enough.

No, WIP.

 

[Pavía]

Is Mansa Musa scripted to die in 1337 as he did historically?

No.

 

[Pavía]

Tootltip for mandekalu cav is broken i believe, it says it upgrade in infantry instead of cav

Thanks, reported for fixing!

 

[Pavía]

Are the Wangara estate dominated by the Soninke culture? Wangara is specifically a Soninke merchant caste widely distributed throughout West Africa iirc

The Dyula was the merchant caste among the Mande-speaking people, and they're over-represented among the Wangara, yes.

 

[Pavía]

Are all the unique units of Mali unlockable in the age of renaissance? That seems a lot, also am I crazy or can levy units become standing units?

1. Yes, as this period is the zenith of Mali's military power, and also a gameplay tool to fight the 'Decline of Mali' and its consequences.
2. In this specific case, the Mandekalu levies can become Farari regular units, which is a very unique feature.

 

[Pavía]

1. Will more special units have access to this promotion system?
2. Will generic units have access to something like this as well?

Currently not, it's something unique in the game; but as it's scriptable, this also means that could be expanded in the future, and also makes it modding material.

 

[Pavía]

Could the Gbara council perhaps fit as a parliament for Mali?

We might need to readjust it, yes, as Gbara was created before we created the Parliament types.

 

[Pavía]

What about the checkmark? Also why does the desciption says that they are made of materials native to the Sahel when they are common to everywhere?

1. The checkmark is 'Special Conditions'. In this case, it marks that it requires the 'Sofa Levies' advance to be unlocked (so, if you see the building in another part of the GUI, you know that you need to go to the Advances Tree and research the advance to unlock it).
2. Because there has been some materials rebalance since we created the building, and now the description is a bit outdated.

 

[Pavía]

Can you give us the starting screen of Mali like you did with Jolof?

This one?:

 

[Pavía]

Thanks for the dev diary! I'm curious, given Project Caesar simulates internal politics in more detail than EU4 did, what was the reasoning behind giving Mali a specific disaster for a period of internal political decline? Which parts of Mali's historical decline did you find that PC wasn't able to capture just by giving Mali a weak ruler and letting the regular systems play out?

The country evolved from being the mightiest Sub-Saharan Empire in 1337 to becoming a marginal country two centuries after. This is such a strong historical narrative, that fits very well our 'nudged' historical flavour content, also creating an interesting and different game loop for some years.

 

[Pavía]

Why did Mali deteriorate, or at least diminish, after Mansa Musa?

Paradox GSGs are at their best when they illustrate why certain nations acted as they did, and why certain events happened. But after this DD (which is otherwise great, don't get me wrong), I'm no closer to understanding what it was about the succession that brought the downfall. This feels a bit like there is a disaster just because there was a downfall in real life. What was the reasoning behind the pullback?

The dynamic triggering conditions are (take them as WIP and matter of review, as usual):

legitimacy <= 95
stability < 20
ruler ?= {
is_adult = yes
OR = {
adm < 50
dip < 50
mil < 50
}
}

And this is the flavour description:

"Weak rulership, civil wars, the rise of external threats, and internal stagnation are the great challenges the Mali Empire has to face. The stability and security of the empire is in peril, and only a strong hand can lead the state to once former glory."

After the disaster is triggered and functioning, you can get several events about court intrigues, pretenders rising, social changes, and breakaway peoples, that try to make for an immersive experience. This is the description of one of those events, for example (with some dynamic localization in place, for those curious):

flavor_mal.3.desc: "The armies of [ROOT.GetCountry.GetName] used to be made up of #italic Horons#! - 'free men', who brought their own weaponry to the battle and were trained in the arts of war. With the increasing usage of [ShowUnitDefinitionName('a_sofa_infantry')], the character of our military is shifting. No more is the state protected by our well-trained part-time soldiers but by an army of #italic Jonows#! — 'slaves' — who once were just the carrier of the military equipment.\n\nOpinions are split if such development is to our advantage or not. While the quality of our army is less secure, it is undeniable that the quantity of the Sofa troops is a force to be reckoned with."

 

[Pavía]

Shouldn't it be in english though? Arab is the language of Islam but Mali isn't arab...

Because it's a dynamic key; e.g., you get the 'Ulamā' naming for the Clergy Estate if the country's main religion is part of the Muslim religious group.

 

[Pavía]

"Bolstering Timbuktu" says "the growth of Town." I assume this should either be "the growth of Timbuktu" or "the growth of our Town."

Anyway, this is neat. I don't know a lot about West Africa during this period, but I'm interested in seeing more.

Incidentally: Feedback left in the other Tinto Flavours after you stop posting in it is still being recorded by someone, right? I left some thoughts and suggestions in the Novgorod diary about the Orthodox clergy estate, but it was after you were done posting for the day. There have been a bunch of mentions about how the Tinto Map stuff gets constantly checked for new stuff to contribute to the reviews, but AFAIK nothing similar has been said for the Tinto Flavours.

1. Corrected the sentence to "Other nations seem fascinated by its growth, and are regularly visiting it."
2. Yes, we will do the same, although don't expect 'Tinto Flavour Review' posts, as that would make less sense compared to Tinto Maps.

 

[Pavía]

Why is there an advance to unlock a starting reform ?

Because we're trying to create as much 'nested content' as possible, so the different game systems interact among themselves.