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

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..."
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Country Selection.png

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:
Mali.png

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

Mali starts with one Vassal, which is Jolof:
Jolof 1.png

Jolof 2.png

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

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

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:
Protected Faith.png

Religions.png

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:
Office of the Farima-Soura.png

Office of the Sankar-Zouma.png

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:
Gbra.png

Ton-tan-jon-ta-ni-woro.png

Mali also starts with 3 Works of Art:
Works of Art.png

Let’s now take a look at some unique advances:
Koroukan Faga.png

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

Gold of Bure.png

Mali is famous for its gold exports, yeah…​

Mali has a bunch of unique units, also:
Mandekalu Levies.png

Here are the Levy units unlocked by it:
Mandekalu Infantry.png

Mandekalu Horsemen.png

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

That unlocks the following Regular units:
Farari Infantry.png

Farari Cavalry.png

Another unique advance:
Kele-Koun.png

That unlocks the Jonow Auxiliary, an Auxiliary unit:
Jonow Auxiliary.png

Finally, another military advance, that unlocks one more unit, and two more buildings:
Sofa Levies.png

Sofa Infantrymen.png

Sofa Barracks.png

Sofa Stockade.png

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:
Zenith of the Mali Empire.png

This is the disaster that may end up triggering for your country, ‘Decline of Mali’:
Decline of Mali 1.png

It will trigger a number of nasty events, such as:
A fragmented realm.png

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:
Bolstering Timbuktu.png

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!
 
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donbg said:
From my understanding (I may be wrong), Mali struggled to assert full control over the extraction of gold, with the extraction being a responsibility of tributary peoples and even struggled to limit the gold supply. Will this be represented somehow?
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There's a gold field in Niani, but after that, the control of your locations that produce gold decreases from 58% in Siguir, two locations away from the capital, to 10% in Diawara, two locations away from the border of Jolof. These numbers may change as they're subject to constant review, but my point is that it will require effort and resources to assert full control and get the gold fields to produce at maximum capacity.
 
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Katana500 said:
Does Mali have any other disasters or is the decline of Mali the only one we have to face!
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One disaster is more than enough, in this case!
 
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Robthegeologist said:
So why would I want to play as Mali?

Sell it to me!
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Being the mightiest Empire of Sub-Saharan Africa, developing and colonizing the surrounding lands, earning huge trading profits, while also ruling a very culturally and religiously diverse population, and facing a challenging disaster on the go, would be good enough selling reasons for you? ;)
 
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dw70676 said:
When controlled by the AI, what is the ratio of "Mali splinter"s vs. "Mali remains united" outcomes are you aiming for any given game?
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We aren't yet in that phase of the project, as the AI needs some more work to start thinking about such granular outcomes regularly.
 
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benjaminoon said:
There is evidence that Mansa Musa was already dead in 1337 and his brother Mansa Suleyman was in power that you guys must have missed. Also, will there be a special building for the university of Timbuktu itself besides the great works?
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1. Apparently, he died in 1337, yes, but in which month? This is what we don't know about, so we have decided to start with him as ruler.
2. There's an advance and an event about the Sankoré Madrasah.
 
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conqueror101 said:
Based off the description, should the Jonow, and Sofa units require slaves? as the description mentions slaves in both of these units.
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There's a common Manpower pool, but you might notice that you need Slaves for Sofa Barracks to work, which is the building that allows Sofa to be built in a location and also adds Manpower to the pool.
 
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Kvesir said:
While it is nice to have so much unique content for Mali, and in particular the unique disaster, I hope this game also has a generic disaster (or otherwise other kinds of generic mechanics) that lead to empires' decline. During the scope of this game there were many empires that went into decline and ultimately collapsed: Khmer, Delhi, Yuan, and later on Ming, the Mughals, the Ottomans etc. It is a concept that definitely deserves to be baked into the game's core mechanics as a possibility for any empire that reaches a certain extent.
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It's something we'd like to have, yes.
 
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bretjemaine said:
This is all interesting and informative, so thanks. But it doesn't address my question.

I'm asking why this happened to Mali historically. Not how you programmed it to fall. Your flavour description could apply to almost any state at almost any time.

I feel like the flavour of any country should be:
  1. encouraging/nudging the changes in a country that are caused, as much as possible, by the existing mechanics
  2. bringing that change to life through personalities, nomenclature, and choices
  3. adding in any major events or causes that cannot be caused by the game mechanics
The flavour talk has a lot of 2 and 3. But it seems in this country's case that the natural narrative of 1 has been bypassed. And without 1, the game can feel disjointed and inorganic.

I'm not criticising, just trying to understand why this is happening to Mali, and whether the historical causes have been taken into account as much as the historical outcomes.
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There were multiple reasons affecting the governance of the Empire, making it increasingly more difficult to be ruled, and also weaker from external threats. You have a short summary in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Empire#Decline

There's something we're working on for the game, called 'Historical Info', that will appear in future Tinto Flavour, and that we'll keep adding for cases such as the 'Decline of Mali' disaster, so the historical context is clearer for the player.
 
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Baptoun said:
Great!! I haven't finished reading this tinto flavor yet, but I have a question: why does the fact that the nobility has religious freedom increase their power, and not just their satisfaction?
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Because you can't directly convert them to another religion if you want, and for that, you need to revoke the privilege first; so I'd say that it translates well in game terms to an increase in their power.
 
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Mef said:
"Our economy, though, is used to a constant influx of gold and is more difficult to inflate."
What is the source for this claim?
I don't think it makes any sense. If you increase the money supply without a corresponding increase in available goods and services, you're going to have inflation.
Did Mali have a magic economic system that has since been lost to time?
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As gold was mostly an exported commodity, Mali could sustain a higher level of relative monetization, compared to other economies; it could indeed be reworded, as it's a bit simple and tautological ATM.
 
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vyshan said:
Will there be another art for the Mosques? It feels odd having a european horseguy statue for a west african mosque.
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It's a generic illustration for the 'Monument' WoA. It's something that we could potentially take a look at, although it's not scheduled.
 
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Good overview of Mali.
 
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Pavía said:
It's a generic illustration for the 'Monument' WoA. It's something that we could potentially take a look at, although it's not scheduled.
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A generic mosque art would feel better IMO.
 
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Pavía said:
As gold was mostly an exported commodity, Mali could sustain a higher level of relative monetization, compared to other economies; it could indeed be reworded, as it's a bit simple and tautological ATM.
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Yet in the game, any of the gold produced will just go directly into the local market? So it would cause inflation there first. It's not like it's decoupled from the local market and only used to pay for imports.

I don't think inflation reduction makes any sense as a modifier in the first place. Inflation is not something that you can magically avoid, no state in history was able to.
 
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Pavía said:
1. Apparently, he died in 1337, yes, but in which month? This is what we don't know about, so we have decided to start with him as ruler.
2. There's an advance and an event about the Sankoré Madrasah.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the info on the university of Timbuktu. Regarding Mansa Musa's death, I was saying that there's evidence he had already died by 1337, in the year 1332 which you guys seemingly missed. There are sources which support this if you would like to know more.
 
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