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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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Fawr said:
I also feel this is a missed opportunity. EU4 has a reputation for big countries becoming steamrollers without the mechanism for them to fall apart like many did historically. I had hoped PC would have mechanisms that simulated the splitting of large countries in general. This makes it look like it only happens to countries like Mali through unique flavour events (or that you don't trust it would happen to Mali through normal processes).

I mean why is this a special disaster for Mali, rather than a general disaster which happens to any large country with a poor ruler, low stability, low legitimacy, diverse cultures, external raiders & external countries looking to take advantage of a poor situation?
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No this is good,they can add a general one later but giving specific content isn't a bad thing,other games tried to do a little bit of everything to everyone and ended up doing nothing
It would be boring if Mali would have no special content for one of its most important part of history,it would be like making a game set in the 3th century and not giving Rome content for the crisis of the third century,but giving everyone a bland "Country is collapsing" mechanic
Give Mali it's content,give the Native Americans it's content,but let them have a chance and reward them for changing history for the better
Also they didn't force the disaster which is good, you need to be unstable before this event fires which is actually what the complaint is about,give content but don't force it/streamline it onto people
 
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Galaxy32 said:
No this is good,they can add a general one later but giving specific content isn't a bad thing,other games tried to do a little bit of everything to everyone and ended up doing nothing
Give Mali it's content,give the Native Americans it's content,but let them have a chance and reward them for changing history for the better
Also they didn't force the disaster which is good, you need to be unstable before this event fires which is actually what the complaint is about,give content but don't force it/streamline it onto people
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While I think that the generic one will be seen hundreds of times as often as the Mali specific one, so priority time should be spent working on the generic one. That includes time for developers, time for content creators, time for feedback from us, etc.

I agree on making content like this it conditional so you can do things to avoid it (unless it happens right at the start of the game)

Galaxy32 said:
It would be boring if Mali would have no special content for one of its most important part of history,it would be like making a game set in the 3th century and not giving Rome content for the crisis of the third century,but giving everyone a bland "Country is collapsing" mechanic
Click to expand...
I don't think this is equivalent. Rome and the other contributors to the crisis would be the top played countries in a game like that. Mali wouldn't be in the top 10.

This is more like in a 5th century game creating a special event for the coming of Christianity to Ireland (rather than making sure general mechanisms work in that scenario).
 
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1. You misspelled "horon" as "Huron" in the unique unit descriptions :) Also, I wonder why this term isn't used as unique localization for Mali's commoners estate.

2. The current model for Mansa Musa is a bit goofy - he really doesn't look like the ruler of a great empire and the richest man in history. The 3D modelling is great, it's more of a style issue: pretty much everyone imagines Mansa Musa with a beard, so you should really give him one - he'll be more recognizable and more imposing.

3. The African throne-room background used in the UI here clearly depicts traditional Asante architecture - not accurate for the Mali Empire which built it's architecture in the Sudano-Sahelian style. Is this a placeholder while the art team is working on more backgrounds or will it be like that on release?
 
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I don't understand why of three monuments(which are all mosques) that Mali starts with only one is considered a building while the other two are monuments, shouldn't they all be represented as buildings? They are all still used to this day
 
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