Tinto Maps #14 - 9th of August 2024 - Western Africa

[Pavía]

Interesting TM!

Question about Mali... Some historians argue that Mansa Mūsā died somewhere around 1337, but exact date and cause is unclear. That begs the question, will Project Caesar have an event related to his death, shortly after the start of the campaign, or will he just continue ruling normally, like any other ruler?

He will continue ruling normally, as any other ruler alive in 1337.

 

[Pavía]

It's a bit hard to comment without fully understanding the design policy behind the distinction of settled country vs. tribe vs. "grey territory". I understand there are also non-territorial countries that will be represented, but we haven't seen them and don't know much about it.

For starters, from a simple glance, I feel like the Yoruba should be better represented in terms of their cities.

View attachment 1173454

That is true. By the end of the month, we will have some more stuff that we need for the design to be fully understood; so I'll probably make some further updates in this thread, according to that.

 

[Pavía]

Is there a system to portray the sahelian dryness cycles?

That would be really cool to have, although we are not yet sure if we'll have the technology available to properly portray them in-game.

 

[Pavía]

I have a few questions.

How will the game represent the uncentralized tribes that organized states for themselves in Africa during the game's timeline? In 1337 West Africa lacks of some important regional players. In game terms, is possible for tagless locations to spawn a tag and is possible for the player play with these tags?
Examples of kingdoms that not yet exist in 1337 and are present in the map as tagless locations:
- Dahomey.
- Denkyra (named Ashanti in EU4).
- The multiple city-states in ports that emerged with the interaction between africans and europeans, city-states like Wydah and Calabar for example.

How will the game represent nomadic/pastoralist migrations that were extremely important for African geopolitics in game's time line? In West Africa the principal example would be the Fulani Wars.
Fulani migrations and wars are repreented by a regional "Situation"? How the game decided to represent the creation of new states caused by waves of fula immigrants as for example the Futa Jalom and Futa Tooro?

There are plans to represent Mali decadence and breakthrough in multiple states as Songhai, Kaabu, Segou/Bambara/Bamana?

More specifially about Benin, in the map it is represented as an unified kingdom, but in fact during the first half of XIV century Benin was a city in process of expansion against others town/villages of Edo culture.
I agree with you that would be extremely hard to represent Edo region as a multitude of independent villages but I think that the early game situation of Benin could be better represented as a kingdom with extremely low "Control" outside the capital and full of rebellious states, to better represent the historical process of Benin central government trying to centralize and govern Edo lands.

The Ardra/Allada kingdom was considered for representation in the map? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Ardra
It would be located around the region where Dahomey emerged in the future.

Kotoko kingdom was considered? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotoko_kingdom

Jolof vassals web will be represented in game?

I will try to reread my sources and post most detaileds suggestions here tomorrow.

This is the kind of rough question that I was expecting for today... And that I can't fully answer yet, as there are some undisclosed features that we have to tackle in Tinto Talks first. But, in general terms, I can tell you that that we want to fully portray all the processes that you mention (and, also, that we want to make some according fixes to the setup).

Please poke me again on these topics in a couple of weeks, by the time of the Eastern African Tinto Maps.

 

[Pavía]

Could there perhaps be a malaria gamerule? Such that if you wish to roleplay as a colonizer you can't send armies into inland Africa without suffering massive attrition, and thus are forced to engage in trade and diplomacy instead of conquest and subjugation. But if you instead wish to attempt your Austria 1473 one faith, you can turn it off and just blob.

We will talk about diseases in future Tinto Talks.

 

[Pavía]

The begho market seems a bit superfluous as it’s very low province and population county.

Can you clarify how modern Sao Tome is split up? Is it all one location?

what is the context about Safewaya being non contiguous?

1. It works well with the current market access spread, and it also makes sense historically-wise.
2. It's only one location.
3. There's a non-ownable corridor between Kanem mainland and the area of Agadem and Bilda.

 

[Pavía]

At its zenith, it was decentralized. It ruled through vassal kings with governors supervising them, like many Sahelian polities. I don’t see how representing that makes Mali look less impressive, especially as vassals can take on the overlord’s color.

We will consider it. One problem that would arise if further dividing it, thought, would be to portray an accurate depiction of the existing districts in 1337.

 

[Pavía]

Just so we have some reference for what the religious subdivision will be, are you planning on breaking up Animism here into a setup similar to how it is in CK3, or do you have different religions in mind?

We have yet to decide on how much granularity do we want as an approach, to be honest.

 

[Pavía]

View attachment 1173468Huh, strange name here

Fixed, just changed the base name to 'Ndar', and made the French version of it 'Saint-Louis'.

 

[Pavía]

@Pavía What happened to the rivers? I checked back several of the past map threads just now, and they seem to be absent from petty much everywhere except the very first map showing the Low Countries. Is it a zoom thing, a graphical bug, or am I just blind?

Zoom thing, the Low Countries map was the smallest one that we've shown.

 

[Pavía]

Hey @Pavía I do have a question.

When you folks are doing these Tinto Maps and are using sources (and ask people to point out other sources), do you also look at the previous/later years for the details that could be used by other PDX Teams (for example for folks responsible for Victoria 3 or CK3)?

We may take a look at CK3, and we've even shared common sources and information about some regions. But in general terms, both teams prefer to not dig much into each other's setup, as the gameplay of the games is different, and we also want the players to feel that they are different (even if they may cover a common century, the one that goes from 1337 to 1453). Also, take into account that their earliest scenario is 1066 (1178 after Roads to Power is released), so that's a 250-150 difference compared with our 1337 starting date.

 

[Pavía]

I don't have anything to contribute for this region but I gotta say you guys *really* need to change how wastelands and empty provinces look like. You can't say what is empty and what is wasteland from the Countries mapmode, you can't say what is colonizable and what is a corridor in the Dinasties mapmode, and some corridors aren't even clear in the Locations mapmode. It's lowkey frustrating, and I hope this is improved until release.

It will be, yes.

 

[Pavía]

I got a very important question:
It only came to mind because I felt something important in this map was missing and then it clicked, how are you gonna rapresent the slave trade exacly since slaves aren't a trade good anymore? It's an important part of the economy of this region and one of the many reasons why the Europeans stack around until the partition of Africa in the late 19th century after all.

There will be a Tinto Talks devoted to slavery, as well. But no, slaves are not 'raw materials' anymore, which I think will help to portray its historical context in a way more accurate way.

 

[Pavía]

Spent more than half a year in northern Ghana, so I'm very happy to see the Dagbani and Mamprusi people being represented. As a first impression, two questions:

1. Steven L. Danver writes that Naa Gbewaa was the ancestor of the Dagbon, Mamprugu and Nanumba kingdom (source); why did you leave out the last one? Whenever I spoke to Dagbani or Mamprusi people, they mentioned those three kingdoms, so I think the Nanumba should definitely be included.
2. Why the division between Mamprusi and Dagbani culture? Speakers of both languages (which are rather dialects) can perfectly understand each other, I have observed that many times. The difference was that sometimes, vowels would be exchanged, so "u" instead of "i," but the words were mostly the same. Even when different words were used, they would still understand each other. I guess that 700 years ago, the cultural difference was even more marginal than it is today because they were just one generation apart. I can ask some contacts to give examples to be more specific if needed. IMO, it's inconsistent to divide the Mamprusi and Dagbani cultures, given that Flemish and Dutch are now represented as Lower Franconian.

I wish, though, that the map would have more granularity. For example, Namburugu is not on the map which was the first capital of the Dagbon kingdom.

*edit* One difference I remember is saying "good morning": Dasiba (Dagbanli) vs. Dasuba (Mampruli).

We consider them different cultures that are related, as they both speak a Gur language (as the Mossi, Tem, Kabiye, Bariba, Gonja, Gurunsi, and Gurma).

 

[Johan]

Do random generated rulers have total random stats from 0 to 100 or do they tend to stay average?

kinda random, but with stats on a bell curve

 

[Pavía]

I've been looking forward to this map! I'll comb over locations later but I do have some suggestions and questions.

- I could be wrong, but I thought the ruling dynasty of Benin was the House of Eweka.
- Shouldn't Eko or Ikosi be considered a good natural harbor too? Especially since in the future it will be the site of Lagos.
- I know we've only seen Edward III's stats so far, would it be possible to see Mansa Musa's right now or would that be saved for later?

As usual, take into account that both the 3D art and the UI are still WIP:

 

[Pavía]

Is there a way of representing personal wealth vs. the wealth of the nation? I'm just thinking about Mansa Musa and how he was a very personally wealthy man, but that should not be reflected in Mali having an enormous income and colonising Brazil in the 1300s. I apreciate that this is a little hard because we are still some time from the peace of Westphalia and the conception of the nation-state, and whilst rulers did govern using their personal wealth, it's potentially unbalanced to reflect that by giving rich rulers high incomes.

No, as this game is not based on characters, but on countries. Implementing personal wealth mechanics and making them work correctly would distract us from delivering other mechanics that we think are more important to the game.

 

[Pavía]

If you're changing European names to native ones when possible, Elmina has a good local name, Anomansah:
View attachment 1173569


Also, somewhat unrelated, but why isn't Timbuktu a market center? 1337 is before its peak, but it was still incredibly important for the Saharan trade

1. Changed.
2. Initially there was a market center in Timbuktu, but it was overlapping too much with Niani, making both together not very functional while playing as Mali. We decided upon Niani, then, as it was the true center of its empire in 1337, and made for better market access in the core Mandé territories.

 

[Pavía]

Can you please make playing in this area fun, like if we can play here a real game, not just unite it in 40 years and move on

Good luck trying to unite it and make it functional in 40 years.

 

[Pavía]

Indeed, we're entering Hard Mode map making south of the Sahara. @Pavía I'm curious do you have any particularly interesting anecdotes of the lengths the teams went to or the compromises they made to represent the poorly-documented regions of Africa?

We spent a fun summer in 2021 working in parallel in the map-making of the region for Caesar, and in the EUIV: Origins DLC. It was interesting, as we had very different approaches for each of the tasks.

• Is the province density shown on this dev diary expected to be final? Considering the wast size of this region it seems low compared to areas like the Maghreb or Russia.

We're kind of happy with the density of the region; we already struggled to find locations in some places, and in general, there's a smooth transition between the different African regions.