Tinto Maps #15 - 23rd of August 2024 - Horn of Africa

[Pavía]

Topography analysis time!

I was both looking forward and dreading to review this region, as this is a véry complex region topograpy wise.
Underneath I present my view on how the topography should or could be expressed, but realise that there are many many ways one could redesign this map.

As this map is HUGE, i made 3000x3000 px maps this time around.

I sunk a good 6 hours into reviewing the topography for this Tinto Maps, so here goes nothing.

Summary:

• The mountains and hills of Southern Arabia should be more pronounced with the addition of a few more impassable ranges
• Ethiopian rift could to do with lots more mountains and hills
• The wetlands of Bahr al Jabal should extend to more locations according to the Peatlands map (Peat-ML).
• The East African Rift system is too extreme in indication of both mountain ranges and impassable ranges

This time no extensive changelog, because dear goodness there are a lot of locations!

As usual, potential 'ridge crossings' as purple lines. Again, I made my topographical suggestions independently of these crossings, so feel free to ignore them while interpreting these maps.

Current Topography according to Tinto	Suggested Topography	'Changelog' of suggested topography
View attachment 1178761	View attachment 1178763	View attachment 1178764

Terrain Ruggedness Index, with an aditional indication of plateaus >2500 m in height	Linear colorscale DEM (0 - 3750 m)	Exaggerated Lower Topography (0 - 3750 m)	Distribution of Wetlands according to the Peat-ML map
View attachment 1178765	View attachment 1178766	View attachment 1178767	View attachment 1178768

Great, as usual!

 

[Pavía]

@SaintDaveUK - something that has been bothering me for a while is that wetlands and hills have a very similar map color. (I know I have issues with it as a colorblind person). Perhaps a slightly more bluish and slightly darker hue could be appropriate?

Just a thought.

View attachment 1178771

View attachment 1178772

Noted, and shared with the team, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

Pardon my ignorance, but what does "sturdy grains" represent? I figure non-cereal grains (in this region I assume it's representing lovegrass specifically)?
Also what would "medicaments" represent? Ingredients for medicine (be it traditional medicine or what little you can call actual medicine at this time)?

In-game descriptions:

Sturdy Grains are different kinds of cereal grasses that have been domesticated in many parts of the World at different points in time ever since the Neolithic. Their greater resistance to poor quality soils and dry conditions have made them into a more important food source in semi-arid regions compared to other kinds of grain.

A wide variety of plants and animal products have been used throughout history to treat all kinds of illnesses, due to their medicinal properties or supposition thereof. Some were more based on actual properties than others, while in some cases it was more a matter of belief in their effectiveness.

 

[Pavía]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been exploring the "Natural Harbor" map mode in Project Tinto, and it got me wondering—how does the game decide which locations are marked as natural harbours? Are these locations based purely on geographical features like the shape of the coastline and the presence of sheltered waters? Or do they also take into account historical trade routes and strategic positioning? I’d love to hear more about how the development team designed this feature and what considerations were taken into account.

Thanks in advance!

I'll post something related to that soon, I think.

 

[Pavía]

If possible it would be great if you could also clarify how are you going to balance natural advantages vs investment or basically how are you going to balance that, for example, even though both Valencia and Barcelona have very mediocre natural harbours they also were (and are) very important ports.

Yeah, I'll also clarify our criteria (which is geographical, but I'll give some examples).

 

[Pavía]

Thank you. It makes me happy to hear that horizontal societies will eventually be represented and that you're taking community input into account to the extent that your team is.

To make it entirely clear, the 'we would like to make this' doesn't mean that 'we will be able to do this'; as Johan said, right now we're leaning toward the Societies of Pops being AI-only at release, as anything related to horizontal societies, because there's a non-trivial amount of issues and work to be done to create a 'good enough' gameplay experience for them.

 

[Aldaron]

I reworked my old Wikipedia map of Alodia / Alwa:

Note that Alwa had disintegrated into various successor polities by the late 13th century.

Could you add the date to the map? It is usually a bummer when maps are not dated since one cannot place them in the chronology of things. Thanks in advance.

 

[Pavía]

Would it be possible to get a political map and a map of the areas of Sudan with the Nile River?
@Pavía

Hmm, just checking the thread, do you mean a close-up with the river, like this?:

 

[Pavía]

Could you also provide a map with
Locations

Rivers can't be seen in that map mode, though.