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Tinto Maps #19 - 20th of September 2024 - India

Hello everyone, and welcome once again to another Tinto Maps! Today we will be taking a look at India! Yup, a whole subcontinent… Exciting!

Let me say a foreword before I start sharing with you some beautiful maps. Some of you may wonder why we decided to make the entire Indian subcontinent in just one DD, instead of spreading it a bit. There are two reasons for that. The first is the political situation: the Sultanate of Delhi is at its zenith, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq. You will soon see that it rules over more than half of the region, approximately; so splitting that polity into several DDs would have felt weird.

The other is that we felt that a more cohesive approach made sense in this region, as it’s sooo diverse compared to others, that the way we approached it, both for its setup and content, was from the generic to the particular; therefore, we think that it will also help us more when we tackle the review of the region. Speaking of that, don’t worry much about the time available to prepare suggestions; you may already know that we have a backlog of several regions, and therefore weeks, before we hit the Indian review, so you will have plenty of time to research and prepare them. In any case, as it’s a massive task (we know it firsthand), we’ll let you know a bit in advance when we plan to start the in-depth review of it, so you have time to wrap it up.

As a final say, I just want to mention that an old acquaintance of the community, @Trin Tragula , now Design Lead in CK3, helped us to map a big chunk of it. Thanks, mate! And now, maps!

Countries:
Countries.jpg

Colored Wastelands.png

As I just mentioned, the Sultanate of Delhi is at its zenith, under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, extending through the Indo-Gangetic Plain, including Bengal, and to the south, throughout the Deccan. There we have its toughest contender, Vijayanagar, a county that is a bulwark of Hinduism. Other important countries around it are Orissa and Sindh, but much smaller countries generally surround Delhi. You might wonder how it would be possible to stop Delhi from completely controlling the region, then. For this, two things are affecting its capability to achieve it. The first is the base game mechanics: ruling over so many different cultures and religions with low control will be hard. The second is a Situation that involves the Fall of the Sultanate; if Delhi wants to succeed, it will have to fight back against rebellions, which involves the potential independence of the Bengalese countries or newborn ones such as the Bahmanis, and the multiple Indian states around it, which are ready to take over it.

Dynasties:
Dynasties.jpg


Locations:
Locations.jpg

Locations 2.jpg

Locations 3.jpg

Locations 4.jpg
Yes, we are making some adjustments to the coloring of the mapmodes!

Provinces:
Provinces.jpg

Provinces 2.jpg

Provinces 3.jpg

Provinces 4.jpg

Areas:
Areas.jpg

The bug is still there, yes… The area that is to the southwest is Malabar.

Terrain:
Climate.jpg

Topography.jpg

Vegetation.jpg

Here we have a new type of topography: Atolls. We added it some months ago, as we worked on finishing the map of the Pacific Ocean, and it will be the last one added to the game.

Development:
Development.jpg

A new map mode is born! Here you have the development of India. The most developed place is Delhi, which is part of the fertile Gangetic Plain.

Harbors:
Harbors.jpg


Cultures:
Cultures.jpg

Cultures 2.jpg

Cultures 3.jpg
Not an entirely new map, but a glorious one. We chose it to be the one to present how the different cultures could be present in the game for a reason.

Religions:
Religions.jpg

Religions 2.jpg

Religions 3.jpg
India is the birthplace of numerous religions, and that needs to be reflected in the religious map. The main religion is Hinduism, but don’t be deceived by its homogeneous look, as it will be quite deep feature-wise. We also have Buddhism, which is at a low point, after some centuries of prosecutions. Mahayana is a majority in Sindh, although that's not completely exact, as an earlier form of Buddhism was practiced there; we’re also not 100% convinced about it being a majority, as some sources and accounts set the Islamization of the region to be completed under the Ghaznavids, in the 11th and 12th century, while others delay it until the 14th century - we followed the later approach, but we're very open to feedback in this specific matter. Another form of Buddhism is Theravada, which is the most practiced religion in Sailan. Some interesting minorities present in the region are Jains (yellow stripes), Nestorians (the pink stripe in Malabar, which portrays the ‘Saint Thomas Christians’), Jews (which have their own separate culture, ‘Kochini’), and several Animist confessions, of which we’ve already split Satsana Phi, the traditional religion of Tai people, and Sanamahism, the religion of Meitei people. Oh, although it’s not strictly part of the region, the light blue stripes to the north is Bön religion.

Raw Materials:
Raw Materials.jpg

Raw Materials 2.jpg

Raw Materials 3.jpg

Raw Materials 4.jpg
India was for some time in the period the wealthiest region of the world, one of the main reasons being that it’s incredibly rich in very different types of resources, including some of the expensive ones. That will make for a very interesting economic gameplay.

Markets:
Markets India.png

There are several market centers in India that we think portray well the situation in 1337: Kabul (yes, it’s in Afghanistan, but it’s one for the area of Kashmir), Delhi, Khambat, Calicut, Pulicat, Varanasi, and Chittagong.

Population:
Population.jpg

Population 2.jpg

Population 3.jpg

Population 4.jpg

Population 5.jpg

Population 10.jpg

Population 9.jpg

Population 6.jpg

Population 7.jpg

Population 8.jpg

India has a big population. To be precise, around 95M pops. Delhi is the second largest country in the world in population, with 41M pops, which makes it a behemoth, with very serious governance challenges. I’m also showing this week the progress we’re making with the coloring of the population mapmode; the stripes on several locations mark that they’re overpopulated, as they have more pops living on them than the pop capacity available (something that may be reviewed, as balancing very densely populated regions such as India or China is really challenging).

And that’s all for today! We hope you enjoyed this massive Tinto Maps. Next week we will be taking a look at the Steppe. Which one, you might wonder? Well, the one ruled by the Golden Horde, from Ukraine in the west to Mongolia in the east. Cheers!
 
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1. First of all, Day 3 for asking for towns and cities map mode
townsandcities.png


2. this is not the place for Tibet feedback, right?
3. while the new shading of the map looks excellent with most map modes, for the ones that portray gradients of values (specifically development, markets and the new population map mode) it really doesn't work, it breaks up the gradient in ways that make reading them really hard.
 
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I agree, the granular map modes (locations, raw materials, topography,...) should imo have a flat color scheme, and not have borders. They are detrimental for extracting information at a glance. (How am I supposed to get anything from the development map mode?)

Also, for the development map mode: please shy away from the green-yellow-orange color scheme. Us color blind people cannot use these :)
I like this suggestion, in the past decade we’ve slowly seen more and more games release with various colour blind modes so colour blind folks aren’t directly kneecapped in their enjoyment of the game.

It’d be great to see Project Caesar follow this trend, especially with a series where being able to easily see things is extremely important for gameplay. Anything that makes the best play experience as accessible as possible can be considered a win.
 
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On Badakhshan and the Pamir:

I'm glad I refrained from posting this in the Iran thread, I thought the region was in risk of being on the corner of every map. But it seems most of it is included here. Some detailed maps of Afghanistan in a separate post, now that most of it is revealed to us, wouldn't be bad. Hint hint. But working with what we know, here's my thoughts:


Badakshan Shah as a vassal of the Chagatai Ulus:

While Suhrobsho (2006) claims (p. 38 and this is repeated on Wikipedia) part of the region was fully independent at this stage, he does so with the backing of an old Soviet source (Monogarova 1972). I managed to find the original and have translated the quoted pages with Google Translate, but they make the claim with the same carefree ease and lack of backing Suhrobsho does. Monogarova I think has one source for the claim, if I understand the somewhat wobbly translation, but I couldn't track that down (Iskandorov 1960 I think?). Regardless, this is wading around in the muck of tertiary sources commenting on each other - not very useful, not very clean, and not very accurate.
So, I will take the liberty of relying on Beben (2023) and Nourmamadchoev (2015), who seem to have actually done some legwork on finding primary or secondary sources.


Nourmamadchoev makes a complex picture: Eariler in the 1300s, rule was divided by a local Shah (but in-game terms more like duchy-level) who had de-facto control but answered to the Chagatai Khan, but being nominally under a Mongol Prince, Yasa'ur.


There is no mention of how long this arrangement lasted, so I will assume that the local Shah took over completely after the death of Yasa'ur in 1320, but it could be the the Yasa'uri army left behind still had some influence, or more likely they functioned as a semi-independent group of raiders / potential ABCs as those in Iran did (covered brilliantly by @SuperLexxe and others).

Beben mentions Marco Polo visiting the area in the 1270s, where it also had a local Shah, and a coins being minted with the name of Dawlatshah in the 1290s. He further uses newer Iranian sources (I assume analyzing the local histories written in an Iranian language, see further down this section) to back up the claim that the area was semi-independent in between initial Mongol rule and conquest by Timur. All of these facts together I think is the most solid case.

The numismatic source supporting Beben along with the Iranian tells of an Argunshah ruling in 1307 (likely dead in 1337), so that is a name that could be used, although to be completely accurate the ruler should be randomly generated, but almost certainly Ismaili Shia.

Nourmamadchoev also makes an important point (p. 10-13): We know that a first, original book of local history called "Taʾrīkh-i Badakhshān" (written in the 1600s) must have existed based on later references to it. Later books with the same name are based on oral histories or compilations of other works. So in summary: the Shah is known to have existed, though we don't know anything about how he looked or how he acted.

I made 2 rough estimates of the extent of this vassal state, one maximalist based on the map from the 1500s onwards (although there is reason to believe local rule had some deeper roots, this is very likely an over-estimation in 1337), and one minimalist based on place and region names in the sources.


"Maximalist" extent:

View attachment 1190054

"Minimalist" extent:

View attachment 1190056



Culture:


Pamiri (a slightly simplified term, but it works) is present, which is good, but there should be a significant exchange between Pamirs, Tajik and a smaller number of Mongols, especially to the West and Northwest.

According to Nourmamadchoev Kyrgyz settlement is later. I assume the Tengri is supposed to refer to some kind of Turkic or Mongolic group later becoming Kyrgyz? I haven't come across any sources that would make them a majority in any of the areas at this time.
View attachment 1190003
p.38


Out of date map for geographic reference:
View attachment 1190034

Religion:

It should primarily be Ismaili and Sunni. I would say conservatively 35-35 %, that's the most reasonable guesstimate that doesn't go to far in either direction. I.e. tries to pretend the Islamic conquest wasn't that long ago or that Islamic rulers had completely white-washed every village with anti-"heathen" teleportation magic the moment they arrived in a radius of 100 km. According to Nourmamadchoev, in the early to mid 1300s, a power struggle between Sunnis and Ismailis had concluded (and an Orthodox-like extremely nitpicky nerdy theological dispute had just happened within the Ismaili community, but that I think is completely outside the scope of the game), and the local ruler attempted to force convert people to Ismaliism. We don't know how that went, except going by what happened later. There are significant minorities of Ismailis in both modern-day Tajikistan and the area in Afghanistan. What happened in between the Timurid collapse and now is too complex for me to use time on, and outside the scope of this post.

The remaining 30 % should be a mix of Mongol and possibly Qipchaq tengris, Zoroastrians (see the Soviet-Russian source, more likely a local religion that had Zoroastrian elements, but for simplicity's sake, Zoroastrian) and a few Buddhists left over from before the Caliphate.

RGOs+Economy

The region is fabulously famous for its mineral wealth (truly outrageous). Lapis lazuli, rubys and other gems, different heavy metals - not a wonder with mountains all around. I think the RGO setup is quite good, it could all be Gems/Iron/Stone, but in the interest of game balance it is fine to include some livestock.


Sources


Beben, Daniel (2023): The History of Badakhshan from the 7th to the 19th Century.

Nourmamadchoev, Nourmamadcho (2015): The Ismāʿīlīs of Badakhshan: History, Politics and Religion from 1500 to 1750.

Monogarova, L. F. (1972): Transformationof Pamiri ethnicities in mode and culture.

Album, Stephen: Newsletter of the Oriental Numismatic Society nr. 153 (1997): Coins of Arghunshah from Khost in Badakhshan.

Davlatshoev, Suhrobsho (2006): The Formation and Consolidation of Pamiri Ethnic Identity in Tajikistan.


View attachment 1190010
And the sources in the source:

View attachment 1190013

Of which I can only read 49.


I pretty much second this here, i was gonna to comment on the Pamiris myself, but the job seems to be mostly done!
Thanks for your input on this matter. There are two different things to review here, I think. First would be if we could potentially rename what we named as 'Assamese' into something different, to portray that Indo-Aryan stock; maybe something on the line of 'Kamarupa', although we're not sure if this would be correct. The other would be potentially 'moving' it eastwards, towards the Bramahputra Valley. Let us know what do you think that would work better.
I don't think the name "Assamese" is of much issue here, just by moving it eastwards on the Brahmaputra accuracy can already be achieved, although i agree with the point that some of the current "Assamese" locations should be an extension of Koch culture, as @PerhapsItsChondoLal stated.
Chittagong was definitely majority Bengali with a sizeable Arakanese population.
Adding that much of the urban (i.e. burgher estate) population should be already of Arabo-Persian extraction, since they've been around from the first millenium.
Diu should probably be coded the same as Venice
Hard agree on that.

I'll have to put a bright light upon the whole "Kafir" culture for the people of Kafiristan, the Kafir designation was pretty much a foreign one (i mean, obviously so, the name it's simply because they weren't Muslim), and although a general name for all ancestors of the current Nuristani peoples is lacking, back in the day (or at least in Timur's autobiography) there was considerable mixing of the general "kafir" term (because it meant infidel generally, besides meaning Kafir as of inhabitant of Kafiristan) and Katir, as of referring to the Kata Kafir group of Nuristanis, which is – and was – also the biggest group, and currently name the largest modern Nuristani language, Kati. It apparently applied generally to all Siah-Posh (i.e. black-robed) Kafirs, if wikipedia is to be trusted:
Screenshot_20240920_081535_Chrome.jpg


This would mean that an entire half (the Siah-Posh) could be named Katir in an unproblematic way. What about the other half? These are the Safed-Posh (white-robed) Kafirs, which seem to be a generalizing term for speakers of the Southern Nuristani languages (while the Siah-Posh group composes all of the Northern ones), who did not, at least in the 19th century, view themselves as monolithically as their northern neighbours. The white-robed group is formed mostly by the Red Kalasha and the Ashkun, the earlier ones apparently gave their name to the Kalash, who if i understood well, are probably Chitral-ized descendants of (Nuristani) Kalasha migrants, especially considering their religion, besides, according to wikipedia, the word "Kalasha" is the native ethnonym for all the speakers of the southern Nuristani languages, but i don't know the source to this claim.

So i give two ways to handle that – Both better than having a "Kafir" culture – name the whole culture Katir after the Katas, throwing most of the Southern Nuristani speakers under the bus for simplicity. Or divide the (admittedly, already small) Kafir culture into two different Katir (for the Northern Nuristani speakers) and Kalasha (for the Southern Nuristani speakers) cultures, within their own separate "Kalashic(?)/Kafiri" culture group. Together with that, there should be some corrections to their extension in the map:
• Asadabad Kunar should be a Kafiri-dominant (if the cultures are divided, it should be majority Katir with 20-30% Kalasha minorities) location, it was the eastern border of Kafiristan in the 19th century.
• Urtsun should have Kafiri minorities (specifically Katir ones, if you devs divide it), later there could be an event about the Kalasha migration, that would settle their pops there.
• There should be Kafir minorities (specifically Kalasha ones) on the locations towards Jalalabad, since that region was originally inhabited by them before Ghilji Pashto migration pushed them into the mountains, and by the 14th century there probably is considerable relic populations on that general region (Marco Polo mentions "sorcerers" when passing by, which probably refers to common Muslim views of traditional Nuristani religion).
 
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Why is sunni islam majority in Malabar yes it's majority in Malappuram nowadays but it was not a Muslim majority area in 14th century. Muslims became majority mostly because of tipu sultan's conquest during that time many Hindus and Christians of northern Kerala migrated south this caused that area to be Muslim majority and that happened in 18th century not in 14th century.
 
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What's with the areas? You've got some incredibly large and oddly shaped ones like doab and gondwana right next to really tiny ones like chota nagpur and khokhilkand.
 
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Suggestion. Nilgiris are seen as an unsettled territory but it's been settled by humans for thousands of years there are 3 groups Kotas, Todas and kurumbas during 13th century. Atleast add Kotas to the game and please make Nilgiris an inhabited location
 
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Can we get a map of the Delhi Sultanates worst case scenario after the "Fall of the Delhi Sultanate" situation procs? Something similar to the Italian Wars one you showed which was "what if it procced in 1337". Just to help visualize how it would look after it loses some of its territory.

Also, is there going to be any potential for Mughal content or is it deemed too far into the future to really model with events like that.
 
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It's not easy, and its initial iteration, the situations for the Fall of Delhi and the Red Turbans Rebellion, coupled with the core game mechanic, made them extremely punishing (something we're finetuning through constant playtesting and iterating).
I hope for all of these situations / disasters, the outcome is, as much as possible NOT binary, i.e, you'll more often than not end up weakening your country, but NOT destroying it completely. One of the downside of disasters in eu4 was that they tended to be too much "all or nothing", either you escaped them / were so powerful they barely mattered, or in the rare cases you screwed up enough, they either made your country go "game over", or simply "lost time" for the situation to get back up.

I hope in PC, the situations of disaster will be punishing, but also fun / engaging to play (even as the "looser" of the disaster), and you'll "feel happy" for actually ending the disaster with a weakened but functional country.
 
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I'm skipping locations, provinces and areas for now and skipping straight to terrain. I'll also add this the Bengal master-post.

TOPOGRAPHY
View attachment 1190045

The topography of Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand seems to be unnaturally flat.
Let's start with the east:
You've added Teliagarhi - which I loved to see - but you've not added the reason why it was important. There are three primary routes into Bengal from North India: North of the Ganges through Tirhut, having to ford multiple rivers and streams; south of the Ganges through the Rajmahal Hills, having only one proper pass guarded by Teliagarhi - or going south through thickly forested Jharkhand, and emerging near Purulia.
Roy, Yogendra P. “SIGNIFICANCE OF TELIAGARHI FORT DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 62, 2001, pp. 1069–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44155847. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.
Where's the Rajmahal Hills, then???? See below (I've marked Teliagarhi in red)
View attachment 1190048

VEGETATION
Now this is a tricky one.
In Jharkhand, the Rajmahal hills south of Teliagarhi were thickly forested.


Jharkhand itself was variously sparsely and thickly forested:


Here's where a larger problem arises. Referring to Eaton's wonderful work "The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier":

But this implies large parts of East and North-East Bengal had thick jungles, something not represented in EU4. Now, we don't have any extant records of forest cover - but what we can do is take not of major cities, take a 2-ish province area around it then make the rest various degrees of forested. But before that areas we DO have records of forest cover of.

The Sunderbans should definitely be jungles, I don't know why they aren't already.


- Ralph Fitch
By the above we can presume that there was a region of wilderness between Koch and Satgaon-Hughli. It can be a safe bet to add various forested areas in Rangpur and Rajshahi till Jessore, though cities must be kept intact.

Isa Khan ("Isacan") was the famous Baro-Bhuiyan chief with his capital at Katrabo, somewhat near Barisal (Bakla). By the presence of of tigers and foxes, we can also presume the existence of forests in the Sonargaon (Sinnergan)-Barisal region (Presumably both the Sundarbans south of Barisal and the uncultivated regions north of Sonargaon).

Further forested areas include parts of Mymensingh, Sylhet and North Bengal. Roughly a third to maybe even half of East Bengal's grasslands should be forested, according to Eaton's book.
View attachment 1190058
Oh my, I did not realize how absent the Chota Nagpur Plateau is. That seems like a very major oversight.
 
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Man, I don't know how to feel about the new map styles...is it me or they look more difficult to read? @Pavía could you post the same maps but with old styles to make a comparison plz?
Yes, the new climates and market maps look harder to read. (Not sure if the market map got changed actually perhaps these specific colours just look a bit unclear)
 
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I'd suggest renaming Kangri culture to (Western) Pahari. Kangra is only one small part of that region, whereas Pahari is a wider term for "hill people".

I'd like to see Kutchi and Dhatki/Thai cultures added in Kutch and the Rajasthan-Sindh borderlands respectively.
 
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