• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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!
 
  • 120Like
  • 98Love
  • 3
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
Also @Pavía , will Tibetan nations have a unique law to represent polyandrous inheritance of farmland, which to my understanding was practiced to avoid splitting up farms into unusably small plots in the Tibetan plateau.


(Also Doab seriously looks like a gerrymander)
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I was wondering if Khambhat should be a natural harbour.
According to this website, Lothal was the oldest port in the world and accordingly it was quite important for the economy and whatnot.
Lothal was a bit upstream of the Sabarmati river which flowed into the gulf of Khambhat

But I see that it experienced flooding before it was built up and that the harbour was artificial? Like that it's in a strategic location but naturally not particularly suitable?
Should a location have pre-built port buildings at game start?
 
  • 4Like
Reactions:
Also also, didn't realize that wasteland could produce wool.
Screenshot_20240920-074016.png
And this good is definitely not fiber crops, I think it says soybeans? Which must then be separate from legumes as a good.
Screenshot_20240920-073933.png
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Also, can we make it so names will sprawl over wastelands even if they are not colored in? I noticed in the last TT that the "Yuan Dynasty' name was way off in the north since the Taihang and Qinling mountains were preventing it from sprawling over China. And in the Delhi map the name will shift depending on whats colored in(though in this case it's the opposite where I'd say non-filled wastelands looks better, IMO). But still, I think it'd be better more often than not for the names to be able to go over the Wastelands rather than trying to fit around them.
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
hello! wondering if there will be anything similar to a religion/culture tree/groups, for example, IMO if the religion/culture is similar, (like the french cultures, or the different types of islam) then they shouldnt be as hard to control, becouse they are similar to yours (idk if i explained it correctly)
 
  • 1
Reactions:
It doesn't feel right that Islam is not a mainstream enough secondary religion to appear on the map at least in the Delhi Sultanate. I don't have data, I'm just saying that maybe you should aim for that option instead of assuming that Hindu is the religion that in practice is totally hegemonic (In Delhi).
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I'd definitely argue there should be more Muslim pops in Bengal and Sindh. I'll make a more detailed post with my sources, but there are some locations in the Bengal area that should be majority Muslim by this time such as Chittagong (Chatga), which should also have a significant Arab-Persian minority.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
It doesn't feel right that Islam is not a mainstream enough secondary religion to appear on the map at least in the Delhi Sultanate. I don't have data, I'm just saying that maybe you should aim for that option instead of assuming that Hindu is the religion that in practice is totally hegemonic (In Delhi).
I could be wrong on this(feel free to correct me if so) but I was under the impression that the stripes only appear if a certain percentage of the population in a location is of a religion. So there might still be quite a few muslims in the north, just still in small percentages below being represented visually just yet.
 
I could be wrong on this(feel free to correct me if so) but I was under the impression that the stripes only appear if a certain percentage of the population in a location is of a religion. So there might still be quite a few muslims in the north, just still in small percentages below being represented visually just yet.
Exactly, but what I'm saying is that at least in more provinces than the current ones there should be cases like this (especially as you say in the north), in which this population is large enough to appear striped
 
  • 2
Reactions:
As far as I know the "thomas Christians " in the south, the Syro-Malabar church claims unbroken communion with Rome so it's probably a bit dishonest to portray them as nestorians when they weren't. Even though the weren't in contact at the time, they never acually broke Communion, and returned offiacally when contact was established again is (I think) the 1500:s. So the should either be prtrayed as catholics or have a enent changing most of them to catholics upon contach with a catholic country.
 
  • 3Like
  • 2
  • 2
  • 1Love
Reactions:
- Not sure why Chattisgarhi is considered a culture, atleast an unified one, since around this time the region would be split between various tribal peoples such as Gondi, Bhil, Muria, Kanwar, Oraon etc... Gondi taking precedence as the major tribal group in the area. Chattisgarhi as a cultural identity is rather new, and does not reflect the social makeup of the 1300s. Chattisgarhi as a language emerged from the admixture of Hindi with local languages such as Munda and other Dravidian languages. Perhaps the culture can arise during gameplay if the tribes in the region decide to settle and move into other social classes. But as a majority in this region in 1337... unlikely.
Surely there were still at the very least SOME Indo-Aryan peoples in the area at the time, and they need a culture to represent them.
 
Let's hope not to have the same vacuum cleaner phenomenon as in Europa universalis 4 where the big ones eat all the small ones over the first 20 years of the game.
Otherwise I'm also not a fan of the game's graphics, it's really ugly.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Kafir culture should change its name, really.
Image Kafir Muslim.
It is not a joke
well kafir for infidel = kofars in plural
this one here i believe will be = kafiriyin

its like with Himyar culture , himyar is pronounced Himar and that word mean donkey but the plural of donkey is hamir in arabic while the plural of yemani himyar is himariyins .
same for Qedar , this word can mean filth but Qedar in plural is Qidariyins while the plural of filth in arabic Qadaara
so even though they could sound similar and taboo in singular they do not sound same while used in plural or abscent
 
  • 1
Reactions:
As far as I know the "thomas Christians " in the south, the Syro-Malabar church claims unbroken communion with Rome so it's probably a bit dishonest to portray them as nestorians when they weren't. Even though the weren't in contact at the time, they never acually broke Communion, and returned offiacally when contact was established again is (I think) the 1500:s. So the should either be prtrayed as catholics or have a enent changing most of them to catholics upon contach with a catholic country.
The Syro-Malabar church is only one of the churches of the st thomas christians that came about from the schism of 1552 as a result of heavy catholic influence from the Portuguese. Prior to this, they were a part of the church of the east, or as PC refers to it, nestorianism.
 
  • 4Like
  • 1
Reactions:
First of all I'd like to thank all the devs for such amazing work on the Indian subcontinent. Seeing such detail fills my heart with joy since I'm am from India. However there is a particular area that I'd like to share my inputs on. I think islam should be 60-65%, Hinduism 30-35% and Buddhism around 5-10% in Sind.

Religion in Sindh region - Islam first spread through conquest when Muhammed bin Qasim conquered the region from Raja Dahir in 712 AD. It was then a part of the Ummayad and then Abbasid caliphates directly till 854 AD when the Habbari dynasty starting ruling independently from the caliphs (altough they did swear nominal fealty to them). This lead to the gradual islamization of the region which was further expanded on by the Soomra dynasty that took the reins from the habbaris during the early 11th century as they were defeated by Muhammed Ghazni. The Soomra's were a local Sindhi Muslim dynasty, some of them were also adherents of Ismaili shiasm, during their rule Islam was cemented as the majority religion of Sindh. In 1335 the Sammas over took over and during their reign there was Sufi influences which lead to increased missionary work. Sources to back this claim are as below

1) Chachnama: A historical text written in the 13th century that details the Arab conquest of Sindh in the 8th century, providing context on the spread of Islam and the state of Hinduism in the region.

2) Al-Biruni's Writings: Al-Biruni, a scholar from the early 11th century, wrote about the social and religious conditions in India, including Sindh. His work Kitab al-Hind provides insights into the state of religions in the region prior to the 13th century.

3) Marco Polo's Accounts: In the 13th century, the famous traveler Marco Polo described various parts of the Indian subcontinent, including Sindh. While his accounts focus more on trade and governance, they give a glimpse into the Islamic influence in the region.

4) Sufi Histories: The spread of Sufi Islam during this period is documented in various Sufi hagiographies and records, such as the works of Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai and other Sufi scholars of the region.

5) A History of Sindh
Author: Soomro Taqi
This book explores the history of Sindh, focusing on both political and religious changes, including the rise of Islam and the lingering presence of Hinduism and Buddhism during the medieval period.

6) The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760"
Author: Richard M. Eaton
Although this book focuses on Bengal, it provides valuable comparative insights on how Islam spread in different parts of India, including Sindh. Eaton discusses conversions, religious diversity, and the role of Sufis, which is relevant to the Sindh region.

7) Medieval India Under Mohammedan Rule (1000-1765)
Author: Stanley Lane-Poole
This book covers Islamic rule across the Indian subcontinent and provides insights into the religious shifts and societal changes that took place from the 13th to 15th centuries in regions like Sindh.

8) The Sufis of Sindh
Author: Annemarie Schimmel
This book focuses on the development and influence of Sufism in Sindh, which played a crucial role in the spread of Islam during the medieval period.
These texts will provide a historical context to the religious demographics of Sindh during the 13th to 15th centuries, focusing on the spread of Islam, the role of Sufism, and the remaining presence of Hinduism and Buddhism.
has context menu

Historians use these sources to infer the dominance of Islam by the 13th century, alongside pockets of Hinduism and remnants of Buddhism.
 
Last edited:
  • 3Like
Reactions: