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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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"Reddi"

I hope there is an achievement that is like "Starting as Reddi form 5 different nations" or something in reference to whatever I see on the Paradox subreddits.
"Reddi or not"
 
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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?
I think that the issue is how the border is thicker between the locations/provinces/goods. They feel too thick and cover up part of the words.
 
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Also, you should really add the Tamil trading guilds as an extraterritorial country spread throughout South India. I wrote a little about it in another thread:

You guys should include the various South Indian trading guilds as extraterritorial countries given their large influence on the history of the region and given the fact that they pretty much functioned as independent states of their own, operating internationally without any oversight from the various landed rulers of the area. They could have their "Pattinams" serve as their equivalent of the Hanseatic Kontors, with them having Pattinams spread from South India to Sumatra. In 1337, the most powerful of these guilds would be the Ayyavole.

On a separate, yet related, note, it would be nice for migration to be possible between the various locations extraterritorial countries have buildings in, with workforces of various buildings able to move to other understaffed buildings if necessary. This could help represent the continued spread of the Tamil minority in Southeast Asia.

As a bonus, here is a map of Tamil influence in Sumatra. The various "settlements" labelled on the map can be represented as unique-buildings called "Pattinams", as I suggested earlier:

View attachment 1177895

I can write more in-detail about their presence in South India later when I’m free if wanted.
 
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I think that if a wasteland is fully surrounded by a country & its puppets, the wasteland should take on the master's color if no individual country has enough borders to color it it. The Himalayas look really weird in the colored wasteland map mode because everything around them is basically the same shade of green.
I do really like the new 'color borders' in all the map modes--- EXCEPT the market access. It makes the gradient really hard to read when the color keeps switching between the real shade & a darker border shade. I would strongly request that an exception to the bordering be made for map modes where the specific shade gives information about the relation between 2 provinces, such as market & population.
 
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I'm not qualified to give any feedback on India, so I won't, but I'd like to add to the discussion regarding new map esthetics.

Colour gradients are very nice when you have a larger area in one colour - so countries, but also areas, climate are fine.
But in map modes which show you individual locations they're a problem, because you get two colours in one location and - since locations are small - that creates visual mess and makes it much more difficult to read; e.g. map modes: locations, raw materials, markets, development, but also vegetation - even though there are some large areas with one type of vegetation quite commonly you have something like forest next to woods next to grassland.
I'm not sure in which category I should put provinces because I don't know at what zoom level one would normally play this game.

Someone commented that wastelands in this location map mode look better. They do look better, but primarily because they're not completely black anymore. Splashes of pure black among light colours force your eyes to look at them. And wastelands in the location map mode are the last areas you want to look at.

I would also avoid colour gradients for cultures. Even though they generally cover larger, single areas, there's a problem when in comes to marking minorities on the map. When you see stripes of minority culture among some majority culture, their colour should inform you what minority it is. But how can you tell which shade of e.g. Punjabi is it's "official" shade that is used on stripes, when there's entire palette of green there? And colours of some cultures are quite similar already.

One more note to the map modes that are fine with colour gradients. Please, don't "grade" it to the point that the base colour entirely disappears. Here's a good example from the climate map:
Climate India.jpg

What's the climate of that bit? At first glance you might think arid, but no, once you look elsewhere on the map you realize that's tropical. Which is quite a difference. We should be able to tell the climate of the area by looking just at that area, otherwise what's the point of colour coding?

Edit:
And obviously this by @Eruth:
I would strongly request that an exception to the bordering be made for map modes where the specific shade gives information about the relation between 2 provinces, such as market & population.
When a particular shade of a location is the information you're looking for, each location shouldn't have several different shades.
 
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Hello, thanks for the DD Pavia !

Quick question about the harbour map.
Woudn't it be better to switch colors ? I mean to have inland locations in black, and coastal location from white to green ?

It would increase the visibility of coastal location, which is, i guess, the goal of the dedicated map.
 
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Not...really? Islam didn't become dominant in Eastern Bengal till the Mughal-era forest clearings (see Eaton - I've become an Eaton Shill at this point).
No idea about Sindh though I did post an interesting article.
That's not necessarily what I'm implying. I'd say only one or two locations in eastern Bengal would be majority Muslim, including Chittagong. Other than that, I'd like to see some more Muslim pops there since conversion (and Arab-Persian immigration) was definitely speeding up from the late 13th century with figures such as Shah Jalal - but not majorities. I am not implying that Islam was dominant in the whole of eastern Bengal. But, as there were many communities (of varying sizes) that converted to Islam prior to the start date, it is not far-fetched to imply that there were Muslim-majority locales, as it was generally communities that converted, not just individuals.

Yes, eastern Bengal should be majority Hindu, when taking the region as a whole. But there were locations where the Islamic communities were consolidated and formed a majority.
 
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Name changes required for Sri Lanka
These are buddhist name given to Tamil Area
Yapapatina -> Yalpanam or Jaffna
Gokanna -> Thirukonamalai or Trincomalee
Mahathodda -> Mannar

Not able to see the one other location which start with the letter M. Could you provide me the name to check?

Other changes
Kanda -> Kandy
Kotta -> Kotte

Also Sailan region can be renamed to Ceylon which is appropriate for the time
 
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Elephants and Ivory are different resources. The former is for Asian elephants and can be used to create elephant-based military units. Ivory is used for African elephants, which can't be used for military units, and are only an economic resource.
This is probably ages away, but it would be incredible to have an option to restore tameable elephants as a North or East African or Levantine country by importing them from Asia or by taming African elephants (supposedly achieved by Ptolomeids and Aksum) - maybe as a powerful mission reward for certain states in those regions
 
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Elephants and Ivory are different resources. The former is for Asian elephants and can be used to create elephant-based military units. Ivory is used for African elephants, which can't be used for military units, and are only an economic resource.
Can they be employed in logging and road-building?
 
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One thing I'm not seeing discussed much is how Chittagong is not a really high level natural harbour
Chittagong has been a vital seaport and harbour since ancient times, even coming up in the world map by ptolemy
So it's kind of baffling that one of the most well recognized harbour's in the world is not represented
 
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I'd say only one or two locations in eastern Bengal would be majority Muslim, including Chittagong.
Ok Chittagong I can see, especially because of the presence of Perso-Arabic traders. Beyond that, I don't see any place going beyond a third being Muslim - maybe Gaur, and barely. But muslims should be present almost everywhere.
 
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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:
View attachment 1189937
View attachment 1190039
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:
View attachment 1189938

Locations:
View attachment 1189939
Yes, we are making some adjustments to the coloring of the mapmodes!

Provinces:
View attachment 1189943

Areas:
View attachment 1189947
The bug is still there, yes… The area that is to the southwest is Malabar.

Terrain:
View attachment 1189948
View attachment 1189949
View attachment 1189950
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:
View attachment 1189951
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:
View attachment 1189952

Cultures:
View attachment 1189954
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:
View attachment 1189956
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:
View attachment 1189959
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:
View attachment 1190014
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:
View attachment 1189963

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!
I don't like the new styles of maps. Especially for development map you can't gell apart is there a border or different gradations of development. Highly detailed maps (RGO) transforms to a blurry mess for my eyesight. Just gradients on top of gradients. Same with locations.
 
In the Sulaiman range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulaiman_Mountains (a mountain range in Pakistan - Afghanistan), The Delhi Sultanate did not rule it. There's even independent Afghan principalities in the region such as at Deraban (in source mentioned). https://mapcarta.com/14706876 (Deraban on a map) The Sulaiman range has historically been difficult for others to conquer, the Ghaznavids successfully subjugated it and the Ghurids most likely, but after such (especially transitioning into the era of the Delhi Sultans), the region was effectively uncontrolled and run with lawlessness. There is some current wasteland in the region, but there's simply much more and even Independent principalities there rather then complete Delhi rule. Even when Afghans ruled the Delhi Sultanate, the region was untouched. Some of the sources describe the failure to actually subjugate the region by the Delhi Sultanate (under its earlier Turkic and not Turco-Afghan dynasties) Like Here.



Sources:

Describing the maximum extents of the Delhi Sultanate (across one part of or another of the Punjab)

https://www.google.ca/books/edition...ntain+ghaznavids&pg=PA270&printsec=frontcover

https://www.google.ca/books/edition...+Delhi+Sultanate&pg=PT303&printsec=frontcover
 
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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).
What is the failure chanse and for how long does AI Delhi survive in the game?
 
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Also, Vijayanagara should start the game as a march of the Hoysalas, not an independent nation. Harihara was only proclaimed king in 1346, after the collapse of the Hoysala Kingdom after their defeat at the hands of the Madurai Sultanate. Before then, Harihara was a feudatory of Ballala III. I suggest you add a situation, perhaps called “Rise of the Kannadiga” (maybe along the lines of what you plan to do with the Rise of the Ottomans situation) which models either a resurgent Hoysala uniting the South or a rising Vijayanagara gaining independence and establishing an Empire. Perhaps have some mechanics relating to Vijayanagara gaining independence if Hoysala is defeated in a war by the Madurai Sultanate.
 

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A few final suggestions:

- The location of Husaynabad in Southern Bengal, seems to allude to the mint town of Husaynabad thought to be in the 24 parganas. However most historians now agree it was near Pandua itself, and not next to Satgaon. Please reconsider changing the name of this location. Some suggestions would be the old village names of Sutanuti, Kalikata or the ancient religious location of Kalighat - all of which now are part of the modern city of Kolkata.

-The location of Satgaon should have access to the ocean. I can see the Hoogly delta extend a bit into the lands, would it be possible to extend the delta a bit more inwards so as to make the locations of Satgaon and "Husaynabad" (as named currently) as coastal provinces? This is because in a few centuries within the game's time frame both of them will eventually "become" the port cities of Howrah and Calcutta respectively and played a major role as world ports of the British Empire (though the main port was Haldia, which ingame would be the location of Tamluk - which I think should be split into two, one coastal and one continental). The Diamond Harbor of Kolkata is a major world port playing a great role in trade along the Bay of Bengal.

- This would greatly impact the gameplay in Bengal for both a native player and a coloniser (coughBritaincough) who need to control just 3 locations - Satgaon (future Howrah), "Husaynabad" (future Calcutta) and Tamluk (Future Haldia) to control major trade routes along the Indian Ocean.

- Speaking of Tamluk, it should be a tier 2 natural harbour (the slightly greener one than it already is). It's a river delta natural harbour and one of the largest ports in the area were built during the British Colonial Era here - as I mentioned, the port of Haldia. It's on an alluvial plain and was considered suitable for the construction of a world port. The only reason I believe it shouldn't be tier 1 because it lacks a natural harbour, but forms the perfect stage for the creation of one - as seen in history. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldia_Port#:~:text=The Haldia Port is one,TEUs containers in 2022–23.)

- Extending the hoogly delta inwards is a simple and effective solution to bypass the need for navigable rivers which seems to not be a feature in this game.

- Further, the name 'Satgaon' is the Hindi analogue for 'Saptagram'. The sultanate being named in Bengali (Saptagram) but the location in Hindi (Satgaon) feels a bit redundant - so I would suggest naming both Saptagram.

- The province consisting of the locations of Khulna, Kulpi, "Husaynabad", Jaynagar, West & East Sunderbans - should be renamed to Sunderbans in my honest opinion.

1726848650353.png
 
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