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Tinto Maps #2 - 17th of May 2024 - Iberia

Hello everybody, and welcome to the second post of Tinto Maps! We’re really pleased about the great reception that the first one had last week, and also about the great feedback that we received. Just so you know, we have more than 70 action points from it that we will be implementing soon in the game.

Today we will be unveiling the map of Iberia in this super-secret project! So let’s start showing maps without further ado:

Countries:
Countries.jpg

The situation in 1337 shows a strong Crown of Castile under the rule of Alfonso XI, who has overcome the problems of his troublesome minority. To the east, we have the Crown of Aragon (it’s named that way, even if it currently doesn’t appear like that on the map), which is fighting for hegemony over the Mediterranean. An offspring of it is the Kingdom of Mallorca, ruled by a cadet branch of Aragon since half a century ago, that also has a couple of northern possessions centered on Perpignan and Montpellier. To the north, the Kingdom of Navarra is ruled by a French dynasty, its titular queen Jeanne, a member of the Capetian dynasty, being married to Philippe, Lord of Évreux. To the west, Portugal has a tense relationship with Castile, with a war being fought during 1336. To the south, the Nasrid dynasty holds power in Granada, backed by the Marinids of Morocco, who have a foothold in the peninsula centered around Algeciras and Ronda. And yes, Andorra is a starting country.

Locations:
Locations.jpg

Note: We are aware that there are some locations that could be added here and there, as this was one of the first maps that we created, and we weren’t completely sure about the location density we would like to have in the game. Some examples of possible locations that we’d like to add during a review would be Alicante, Tarifa, Alcobaça, Tordesillas, Monzón, or Montblanc. Also, you might notice that Zaragoza is named 'Saragossa'; this is not final, it's because we're using it as our testing location for the dynamic location naming system, as it has different names in Spanish (Zaragoza), Catalan (Saragossa), English (Saragossa), French (Saragosse), or Arabic (Saraqusṭa).

Provinces:
Provinces.jpg

Although it looks a bit like the modern provincial borders, take into account that those are based on the provincial reform of Francisco Javier de Burgos, which were also inspired by the cities/provinces that were accountable for the ‘Servicio de Millones’ during the reign of Philip II. Also, please, don't focus on the province names, the language inconsistency is because we were also using them as a testing ground.

Terrain:
Climate.jpg

Topograhpy.jpg

Vegetation.jpg

Iberia has one of the most complex terrain feature distributions in the entire world. We've also discussed this week that we're not very happy about the Vegetation distribution, which we'll be reworking, so feedback on this topic is especially very well received.

Cultures:
Cultures.jpg

Quite standard cultural distribution here, based on the different languages of Iberia (Asturleonese was still a language back in that time, although close to being opaqued by Castilian, after one century of joint ruling). The Andalusi represent not only the Muslim inhabitants of Granada and the Strait of Gibraltar but also the Mudéjar communities spread throughout much of the territory.

Religions:
Religion.jpg

The Sunni populations present here match the Andalusi pops of the previous map. Although it’s not shown in the map mode, there’s another important religious community in Iberia, the Sephardic Jews, who inhabit several cities and towns.

Raw Goods:
Raw Goods.jpg

This is also a map mode that we'll be revisiting next week, and feedback is also very welcomed. A curiosity: for the first time in a Paradox GSG, there is the Mercury resource in Almadén.

Markets:
Markets.jpg

This is the current distribution of markets, please take into account that it is based on the current gameplay status of the system and that it won’t necessarily be its final status. We tested in previous iterations having market centers in Lisbon and Burgos, but they weren’t working as we wanted; thus why we only have market centers in Sevilla and Barcelona. As the markets are dynamic, it might be possible to create new market centers, so a Portugal player might want to create a new market in Lisbon after some years (although having access to the market of Sevilla is juicy if you get enough merchant capacity on it).

Pops:
Pops.jpg


And that’s all for today! Next week we will be traveling to France! See you then!
 
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When I look at farmland terrain type I always wonder how the decision are made about it. How the devs chose between farmland or grassland?
 
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I was wondering: was the extent of Islam and Andalusi culture already diminished that much in 1337? I thought the southern parts of Castille would see way more Sunni and Andalusi culture, especially the latter.
 
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As a resident of "New Catalunya", it's very cool you went with that name as with "Old Catalunya" -- all my support here. These areas were relatively newly resettled by that time, so it makes sense in addition to those names really being really used.

Edit: although the "old catalunya" may make more historical sense to be just Urgell on the west and Barcelona on the east, as these were the old counties, no? The new part is just new resettled land.

Once said this, it feels odd that there's not more wheat produced in the eastern part of Catalunya as that's something we've been producing for centuries due to the lack of irrigation water until a century ago. Lleida is producing medicaments for some strange reason while Solsona and Cervera have furs or wool. These areas were extremely poor.
 
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1356 is after pandemy spread which killed 50%View attachment 1134451

Thank you and the rest for clarifying the plague. I had thought of it being a factor for the pop. size, but did not know it was that devastating in Barcelona in particular.

Still, 133k inhabitants seems unrealistic even when taking towns and it being pre-plague into account. Though, I guess not by such a large margin as I suggested.
If it killed half to reach the number I suggested, plus say 20k of surrounding towns etc., that still makes about 90k, not 133k inhabitants.

I don't want to die on this hill, and this is the home region of the developers, so they probably know their stuff. I just wonder if population density gives an accurate reading of the population at the time. Still, I appreciate the effort it must take to find any usable data at all.
 
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Is there a map mode that shows which provinces are cities and towns? If not, that might be a nice addition. If it already exists, please share:)

yes
 
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I guess a general question I have is why is France / HRE represented with all these little appenages and statelets but other countries like Spain are not? England I get as it had much stronger central control. Will countries who's central control drops below a certain amount have all these semi-independent / vassal tags pop up? Or is this just a unique situation for certain countries like France / HRE?
 
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Please consider going back to 'Catholic' 'Sunni' over the -ism. It just looks worse on a map and reads tinny and artificial compared to the more elegent old depiction.

We have both adjective and noun forms for religions. Its a 1 line change to change this for us, but am awaiting @SaintDaveUK for that, as language use and such things is his interests.
 
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  • Spice in Zaragoza is a even more weird... Was it meant to represent regaliz? Zaragoza was known for its orchards so fruits may be more realistic. (I feel we lack a vegetables resource to model orchards). It may still be necesary for gameplay purposes to boost a bit Zaragoza.
  • I would put wine in Barbastro (it is still a vineryard area) and remove wine from Tudela (which is another orchard area that could be given fruits or the more orchard resource)

when you say that orchards should represent vegetables, do you mean vegetable farms? like, cabbage and onion farming as opposed to fruits such as apples and oranges?
 
Alright so looking through my own research which doesn't have much on Spain, I have only a few points:

Iberia has pretty rich deposits of some minerals, so I wanted to mention tin in the North-West, as well as silver pretty much all over the place.
However, it looks like there wasn't that much mining done in this time period, compared to how many sources I've found for Germany. Even the world heritage mining sites in Spain are mostly from the 19th century.
The Riotinto mines in Huelva seem to be represented by copper and lead there. Two tin locations in the North-West are probably enough despite how plentiful tin is there, all the sources I found just talk about ancient mining. I'm also not sure about silver mining in the time period.

Spain was an exporter of alum and I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that it was produced in Catalonia (can't find a source anymore now). There is this alum mine but I don't know if it was operating back then.

Do you count alabaster as marble? They are pretty similar... Aragon has the largest deposits of the mineral and many local sculptures in the time period were made from alabaster, so I think it deserves to produce some marble. Maybe you can find where exactly it was produced at the time, but English Wikipedia lists Fuentes-Azaila and Calatayud-Teruel as the main deposits.

I'm surprised that Granada doesn't have any clay production! They were famous for their ceramics made from local red clay. This website says

You can literally just google something like "Granada clay middle ages" and you'll find plenty of articles and papers talking about ceramics in Granada.

You didn't include the Canary Islands, so I'm not sure if they already produce dye, but they could potentially produce a dye known as orseille. "There has been speculation that the abundance of roccella tinctoria on the Canary Islands offered a profit motive for Jean de Béthencourt during his conquest of the islands." but there is no source for this claim listed.
There definitely needs to be more dye in South-Eastern France than just in Toulouse but that's for next week. :)

As for vegetation, maybe there could be some farmland along the Tagus east of Toledo? So Ocaña and Huete locations (wow they are big), there's fertile loess soil along the river. That would also likely come with a goods change away from wild game and livestock.
I love the idea of alabaster. However it would need even more granularity to model this type of things. I actually considered suggesting Calatorao as a location, since it was a major stone source for a wide area. But the locations seems to match a lot of comunidades de aldeas (in Aragon)/comunidades de villa y Tierra (southern Castille)/Merindades (Navarre) / Encomiendas (several areas). So many mines of some importance are just secondary locations in bigger political subdivisions.

There some more mining areas you are leaving, like the Sistema Ibérico (lead and iron) but again it will require an even finer map.
 
We definitely need Olivença as a province. It has been the only significant change in borders in over 700 years between the two entities. Also, could we get Madeira, Azores and the Canary Islands?
 
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I was wondering: was the extent of Islam and Andalusi culture already diminished that much in 1337? I thought the southern parts of Castille would see way more Sunni and Andalusi culture, especially the latter.
There was a huge relocation of the Muslim population of Andalusia after the Mudéjar Rebellion of 1264-1267; we've used the data of some fiscal censuses of the 1290s to establish how many mudéjares were still remaining.
 
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