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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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Was this region really that centralized in this period, compared to France for example?

Seems weird to me, seeing every region so decentralized but Iberia already consolidated into its powerhouses for the next century (Andorra and Mallorca aside).
 
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@Pavía I would like to know if it would be possible to add the Nation of Couto Misto / Couto Mixto / Coto Mixto (spelling changes depending on the language) it was an independent state during the X century up until the XIX century, it existed primarily in the galican municipality of Calvos de Randín between galicia and portugal, it was ruled has a Republic were the decision were made by a council of Judges.
It might be too small to be represented as a location on the map.

In case you read this another small change i would recommend would be to change the wine in the Alentejo region with horses has that region of the county is far more famous for its horse ranches than it's wineries / vineyards
 
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Regarding the topic related to how Zaragoza is named depending of the nation culture, will it be (at least with the cultures of the region) possible to have more culture located names, as for example if portugal owns Zaragoza it changes to Saragoça or Badajoz becoming Badalhouce?

Potentially, yes.

would you consider creating a form with all location names (sorted by province and region for precision) wherein speakers of different languages could suggest names used for these locations in their respective languages? this could, after review, increase the pool of dynamic names by an order of magnitude.
 
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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
Egyptian doctor and merchant Ibn al-Basit, who visited Granada and was received by sultan Muley Hassan in 1465 and 1470, tells us in his account of the “atmosphere of its streets crowded with weavers, jewellers, potters, leather craftsmen and weapons manufacturers”. These items found export markets in Castile or in the whole Mediterranean area through the ports of Málaga and Almería. Ibn al-Basit also made interesting remarks on the popular ceramics from Granada, like the one he refers to as a type of red clay with which were made very light pots for water, which added an extraordinary flavour and beneficial properties to purify the blood.
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.
 
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Regarding locations in Aragon, did you guys consider adding "Albalate"/"Albalate del Arzobispo" just northwest of Alcañiz? At that time it was just a bit smaller than Caspe in Zaragoza and, eventually, it grew to become the third largest town in the Teruel province in the XIX century. In medieval times it also administrated neighbouring towns like Andorra, my hometown (yep, same name as the country).
 
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Wait 133,000 inhabitants of Barcelona? That seems excessive no? I just googled and found a paper (Barcelona, a Society and its Law: 11th-13th Centuries; de Montagut, Tomàs; 2008) that says its population in the 1356 was 34,000 inhabitants.

I imagine this map would include population of the surrounding countryside, but that still is an incredible 100k difference. Am I missing something?
What makes the number so high? Provided this is the map at the start date of course.
1356 is after pandemy spread which killed 50%
1715955869812.png
 
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Iberia looks really nice! I'm looking forward to playing a campaign with Mallorca. It will probably a good way to learn about trade, navy and building tall while offering the challenges of playing small yet being a bit out of the way and separated.
 
That raises the question of why Iberian vassals are part of the country while French vassals have their own tags. Do the "vassals" of Castille and Portugal have that much less autonomy?

Speaking of Iberia, historically Granada lasted until a century and a half past the start date. I hope there are measures to stop Castille from splattering them 20 years into the game every time.
Yes, Iberian feudalism was different from French feudalism.
 
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Was this region really that centralized in this period, compared to France for example?

Seems weird to me, seeing every region so decentralized but Iberia already consolidated into its powerhouses for the next century (Andorra and Mallorca aside).
Iberian feudal lords were much less powerful compared to their kings than the French ones.
 
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What percent of a population do minorities need to be before they show as striped?

Surprised there isn't a single town with a notable Sephardic or Jewish minority but I suppose that depends on my first question.
 
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Love the detail and location density! A few notes that come to mind regarding Asturias are that maybe a less bordergore-ish distribution of locations would be more pleasant (for example, Castropol and Avilés not owning their most southernmost territories along the Cantabrian Mountains; would help not only location shaping but also with more accurate terrains) and that some coal would be nice, if it's not already dynamic (early mining could be present, with those borders, in Avilés and Oviedo/Villaviciosa/Mieres, it depends as traditional pre-industrial mining was very sparse in those areas). Would also love some astur-leonese toponyms (or changing Villaviciosa to Gijón, for example) but I understand that it's still early. But so far, it's stunning!
 
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Loving the granularity of the map, as usual. Makes it feel like you truly rule over a HUGE empire with big tracts of land, rather than in EU4 where spain has only around 35-40 provinces making it feel like you're just a regional power. Looking at that big map in Tinto Talks #2, the fact that europe is smaller is awesome. Makes it all the more impressive when you're that little peninsula that owns half the new world as colonies.
 
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@Pavía I would like to know if it would be possible to add the Nation of Couto Misto / Couto Mixto / Coto Mixto (spelling changes depending on the language) it was an independent state during the X century up until the XIX century, it existed primarily in the galican municipality of Calvos de Randín between galicia and portugal, it was ruled has a Republic were the decision were made by a council of Judges.
It might be too small to be represented as a location on the map.

In case you read this another small change i would recommend would be to change the wine in the Alentejo region with horses has that region of the county is far more famous for its horse ranches than it's wineries / vineyards
It's too small even for the scale of this game, indeed.
 
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“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.” Maybe it’s too late but in relation to the first tinto maps could you make it possible to have 1836 Luxembourg borders, since that’s roughly when the game will probably go to? Currently using the locations you cannot do that.
 
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What percent of a population do minorities need to be before they show as striped?

Surprised there isn't a single town with a notable Sephardic or Jewish minority but I suppose that depends on my first question.
I don't remember it by heart, but there isn't more than a 5-10% Sephardic population in any Iberian location.
 
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