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Tinto Maps #20 - 27th of September 2024 - The Steppes

Hello, and welcome one more week to the weekly encounter for map lovers! This week it’s also directed at horse lovers because we will be looking at the Eurasian Steppes, plus the Urals! So let’s start with the maps without further ado.

Countries:
Countries.jpg

Colored Wastelands.jpg

A glorious, Golden Horde! It is at its power peak, under the reign of Uzbeg Khan, so it's a much more menacing presence for its neighbors. However, it has its some internal issues that need to be managed, as you’ll notice in some of the maps, and in the future when we talk about the content for Hordes. The Golden Horde also heads its own IO, the Tatar Yoke, as shown in a previous Tinto Maps:

Tatar Yoke.jpg

We have already corrected the Ruthenian countries that are under the Horde’s Yoke, although we still have to correct the Russian principalities, which will be done in the corresponding Tinto Maps review. We’re also aware that we need to improve a bit the coloring of the IO, to mark not only the Golden Horde as the overlord of these countries, but also that Muscovy holds the title of the Grand Principality of Vladimir, which makes it the ‘enforcer’ of the Yoke. These fixes are also planned to be done in a few weeks.

Societies of Pops:
Societies of Pops.jpg

Societies of Pops 2.jpg .jpg

A bit up to the north, we have some Societies of Pops! This means that the territory of Western Siberia won’t be empty land, but will be populated by these people, which can be interacted with.

BTW, I’m not showing this week a dynasty map because, well, only the Borgijin dynasty rules over the lands of the Golden Horde, of course!


Locations:
Locations.jpg

Locations Western Siberia.jpg

Locations 3.jpg

Locations 4.jpg

Locations 5.jpg

Tons of locations today… You might notice that the density location is in a progression from west to east, from the most densely settled areas to the less settled ones. You may also notice that we’ve followed a design of ‘settler corridors’ in Western Siberia, setting those parts of the land that were habitable, usually on river valleys.

Provinces:
Provinces.jpg

Provinces 2.jpg


Areas:
Areas.jpg


Terrain:
Climate.jpg

Topography.jpg

Vegetation.jpg

The terrain is interesting here, as there are two main ecological areas. The first is the Steppes, Flatlands with Sparse and Grasslands vegetation, with either Cold Arid or Continental climates. And then we have the Siberian Arctics Forests, which are completely different, of course. On a note, the Urals were set as Hills, as they’re a quite settleable area, but we’ll probably make a review with your feedback, and add some mountains there.

Development:
Development.jpg

The whole region is not very developed, you might notice the difference with India, from last week’s Tinto Maps.

Harbors:
Harbors.jpg

There are some harbors in the Steppe region… In the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, of course! As usual, we’re open to feedback on this matter.

Cultures:
Cultures.jpg

Plenty of cultures! One note: Although we planned to work on the religious and cultural minorities of the region during the summer, we ended up not having enough time to add them. So what we’ll be doing today is showing the rough outline of ‘cultural spheres’, and then we’ll add the minorities during the review of the region. In that sense, feedback is very well received.

With that said the only note that needs to be made in terms of the cultural design is that we divided the Tatar cultural group into some differentiated regional cultures, being Crimean, Mishary, Kazani, and Astrakhani. We’re also aware that some of the cultures, as Mari and Chuvash, might be a bit displaced, as noted in the Russian Tinto Maps, so we’ll review and correct that with your feedback.


Religions:
Religions.jpg

Regarding Religions, the matter is a bit worse, as the big Sunni blob is just because the main religion of the Golden Horde is Islam, after the conversion of Uzbeg Khan, but that’s obviously incorrect. Also, as we have been able to forecast development time on how Pagan divisions will be during this autumn, we will make a comprehensive review of the region as well, to get a good distribution of ‘Shamanist’ Paganism, Tengrism, and Sunni Islam.

Raw Materials:
Raw Materials.jpg

Raw Materials 2.jpg

Raw Materials 3.jpg

Regarding the raw materials, the Steppes have plenty of Livestock and Horses, quite logically, although there are regions with some other goods. And up to the north, the main materials are Lumber and Fur. Apart from that, I want to mention the mineral hub in the Ural Mountains, with plenty of Copper, Iron, Gold, Lead, and Coal. That makes it a very mid and late-game interesting spot, and playing as Muscovy/Russia, I’ll tell you that you definitely want to expand into that region, as it will fulfill some of your material needs by that time.

Markets:
Markets.jpg

Markets! Big region, with lots of markets, although you may noticed that we changed the coloring of the locations that have 0% market access, which is the case in several areas. In any case, the market centers are Kaffa, Astrakhan, Saray-Jük, Kunya Urgench, Samarkand, Almaty, and Chimgi Tura. BTW, these names are much easier to notice in the game’s UI, as they’re beside the market centers:

Markets 2.jpg


Population:
Population.jpg

This week we’re showing only the country population mapmode, as there are some location numbers here and there which are failing, due to the already known issue with our pop editor (and which are on the way to be fixed). In any case, the whole population of the region is around 6.5-7M, of which around 6.3M are part of the Golden Horde. As I said, it’s a menacing country…

And that’s all for today! This is going to be my last Tinto Maps in a while, as I’ll be on vacation for 3 weeks during October (you might have noticed that I didn’t have any during summer), so one of the Content Designers in the team, @Roger Corominas , will step in and be in charge of the next 4 Tinto Maps. It’s in good hands, as Roger is an Experienced CD, who has been working and focused on Project Caesar for more than 3 years, at this point (this is why you might not know him from EU4, as other CDs in our team). In any case, he will be starting with the regions of Xinjiang, mostly ruled by the Chagatai Khanate, and Tibet.

I’ll keep reading and answering you during next week, and then I’ll be back in a month from now. See you!
 
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Certain locations in the region after the feedback still have obvious Slavic names.
That really breaks immersion and flavour to quite a few few people, so I tried to improve it a bit.
And also improved my own approach to this kind of suggestions.

THIS TIME I
  • avoided pure hydronyms as much as possible,
  • used better maps (Google) to look for alternative settlements nearby with either Turkic/Circassian origin or at least not-so-obvious Slavic names,
  • used Circassian names and sources of those settlements or some information about previous settlements from Wiki,
  • and the most important – used historic maps of the region.

LEGEND
Settlements from the
XV – XVII century maps
Previous Circassian settlements or Circassian settlement names
Nearby settlements with Turkic, Circassian or neutral name
Vassanar.png
Yessentug.png
Mezmay.png
The second row with a question mark means my suggestion for better spelling adaptation.
Like Cabartei Kabartey.
Also used one modern map from multiple Circassian sources.​
Wikipedia sources​
Google Maps used​


MAP
Caucasus.png
1747059477098.png

I used standard transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet, but maybe better to use Turkic-ish spelling: Şanjir, Bjedygu-Kal, Hadiji, Şitkale, Koşehabl etc.?
I hope the devs will handle it better.


The most important thing – of course we cannot locate the exact places from those old maps, so this is some approximation in any case, I am aware of it.
My main reference points were (apart from the mountains and the seas):
  • rivers (especially the Cuban and the Don),
  • relative positions on different maps,
  • scientific articles on old maps of Circassia,
  • information on pages about Circassian history.
  • Bzhedygu-Kal (Bjedygu-Kal ?) - previous Circassian name of Yekaterinodar.
  • Khadyzhy (Hadiji ?) – previous Circassian village on that place.
  • Yessentug – Yessentuki were reportedly named by Yessentug khan.
  • Julat instead of Dzhulat – maybe Horde spelling should be adapted to Turkic spelling.
  • Kara-Bazarprevious Nogay slave-trading settlement before Kochubey.
  • Burgusan – chosen thanks to Zhulat-Dzhulat present on the Circassian and game maps.
  • Cabartei (Kabardey ?), Parapet, Vassanar – chosen based on rivers and general setting.
  • Earlier maps were prioritised.
  • I did not use XVIII century maps a lot because the current settlements were mostly established around that time, so it is not a big difference from Google maps suggestions.
  • One 'modern' map of Circassia in 1450 is from multiple Circassian sources.
  • All those places I used were in multiple maps.

I highlighted the respective settlements on those maps.

Fra Mauro 1459
Cantelli 1684
Circassian source 1450
1459_FraMauro.png
1684_Cantelli.png
Circassia_1450.png


Gastaldi 1548
De Jode 1579
Keller 1590
1548_Gastaldi.jpg
1579_DeJode.png
1590_Keller.png


Similar reworks of Volga-Don and Ukrainian Steppe parts are underway!
 
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Here is the map of Volga Bulgaria

View attachment 1292000

Red - Tatar city names
Blue - Tatar river names

As a basis, I took those two maps

View attachment 1291709View attachment 1291710
The first one is 1779 map of Kazan governorate, the second is the map of the Kazan Khanate

And, If you look closely, you can see that divisions in the Kazan governorate called Darugi - a remnant of the Kazan Khanate administrative divisions. So, I propose to create Provinces like those divisions - something like Novgorod has right now
View attachment 1291722
I marked the Dorugas in red and the other divisions in yellow. As you can see, one (Crimean Daruga) is speculated to be assimilated into the Russian Uezd system.


Here I outlined this map on the EU5 map as well as I could. As you can see, somewhere the provinces don't align at all

View attachment 1291803
So with red dotted lines, I marked old divisions of the Khanate from the second map
Everything else is from the first map


Few location changes.
View attachment 1291771
With this darugas will align much better with maps
It will also allow us to represent more cities like Cäke and Koshaysk,
Cities like Bilar, Suar, Alat, Arça and Cöri will be represented much better
Made some changes and added a bit more locations

I take back my claim to rename Morkvashi - it is a historically significant city and was already on the maps of the 17th century (not the worst case). So I think we should let it be a representation of the destroyed old Bulghar city. A lot of locations are named after rivers, as I have not found better variants
1746699577932.png


Here is my proposal for areas
1746699627786.png

Five important darugas that have survived.
Taw yagi - mountain side - a common name for this region, represents a 6th daruga with an unknown name
Morkvashi and Bögelma - parts of the historical Nogai daruga that were separated into other divisions by the Russian Empire

or even like this to separate Sinbir
1746701586497.png
 
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Here is my proposal for areas
Probably you meant provinces here?

Also I can propose some improvements to reduce the number of hydronyms:
  • Batyrevo -> Shygyrdan, a nearby village of the XIV century (according to Wiki), so no need to use river name.
  • Promsa -> Tagay, a bit on the edge, but also a nice Tatar name, no need to use river name.
  • ??? (location between Zainsk and Menzeinsk) -> Chally (Tatar name of Naberezhnye Chelny).
  • Shigony -> Syzran or Aktushy, even though Shigony seems to me OK.
  • ...? na Volge -> Suskan.
  • You renamed Kondrucha location to Qurumoc and Koshki to Qondrirca river, so maybe just rename Kondrucha location to Tatar Qondirca?
  • Hence Koshki -> Salavan (a village nearby).
  • You renamed Kamyshla to Qamisli, but marked it as a hydronym, but it is a town.
  • Sergiyevsk -> Kandabulak (a village nearby).
  • ??? (location between Koshli and Kamyshla) -> Shentala.
  • Stary Amanak -> Amanak I would not count it as a hydronym.
  • Why don't you like Buguruslan? It has Tatar origin, but in Tatar Bogyryslan.
  • Abdulino -> Saray-Gir (a village nearby).
I used standard transliteration only for simplicity, but Turkic is obviously better.
 
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Malmyzh is on the wrong side of the river, it's located on the border between Oli Baraza and Bogatye Saby.
Yes, so as vyatskiye polyany - a current name for that location. So I presumed the river is inside the location, like the current border between regions in Russia

It is just sad to lose Malmyzh entirely

A good alternative is Kiznär - Кизнер - a village but unknown date
Or Luğa - Люга - a river
 
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Yes, so as vyatskiye polyany - a current name for that location. So I presumed the river is inside the location, live the current border between regions in Russia

It is just sad to lose Malmyzh entirely

A good alternative is Kiznär - Кизнер - a village but unknown date
Or Luğa - Люга - a river
You could add Malmyzh between Cöri and Arsk.
 
Steppe hordes are this game wildcard
IMG_6315.jpeg
IMG_6318.jpeg
IMG_6319.jpeg


Warlords? - in
Full annex? - in
Mingplosion? - in.


Well, even though it is fun there is a reason why Golden Horde fractured to specific small hordes, centralised around big settled areas, like Crimea, Astrakhan, Kazan.

Hordes with Center in Bahmut or Tambov are impossible, there was nothing there at that time.
 
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So I guess the full picture is: Golden hode transformed into the county of Durdzuketia and lost a war to Bulgaria, becoming its vassal. And only than it exploded, creating new nations one by one.

IMG_6320.jpeg


It definitely outside of the possibility range.

So my question is, how did that conversion to a county happened?
 
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So I guess the full picture is: Golden hode transformed into the county of Durdzuketia and lost a war to Bulgaria, coming its vassal. And only than it exploded, creating new nations one by one.

View attachment 1293415

It definitely outside of the possibility range.

So my question is, how did that conversion to a county happened?
Probably hit the "settle" button and then blew up.

I'll never understand why these games always seem to implement a "nomads settling down" button that always leads to hilariously broken outcomes like this.
 
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On the Spread of Nestorianism in the Steppes:
Little more than the bare fact can be stated with any degree of certainty, but an interesting confirmation of the widespread distribution of Nestorian Christianity in central Asia is provided by the Christian graves which have been found in the province of Semiryechensk in Southern Siberia, which now forms part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but comes well within the area we have been denoting by the term Turkestan. These graves were discovered near the villages of Great Tokmak and Pishpek, both of which are at no great distance from Lake Issiq Kol.

Dated 1307: 'This is the grave of the charming maiden Julia, the betrothed of the chorepiscopus Johanan.5 A pathetic proof that there was no clerical celibacy, at least for orders up to chorepiscopus. Dated 1315: 'This is the grave of Sabrisho, the archdeacon, the blessed old man and the perfect priest. He worked much in the interests of the Church.5 Dated 1326: 'This is the grave of Shliha, the celebrated commentator and teacher, who illuminated all the monasteries with light. Son of Peter, the august commentator of wisdom, his voice rang as high as the sound of a trumpet. May our Lord mix his pure soul with the just men and the fathers. May he participate in all heavenly joys.5 Dated 1338: 'This is the grave of Pesoha, the renowned exegetist and preacher, who enlightened alll66 UNDER THE MONGOLS AND TIMUR cloisters through the light. Extolled for wisdom, and may our Lord unite his spirit with the saints.'

(source: VINE, Aubrey: The Nestorian Churches, available at: http://www.aina.org/books/tncchonc.pdf, p. 164-166)

Regarding China:
Thus Marco Polo testifies to many Christians being in China in 1271, and some details are given about them by John of Monte Corvino, who in 1289 was appointed by Pope Nicholas IV as special missionary to China. (Had this interest in the Far East any connection with Rabban Sauma's visit to this same Pope the previous year? See pp. 152-153.) John eventually arrived in China in 1294, and laboured for many years in Cambalu (Pekin). In 1305 he sent a letter1 to the Pope, giving many interesting particulars of his own work, and also some remarks about the Nestorians. He says that they opposed his work: The Nestorians, certain folk who profess the name of Christians, but who 1 The East and the West, April 1904.l68 UNDER THE MONGOLS AND TIMUR deviate sadly from the Christian religion, have grown so powerful in these parts that they will not allow a Christian of another rite to have ever so small a chapel, or to proclaim any but the Nestorian doctrine.' He claims to have baptized about six thousand converts between 1294 and 1305, and says that but for the Nestorian opposition the number would have been nearer thirty thousand. This information is supplemented by John of Cora, who served in Cambalu for a time under John of Monte Corvino. He also tells1 of the Nestorian opposition to the Roman mission, and adds that the Nestorians somewhat resembled the Greek Orthodox. He says that they numbered more than thirty thousand, and were a rich community, possessing very handsome churches. (Same source, p. 167-168)


Worse, Chris tians could no longer hope to counter their loss of influence in the Middle East by missionary expansion into central Asia, as the Mongol invasions had so devastated the traditional urban centers. Moreover, all the Mongol successor states soon fell under heavy Muslim influence. By the mid–fourteenth century, Islamized Mongol princes ruled not just the Ilkhanate but also most of the other states. These included the Chaghadai Khanate that dominated the lands between Persia and China, and the Golden Horde of the steppes. Even after accepting Islam, the Chaghadai rulers continued to tolerate a Chris tian presence at their capital of Almaliq until 1338, when all Chris tians in the city were killed. Traces of Chris tian ity among the Keraits and Uygurs did not last long into the fi fteenth century.
(Sourcde: Lost History of Christianity, JENKINS, Philip, p. 124 http://www.aina.org/books/tlhocga.pdf)

These persecutions had a greater effect on the churches of the Middle East than any other event since the conversion of the Roman Empire. The succession to the ancient hierarchies fell into disarray, interrupting sequences that had remained unbroken since the time of the apostles. The office of Nestorian catholicos remained vacant from 1369 to 1378, and possibly longer, and the Jacobites remained without a head from 1379 to 1404. Whole Christian communities were annihilated across central Asia, and surviving communities shrank to tiny fractions of their former size. As late as 1340, Merv was still the setting for a Chris tian training school for Tatars, but by this stage the city was finding it diffi cult to maintain even the shreds of its former glories. Chris tian ity now disappears in Persia, and across southern and central Iraq. The patriarchs “of Babylon” now literally headed for the hills, taking up their residence on the safer soil of northern Mesopotamia. In later centuries, patriarchs made their home at the Rabban Hormizd monastery in the mountains near Mosul.50
(Sourcde: Lost History of Christianity, JENKINS, Philip, p. 130 http://www.aina.org/books/tlhocga.pdf)
 
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The status of genoese possesions isn't accurate. Tana and Susaco should be under genoese control while Soldaio/Sudak should be controlled by the horde.

Tana was sacked completely in the 1320s, it was resettled by Venetians in 1331? (Sorry I'm doing this from my head) Genoese weren't interested due to their ports being more successful elsewhere, it wasn't really even something the Venetian government were wholly interested in either so it was a private endevour outside the support of the Venetian state but still subject to Venetian laws with very loose control as a commercial enterprise. However it is a completely rebuilt from scratch Venetian town, even theoretically being catholic and venetian culture, albeit one that vaguely resembles very basic wooden structures and docking facilities at this point with a stockade. The point being that it was still a potential end route for the silk road and commercial caravans would still pass by and offer lucrative trade opportunities to those willing to risk it.

There's some italian sources to support this, both describing traders turning up to a completely sacked town of ash devoid of people as well as the venetian records of traders wanting to resettle it as a more purpose built trading settlement able to better support more temporary accomadation

Tana also remained Venetian from this point until the ottomans occupied constantinople and it was quietly abandoned from venetian control entirely
 
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