Tinto Maps #22 - 11th of October 2024 - Mongolia, Manchuria and Eastern Siberia

[Zerodv]

They followed the ethnographic classification of sublanguages or dialects

Did they? What's Lamutk supposed to be?

 

[Chieron]

Why is the Sea of Okhotsk named Yakutsk Sea in PC? Yakutsk is leagues inland and googling the name returns nothing. Even the coastal area is called Okhotsk Coast in PC..

Edit: the Yakutsk Sea area seems to have a second part, which is part of the Bering Sea in reality. Of course, naming it Bering Sea would be anachronistic (technically all Russian names in that region are, though), but splitting off the Eastern part and calling it something else would be better. Maybe Kamchatka coast ?
Having the Artic Ocean being called Pacific North is also odd, but that area is not transversable anyway.

 

[Osariik]

Will it be possible to play as societies of pops? I'd love to be able to play as one at some point

 

[turoo7]

I think there's a case for Mongolia having salt provinces. I very much might be wrong and this is a very rough job but From "Монгол Улсын Үндэсний Атлас" or the national atlas of Mongolia. 2009. The following lakes are brine or salt lakes in pink with the red blob in the east is my rough circling of loads of tiny ones. according to wikipedia the name of Uvs the largest lake circled in pink is literally a mongol-turkic term for bitter, tangy and sour.
And IIRC at least some of these are used to harvest salt and are a major local industry from googline mongolian salt production though apperently the government has had to offer support due to loads of cheap salt from China.
Since the Yuan will lose China most of the time and thus lose all those resources I think this might be become important for them.

 

[lazprune]

Shouldn't there be some form of "nestorian" christianity in Mongolia? The Kereit dynasty that dominated the area before Temujin was famously christian and Börte (his own wife) was also christian.

 

[Reimond77]

As someone else has already done a map for Sakhalin locations, I don't have many suggestions, but wanted to ensure that the Nivkh settlements of Pil'vo and Chamrvo are included, as these were located on the historic boundary between the Nivkh and Ainu. Pil'vo appears to have already been suggested, Chamrvo does not. While there were Nivkh populations in the Poronai River valley in the southern half of Sakhalin, they appear to have migrated back there more recently after being forced out following the Ainu arrival in Sakhalin around the 11th-12th century. For Ainu naming, Pil'vo should become Porokotan.

Chamrvo, yes. We call it Komr-vo (Комр-во). It is marked with a small red dot from the bottom of the province of Kk'atand (Ккъатанд). I confirm its existence. Moving the border of the lower province to the north in order to hook this settlement is not desirable, since this will violate the administrative boundaries of the districts that will be there in the future. Probably in this case, given its not zero fame, it is better to add a separate province.

The two unnamed provinces were most likely uninhabited, but if you do that, it will look ugly. Therefore, a mixed population should also be made there. These provinces should have an "Arctic" climate, while all others should have a "continental" climate. At the beginning of the game.

Among the Nivkhs, the ending "Vo" - means village. This can be used as regional names for provinces with a city type name.

Spoiler: Map

 

[otaman1]

Is there a reason why the Chukchi and Itelmen are not society of pops?
Also, I'll be nitpicky here but I understand why Paradox decided to do it like this. These tribes often had subclans or subtribes that differ from each other. The Koryaks, while here are grouped into a large entity, are usually grouped into two different lifestyles; one being the coastal people called Nemelan who lived in settled villages. The other being the inland people called Chaucu who were nomadic and followed reindeer herds. This is the same for the Chukchi people. As for the Itelmen, they were more settled and had hundreds of villages but those villages were independent of each other. If a village got too big, some people would leave and build a new village down the same river as their previous village.

 

[lazprune]

View attachment 1201036

Woah the location borders looked so nicer without the bold outlines.

 

[Cuke]

A quick list of inappropriate names in Russia, east of Lake Baikal up to the Kolyma.
1) Zolotinka - founded 1970. I suggest Kholodnikan (russian) or SOLOKIT, which is the local river and a common term in Evenki language for a riverbank trail (features multiple times in the region).
2) Tupik - founded 1911. Name means cul-de-sac and refers to an attempt of building a railroad. It located at a conflux of 3 rivers: Tungir, Bugarikta and Serpuk. Of these three, I would choose Tungir because it's the largest, but also because Bugarikta seems to be a name for 3 more rivers in Yakutia.
3) Bulava - founded 1812. Wiki suggests that BULAU was the original term corrupted into a Russian word.
4) Kudepyapka - I tried finding this river in Russian but could not. Finding a better river in the area is kinda hard. KANANDA, maybe?
5) Zarya - I wish I could triangulate this obvious Russian word in the sea of local names, but I cannot. And there are waaaay too many Zarya's in Soviet Union.
6) Teply Klyuch - SYLAS KULUS (more appropriate Yakutian translation), a water source along a motorway
7) Razvika - founded 1983, presumably it means Razvilka (road fork). Finding a river with a unique name is kinda hard in these mountains. Let it be ULAX.
8) Topolinoe - named after poplar tree in Russian, should be DELINDE, which is an Eveni word for local fish (Hucho taimen)
9) Pobeda - a mountain, so it should be XONOXO-TAAS in Yakutian.
10) Shestakova - lake named after a Shestakov russian guy. There's a river OGOROKHA nearby.

Whoever is interested in the region should go through the list of names and decide on Yakutian double vowels and KH-or-X spelling.
Further northeast, there are some concerning names in Kolyma such as Dve Vishki (Two Towers or Two Derricks) and Ambarchik (small Ambar, i.e. granary) and Aliskerovo (a mining settlement named after Mr Aliskerov in 1961)
Names west of Baikal also have mistakes like Dzerzhinsk (XX century communist), Staraya zima (not capitalized), or Irkutsk-Kazachinskoye (i.e. Kazachinskoye in Irkutsk region, therefore should be shortened if there are no more Kazachinskoye anywhere else)

 

[dorii]

Some proposals for changes in the Baikal region:

• Location Names:It's somewhat strange to see names like Irkutsk and Slyudyanka used at the starting date, as these are Russian names of cities founded after these territories were annexed into the Russian state. It would be more logical to use the name "Erhüü" (the Buryat name for the Irkut River, on which the city stands) for Irkutsk, and "Tüngen" (the name of a river in the modern Tunkinsky District, part of the depicted location on the map) for Slyudyanka. Accordingly, the province of Irkutsk should be named "Erhüü."
• Name of the Western Stanovoy Area:Before the arrival of the Russians, it could be called "Ara Khingan".
• Name "Khamag":In my view, it's not entirely correct; it should be replaced with "Barga" or "Khori-Tumat," or included in the Buryat culture. Historical Bargujin-Tokum was inhabited by these tribes, which became part of the Buryats, Yakuts, and Barguts of China (Ushnitskiy, V. V. (2016). The Problem of the Sakha People’s Ethnogenesis: a New Approach.) (Konovalov Procopius Batyrovich, & Tsybikdorzhiev Dorzh Vladimirovich (2017). Historical Bargujin-Tokum - the ancestral homeland of the Buryat people. Izvestiya of Irkutsk State University. Series: Geoarchaeology. Ethnology. Anthropology, 19, 129-150).
• Size of the Buryat Population in the Baikal Region:By the time of the arrival of the Russians, the Buryat population in the Baikal region was 50-60 thousand people. It likely wasn't significantly lower in the Middle Ages, as the socio-economic level remained relatively unchanged. The modern population shows no signs of passing through a bottleneck in population genetics studies.
• Terrain type of Selenge location: Although the mapped territory includes part of the Khamar-Daban Range, the majority of the province is made up of the Selenga River delta and the Kudara Steppe along its valley. These areas feature relatively flat terrain, and historically, people have predominantly lived there, rather than on the ridge or its slopes. Therefore, in my opinion, it's not entirely accurate to depict this area as mountainous. It might be more appropriate to separate the part of the ridge from the rest of the location. This adjustment would provide a clearer distinction between the flat and the mountainous areas, offering a more accurate representation of the local geography and settlement patterns.

 

[zraith]

This was going to be added in my earlier post, but slipped my mind.

Looking at the terrain map mode, where are the wetlands/marshes/swamps? The land near the northern coast is largely flatland and in other parts of Siberia as well where it could be interspersed with wetlands.

Map of Sakha of geographical zones and ecosystems found here: Plants in the Sakha Culture: Names, Knowledge, and Habitat

Also a map of wetlands in the entirely of Russia that might be useful in where to add the wetland terrain type: Land resources of Russia - Wetlands
Preview:

 

[ArVass]

1. Why does Dolgan Province have no locations in it at all? It is entirely a wasteland
2. The corridors are extremely thin and spaghettified, some may need to be thickened to be more in line with the corridors of the Sahara
3. Several people have mentioned it but the Yuán could also be called "Great Yuán" instead

 

[ValhallArchitect]

Russian traders and trappers historically sailed through the Arctic and down the Siberian rivers during summertime.

So while it's understandable that we can't sail large supply-intensive navies through here, will we at least still be able to send and receive trade through the Arctic?

I think these are presented as non navigable as navigable represent some sort of warfare navy.
Russian fur traders did travel by small boats along the coast, but probably the same boats they used to travel on major rivers (which Siberian trade routes were mostly based upon). In this regard, this makes sense that they are not represented as sea tiles, just like rivers are not

 

[ValhallArchitect]

I disagree with this perspective, if any extremely small amount of people justified a location then even the Sahara should way more filled.

The reality is that if a locality is far from a major river in a way that facilitates or allow a large state both native and external from navigating these impervious regions, has no actual sizeable population either in 1337 or 1800 or today... then what purpose does that locality fulfill? It's just there to make the game laggier or to be ahistorically colonized by Russia or other states?

The difference is that the Sahara was mostly totally barren land, with no resource or water at all, with few very concentrated oasis.

The Siberian on the contrary is
1) perfectly suited to human living, as it has evenly distributed water, natural resources and game, except in some very northern areas and some localized mountain ranges which can be considered « impassable » by PC standard
2) it was not mostly uninhabited, but rather, just like the Appalachian forests, mostly evenly inhabited by small tribes, who lived extensively from within a certain radius of resources.

It doesn’t mean that you would travel 1000km without encountering any human, but rather that they lived in small communities evenly dispersed on the whole area
—

The argument of major rivers makes sense, but that is not the case in most places.
- Kystatyam / Caarcan is represented by a narrow corridor, although it follows a river.
- Kuustur/nami are totally disconnected, although there is no actual mountain range here to prevent communication / travel. on the contrary, there is actually a river there connecting the coast with the inland.
- buur / ucaa are connected by an even longer corridor, while there is no river between them. The whole area in between the west stripe and central Lena river stripe of locations are totally disconnected, although many rivers spread eastaward into the Lena, there are no topographic feature preventing travel (no mountain range directly west of Lena)

The current situation is far from being fully correlated to the historical river routes. Some are missing, and extra « corridors » are added where they don’t correspond neither to a river or a mountain pass

—
Having the locations slightly bigger and more evenly distributed, instead of having a very compact density of extremely thin provinces with huge impassable lands in between would, by no extent, make the game laggier.
It only would if adding new locations, and only to the extent that it merely concerns a few dozen locations in a very definite and extremely localized region of the map, which is peanuts in comparison to 22000+ locations already present.

Once again, though, I never asked for more locations. On the contrary, I just ask for a more even distribution instead of having huge thin corridors
As pointed out in my previous post, most locations in Siberia are currently much smaller compared to, for example, Manchuria, although they were less populated AND they already get distorted quite a lot (any area in Manchuria should be represented by +50% pixel if only to represent the same IRL area).
Contrary to your postulate, the current situation is actually much finer grained in Siberia than it is in Manchuria, with many high density locations representing just a few hundred people locally

 

[ValhallArchitect]

Some of the impassible terrain in Siberia does make sense as it corresponds to mountains and wetlands that are even now largely unsettled. Some of the shown provinces do correlate to current and existing settlements, but in an area such as Siberia or Canada (less so with Southern Patagonia) that were not settled largely until fairly recently, it does railroad things a little bit to follow a historical path in terms of where places are settled.

What does not, is that in some areas these wastelands would correspond to rivers and lowlands where you could see settlements being made. The biggest thing that stuck out to me is the Lena River valley has passageways. It's a bit difficult to see as there's no river map to better trace it, but the Lena river roughly follows the yellow line in the image below. I had difficulty figuring out the course of the Aldan river, a tributary of the Lena river, which is the two yellow lines in the lower right. The orange line is the Omoloy river and the green line is the Yana river.

View attachment 1201366

After mapping out the rivers, based on province names and some guesswork, I would propose the following two passageways:
1. one following the Yana river (green line) connecting Uus Kuya to either Alii or Ceriimee.
2. the other would be a passageway connecting either Tyul-Gyar/Namii to either Saqqyryyr or Kustuur.

It would be very nice if there were locations all along each of these rivers (Lena and Yana) as this would probably be the best areas where settlements would arise in these locations. Lena's passageways that should be made into additional locations are circled in red.

I totally support wastelands where they fit, Aka in mountain ranges and some uninhabited swamps in the north coast of Siberia. What I was saying though, is that some of the current wastelands are actually way bigger than the mountain range themselves, or , as you rightly point out, some rivers although they were both fit to human habitat and intensively used for trade are represented as disconnected wastelands

 

[ValhallArchitect]

I've heard but don't know if it's the actual reason that they don't want to make provinces outside Europe too big so you don't have EU4 where it takes a week to travel or have the centers be not centralized so walking from 1 side takes a week but the province from the other side takes 2-3 days.

So I guess that forgoes them keeping the chokepoints but made some of the neighboring none wastland provinces bigger or something. Though if it isn't the case I wish they did in western Mongolia/Eastern Kazakstan a bit more.

I've been to the mountainous wasteland provinces in Mongolia. People were driving Priuses right up to just short of the very peak of Huiten Uul (the highest point in Mongolia) without any paved roads or anything yet it's this series of massive impassible blob the size of many European countries. Meanwhile the Carpathians, Alps, etc in Europe are fine lines you can't see zoomed out.

As pointed out in my illustrated long post, while I totally understand the requirement or the artistic design for not having huge location size increase between two regions (nuance : at a given latitude), it could definitely fit in the case of Siberia where, due to its extreme latitude, 2 pixels represent the same distance at 60° than 1px does at 45°.

Tissot indicatrix, each circle representing the same area (and x/y travel distance) IRL. As you can see, one location in Hokkaido / Manchuria / south france / Texas / should be, to be represented as equal travel time and area (and make population density comparable) be drawn with 2x more pixels in Novgorod / Montreal / central Siberia, and even 4x bigger in the Laptev sea coast. Which also corresponds, incidentally, with a decrease of pop density.

Even with 2x or 4x more pixels (adjusted to latitude), travel time would not take more time if it relies on haversine calculation (basically a multiplier / divider factor relative to latitude). That was the case in EU4 (00_defines.txt file)

 

[The Tsar]

View attachment 1200503

WOW

 

[GeneralUrist]

Holy province density! I wonder if having this many provinces for a remote region like the far north-east of Siberia is excessive, both for performance worries and given the requirements for colonization of 1000 migrants. For example St Lawrence Island has less than 2000 people in the modern day, and it's split into 3 locations! A lot of the locations have modern names, some very modern (like Oktyabr'skii i Kamchatka seemingly referencing the October Revolution). I understand sources for native names are very sparse in this region, does the team plan to give all the locations non-russian names eventually or is that a task they were forced to concede as impossible?

 

[nightvvisher]

Couldn't you make provinces and areas borders better across the whole map, something like in eu4 extended timeline mod, so that player and ai could make modern and historical borders, i mean with Russia or China i would like to be able to easily set border now it looks now, without breaking my head on what location from what province to take etc...?

 

[Zerodv]

The difference is that the Sahara was mostly totally barren land, with no resource or water at all, with few very concentrated oasis.

The Siberian on the contrary is
1) perfectly suited to human living, as it has evenly distributed water, natural resources and game, except in some very northern areas and some localized mountain ranges which can be considered « impassable » by PC standard
2) it was not mostly uninhabited, but rather, just like the Appalachian forests, mostly evenly inhabited by small tribes, who lived extensively from within a certain radius of resources.

It doesn’t mean that you would travel 1000km without encountering any human, but rather that they lived in small communities evenly dispersed on the whole area
—
View attachment 1201814
The argument of major rivers makes sense, but that is not the case in most places.
- Kystatyam / Caarcan is represented by a narrow corridor, although it follows a river.
- Kuustur/nami are totally disconnected, although there is no actual mountain range here to prevent communication / travel. on the contrary, there is actually a river there connecting the coast with the inland.
- buur / ucaa are connected by an even longer corridor, while there is no river between them. The whole area in between the west stripe and central Lena river stripe of locations are totally disconnected, although many rivers spread eastaward into the Lena, there are no topographic feature preventing travel (no mountain range directly west of Lena)
View attachment 1201815

The current situation is far from being fully correlated to the historical river routes. Some are missing, and extra « corridors » are added where they don’t correspond neither to a river or a mountain pass
View attachment 1201816

—
Having the locations slightly bigger and more evenly distributed, instead of having a very compact density of extremely thin provinces with huge impassable lands in between would, by no extent, make the game laggier.
It only would if adding new locations, and only to the extent that it merely concerns a few dozen locations in a very definite and extremely localized region of the map, which is peanuts in comparison to 22000+ locations already present.

Once again, though, I never asked for more locations. On the contrary, I just ask for a more even distribution instead of having huge thin corridors
As pointed out in my previous post, most locations in Siberia are currently much smaller compared to, for example, Manchuria, although they were less populated AND they already get distorted quite a lot (any area in Manchuria should be represented by +50% pixel if only to represent the same IRL area).
Contrary to your postulate, the current situation is actually much finer grained in Siberia than it is in Manchuria, with many high density locations representing just a few hundred people locally

I understand your point better, but I'm still not sure if implementing the spirit of your suggestion should result in there being no large wastelands.

To me the main issue with the wastelands is that they make it feel like there are islands of inhabitable regions which is not particularly accurate, but at the same time I really don't think a 100-pop locality far from a large navigable river does anything for the game, I still would prefer for such remote places to not be interactable insofar as there is no good argument as to how a state could leverage resources in those places.