Tinto Maps #26 - 15th of November 2024 - Indonesia

[Focus my son]

Shouldn’t there be more spices?

 

[Thorum]

Looks good

Three remarks for now (apart from adding my two cents to the "more different spices please" crowd )

- For Mindanao, the division between the three market centers of Brunei, Manilla and Tidore seems very strange, I'm asuming this is still work in progress ?

- further east, I'm surprised Ambon (Hitu location) didn't get a natural harbor, and that there is not a single SoP in the entire Seram or Biru provinces...

- Ternate and Tidore are small, yes, but Is giving them a bit of Halmahera the correct solution ?

At least for Tidore, there are plenty of islands between Tidore island and Amassing location, to make a sufficiently large island location out of ?

For Ternate there is no such elegant solution. However, the way it's drawn right now, the 'mainland' part forms a bridge between the locations of Wasilei and Jailula, that seems unwanted ? Today's provincial capital of Sofifi is in that mainland part and today's roadways indicate this kind of thing, but those seem like really recent stuff.

There also seem some wasteland missing on Halmahera (wikipedia-heightmap below) ?

An example of what that could give below :

 

[Paulatim]

I mean sure but how would be break them apart? A bit of abstraction is necessary for gameplay we can't have one trade good for each of the 10 or so main spices. You could just do "exotic spices" and put all the spices from India and Indonesia in it but it's just too... broad. Some of these spices are way too expensive compared to others even today.

Middle east, India, china, central America, moluccas, probably western africa and eastern africa. Not so difficult at all.

 

[redcola]

As Indonesian myself, I have several suggestions:
1. The language of Borneo are replaced from Bornean and Barito with broader term "Dayak" , the northern and western part of Dayak are called Iban, while southern part are Ngaju and Maanyan, Malay in the southern Borneo should be replaced with Banjarese, and Malay in eastern part of Borneo are called Kutainese
2. The language of Palembang exist, seperated away from Malay in general, Lampung in the southern part of Sumatera have Lampungese language as well, Minangkabau are the most distant relative of Malay, so Minangkabanese should be seperate language, and Aceh is a separate language from Cham even they share alot of similarities, a chunk of bornean in Sumatra should be replaced with Rejangese
3. Java are correct, except in the island of Madura are Maduranese not Balinese, and Balinese only extent to western part of Lombok Island, the eastern part belongs to Sasaknese
4. The language of Sulawesi are ok, but there should be a Torajanese language in the central Sulawesi since its the dominant culture there, and Gorontalo only limited to the middle section of North Sulawesi, and the eastern tip belongs to overwhelming majority of Minahasan culture and language ( funfact :Minahasan are closer to Philipines language instead of Sulawesi), there are dominant culture and language of Butonese group in the island of Buton and south eastern part of Sulawesi, a culture which at that time was able to build fortress out of stone while the rest still using woods and rammed soil, below is the reference which I personaly can confirm and my sugestions above are simplified version yet accurate representation of Nusantaran culture in general

 

[PanelaRosa the Great]

Shouldn’t there be more spices?

View attachment 1216617

 

[phantasmAgaric]

Whilst Acehnese and Cham do form a group within the Austronesian languages, the two diverged more than a thousand years prior to Project Casear, in the 1st or 2nd centuries CE, and it's unlikely they'd have much in common by now. Additionally, whilst you're not explicitly including writing systems, I would consider standard written languages when consider which vernaculars (a term I much prefer to dialect here!) are included in a "language". In this case, Cham has by this point got a long history of literature in its own unique script, whereas Acehnese is unwritten, adopting a variant of the Arabic script after Islamisation in the 16th-17th centuries. As names for both languages are readily available, I'd definitely split them.

 

[Roger Corominas]

I hope Aeta people and other negrito ethnicities will have their own character models rather than looking like generic southeast Asians. Excited for Oceania, you cooked hard here

Yes, we are aware of that and they will be assigned the proper models.

 

[InterCarTon]

Any chance Ternate and Tidore will be investigated like Venice? Since they are all islands that have their location attached to the mainland in PC

 

[conqueror101]

Malaya

The part of this edition of Tinto Maps that I was most interested to see was Malaya, which is extremely rich in natural resources. Looking at the world map, you may be forgiven to think that it’s the place in the world that is most densely packed with resources, but since it’s at the equator, the map distorts quite a bit. Malaya actually has more land area than England (especially if you add Pattani which I did here), so it’s not that small.
I count 28 locations in Malaya while England is going to end up with what, over 120 locations?
Of course I’m not saying that Malaya should have anywhere near as many locations as England, its geography and vegetation is very different and its population in the time period was absolutely tiny. Also, to my knowledge England wasn’t entirely covered in rainforest, even if the weather really tries.

Back to the resources for a moment. Some of them are obviously not relevant for this game, such as oil, rubber, manganese, bauxite, tungsten or palm oil.
But it still has plenty that can be represented in the game, such as iron, coal, kaolin and silica(clay and sand, not as glamorous), gold (way more glamorous and why it was called the “Golden Peninsula” by ancient geographers), spices, tropical fruit, rice, lumber and of course tin, which even the local currency was made of.

Small historical geography lesson
Malaya represented a barrier for shipping between India and China. The monsoon winds that hit the peninsula alternate in a rhythm over the year, which meant that Indian merchants or Chinese merchants using favorable winds to sail to Malaya had to wait several months for winds to change so they could use them to get to their destination.
This meant that many merchants from different cultures sought shelter along the Malaya coast and entrepots were established there to store wares. (It was possible to work against the monsoon, following the coastline, and this was mentioned extensively in logs from the 18th and 19th century.)
The eastern side of the peninsula is fully exposed to the monsoon, so its ports were unusable for months (“musim kuala tutup” the season when the estuaries are closed), while the western side is somewhat sheltered by Sumatra. The east did still have plenty of ports and city states, but the western cities were visited more by western traders so we tend to know them better today.

Now to my feedback!

I believe that Malaya’s historical geography could be better represented. Before the late 19th century, the small population settled along the coast and rivers and rarely ventured into the interior jungle where secluded Orang Asli tribes lived. We’re talking about the 1880s when exploration and mapping of the interior really started to kick off. During the game’s time period, Malaya should be full of impassable areas, with only a few river routes allowing passage. (See picture) As it looks right now, it’s more reminiscent of modern Malaya with highways, railroads and palm oil plantations everywhere, rather than historical Malaya which should look more like the Amazon or Siberia. Especially when considering that we’re talking about movement of armies here. Yes, people could move across mountains and jungles, but if you want to bring an army or trade goods, you better stick to the known river routes. We know from historical accounts of military campaigns that this is what was done by armies. Didn’t people live in these jungles? Yes, it’s likely that some of these areas were inhabited by Orang Asli tribes. However, since the only interaction these groups had with the rest of world happened when they came to the river routes and traded their jungle goods, I would argue that it’s reasonable, from an administrative perspective, to count them as belonging to the settled areas, even if they lived their daily lives somewhere in the rainforests. “On the Peninsula, the collection of resins, aromatic woods and rattans was a task that ideally suited the Orang Asli with their knowledge of the jungle. A network of exchanges developed among the different Orang Asli groups because of their areas of habitation. The more interior Senoi would have negotiated the exchange of certain products with the Semang, who then brought these products to the Malay or Chinese traders at the fringe of the jungle or on the coast.” “The decline in the use of the land routes in the north, combined with lower demand for forest goods, eroded the economic and the social position of the Orang Asli. The final blow came with the establishment of British colonial control in the late nineteenth century, when the jungles began to be cleared in order to create rubber estates and oil palm plantations. Not only was the habitat, and hence the nomadic jungle lifestyle of the Orang Asli threatened, but their economic participation in the international economy severely curtailed” (From Orang Asli and the Melayu in the History of the Malay Peninsula)

View attachment 1216563

The first proposal I prepared had 42 locations (I posted a preview last week), but since the locations would have probably been too small, I decided on a proposal with 31 locations:
View attachment 1216566

As you can see, passage is only possible along the historical routes. The Muar-Pahang route was important and often mentioned in sources, it's on this map of the Aceh raids for example. Using boats to follow the coast was also popular, of course. I would even consider making the southern east coast entirely impassable, but that might be a bit too extreme.

“Muzaffar Shah, the fifth sultan of Melaka, who reigned from 1445 to 1458, refused to acknowledge the suzerainty of Ligor over his country. The Ligorians, in assertion of their claim, sent an invading army led by Awi Chakri, overland to Melaka. The invaders, who were aided by Pahang auxiliaries, followed the old route by the Tembeling, Pahang and Bera rivers. They were easily defeated and fled back by the same route. Subsequently, they attempted a naval invasion, but were again defeated. Muzaffar Shah then conceived the idea of checking Ligorian pretensions by attacking the Ligor vassal state of Pahang. An expedition was organised by Muzaffar's son, Raja Abdullah and was personally led by the Melakan Bendahara Tun Perak with two hundred sail, big and small, accordingly proceeded to Pahang and conquered it in 1454”

Spoiler: Here’s the full list of locations:

Name	Equivalent	Comment	Raw Material	Harbor	Vegetation	Topography	Development	Population
Patani Province		(Siam/Thailand) Patani in Malay, Pattani in Thai						24112
Patani	Pattani	Trading town, Pattani in Thai	Spices	Medium	Jungle	Flatland	High	10308
Sai	Menara	Mueang, Teluban in Malay, Sai Buri in Thai, called Sai in old maps	Medicaments	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	High	6821
Reman	Yala	Mueang, alternatively Rahman, Raman in Thai - this includes the area of Jala/Yala	Wild Game		Jungle	Mountains	Very Low	4547
Legeh		Mueang, Ra-ngae in Thai	Gold		Jungle	Mountains	Very Low	2436
Kelantan Province	Kelantan Province							23710
Kelantan	Kelantan	Trading town, modern Kota Bharu	Incense	Medium	Jungle	Flatland	High	6308
Ulu Kelantan	Pulai	Upper Kelantan with Galas and Lebir tributaries	Stone		Jungle	Hills	Very Low	2598
Terengganu	Trengganu	Trading town	Elephants	Medium	Jungle	Flatland	High	5821
Dungun	Dungun	Trading town	Lumber	Medium	Jungle	Flatland	High	5410
Kemamam	Paka	Settlement on the Kemamam river, modern Chukai	Tin	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	Medium	3573
Pahang Province	Pahang Province							20625
Inderapura	Kuantan+Pahang	Trading town, Also known as Pekan or Pahang	Sugar	Medium	Jungle	Flatland	High	10069
Ulu Pahang	Bera	Upper Pahang River	Dye		Jungle	Flatland	Low	4547
Tembeling	Jerantut	River and part of the old north-south route	Iron		Jungle	Hills	Very Low	2598
Lipis	Kuala Lipis	Kuala Lipis and Raub were founded here for gold mining, in the 19th century	Gold		Jungle	Hills	Very Low	3410
Johor Province	Johor Province							22411
Endau	Gelanggi	River and fishing village on its mouth	Clay	Bad	Jungle	Wetland	Very Low	2761
Johor	Johor Lama	Old Johor is located east of the estuary - note that Johor settlements in the time period were along the Johor River, rather than across from Singapore like modern Johor Bahru ("New Johor")	Salt	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	Medium	6658
Temasek	Temasek	Also Singapura or Singapore	Fish	Good	Jungle	Hills	High	4872
Batu Pahat		Modern city wasn't founded until after the time period, but there was a settlement here at the Batu Pahat river	Sand	Bad	Jungle	Wetland	Low	2761
Muar	Mura	One of the few places with long recorded history, mentioned as a fishing and rice farming town in the time period	Fish	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	High	5359
Selangor Province								28992
Malacca	Malacca	Trading town, Melaka in Malay	Fruit	Very Good	Jungle	Flatland	Low	4385
Seri Menanti	Rantau Panjang	Capital of Negeri Sembilan, also known as Sri Menanti	Lumber		Jungle	Hills	Low	3573
Klang	Klang+ Kajang	The big dog here, Klang founded nearby Kuala Lumpur in 1857	Tin	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	High	14214
Selangor		Trading town	Incense	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	High	6821
Perak Province	Perak Province							21924
Perak	Manjung	Along the river Perak,capital of Perak - the capital was Teluk Mak Intan from 1528 to 1877, so it could be called this, but Perak is more concise - includes Bernam, the start of the route into the interior	Medicaments	Okay	Jungle	Wetland	Medium	8120
Mjmjam		aka Dinding, tin mining settlement - location is a bit larger than the borders of the British colony	Tin	Okay	Jungle	Wetland	Medium	3573
Beruas	Beruas	Capital of an older civilization and frequently mentioned settlement during the time period - in modern times, cities like Taiping, Kuala Kangsar and Ipoh are more important here	Tin	Bad	Jungle	Wetland	Medium	7633
Ulu Perak	Gerik	The upper reaches of the Perak. Could be named Kroh (border town in the mountains, now Pengkalan Hulu) or Gerik, but I don't know if these existed yet	Lumber		Jungle	Mountains	Very Low	2598
Kedah Province	Kedah Province							25349
Penang	Bujang	Island and surrounding area, British colony	Spices	Good	Jungle	Flatland	Low	2274
Jerai		14th century account lists Jerai as settlement, Mount Jerai is in southern Kedah - could be called Pendang which would be more modern	Elephants	Okay	Grassland	Flatland	High	7308
Kedah	Kedah	Location of the Kedah river and site of Kedah capitals, like the modern Alor Setar	Rice	Okay	Farmland	Flatland	High	8445
Kota Sena	Perlis	Became capital of Kedah in 1653, modern Kangar/Perlis. population, so I think it makes sense to make it its own location.	Rice	Okay	Jungle	Flatland	Medium	4222
Satun		Was part of Perils/Kedah in the past, but has a large Thai population, so it makes sense to keep it separate - part of the Thai Phuket province today	Lumber	Bad	Jungle	Wetland	Medium	3100
Removed	Kampung Paloh

A note on location names: I chose to omit “Kuala” (which means estuary/confluence and is followed by the name of a river), as it was generally not included with settlement names in the historical sources. Almost all of these historic settlements are named after a river (for obvious reasons) and in the few cases where I couldn’t find a settlement during the time period, I named the location after its river, so it’s consistent.
Perak, Terengganu, Kedah, Kelantan, Selangor, Johor, Pahang, Klang are all names of a river, settlement and state. While the rule is supposed to be that locations are named after the exact name of a settlement, in this case using river names for locations just feels more historically correct.
It’s also easier to distinguish locations if you don’t have half of them starting with “Kuala”...


Vegetation

The vegetation of Malaya at the time can be summarized as: everything is jungle, except for some coastal settlements. A lot of rainforest was cut down in more recent history, but on the other hand, much of the agricultural production in Malaya does involve trees, such as palm oil, rubber, banana, cocoa, durian, coconut. So a lot of times you’re replacing trees in forests with trees on plantations and even a modern tree cover map will show basically everything but the cities covered. Due to monsoons affecting Malaya from both sides, it has enough rainfall that there are no real dry zones on the peninsula. View attachment 1216575 If left to nature, Malaya would be entirely covered in forest and since there is no season where plants don’t grow, regeneration happens fast. Only places with significant human settlement could have any vegetation other than jungle. Considering how small the population was at the time, and how outside of the small villages, everything would still be jungle, I decided to place jungle everywhere. Malaya was not a hospitable place in this time period. The only exception is Kedah, which had already established itself as the peninsula’s rice bowl at the time.

View attachment 1216574

Topography

Not much to say here, most of the mountains are already impassable, so the locations here are flatland or wetland on the coast and more hilly/mountainous in the interior. It’s documented that 14th century Singapore (Temasek) consisted of terraces carved into its hilly landscape, so it should definitely be hills as well.

View attachment 1216576

Raw Materials

To put it bluntly, Malaya’s economy in the time period was tin, trade and jungle. Some of its natural resources that we know about now were never exploited to a significant degree during this time, so that has to be taken into account.

View attachment 1216578

Gold and Tin:
The two most important mineral resources, historically. Malaya was referred to as a place of gold by all ancient cultures that encountered it.
Records of tin exports to Arabia exist since the 10th century, while China started importing it from Malaya in the 14th century.

Spoiler: Map

View attachment 1216579

Other mining:
Malaya also produces iron, clay, sand and stone. I have distributed them to appropriate locations.
Coal was only discovered in the 20th century. I think it’s fair not to place any here, but if you want to make it possible to discover it in the late game, the location would be Batu Arang (Selangor).
I don’t know of any significant production of marble, gems, alum, silver, copper, lead, saltpeter or mercury.

Rice:
Kedah was known as the rice-bowl of the peninsula. Not a lot of Malaya is naturally suitable for rice production and plenty of other staple foods exist that don’t really have a good in the game, such as sago (palm starch). I have given rice to those few locations that produced it.

View attachment 1216580

View attachment 1216581

As suggested by records of trade with China, I’ve placed the following goods along the east coast:
Medicaments (camphor mentioned as medicament in an Arab treatise), Spices, Elephants (Ivory), Dye (Lac), Lumber, Incense

NO COTTON - it’s mentioned in chinese records as an export, but Malaya’s climate isn’t suited for growing cotton, so they possibly meant cotton cloth that was traded

NO HORSES - a traveler’s account mentioned that the land didn’t have horses or donkeys, so there was likely no significant production of horses here. Elephants were used to transport goods.

I’ve further distributed the following goods as they are mentioned by visitors from the time period:
Spices, Sugar, Wild Game, Fruit, Fish, Lumber, Elephants, Medicaments (Camphor), Salt (produced on the coast)
I believe that pearl fishing wasn’t really done in Malaya, as opposed to much of South East Asia.

A note on Malacca, which is shown to have spices in the OP:
When Malacca was founded, it was a fishing village. It was not suitable for rice production and the most important produce of Malacca became fruit. After the city grew, fruit trees dominated the landscape as noted by visitors.
Malacca was a TRADING hub, not a production center. It didn’t really produce much spices of its own, but it was the central distribution hub for spices coming from the islands to the east.

Also note that Malaya has the potential to produce cocoa, tea and coffee, but these would only be introduced later in colonial times when plantations were built in previously undeveloped land - not relevant for this game.


Harbors

As mentioned above, the western coast was somewhat sheltered from the monsoon, so its ports had more potential than the ports on the east coast, but there weren’t that many locations with really good ports. Malacca lies in an advantageous position, had the best port, was founded for trade and became the primary trading city of Malaya. I'm not 100% sure if it should be the better port than Temasek, but overall it was more important in the time period.

View attachment 1216582

Population
Starting population here necessarily has to be a wild guess.
Numbers were generally VERY low until up to the 19th century, when Chinese mass immigration waves happened, as well as more modern development by the British.
This book lists Maddison’s estimated population of Malaysia. I’m going to estimate Malaya’s population to be 50% of that of Malaysia, until the 1870 figure after which I estimate it to be 70% (today it’s 79%). I’m also adding the population of Singapore of course.
1500: 171k (86k)
1600: 198k (99k)
1700: 231k (116k)
1820: 292k (146k)
1870: 884k (618k)
1900: 2447k (1712k)
Malaya changed a lot after this game’s time period, due to explosive population growth and immigration.
If we extrapolate the estimated growth rate to 1337 we get a population of 136k for Malaysia or around 68k for Malaya.

Reid’s estimation in Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce has Malaya+Pattani at 500k in 1600. That’s almost 5 times more!
Considering what the description of the main settlements along the coasts were like in the 16th century (almost all of them were in the hundreds of people), I find it hard to believe that Malaya had 500k in 1600. However, Maddison’s pre-1870 figures also look quite low considering how high the population was later on.

I’m going to go with an estimate somewhere in between those two extremes: 167k for Malaya, Pattani and Satun in 1337. This is almost exactly half of what it's at currently.

Of course, this also means that the population of East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak) would have been around the same. With an estimation of around 470k for the total population of Borneo at the time, 167k for the northern part (without Brunei) sounds reasonable.

Some quotes on population:
“By the early sixteenth century Tomé Pires is listing eleven ports on the east coast as against twelve—or possibly thirteen, if we include Muar—on the west. Sixteenth century maps of the Peninsula tell the same tale of settlements strung along the coast from Pahang northwards, so that we can only conclude that the idea of an unpopulated eastern littoral is a myth”
“Just beyond the Malacca boundary to the south was Muar, a community of padi-farmers and fishermen. Pires records 2,000 men in the settlement, which implies a total population of at least 4,000, but this is probably an exaggeration. The Batu Pahat River was more thinly populated but no less productive of fruit and fish. Finally, in the extreme south of the Peninsula a few Orang Laut still haunted the shores of what is now Keppel Harbour, Of the settlement on Singapore hill Pires makes no mention.
Northwards beyond the Linggi River was a succession of settlements which were under the direct rule of Malacca and which, in addition to paying an annual tribute of tin, engaged in a coastal trade in foodstuffs for that city. Most of these were mere villages. Sungei Ujong, Klang and Perak each had about 200 persons, Sëlangor was somewhat larger, while Bernam had 400. The largest producer of tin was the district of Mjmjam (Dinding), which was notable for its colony of 500 Filipinos. Bruas, comprising two villages on the river of that name, was of a rather different character, depending less on tin production than on its fleet of trading prahus.”


Development

The colors in the map are relative, there shouldn’t be much development here on a global scale. The eastern coast from Pahang upwards would have had the highest development, along with some of the western coast. The interior and most of the south were basically undeveloped.

View attachment 1216584

Market

My suggestion for a 1337 market center here is Inderapura/Pahang.
The west coast had been in the shadow of Srivijaya on Sumatra for centuries and possibly was already influenced by the Majapahit Empire at the time, although Singapura did apparently still exist independently.
The north was under the influence of Siam, while the northern east coast, with its numerous trading ports that actively traded with China, would have been in the strongest position on the peninsula.
Specifically the old kingdom of Pahang, which is consistently named as important in the sources and projected power along the entire east coast. The Majapahit chronicle even uses Pahang as the name for all of Malaya.
It traded a lot with China (this trade really took off during the Southern Song (1127-1279) which focused southward), but it was also the first port on the east coast that you’d encounter when sailing around the peninsula from the west.

As far as I can tell from the sources, Temasek is already on the decline at this point, but it was also quite important of course.


Suggestions for possible content

-The founding of Malacca. It started out as a small fishing village, but starting around 1400, trading infrastructure was built up and the town slowly became the main trading center and acquired a population in the thousands.
-Immigration from South East Asia? In the 15th century, Mjmjam (Dinding) had a population of 500 pinoys. The Bugis people from Sulawesi were also quite involved in Malaya’s history. I came across quite a few references to Sulawesi’s population drain due to emigration and slave trade. Malaya’s trade ports being an attractive region for immigrants might be something that can just be simulated with game mechanics.
-What about the Chinese migrations all over South East Asia? I’m assuming there will be some sort of representation?


Sources:
Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500
This map (the uncompressed tif is great) https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-231529372/view
This map https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Siam_in_1893,_During_Rama_V's_Reign.jpg

Sejarah Melayu: A History of the Malay Peninsula

Sejarah Melayu: A History of the Malay Peninsula

www.sabrizain.org

Other sources are various online maps and generic geography

Honestly, post your 42-location map, if only for the devs to compare. I think we should worry about accuracy and granularity, and the devs should worry about balancing too many locations, etc.

 

[phantasmAgaric]

If the Orang Asli are a society of POPs (which I still think you should call stateless societies!), I would think that the Orang Rimba and Dayak groups like the Ngaju, Ma'anyan, Iban, etc. should be too. Their dynamics as inland forest people's versus trading and agricultural settled kingdoms are pretty much identical.

 

[Roger Corominas]

I hope you add an event of Islamization for this region, might be the most succesful Islamization in the game's time frame. Some content, maybe a situation?

Yes, I would like to have something for that too.

 

[Thorum]

Where is the Orangutan society of pops?

Hoping that that was a sincere question, from wiki :

 

[conqueror101]

Oceanic next, I guess, when we hit America, we are going to go west-east. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either.

 

[YashaCarry]

Oh god, Oceania’s next?

I need to prep my feedback on New Zealand and Fiji besides my current Polynesia stuff…

 

[eddin2]

First of all, great work, as usual.

I have only 2 questions.

First is about SOP, is this area really that low on them? I would think there would be a lot of them, or maybe you made most of tribes in the area playable tags, so there's not much left for SOP.

2nd question, already mentioned, is about spices. As others stated, having all spices as one Raw good, isn't happiest solution for game heavily revolving around trade, exploration and conquest, all in search for resources and wealth.

It is possible to have an event or something similar to give bonus on raw good production in one location or area (like in EU4), but, when it comes to spices, it would mean to much of these events and locations across the map, to adequatelly represent all historical locations producing certain spices. I think having several different raw goods instead of one generic, would be better from historic, and gameplay perspective.

Even though they have common denominator, they belong not only to lot of different plants, lot of them totally unrelated, but a different part of the plant used as spice.

At least most important and most expensive spices during the games timeframe, should be represented as it's own raw good.

Keep up the great work!

 

[Mef]

Honestly, post your 42-location map, if only for the devs to compare. I think we should worry about accuracy and granularity, and the devs should worry about balancing too many locations, etc.

This is the one I did initially, it doesn't include Satun in the north (so that's one more location).
I'd say this is the maximum possible location density that historical sources afford. Even then, some of the locations are just rivers rather than documented settlements of the time period.

 

[Tahami Tsunami]

I'll definitely need more time looking through everything on here!

I'm guessing that Lapulapu's island of Mactan is too small to be its own location correct?

A zoom-in around the Singapore area would be appreciated since it's a bit hard to make out.

Any chance we could see the stats of Maharani Gitarja and Gaja Mada if they're available?

It may not be intentional, but I for one am happy that we may start seeing maps for the Americas around the time of Thanksgiving!

 

[yusufho]

Could you please add North Sentinel Island and allow us play as Sentinelese to conquer the world. lol

 

[Limyx826]

Malacca must be represented in the map as good harbour and events for it to showed up. It was a major regional power after 1400s until the Portuguese came and extremely influential in terms of culture to the Malays to this day.

 

[hewanmelata]

Dharmasraya is present as the Melayu kingdom, with indeed Mauli as their dynasty. Siguntur is another polity.

well, we have problem then.

Malay kingdom and Dhamasraya kingdom is actually the same kingdom, so that's actually correct. but again, the capital is in the wrong place. They should rule more of West Sumatra.

I'm really wondering where this decision to use the name Siguntur came from.

As far as I can tell, we don't even have any real evidence that such polity existed during that age of time. no text, no inscription.
I did a quick search and come with no real evidence of their existence except for some blog with claims.
And all the kings that Siguntur claimed to had is just basically all the Dhamasraya/Malay kings.

it feels very arbitrary to me, but I guess if for in-game narration another "Minang" entity should exist, then yeah okay I guess, would be less misleading to call them something like Minang Chiefdoms instead.

Also funnily enough, Siguntur was apparently located exactly in the in-game location of Dhamasraya.
And real world Siguntur actually located in Dhamasraya as well.