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Tinto Maps #28 - 29th of November 2024 - North America

Hello everybody, and welcome one more Friday to Tinto Maps, the place to be for map lovers! Today we will be looking at North America, which is very handy, as we can deliver some Thanksgiving turkey maps to our friends from the USA (and Canada)!

But before I get started, let me have a word on some (shameless) promotion. You may know that we in Paradox Tinto have also been in charge of Europa Universalis IV in the past few years. Well, I just want to let you know that there’s currently an ongoing sale on the game, with several discounts on diverse packages, of which outstands the hefty Ultimate Bundle, which includes all the DLCs developed and released by Tinto in the past 3 years (Leviathan, Origins, Lions of the North, Domination, King of Kings, and Winds of Change), and a whole bunch of the older ones. I’m saying this as you may want to support the ongoing development of Project Caesar this way! Here you may find more detailed information, and all the relevant links: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...toria-bundle-up-for-this-autumn-sale.1718042/

And now, let’s move from the Black Friday sales to proper Tinto Maps Friday!

Countries & Societies of Pops:
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For today’s Tinto Maps, we thought it would be a good idea to show both the land-owning countries and the SoPs. As I commented last week, we’re trying to follow consistent criteria to categorize countries and societies. This is our current proposal for North America, with Cahokia and some Pueblo people being the only regular countries in 1337, surrounded by numerous SoPs. I’m not bothering to share the Dynasty mapmode, as we don’t have any clue about them, and they’re auto-generated.

However, we have been reading and considering the feedback we received last week, in the Tinto Maps for Oceania, so we want to let you know that this is our current design proposal and that we want to hear from you what are your expectations regarding the countries that you would consider landed in 1337*, and also which countries you’d like to play with in this region, either as landed, or as a SoP.

As you may already know, our commitment is to make Project Caesar a great, fun game with your help, and we greatly appreciate the feedback we receive from you in that regard.

* This is already quite tricky, as most of our information only comes from post-1500s accounts when the native societies were already looking very different from two centuries ago. Eg.: The first reports made by Hernando de Soto about the Coosa Chiefom around 1540 points it out to be organized in a way that we’d consider it a Tribal land-owning tag, as confirmed by archaeology. However, that polity was not organized at that level of complexity in 1337, as there isn’t any contemporary data comparable to that of Cahokia. And some decades after the encounter with de Soto and some other European explorers, the mix of diseases had made the Chiefdom collapse, being more akin to what a SoP would be. This type of complex historical dynamism is what makes it so difficult to make the right call for the situation in 1337, and also for us to develop with our current game systems the proper mechanics that would be needed for SoPs to be fully playable (and not just barely half-baked).


Locations:
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Plenty of locations, at the end of the day, are a big sub-continent… You may notice that we’ve tried to use as many native names as possible, although sometimes, we’ve failed to achieve that. Any suggestions regarding equivalences of Native and Post-Colonial will be very much appreciated, as this is a huge task to do properly!

Provinces:
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Areas:
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Areas… And with them, an interesting question that we’d like you to answer: Which design and style do you prefer, that of the East Coast, more based on the Colonial and Post-Colonial borders? Or the one for the Midwest and the Pacific Coast, more based on geography, and less related to attached to modern states? Just let us know!

Terrain:
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Some comments:
  • Most climates are portrayed in NA, from Arctic to Arid.
  • The Rocky Mountains are rocky!
  • Regarding vegetation, we wanted to portray the forest cover in 1337, which is tricky, and that’s why some areas may look too homogeneous. Any suggestions are welcome!

Development:
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Not a very well-developed region in 1337…

Natural Harbors:
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Cultures:
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Lots of cultural diversity in NA!

Languages:
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And the languages of those cultures!

Religions:
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We have a mixed bag here: On the one hand, Eastern and Northern religions look more like the design we’re aiming to achieve, while on the other, to the south, you can find the splitter animist religions based on cultures that we now want to group into bigger religions, more akin to the northern areas.

Raw Materials:
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Wild Game, Fish, and Fur are king in this region! But we are also portraying the ‘three sisters’ (maize, beans, squash), the agricultural base for many of the native American societies, using Maize, Legumes (beans), and Fruit (squash). Cotton is also present in the south, as it was also native to the region (although the modern variant comes from a crossing with the ‘Old World’ one), and there are also mineral resources present here and there.

Markets:
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Two markets are present in 1337, one in Cahokia, and another in the Pueblo land.

Population:
Broken map! But as this is an interesting topic to discuss, these are the current numbers we’ve got in the region:
  • Continent:
    • 20.487M in America (continent)
  • Sub-continents:
    • 10.265M in North and Central America (we have a pending task to divide them into two different sub-continents)
    • 10.222M in South America
  • Regions (roughly 1.5M):
    • 162K in Canada
    • 1.135M in the East Coast
    • 142K in Louisiana
    • 154K in the West Coast
    • 43,260 in Alaska

And that’s all for today! There won't be a Tinto Maps next week, as it's a bank holiday in Spain (as I was kindly reminded in a feedback post, you're great, people!), so the next one will be Central America on December 13th. But, before that, we will post the Tinto Maps Feedback review for Russia on Monday, December 9th. Cheers!
 
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In regards to colonization, will project Caesar accurately represent british colonization by having seperate tags for say, Connecticut or Rhode Island, rather than merely just oversimplifying it and saying “13 colonies”. Also will there be an event for the Mohegan to break off from the Pequot, something that historically happened?
Also also (specifically cause I live in CT) I feel like you guys may have oversimplified the cultures there you can probably add more cultures in between (I’ll share a map that I made based off some information)

Sorry I really want a super accurate Connecticut and the ability to play colonial Connecticut. (Sources are the second image).



Also forgot to mention this but some countries should be able to change their like woodlands as native cultures used tactical burning to like cultivate their environment.


@Pavía
We'd like to have both individual colonies and some kind of '13 Colonies' common colony and federation/confederation, so it's up to the player to choose.
 
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Theres a few tiny provinces next to big ones which looks messy, are those leftovers from an earlier version of the map? Should clean those up when you polish the continent :p
 
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I think "ceremonial" is a bizarre name for a religion wouldn't it be better to use another name? for example the name the Osage (the most likely descendants of the cahokians) used for "great spirit" or god: "Wah'kon-tah" that sounds like a really cool name
 
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Good map talk. Thanks for the breakdown.
 
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I'm mainly going to be focusing on the Nova Scotia region here. If there are any Nova Scotia or Mi'kmaw specialists, please feel free to step in. I'll take some of the easier ones for now.

First, will we know the dynamic names of locations at any point? I'm guessing the idea is to have Mi'kmaw names be the standard for this time period and have Anglicized/Francocized names for if the area is colonized by those respective colonial powers.

Is there any chance of getting a zoomed and higher-res map of the location map of Nova Scotia? Some of the names are a bit small to make out.

Here's a map that might be useful if you haven't already seen it. It's a map of Mi'kmaw place names. https://placenames.mapdev.ca/

For the Location map, you might want to change these Anglicized names to Mi'kmaw ones and make the Anglicized ones dynamic names:
"Pictou" -> "Piktuk"
"Canso" -> "Qamso'q"

For the location to the west of Shubenacadie, I think the name of should be "Kennetcook"

That's all I'm able to make out there for now.

For the Provinces map, I'd make these changes:

"Epexiwitk" -> "Epekwitk"
"Agg Piktuk" -> "Piktuk" (Epekwitk aq Piktuk was a Mi'kmaw district that encompassed both Prince Edward Island and Pictou, so including "Agg"/"Aq" feels a bit awkward)

For the Area map, if we're going to be using "New Brunswick" for the area that constitutes modern day New Brunswick, it feels a little odd to be using "Acadia" for the area that constitutes modern day Nova Scotia, considering that much of the French colony of Acadia spanned New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and parts of Maine. I'd lean more towards just using "Nova Scotia" as the name for that area. On that topic, what area does Prince Edward Island belong to?

Moving onto natural harbours, I'm happy that the Halifax and Yarmouth harbours are present and prominent. The Canso area should probably have a small natural harbour (it was an important harbour for fisherman and fur traders), and there should probably be natural harbours to represent the Port Royal/Annapolis Harbour and the Sydney Harbour. Also, in the blue circle I made, is the natural harbour here supposed to represent Yarmouth Harbour? If so, then the natural harbour should really be located in the location to the west of it, as that's where Yarmouth is. If not, is it supposed to represent Shag Harbour (still a harbour, but I think less important historically than Yarmouth Harbour is)

1732893226924.png


Finally, for the raw materials, fish is definitely a dominant good in the area, but there are some other natural resources that might have been overlooked. Annapolis/Port Royal was an important agricultural center as early as 1609. Cape Breton is a famous mining region for coal and steel in the late 1700's. The Cobequid region has a large quantity of iron ore (though, historically, the area wasn't mined until the 1800's, so maybe outside the purview of this game.) Also, Nova Scotia has a massive amount of forests, so lumber has always been an important export. It's not all just fish! ;)

I think that's all I've got for now. I might be able to add more if I can get that zoomed and hi-res location map.

Thanks!
 

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We'd like to have both individual colonies and some kind of '13 Colonies' common colony and federation/confederation, so it's up to the player to choose.
Aight cool, though tbh the British administratively never really had a common policy on the colonies until after the revolution; Florida (which was controlled by the British at the time) or Quebec could’ve broken away (as they were invited to the congress) and made the like “15 colonies”


Forgor to add this but some Florida tags should prob be kingdoms
 
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The issue with colonial borders for the US in particular is that US state borders are ugly, arbitrary and nonsensical. I don't think players should be forced to remake such aberration to good taste.

You could say the same thing about borders everywhere else in the world. Why is it only an issue here?
 
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You're missing a capital letter in the Chawasha location.

And it seems a cat walked on your keyboard here:

View attachment 1223653

[Is it some kind of a spelling in a native language? But why, when all the other areas' names around the world are in English?]
1. Fixed.
2. Taken from the Official Alaska State Website:

The name "Alaska" is derived from the Aleut "alaxsxaq", meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed". It is also known as "Alyeska", the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root.
 
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For the love of God, please have the borders follow actual geography and native populations. That would be preferable.

I think this would be really complicated, but its an idea - maybe this could be a game start decision - you can choose to have have areas / provinces based on actual geography, or adversely, what the colonists drew up. For the New World in general. Or you can make this an in-game decision for the colonists on how to draw the borders.
 
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These are our current (Spanish-centric) standards, which we're trying to make as viable as possible in the rest of the world:
Thanks. So another question: how do you deal with locations with multiple harbors? Do two Palma de Majorcas add up to a Sevilla, do you go with the best harbor, or something in between?
 
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What do wastelands actually represent?

In Eurasia, the northern wastelands are reserved for areas of permafrost. Canada seems to just have them not only everywhere with permafrost, and not only everywhere with a subarctic climate, but also across most of the country's continental regions as well.

What does the wasteland in southern Nova Scotia represent? What do the wastelands a mile from the north shore of the great lakes represent? In southern Quebec where the vineyards are? Are these places too far from a navigable river for Europeans to bother settling there, or just forests that are very thick?
Non-livable or non-crossable (by an army) areas.
 
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Some feedback on geography of Michigan primarily and some of the rest of the Great Lakes area as a whole.

1. I think there should be some scattered wetlands in the area to better represent a lot of the terrain that is currently just forested flatland. Trying to get pre-colonization maps of wetlands is tough, but here's a little info on Michigan: https://mnfi.anr.msu.edu/reports/MNFI-Report-1996-03.pdf
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So ~a third of the Upper Peninsula with a somewhat concentrated location in the east and central areas that are currently just flatlands.

Ontario, similarly, is hills and flatland despite having large areas of swampy terrain. Here is a modern map that shows a lot of areas that are >50% wetland

Or this modern map of Minnesota that shows a significant amount of wetland in the north

2. There are already a lot of natural harbors in NA, so I understand not wanting to add too many, but it's also a huge geographical advantage much of the US has. In the Great Lakes, specifically, I'd argue that certain areas like west Michigan(see things like Muskegon Lake and Grand Haven) as well as protected areas elsewhere such as Green Bay or Duluth.

3. Keweenaw's resource should 100% be copper rather than iron. Yes, that area has iron too, but copper was the signature resource and used by the original inhabitants before the Europeans showed up as it was readily available and one of the rare sources of pure copper in the world. According to this, it was the first known metalworking site in North America.
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For the Provence and area map modes I think it should be more natural based, however I think the locations should allow historical colonial border as at the end of the day this is a map game and many of us enjoy recreating historical empires and with the granularity it should be possible to have both.
 
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Is it possible to have a more zoomed in map of southern Québec, please? The names are not lisible for locations in this area.
IMG_0904.jpeg
 
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Fairly disappointed with the lack of SoPs in the West, Canada especially it's also making me wonder how the Great Plains polities are going to work

That said I'll have to look up some sources but the salmon run towns of the Northwest Pacific from Vancouver Island and the Mainland up to Haida Gwaii absolutely fulfill the requirements to be SoPs

I'm a hardliner for geographical borders, there's a 0% chance the game ends up going in a direction that leads to the creation of the thirteen colonies as they were historically anyway. I think it's limiting to both colonial and native gameplay except for games that are specifically trying to replicate the exact history of the US. Geographical borders look better but also inform gameplay to more closely match the concerns of all involved parties at the time

Imo the same is true for the national border, there was a much longer part of history to the end date where colonial claims ignored that border than followed it
 
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Areas:
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Areas… And with them, an interesting question that we’d like you to answer: Which design and style do you prefer, that of the East Coast, more based on the Colonial and Post-Colonial borders? Or the one for the Midwest and the Pacific Coast, more based on geography, and less related to attached to modern states? Just let us know!

I think I'd prefer the East Coast colonial and post-colonial borders, since ultimately the Europeans will be colonizing that area at some point during the game's timeframe. Also, if we are to ever to form the United States, it would seem a better idea to have the colony footprint already there.

Could you provide a rivers map mode for the East Coast? In particular, I'm curious to see how Tinto has drawn the Allegheny, Ohio, and Monongahela rivers. I live in Western Pennsylvania (or Westsylvania, according to the area maps shared today). HOI4 has all three rivers, with the confluence in Pittsburgh, but Victoria 3 only has the Allegheny and the Ohio, and the Mon is missing.

So, I guess I'm respectfully requesting if you could please consider including all three rivers for Project Caesar, if you haven't done so already. Fort Pitt just wouldn't be the same without them. :)
 
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