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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:
Countries.png

SoPs.png

SoPs2.png

SoPs3.png

SoPs4.png

SoPs5.png
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:
Locations.png

Locations2.png

Locations3.png

Locations4.png

Locations5.png

Locations6.png

Locations7.png

Locations8.png

Locations9.png

Locations10.png
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:
Provinces.png

Provinces2.png

Provinces3.png


Areas:
Areas.png

Areas2.png

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:
Climate.png

Topography.png

Topography2.png

Vegetation.png

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:
Development.png

Not a very well-developed region in 1337…

Natural Harbors:
Harbors EC.png

Harbors WC.png

Harbors3.png


Cultures:
Cultures.png

Cultures1.png

Cultures2.png

Cultures3.png

Lots of cultural diversity in NA!

Languages:
Languages.png

And the languages of those cultures!

Religions:
Religions.png

Religions2.png

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:
Raw Materials.png

Raw Materials 2.png

Raw Materials3.png

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:
Markets.png

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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I know plenty of people have voiced the same concern, but I really rather hope they get rid of the straight line USA colonial borders. They really would lessen my immersion, and frankly feel inconsistent with the rest of the game. I also feel its a bit lazy, when some creativity could be used to come up with interesting and historically plausible province/region shapes, rather than backdating colonial charter borders. I'd be okay if they were roughly in the shape of modern US state borders, as long as there are no straight lines, and the sizes and shapes make sense geographically to belong to one region.
 
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A lot of Resource Recommendations
RGO-wise a lot of North America doesn’t feel like it’s worth colonizing, at least compared to resource diverse Central and South America.
This is exactly why North America wasn't colonized in the 1500s. That's historical accuracy, not a bug!

That said, I do like the idea of being able to discover resources (especially minerals) that physically did exist in an area, even if they weren't exploited historically until later.

Great research on the all the resources!
 
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Just looking at these maps again, and shouldn't southwest Erie have a bunch of wetland? Has that been brought up?
There should definitely be alot more wetlands in general, including the Great Black Swamp which I believe is what you're referencing. Here's a post I made previously where I remade the whole continental US from the ground up, which does include the Great Black Swamp along with many more now extinct wetlands.
 
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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:
View attachment 1223538
View attachment 1223539
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:
View attachment 1223545
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:
View attachment 1223555
View attachment 1223556
View attachment 1223557

Areas:
View attachment 1223558
View attachment 1223559
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:
View attachment 1223560
View attachment 1223561
View attachment 1223562
View attachment 1223563
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:
View attachment 1223565
Not a very well-developed region in 1337…

Natural Harbors:
View attachment 1223566
View attachment 1223567
View attachment 1223568

Cultures:
View attachment 1223569
View attachment 1223570
View attachment 1223571
View attachment 1223572
Lots of cultural diversity in NA!

Languages:
View attachment 1223573
And the languages of those cultures!

Religions:
View attachment 1223574
View attachment 1223575
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:
View attachment 1223576
View attachment 1223577
View attachment 1223578
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:
View attachment 1223579
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!
Belated suggestion, but please split the Chumash tile into 2 tiles, Chumash (northern) and Tovaangar (southern)
 
Basing this off the EU4 wiki, a tribal government is literally just a reskinned monarchy (don't see why the distinction is necessary at that point).
I do not think we have had an explanation of how tribal governments work in EU5.
Unless “tribal” represents more than a tribal monarchy and can support the model of Iroquoian governance, no, they should be republics.

I feel like Tribal/Feudal/etc. should be on a separate level than Republic/Monarchy/Theocracy/etc. to simulate the organization of a government on more levels than just what we see here and this tribal label on the tiers of monarchy, republic, and theocracy.
I haven't played EU4 so I'm not clear on how they worked in that game, but so far I agree that Tribal governments currently appear to be reskinned monarchies. According to Tinto Talks #2, Tribal countries use Tribal Cohesion and contribute to a country's name (could be along the lines of Minor Tribe, Tribe, Chiefdom, Paramount Chiefdom, etc.). The same Tinto Talk mentions how government types "...determines a fair bit of what type of mechanics you get access to. As an example, a Republic does not have access to royal marriages, and a Steppe Horde has a different view on how war, peace and conquest works compared to other types of countries." We'll absolutely need a better idea on what mechanics Tribal governments have access to, otherwise I'd agree that it could make more sense to have separate levels of government organization between Tribal/Feudal/etc. and Republic/Monarchy/Theocracy.

Perhaps this could be something that the devs could be considering when going over Tribal Settled Countries? If that's the case, the Iroquoians make sense as Republics, the Mississippians as Monarchies, and many of the Puebloans as Theocracies (if I recall correctly, chiefs were selected from religious societies and were more focused on religious matters while their assistants or war captains focused on war, etc.). Hopefully a Tinto Flavor on any Tribal country is coming soon to go over unique mechanics.
 
Thanks for sharing that, I've gotta dive deeper into these other Paradox games! It could offer some clues on what we could get and concepts that Tribal nations could have.

By the way, and maybe everyone else knew this already and I'm just late to the party, but I noticed in a screenshot from someone's stream of EU5 (one of the ones where the impassable terrain was the same as ocean tiles) that there's been at least some changes to the impassable locations! This is most noticeable in the Southeast where there doesn't seem to be as many in the Appalachian Mountains. It's more progress and hopefully they'll add impassable locations to the PNW like in your maps!


NA new impassable areas.jpg
 
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Personally, I think the woodland cultures that were village level polities should be ABCs that can be uprooted when a war is lost or people are starving and then move and settle somewhere else. Likewise, country or city polities should shatter into village polities in those circumstances or get absorbed into the invading nation. From what I know, that's what actually happened historically, not random cross continent migrations.
I also don't see much value in having them be in the same locations as each other. In reality, they wouldn't share villages, hunting grounds or farms. They just lived next to each other sometimes but weren't overlapping. I think it's an okay abstraction. Some locations in the HRE were probably owned by many polities too but they think it's okay to abstract them away as well. I don't see how the woodlands is different.
I can't believe I forgot to reply to this, this is a promising idea that I like a lot! What would the distinction be for determining a village level polity from a country/city level polity? Population, certain technologies, etc.?
 
I can't believe I forgot to reply to this, this is a promising idea that I like a lot! What would the distinction be for determining a village level polity from a country/city level polity? Population, certain technologies, etc.?
A village polity would be a self governing town like the Cherokee did. A city/country level polity would be larger than that. You'd have many different towns making governing decisions together (not necessarily democratic as I make it sound) like in New England, the Haudenosaunee, mississippians and later in history the wabanaki. Just like how in the HRE there were self governing villages, larger city states with surrounding villages and some places large enough to be countries like Brandenburg, it's mostly a matter of scale and which level decisions are made on. The Haudenosaunee when invading the Shawnee had to do diplomacy with each individual fort ancient town because each town governed itself but when attacking the Wyandottes, they fought the whole confederacy as one political unit.
 
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