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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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That's a nice continent you have there, Pop Societies. Shame if someone were to colonise it.

Also, all this wild game makes me wonder if you plan on really having dynamic RGOs, or if the gold available in these areas won't be discoverable in the game?
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Also, nice, Great Lakes Naval Battles :cool:

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As for the area question; I'd prefer a mixture of the two options, where the borders of areas have the vague shape of modern states, but not the outright geometric one. This way, you can simulate the colony divisions without making everything feel like it's adhering to an artifical IOTL system. The East Coast, therefore, is already pretty close to what I'd find ideal, but I'd make sure as much as possible that none of the lines go over major rivers or other geographical barriers, the way 'map-making by ruler' does.

Like, for example, stuff like this below, that was born out of American political inter-state rivalries and such, don't need to exist in the game and can instead go to more well-rounded state-like areas.

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PS:

@Pavía a friend who did research in Alaska in anticipation for this, asked me to point this out.


"Please make the North Slope flatland. The Brooks Range doesn't extend that far north. Local groups are Utkiavigmiut. And add Wainwright (Ulguniq or Kuuku) as a safe harbor."

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Hoo boy. Some people are going to be displeased with the paucity of settled countries this week. The sea lanes map showed a lot more settled countries, what made you guys change your mind?

If anything Cahokia was already in pretty significant decline by now while some other sites like Moundville and Etowah were at their peak iirc, would they not make better choices for settled states?
 
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Is there an event or similar for the emergence of some native countries that formed out of SOP:s during this time period, like the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee?
 
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Feedback on consolidating religions:

Maybe you could merge the Pueblo religions into one Katsina/Kachina religion?

Hohokam and Pima/O'odham religions (and maybe even cultures) could possibly be merged, O'odham is the most likely candidate for the ethnolinguistic identity of the Hohokam afaik. Tepehuan might also be merged into this, their autonyms are very similar to O'odham and they are linguistically related.

I'd fold Caddo and Atakapa religions into your "Ceremonial" religion - they're included in the following map. And I don't see any reason to split the Caddo people religiously, that just seems ahistoric. Afaik they're kinda a core part of the cult.

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Kitsai can probably be folded into your Wakanist religion.

Simultaneously having 'Athabaskanist', 'Dene', and 'Dene Totemist' religions is silly. I'd merge Athabaskanist with Dene, given that the Dakelh and Chilcotin are Athabaskan groups like their neighbors, and I'd say stick with the name Dene for simplicity (plus it's the autonym). I'd try to find another name for 'Dene Totemist', as it covers Tlingit, Haida and Eyak peoples who are NOT Athabaskan/Dene and are more distantly related to them. Haida might not be related at all. They should also technically be separated out linguistically.

Probably Mayo and Yaqui religions can be merged.

The Yuman language family can maybe have one unified religion.
 
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Hoo boy. Some people are going to be displeased with the paucity of settled countries this week. The sea lanes map showed a lot more settled countries, what made you guys change your mind?

If anything Cahokia was already in pretty significant decline by now while some other sites like Moundville and Etowah were at their peak iirc, would they not make better choices for settled states?
1. Very early design, when we didn't even have SoPs yet implemented, that was pending a first review pass (and after this Tinto Maps, it will receive a second).
2. Any sources of information for other cultures would be helpful. And yes, we'd like to portray the decline of Cahokia on a certain way, although it would be tricky without proper playable SoP mechanics.
 
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Is there an event or similar for the emergence of some native countries that formed out of SOP:s during this time period, like the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee?
Not yet.
 
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Okay since almost all of colonizable lands (Africa, Americas, Oceania) is either empty or SoP’s, can we remove the ability for countries to colonize other settled nation’s locations when they have high power projection?

As Inca and Aztecs were conquered instead of being colonized and colonizing Europe etc is kinda funny as high power projection country will be able to colonize its neighbours confirmed by Johan in one of
the comment last week/s

I dont know why we are able to colonize owned locations when there are less
Settled tags than eu4 anyway (and most are SoP so not a location based tag) , at first hearing I though it would be due to more native tags, but it is cetrainly not the case after seeing these maps, so pls tell us the reason of the addition of this mechanic?
 
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I'm gonna reply here, since it's probably better to keep it in this thread rather than in my separate thread:

2. There's a way for those goods to appear after the Columbian Exchange happen, yes. So we're aiming for goods already present in 1337 for the setup.

How will the game know where to place these goods then? Or at least where certain goods can and can't appear?

Also what is the stance on those raw materials that existed, like cotton or tobacco, but weren't widely produced like in later plantation economies?
Should they still be present to the same extent as they were later during colonial times?
 
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You've mispelled Dhegiha as Dheigha

Languages look better in the east than the west.
- you shouldn't leave a rump "Iroquoian" language including Erie and Laurentian
- Tutelo is closer to Ofo than to Catawba
- Penutian and Hokan are controversial hypotheses and best as language families, if that
- a "Yutonahua" language is just cursed - this needs to be broken down into Hopi, Pima(n), Corachol (including most of the Chichimeca). You could maybe create a Taracahitic language, but it would be preferable to break it down into Cahita, Tarahumara and Opata.
- Irritilas used Nahuatl only as a lingua franca, their native language was something else and the best guess is something close to Zacatec and Huichol.
- The position of Toboso and Jumano is also uncertain, but the best guess would be that they were Taracahitic languages that were particularly close to each other.

As for culture groups, the PNW is a situation where overlapping linguistic groups and cultural region groups might be a good idea given the similarities in art, totem poles, aquaculture, potlachs etc. That is, have a Salishan group for example, but also create a group separate from language relating only the coastal Salishans with the Wakashan, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida and the Penutian families of Oregon (but not California). Of course, if further research tells you that actually those various groups considered each other barbarians despite those clear similarities in culture, perhaps that idea can be shelved.

In the southeast, the Cherokee, Catawba and various isolates like Natchez and Tunica are probably better off grouped with their Muskogean neighbors despite being linguistically unrelated, as they did seem to form a culture area. Of course, the subgroups of each would be more closely related to one another (is such a thing possible in Project Caesar?)
 
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Also, regarding playable tags vs SoPs, I would want you to prioritise the gameplay experience for the European nations that will colonise these lands. I don't think there's a way to make native american tribes fun to play in a game like this. No point in filling the place with a bunch of tags that will inevitably just become annoying due to some overtuned features.
 
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Will settled and SOP gameplay overlap somehow?I'd imagine it would be pretty boring to play as Cahokia, being the only settled country in a vast area unless you can interact with all the SOP
 
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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!

The latter. Absolutely 110% the latter. The artificiality of seeing US states when every other region in the world follows a much more organic design is… eww.
 
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