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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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You missed the Cascade Mountain range, the second-highest mountain range in the US! It's mostly flatlands on the map, including Mount Baker, which is over 10,000 feet tall (2,000 feet higher than the Carpathians, for comparison). There should be impassable locations, a lot more mountains, and hills a few locations east of the Puget Sound. Vancouver Island should feature hills/mountains as well, since it's sort of an extension of the Cascades, and is 7,200 feet tall at its highest elevation. The Cascade foothills meet the sea starting north of the Skagit location. There's also a cluster of mountains on the Olympic Peninsula. Even today there are no roads that go directly across it, the roads go the entire length of the coastline to avoid the mountains.

Edit: Here's Google Maps' relief map of the area:
1732892836712.png


Also, this is a small thing, but I see there's a stretch of Continental climate instead of Oceanic in Washington bordering the Puget Sound around the Snohomish location. The climate is more or less the same the whole coast of the Puget Sound--not-too-hot summers, not-too-cold winters, lots of light rainfall, less than a foot of snow a year typically. The climate only becomes Continental in Washington east of the Cascades, because the mountains prevent the moisture from the Puget Sound from moderating the temperature. I checked the Koppen Climate Classification map on Wikipedia as well and they have it listed as Csb, which I think is Oceanic in PC terms anyways.

Super pumped the Great Lakes are navigable, can't wait to build the Spanish Armada in Lake Erie
 
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A few questions
1 - What time period are you try to present?
2 - Did you intentionally include any anachronisms on the map?
3 - Are you open to adding more locations, cultures and tags (and could you give us an approximate percentage if so)?
4 - Do you have a preferred way of dealing with areas where we do not know the name and culture of the people living there during the period?
 
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Also, I'm fully in favor of following more colonial borders. However, I really dislike straight lines unlike US/British colonials, so if possible I'd like it more if you took the Iberian way of drawing borders (more geographical, less geodesical). An example from an age long past:

9ySxWZ1.png

"bro this sucks" yeah this was a suggestion map of mine from before the Origins DLC, so it doesn't even have the Appalachian wastelands etc. But take Texas:

1732890781392.png


There aren't any straight lines here, but you can *see* the overall form of the state. Similarly, there's no Oklahoma Panhandle because it'd look extremely silly in EU4; the panhandle could be there in EU5 but just as the locations, with the entire panhandle being part of a geographical province/area.

And what is going on with Texas/Natahende lmao.
 
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Are the names of the areas just because you play a certain, presumably European, country, or is Virginia always Virginia, even if you play Cahokia, for example? Do they also have any endonymogical names? Or names not referencing a certain European monarch?
They're static.
 
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I think the current setup is actually pretty good for areas. My main issue with "natural areas" is that I assume that means we couldn't have stuff like colonies that actually match up with the areas, right? So we'd be stuck with just "The Thirteen Colonies" rather than bespoke colonies for the future states. I'd prefer that personally. But out west where that's not as big a concern for the time period, go crazy and have fun. Of course, if colonies are not tied to areas then it doesn't really matter I suppose.

For SoP's I'm a bit shocked at the lack of settled states. But, to be honest I almost want it to stay this way since it means we'll certainly get a really big and focused SoP North America DLC in the future, so it may be best to suffer now to reap the rewards of the north american tribes getting a DLC later. I am sure a few could be added though, like some of Cahokia's neighbors or something.
 
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Is it intentional to not have any SOPs at all in the Western parts of the continent? Most of the tribes there were less developed than many of the Eastern nations (to the best of our knowledge, as they were also documented far later), but they definitely seem deserving of the status of SOPs, especially the wealthy and densely populated coasts of Cascadia?

Some of their customs, like totems, play a huge part in how Native American culture is seen today
 
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Is this new information? I was under impression that game will end on same date as eu4 on 1821. But this is full 500 years :)
Not new, it was mentioned by Johan some months ago.
 
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I personally think that the current set-up of landed tags vs societies of pops is perfectly fine. I believe this is the correct way to go, especially given that societies of pops will eventually be playable.

I don't think the devs need to start landing different countries just for the sake of having playable tags there in 1.0 if societies of pops genuinely better represent the situation of the people there at the time.
 
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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
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 aking 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!
Big states can live as is, but those small ones like Massachusetts or Vermont or New Hampshire should be merged into at least New England area
 
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On the Pacific Northwest (and actually on all of the Americas) I find the channel Ancient Americas to be great source:


(Link to the specific Pacific Northwest populations)

He generally leaves his sources on the description, so that could be a great help as well.
 
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A really disappointing Tinto map.

1. Including Cahokia is a very debatable choice, especially as such a large state. Cahokia in 1337 had been actively dissolving for nearly a century already. Some claim the city was already completely abandoned by this point though more likely it was just a small town with little of the reach and power it had a couple centuries prior. Complete abandonment is not far off regardless.

2. To include Cahokia like this but not include its various successor states which at game start were at their peak, and would have been larger and more powerful than the dying shadow of Cahokia is a huge shame. If Cahokia makes the cut then states like Etowah and Moundville easily should as well despite the fact that they too would decline or even dissolve completely in the coming centuries.

3. A near-death Cahokia could make for a fun player alt-history with some flavor events of rebuilding the once great city/empire.

4. Using modern US state borders despite the fact that most of them are arbitrary lines that ignore the natural geographies which impacted settlement and colonization is a huge shame. Also, many of those state borders wouldn't even be established until after the game's timeframe.
 
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Because those straight lines are Vic3 and not EU5/PC...

Tinto Maps Africa also didn't have the colonial straight borders right? Leaving them out of the America would also be consistent.
Because colonization of Africa AKA The Scramble for Africa didn't occur until entirely after the game's timeframe

Colonization of America began in the late 1500's (Of course didn't truly establish until the early 1600's, but the 13 colonies borders/early US borders were most definitely established by 1836)
 
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I would leave the Areas with the colonial borders, just so that they work as the designated regions in which colonial nations are formed. This is in order to have some semblance of similarity in the middle and late game of the "historical" borders of colonial nations.

However, I would have these areas use some Native American name, either the most prominent group of the area or prominent Native settlement, etc., even if they have colonial borders, I get it wouldn't be 100% accurate, maybe not even 50% accurate, but could be an intermediate solution.

For example, the Area of Virginia could have its colonial borders (including West Virginia, btw) but be name Powhatan before it is colonised by England, or Florida, with its colonial borders, could be named Timucua and then it changes its name into Florida when colonised by Spain, etc.
 
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