Tinto Maps #30 - 20th of December 2024 - South America

[Pavía]

Hello and welcome to one Friday of map-loving! Today is special, as our 30th Tinto Maps, devoted to South America, is the last regular one. This implies that it won’t be the last, though - we plan to have two Tinto Maps Extra on December 27th and January 3rd, and then we will continue with the Tinto Maps Feedback posts as we progress with the map review.

But don’t worry, as on the first post-Christmas Friday, January 10th, I will start a new series, Tinto Flavor, in which we will show the content that we have been working on for Project Caesar. And I promise you, it’s a ton of content, so you will have to play the game in due time to discover it all…

Before we continue, one note: as we're covering a lot of lands today, don't be shy and ask for more detailed maps of the type you want wherever you want them, and I'll try to provide in the replies. And now, let’s start with the South American maps:

Countries

Most of the countries that can be considered being at a State-wise level in 1337 are mostly concentrated in what is today Perú. We have famous ones, as the Chimu or Chincha, and you may also see a tiny country, Qusqu, which would later become the Inca Empire, the long-term goal while playing in the region.

Dynasties

SoPs

There are SoPs spread out all across the continent, making for a really interesting mix in the Peruvian area (again). We're already thinking about how to better visualize the coexistence of these two types of countries in the political layer, but it's going to take us some more time to get there.

Locations

One note: I'll talk a bit more in-depth about the design of the Brazilian locations if you scroll down, in the Terrain section.

Provinces

Areas

Terrain

There are huge geographical variations in South America, being one of the most diverse continents. One of the things I wanted to discuss is that we've tried to portray the Mata Atlântica, the original forest cover that was present in Brazil before the Portuguese colonized it, and a different type of land exploitation started. In this regard, we've been reading the feedback of the Brazilian community, and I want to say that our intention here is to portray the most realistic situation for 1337. That said, we've already internally discussed that we may reduce its scope, so it doesn't look so extreme, but we'd like to hear your opinions about it. And here you have one of the images that we used as a reference for it, so you get a good grasp of our intention:

Spoiler: Mata Atlantica

Development

Natural Harbors

Culture

The jewel of the crown in this region. We've tried to portray the Pre-Columbian cultural diversity of these lands as accurately as possible, and, well, here you have the results.

Languages

And the languages that group these cultures.

Religions

We've tried to do our best to group the cultural religions of South America into different groups, based on common believes, gods, rituals, etc. Let us know what do you think of them. Oh, also, the Inti religion has its own differentiate mechanics, which we'll explain in the future!

Raw Goods

Lots of different natural resources in South America. You may note that some are more common compared to other regions (such as Medicaments). We've also been tweaking the color of different resources, with the help of your feedback!

Markets

The green market is centered around Teyuna, and the red one is Chinchay.

Population
Some issues with the map of the region this week (sadly), so let's discuss the numbers. The total in the continent is 10.22M, divided this way:

• 1.66M in Colombia
• 1.2M in Brazil
• 5.07M in Andes
• 877K in Chaco
• 1.4M in La Plata

And that's all for today! We hope that you enjoyed the Tinto Maps series! We've definitely done, and it's also greatly helping us to make Project Caesar a much better game, with your help and feedback. Cheers!

 

[Pavía]

Been looking forward to this one for a long time as well. A big thank you to the devs for all your work so far!

1. What is the primary culture and court language of Cusco? I think they should be Aymara and Puquina respectively, based on Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerron Palomino’s work Las Lenguas de los Incas.
2. Aymara culture/language should be more widespread in southern and even central (as Jaqi) Peru. This paper and the book I listed in my first point both discuss this.
3. There should be Puquina minorities throughout the Tititcaca basin, but I assume this will come in the minority pass.

I will doubtlessly be working on location, culture, language and perhaps political map suggestions in the days and weeks to come. I will also say once again that the population seems low to me, even for conservative estimates.

1. Inka and Quechuan.
2. Noted.
3. Noted.

 

[Pavía]

How is gameplay going to work as Cusco, trying to form the Inca Empire, with so many uncolonized lands in the region? Honestly surprised about that.

Also the Muisca should technically have a few more subdivisions, such as Tundama and Iraca iirc.

They have some unique features, but it's pretty hardcore at this moment, TBH.

 

[Pavía]

Can we get a close-up of locations in the Falklands/South Georgia?

Will the Galapagos be covered in a later Tinto Maps extra?

Eventually...

 

[Pavía]

For the Colonies:will there be some kind of decision to unify all colonies of the same Culture group/Language after independence into one big country?Kind of like what Colombia wanted to do/what the US could have done with the Canadian colonies,maybe the name could be decided by the player after clicking the decision

Could be a thing, bookmarking.

 

[Pavía]

can't believe there's only 5.07 people in the andes smh

Can I interact with the 5 individuals (and I assume a baby?) in the Andes?

Uff, that population numbers in America are difficult, indeed...

Corrected, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

I'm not sure if this applied only to the incan's, or to all of pre incan Peru and the Andes. But again citing the book 1491, there appears to be a decent amount of evidence that shows that the incans not only lacked money as a thing. But also had no markets either.

I'm curious how this will be handled. Are there any plans for dealing with this? Or is it one of those situations where being completely 100% historically accurate is something that comes at two big of a conceptual cost?

We need to keep the base game mechanics for this, so it needs to be abstracted.

 

[Pavía]

Now that the Tinto Maps are drawing to a close, would it be possible to know how base trade goods are distributed? (Like, 7.23% of all locations have fish, 1.74% have marble, etc; or 827 locations have fish, etc). Would be an interesting insight into the game's economy.

(I'll make the script to extract that info if that's all it takes, if you can show what location description files look like )

Potentially, maybe...

 

[Pavía]

Could you show us the full world map, now that all regions have been revealed?

Eventually...

 

[Pavía]

That Chinchay market is huuuge. Does that present any issues to the Andean tags?

There's a bug there that we need to fix, that's why it covers so much land.

 

[Pavía]

On Brazillian terrain, that's how the Mata Atlântica looks: View attachment 1233683

All those forest tiles should be converted to jungle.
And this is how the Cerrado, the Brazillian Savanah, can look like:

View attachment 1233686

I would hardly call this Grasslands. Though this image is not as stereotypical of the Cerrado as the previous one is to the Mata Atlântica, so I would need to research more to be able to say exactly which provinces should be converted from Grasslands into Forest/Woods.


Could we have a closer look on the terrain map for the Brazillian Northeast? I should be able to provide a more detailed feedback on that one.

Here you are:

 

[Pavía]

Can you at least give us a screenshot of the whole continent in political map mode?

 

[Pavía]

Also, hopefully the dynamic raw goods are already implemented, as seeing São Salvador da Bahia loc producing sand is... weird, to say the least.

Yes, it already is.

 

[Pavía]

What was the source for climate map of Brazil?

Köppen-Trewartha, as usual. We're changing it in the reviewed regions to the 1901-1925 one, IIRC, as suggested by @Sulphurologist , as it's closer to the climate in 1337.

 

[Pavía]

What are the religions in the Andean group?

What do you mean?

 

[Pavía]

As we all thought, you had the Mata Atlantica in mind when you made those weird wastelands in Brazil.

I'm at work and honestly I have no definite sources to show so what I'll say will feel vibes-based, but: this is a terrible approach imo. Those areas had native populations, and most of them were perfectly colonizable by the Portuguese; many of those places weren't colonized until the XIX century not because of, say, Brazilian malaria killing the whites, but rather due to a mix of 1) Crown restrictions on colonization (east/south of Minas Gerais being the biggest victim), 2) the ferocity of the local natives after they learned of the settlers' cruelty (this was not an absolute deterrent ofc), and 3) the country just being so damn big and rich there were other easier areas to exploit. But the colonizers knew about those "empty" areas, they would cross them in travels and expeditions; they just did not settle them. I've made a map showing this in my suggestion thread:

Most areas in black are NOT in the Mata Atlântica region. Most of them are in the middle of the country because, again, it's too damn big. The frontier was simply enormous, we never had that many people (to this day the country is "sparsely" populated, only 23.8 people/km²). That, aligned with political/strategic issues (avoiding new smuggling lines from Minas Gerais, not colonizing the South beyond Tordesillas, why bother with Goias when Minas Gerais already has gold) brought us this colonization pattern. Even the Amazon got settled relatively soon (but of course, only near the rivers; the map is misleading in that).

For reference, this is how my location map looked last time I updated my thread:

Spoiler: yeah I know I should overlay this over the Tinto map but this is just for illustrating the post

View attachment 1233688

I do strongly believe this is a better approach. We do not need that many wastelands, the eastern wastelands should be restricted to the Serra do Mar/mar de morros (PT-BR only). What I would be more liberal with is the Amazon, however, precisely because we did not get much/any settlements far from the rivers until much later on (and for this, I have this Native Vegetation map which could be used as a reference, although limited to 1500).

And that's only about the locations. I have no idea about cultures and tradegoods and whatnot lmao.

Great feedback, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

Not exactly related to the map, but is the unique style of Inca inheritance represented in some way? I think it's quite significant, since it was a major incentive for their rulers to go out and conquer other lands.

Yes!

 

[Pavía]

Also let me ask something else: was there any criteria in drawing the locations? I was cheeky and used the municipalities' borders themselves and imo it worked, but I don't know if you have super accurate maps for yours or just draw blobs that looked "good enough".

We use a mix of geographical, administrative, and cultural layers for regions such as Pre-Colonial Brazil.

 

[Pavía]

I have a question, arawak is the name of a culture/linguistic branch, not really a specific culture.
The few provinces with arawak culture are supposed to represent minor arawaks cultures while the major arawak cultures are named?

Yes, although I've already talked with my team, and we'll likely make it a bit more consistent when we review the region.

 

[Pavía]

When religions were first mentioned Johan said that there was an Andean religious group
View attachment 1233704

Ah! This has changed, and become a bit more complex. We may think of giving an update on this, in the near future.