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

[Pavía]

First off, i have to thank all the devs for their wonderful work and for being open to listening and taking seriously all the feedback being given.

Second is that, like for my fellow brazilians and south americans, this Tinto Map has been very underwhealming, for a couple of reasons:
1. The amount of locations is way lower than it should be, and the fact that almost half of Brasil is impassable terrain doesn't help either.
2. The arbitrary usage of Areas. I cannot comprehend why this decision was chosen, when North America was made to follow exact state lines. I'm not criticizing the devs, since i'm loving their work and the effort put into this game, but the arbitrarity of making the use of this Area format in SA when NA follows their irl state format.
3. The geographical and terrain maps, while not bad, could be better.
4. The naming of Areas and Province names, in some places is a bit weird, so i would love to see where the sources for the names came from.

Since i'm not form the regions affected by the impassable terrain (mostly Sudeste, Sul and Norte of Brasil) i won't dwell too much on them, since a lot of the comments here have done a wonderful job in giving better feedbacks than i can ever give. But i'll comment a bit on my region, the Nordeste, and more specificaly, my state, Ceará.

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While less affected by the impassable terrains, there are still some weird decisions:

1. The lack of granularity, in my opinion, is the main problem, as it affect the representation of cultures, terrain, borders and markets.
About that, i think the proposal made by the user Braziler, in the Brasil proposal Thread is very interesting and should be used as the main parameter for the re-drawing of Brazil, and i'm excited to see their proposal in this thread.

View attachment 1233844 View attachment 1233845View attachment 1233862
[Current Tinto Ceará Setup - Map of Ceará between the end of 17th and the start of 19th century - Map of Ceará during the 19th century]

2. On Ceará, the addition of some more locations to the north of the state is good, helps represent some important villages that began growing in importance during the 18th and 19th century (such as Acaraú, that should be a small relevance port, as it served to export goods that came from the enterport of Sobral coming from all of North Ceará and Piauí. Other ports should be Fortaleza, that would become very relevant during the end of the 18th century and 19th century with the start of the Cycle of Cotton in Brazil).

View attachment 1233859View attachment 1233882[Here's a map of the 18th century that shows some of the Cattle routes and points of interest (Also differentiate between "White/Colonizer Villas" and "Indigenous Villas" as well as a map of the colonization routes of the northeast, in black the "Sertão de Fora", of the Pernambucanos, and in red "Sertão de Dentro", of the Baianos.]

3. However, the lack of locations in the south of the state is noticeable (As well as in the neighbor states of Rio Grande do Norte and Paraíba):

-The south of the state being reduced to only two locations is, imo, a bad idea. The villas of Icó, Crato and Jardim were very important and relevant. With Icó growing from a small fortified settlement (to protect people from the attack of the indigenous Icós) to a relevant villa because of it nature as a enterpost for cattle routes and trade center for the travelers, it would be the first of the hinterlands of the Ceará during the 18th century.

-The region of the Valley of Cariri (named that way because of the indigenous Cariri people), in the south of Ceará, was first settled before the Dutch invasion, and the rumours of gold and gems in the region brought many people to the region, making some villages grow in importance such as Lavras da Manganbeira and Crato. However, like the Dutch before them, they didn't have any success in finding those riches. The region would, however, still become very populous and important because of the availeability of fresh water, fertile land and strategic location to cattle routes. So having gold and gems in that region may be incorrect, the better resource in that region would be agriculture of sugar-cane and subsistence farms of corn, beans, rice and cassava.

View attachment 1233888
[Map of the Evolution of villas/municípios of Ceará, with the leftmost one being close to the end date of Project Caesar.]

4. Another good that could be relevant for the region is Cotton as it historically took over as the main lucrative good in the region with the decline of Northeastern Cattle trade (because of the increasing success of cattle production in the South of Brasil, another important reason to have a look in those regions! However, both coexisted and complemented eachother, with cattle being fed the remains of the cotton plant after the harvest and using its excrements as fertilizer for the next cotton harvest). Cotton was produced in the Hill/Serras of the state, such as Baturité, Uruburetama, Meruoca, Pereiro and Aratanha, as well as the villas of Fortaleza, Aracati, Icó and Sobral.

I thank all the devs for the work and I hope they can use this feedback to help.


*edit1: Grammar

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My sources:
- História do Ceará by Airton de Farias 7º Edition - 2018 (Personal copy)
- Map Source (In PT-BR) - A Metrópole híbrida: Uma perspectiva histórica da urbanização de Fortaleza by Ricardo Alexandre Paiva
- Map Source 2 (In PT-BR) - Formação do território e evolução politico-administrativa: A questão dos limites municipais by Lana Mary Veloso de Pontes

Thanks for your kind words and feedback, this is exactly what we're looking for, both in the tone and in the sources given to us.

 

[Pavía]

The cerrado is further inland! Those Wastelands are Mata Atlantica, which is fertile soil.
Besides, even the Cerrado wouldn't be uninhabitable like the vast swaths of wasteland in the maps of project Caesar.

Facts:

Brazil's South and Southeast are the largest agricultural producers of Brazil, have the largest population and wealthiest economies. Making the South of Brazil a wasteland is unacceptable.

Look at the population density from the IBGE (Brazil's official Census from the government) of the Southern half of Brazil, right on the "wastelands" proposed by paradox. And it's not a new thing from the 20th century, the South of Brazil is populous when compared to the rest ever since the old times of the Capitanias Hereditárias, in the 16th century.

View attachment 1233906

One methodological note: 20th-century density maps are not always aligned with the population density of previous centuries. One case that I know very well, from my background: the region that is today Castilla y León in Spain was among the most densely populated in the Iberian Peninsula in the 14th and 15th centuries, but in the 21st century, it's among the less densely populated in entire Europe.

I am not saying that these maps are not useful at all, but that they need to be handled with care, as they might be misleading for the period covered in Project Caesar.

 

[Pavía]

Alright, then. Time to get to it...

I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS:

1.1 - Wastelands: I won't tire the point further, as I think the feedback is clear and other people can and have provided more detailed map proposals and sources, but the Atlantic Rainforest's wastelands should mostly go. They cover very much inhabited areas, historical routes, and reduce the location density of an important region of the country. I believe the Amazonian Rainforest's wastelands also warrant some limitation, at least along some of the Amazon's tributaries, and I am in favour of at least a corridor between the forest and the andean region.

1.2 - Societies of POPs: The Tupi-Guarani peoples were agriculturalists from their amazonian origins, could organise themselves plenty enough to wage war with one another and the europeans, and certainly had a chiefdom authority, at least (source in portuguese about the guarani specifically). With this in mind, I believe they fulfill enough criteria for every Tupi-Guarani culture to be represented in SoPs. Many of the conflicts in colonial history across the brazilian coast and the Platine Basin — such as the War of the Tamoyos (PT) or the War of the Seven Reductions — would likely not be a possibility without the stateless native populations being organised as such.
For the Jê peoples, the picture is more complicated — they are traditionally regarded as hunter-gatherers in this period, but, at least in Southern Brazil, they would move closer to their Guarani neighbours in organisation under the pressures of the times and archaeological evidence suggests they might have already been there, at least in terms of population density and permanent settlement, pre-contact (PT). I don't think there's a particularly strong argument for a SoP here at the start, however, and once more the apparent impossibility of SoPs to emerge during gameplay is unfortunate, as I think it'd work well in their case.

1.3 - The Cassava Question: The cassava is a important staple food in the tropics around the world today, being the third most-common source of carbs in these regions today due to it's resilience and adaptability to more marginal soils and decent micronutritional profile. It has reached these heights after being exported from South America to Asia and, more impactfully, Africa by portuguese traders. This story should ring some bells for europeans reading it, because it sounds quite like what the potato got up to in more temperate climates.
I understand if it simply does not make the cut as an independent raw good, but I urge the developers to at least consider the proposals for representing it as the potato trade good — it's a far better alternative to the legumes it's not even related to! They are both resilient tubers from South America which would become very successful subsistence crops in the Old World, and I believe this classification would help represent the Columbian Exchange even better — it's impacts in Subsaharan Africa could be properly represented, then. I think it would be a deep shame if it weren't represented at all, given the clear effort and intent to show the exchange of crops and goods between the New and Old Worlds.

1.4 - Languages: I think Tupi-Guarani at least shoud be split into, well... Tupi and Guarani. It's a very broad group of languages which are not generally mutually intelligible. I couldn't tell you much beyond that, alas, so perhaps the more linguistically-minded have better suggestions.

1.5. - Religions: I am generally very pleased with the splitting of Great Red Boarism Animism. However, I do think that the Kaingang/Kanhgág and Xokleng/Laklãnõ should not share the same religion with their Guarani neighbours. I do not have the anthropological chops to really put forth the argument that strongly, but these are decidedly unrelated groups of people, and the guarani are even relatively new to the region as they'd have migrated in, at the earliest, some 100 years ago at the start of the game. The southern Jê peoples, meanwhile, have likely inhabited these lands since the first century AC. The guarani are not such apt missionaries, I suspect. Even presently, I have gathered the impression these peoples have rather different cosmologies, though I haven't the experience or knowledge to really speak on specifics.

II. THE SPECIFIC BITS:

...Which is to say, Southern Brazil — I trust my compatriots will handle the rest.

2.1 - Locations: Lord Almighty, what have you done...

View attachment 1233920
Notable Colonial-Era Settlements - Violet: Pre-1700, Green: 1700-1750, Yellow: 1750-1800 — Large font settlements should all be present, in my view. Positions are rough, I know.

The would-be states of Paraná and Santa Catarina are largely consumed by the wastelands, and so is northern Rio Grande do Sul. This cannot do. Even if the region wasn't widely settled in the period, it remained an important source of conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns, and this sort of low-density is just sad-looking. Now, I'll refrain from offering strict borders for the locations, but the map above has settlements marked out — diamonds are portuguese settlements and circles spanish ones, with some jesuit reductions as crosses. There are admitedly not many, so some anachronistic settlements will likely have to be used. FleetingRain's excellent suggestion thread could be a good start for finding those, in my opinion, even if the modern borders obviously don't make much sense. There are several rivers that could be used, too, as seems to have already been the case in RS.
The fields of Guarapuava would not be formally settled by europeans in the game's timeframe, but as you can see the city is tentatively marked on the map as Koran-bang-rê, the Kaingang term for the area. I would prefer that to just calling the location "Kaingang", if that's what that location is supposed to be. Tentatively, "Agûarápuaba" could be used as the tupi-guarani name for it, as well, though it's technically from the Língua Geral.
For some other quick naming suggestions:

• Curitiba (Portuguese) - Kuri’ytyba (Tupi-Guarani)
• Castro (Portuguese) - Guarapiaba (Tupi-Guarani - name of a tribe, not a place)
• Ciudad Real del Guayrá (Castillian) - Guairá/Guaíra (Portuguese)
• Xetá (Tupi-Guaraní/Xetá) - Umuarama (Portuguese - later settlement, but it lines up well with the location if it isn't meant to be Guayrá)
• Apyrete (?) -> Meiembipe (Carijó name for the island of Santa Catarina)
• Tapes -> Porto dos Casais/Porto Alegre (Unless there's some other reason for that name, the actual town of Tapes would be in the location of "Icabaqua")

Several of the existing locations also seem to be missing diacritics — there are likely more I haven't noticed, and I haven't even noted the ones in the 'Guays or Argentina:
Jaguarao -> Jaguarão
Cangucu -> Canguçu
Ibicui -> Ibicuí
Ibirapuita -> Ibirapuitã
Jacui -> Jacuí
Carijo -> Carijó
Vacacai -> Vacacaí
Icabaqua -> Icabaquã
Laklano -> Laklãnõ
Xeta -> Xetá
Guaiana -> Gûaîanã/Guaianá (Old Tupi/Portuguese)

On another note, lots of rivers and tribes, I see. Amusingly, you've gotten the Carijós there twice — once in the usual portuguese from in RS and another further north as "Karai Yo".

2.2 - Cultures: I was very pleasantly surprised to see the Xetá on the map — though it's a bit unclear whether they'd have existed as a distinct identity in the 1300s, the fact of the matter is that we do not know much about them, alas. I don't think they should at all be removed, however — Heaven knows they've had enough of that already.
I'm glad to see the Kaingang/Kanhgág and Xokleng/Laklãnõ as separate, but related cultures. They are conflated, sometimes. Still, my main complaint with them is the simple fact that much of the territory they inhabit is occupied by wastelands in the current map.
I think the Carijós — I assume they're the pink-purple culture on the coast? — are being shown with too much restraint. They should really be present from roughly the current location of Mararaiama (?) south to Carijó itself, even if as a significant minority.
The Ava culture is a pretty chonky Guarani culture, but I think that's fair enough, especially since their migration south into the Platine Basin is still relatively recent in 1337.

2.3 - The Matter of Mate: I think that yerba-maté should be represented by tea, even if on only a few locations. It is a culturally significant product in both native and colonial culture, and though certainly far too regional to be it's own thing it'd be a shame if it was entirely absent. Economically, it was a good of some note and, in particular, was harvested and grown by the jesuit reductions for export. It would later — admitedly after the game's timeframe — play a significant role in the settling of the interior of Southern Brazil, even if as a third fiddle to cattle and coffee.

2.4 - Gold!: There is (some) gold in Southern Brazil! Although the Brazilian Gold Rush is mostly remembered in the context of Minas Gerais, the earliest significant gold mining in Brazil took place in what would become the state of Paraná (PT), though the precise date is somewhat controversial. Indeed, this is a big part of why the First Plateau of the state would be settled, and Curitiba in particular had it's start due to gold mining. Drying veins and the truly absurd deposits discovered further north would eventually leave this early rush thoroughly dead and buried, although, believe it or not, there is still some gold mining ongoing near Curitiba to this day (PT).
That's all to say Curitiba should have gold as it's trade good. Maybe it should run out eventually, but it should certainly have it.

III. CONCLUSION:

Brazil is big and I hope to have helped a tad.

I'm very happy that the developers over at Studio Tinto have been so willing to read, work, and change things in response to forumite feedback. Indeed, I think this game'll be great because of that, and it has been nothing short of wonderful to read the discussions and revelations on here. Thank you all for making it possible.

I'm sure we'll have lots to complain about the Tinto Flavour for colonial South America, too!

Very nice and informative feedback, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

Are there instances of armies with supply wagons and cannons crossing the Sahara from north to south?

Moroccan invasion of the Songhai Empire - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Not entirely sure if they were carrying cannons, but they had for sure gunpowder weapons and supply wagons carried by horses and camels.

 

[Pavía]

Topography review

Summary:

• This time I went 'freeform' here and there, where I think some Locations should be reshaped to follow the topography a bit closer.
  • E.g. Colombia's valley between the Cordillera Central and Oriental is currently non-existent, but in reality has flatlands all the way past Bogotá
  • Readjusted some mountain range edges in freehand drawing to more accurately approxcimate their map position.
• Some expansions of the Andes mountains
• Some reshuffling of Wetlands
• In Brazil a reshuffling of hills with plateaus
• Coastal Andes of North-Central Chile is significantly elevated above sea level (-> Plateaus)
• Some choices of Andes wastelands seem a bit odd to me (minor hills as impassable, while huge ranges are acessible)
  • I added a few imo essential ones, but most I leave up to interpretation.

General Topography

Tinto's Topography Current	Suggested Topography	Suggestions 'changelog'
View attachment 1234339	View attachment 1234340	View attachment 1234341
View attachment 1234352	View attachment 1234353	View attachment 1234354

Elevation & Terrain Ruggedness

• I'd like to bring up that above 2.5 km elevation, human physiology is stressed significantly. Only peoples that have lived here for centuries, and have an adapted physiology can have relatively normal life expectancy. For this reason, the purple indicated such places, and these in particular are over 4 km (!) in height.

Terrain Ruggedness (translated to Tinto's categories)	Expanded TRI, with indication of plateaus > 2.5 km	Digital Elevation with exaggerated color scheme
View attachment 1234342	View attachment 1234343	View attachment 1234344
View attachment 1234355	View attachment 1234356	View attachment 1234357

Wetlands

• Most of the wetlands occur in the wasteland areas. E.g. The Paraguay-Paraná Wetlands are fully located in the wastelands
• Argentina has a unique wetland-like region with an enormous amount of lakes, West of Buenos Aires

100 year-event Flood Risk	Global Wetlands and Lakes Database	PeatML: total percentage of Peatlands per km²
View attachment 1234347	View attachment 1234349	View attachment 1234350
View attachment 1234362	View attachment 1234363	View attachment 1234364

Great feedback, as usual, thanks!

 

[Mercurius Bugzy]

for heaven's sake remove that deadzone in there , the colonists literally turned that are to a farmable fully habitable land during the 1600s and there is 2 treads in here describing well how and why that area should be colonisable and not a dead zone .

remind you that north america's west stayed almost entirely a forest till the late 1700s early 1800s yet it doesnt have a single area turned to a deadzone except in the apalachian heights so WHY brazile have those giant parts forbidden ? i cant think of the logic at all

this is exactly why i told you that yemen should be linked to Oman too , because they expand in the 1600s while sweden dont expand north till much later but its sweden who have right to colonise its north but a whole arabic culture and nation located in between those 2 is considered a wasteland just because go figure.


View attachment 1233726

I have seen a lot of mentions of this and similar queries regarding how easily it was to colonise when the colonists arrived. granted I might be thinking too much in the spirit of EUIV, there could be better solutions mentioned that I just havent read yet and this could be painful to develop, but to me it would make sense to have any nearby peoples just have a decision akin to the siberian frontier decision in russia or the incan mission tree, make it more expensive than regular colonialisation but this way you can account for the problem where the start date is in the 14th century and all the information/census/research data is significantly more recent or to account for the dates you could make it so its passable/colonisable after you reach a specific tech/year. You could call it "terraforming" or something similar.

no terrain has to be impassable or passable 100% of the time/duration of the campaign.

 

[Pavía]

Overall pretty decent map, one of the biggest problems I see is the wild inconsistency in location size in some areas, particularly in Mato Grosso/ParaguayView attachment 1234485

It greatly depends on the information available. We've been trying to follow here the 3:1 rule (a location cannot be more than 3 times bigger than any of the neighboring ones), but we will double-check, nonetheless.

 

[Pavía]

Chilean wine experienced a "boom" in the 19th century, after the many European grape varieties were introduced. For much of Chilean history, the País grape was predominant.

Flavor involving Chilean wine is something that could be done in Victoria 3, not in the Not-Eu5 timeframe.

While your point is accurate, historically speaking, I think it rises a deeper feedback discussion regarding the what-if nature of this game.

Indeed those wine varieties arrived in the 19th century. But they 'could' have also arrived earlier, from 1700 onwards. Because it was in 1700 that the House of Bourbon took power in Spain, greatly opening trade and transit of goods between the Iberian colonies and the rest of Europe, particularly after the Free Trade agreements of the 1760s. Free trade in the colonies was something the Habsburg tried to prevent as they maintained a monopoly on the American products.

So historically speaking, events for the introduction of certain goods in colonial nations could happen randomly starting in the 18th century. 'Historically'.
But ingame, what if the Bourbons sit in the Spanish throne earlier? Or what if Spain picks a different colonial policy from the beginning, or changes it during the game? Then these types of historical events could definitely trigger at different dates.

In the particular wine example we are discussing, the event occurred because the climatic conditions of this area in Chile were particularly suited for European wine varieties, not because it was the 19th century per se.
Many events in the game could occur earlier or later, depending more on if their necessary conditions are met, than fixed dates, and of course with a level of randomness in the activation probability.

The New World is a complex area in terms of events and flavor, really. These nations depend on both their own conditions and also greatly on conditions regarding whatever has happened in Europe. I think a fair amount of lienancy regarding specific dates is required, and more attention to specific triggers.

There will be a way to make wine cultivation possible in Chile.

 

[DerRitter]

A lot of possible things to say in this one. I will mainly focus on what I know of; Chile.

Mapuche (and varieties)

Chile was surely in many ways, one of the most conflictive regions across the period. This however, did not begin with the arrival of the Spaniards.
The most extensive and populous indigenous culture to this day remains the Mapuche, in there multiple regional varieties. While the is evidence of their presence up to the Limarí river, they were a majority in general, between the Aconcagua River (a bit north of Valparaíso) and Chiloé.

Most mapuche cultures called themselves just "che" or people. The specific regional varieties thus are named in relativistic terms. Pikunche (northern people), Huilliche (southern people) for instance. In this sense, I would recommend separating them in Pikunche, down until Chillán (it can be understood that these were the main mapuche group that was integrated in the historial chilean colony, and the main indigenous ancestry of modern chilean mestizos). Mapuche would be south from Pikunche up until the start of Huilliche, and Huilliche should extern to Chiloé, were it ends in contact with Chono (not such thing as Guaiteco culture). There also exists the term Cunco, which really corresponds to the result of contact between Huilliche and Chono cultures, and should not really exist at start.

In terms of organization and statedom, the Mapuche were quite curious in this regard. They existed as a series of separate local chiefdoms, well aware of the existence of each other, with different tiers of organization between family lands (Rukas joining into a Lof) up to more extensive chiefdoms (Lofs joining into a Lebo) , unified by their religions altars as jurisdictions (a Rehue). In most circunstances, they ruled themselves as a patchwork of uncoordinated chiefdoms. During wartime, however, the mapuche considered war to be a culture-wide affair. They organized first, for smaller conflicts into Ayllarehues (9 Rehues or religious jurisdictions), and then into Futalmapus ("great lands", essentially temporary wartime states composed by federations of chiefdoms, that were able to raise armies and coordinate different territories and resources.

Modern researchers consider that Mapuche were aware of potentially higher organizations, and just selected to maintain their traditional ways as their land was fertile and resourceful enough that they felt no need for more advanced systems of organization and taxation in regular circuntances.
This system of war federalism lead by a wartime Toqui as leader (originally developed as a Judge figure to solve problems between different chiefdoms) was not a post-contact innovation, as during the Battle of the Maule (circa 1485), a Pikunche Futalmapu formed to stop the expansion of the Inca state from the north, and was able to provide enough resistance as to stop the southern expansion and set a boundary between the free pikunche remaining and the inca-ruled central Chile.

While such system does not provide for permanent statedom (at game start at least), I believe that most of, if not all of the Che peoples should have SoPs, at least up north there should be a Pikunche SoP between Santiago and the Maule, to represent the historical Inca-Picunche conflict. In my opinion, the most "accurate" representation would be a locationwise series of SoPs for different Pikunche, Mapuche and Huilliche peoples that might represent Ayllarehues, that might band together against external aggression, but in the most limited case, at least one SoP for each might do to represent some level of historical resistance. Chile is *not* a place that will go colonized without resistance.

Diaguitas

The Cacán speaking peoples (known in Chile as Diaguitas), are one of the most interesting peoples after the Mapuche. While nowhere near as populous and extensive, the Diaguita, that lived as settled peoples in the fertile interior river valleys from River Choapa to River Copiapó in the southern frontier of the Atacama Desert, are noted for their extensive material culture, with a rich and ancient history of pottery, and evidence of prehispanic metalworking as well. They inhabited their river valleys in settled chiefdoms, independent of each other and with little evidence of conflict. After the arrival of the Inca, they quickly made alliance and joined the empire, and adopted many political and technological innovations, such that they were the most developed and organized people in Chile at the time of the arrival of the Spanish.

In general, there is no evidence of resistance to the Inca at all (unlike the Pikunche of which there is extensive knowledge about this). As such, the selection of representing them as SoP or not might not make a lot of historical accuracy impact. I would, however, their advanced material culture I think makes the case for some kind of SoP between Elqui and Huasco, as it might be interesting.

Population

Since this information was not given in this Tinto Maps; most historians consider that the population of Chile pre-contact was around 1 million people, with most of it being the different Mapuche peoples.


Location Density

I believe considering its population as well as its geography, the number of locations in Chile is rather limited. It is important to consider the basic relief of Chile:

Essentially, the vast majority of Chile can be divided from coast to Andes into a coastal flatland, a coastal mountain range, an intermedian geographical depression and the lower Andes. This provides logistical challenges to move from Coast to the fertile interior, navigating different mountain passages and such. I believe most of Chile should have a separate coastal and interior location to show this divide. This is an important geographical barrier that is also notorious in particular in the northern cultures. There is evidence that the Changos inhabited the coast as far south as Elqui, but only and exclusively the coast.

The interior valley was inhabited by the Diaguita and the less populous Atacameños (Likan Antay). Both of these societies had completely different lifestyles (the Changos being seafaring nomads that lived from fish and shellfish, while the Diaguita and Atacameños were settled agriculturalists with advanced pottery and material culture). In this same sense, the interior valley cultures were integrated into the Inca empire, but the Changos were never integrated to any society that occupied their land. I believe dividing the northern locations into coast and interior valley is absolutely necessary to show this.

Northernmost

As for the northernmost territories across the Atacama Desert, where the Aymara and Quechua can be found, my only real feedback is part of a common sentiment in this thread; the Quechua-Aymara-Andean cultural complex was possibly the most advanced in the americas, with millenia old organized civilization. I would like to see some further state and SoP density across all of the area, at least to the level of Mesoamerica. What is Arica and Tarapacá should really be held to this same standard. At least historically, this region seemed to have felt under the dominion of the Aymara señorío of Carangas, a settled state by all means.

 

[Hippolyta1]

One methodological note: 20th-century density maps are not always aligned with the population density of previous centuries. One case that I know very well, from my background: the region that is today Castilla y León in Spain was among the most densely populated in the Iberian Peninsula in the 14th and 15th centuries, but in the 21st century, it's among the less densely populated in entire Europe.

I am not saying that these maps are not useful at all, but that they need to be handled with care, as they might be misleading for the period covered in Project Caesar.

Okay, in that case, here is a map of the estimated Brazilian population at the end of the 18th century, according to one of the most renowned Universities in Brazil (Source here). Can you see how the South and Southeast of Brazil already were densely populated at that time? Look at how many cities already existed in São Paulo and Minas Gerais back then, most of them founded in the 17th and 18th century.

Please, take that wasteland out. Or make it so there is a way to chop the Mata Atlantica down and make it colonizeable. Because depicting the economic heartland of Brazil (which already was very important ever since the 16th century) was a wasteland akin to the Amazon rainforest is outrageous for any Brazilian eyes to see.

 

[Spiritoftwinings]

A lot of possible things to say in this one. I will mainly focus on what I know of; Chile.

Mapuche (and varieties)

Chile was surely in many ways, one of the most conflictive regions across the period. This however, did not begin with the arrival of the Spaniards.
The most extensive and populous indigenous culture to this day remains the Mapuche, in there multiple regional varieties. While the is evidence of their presence up to the Limarí river, they were a majority in general, between the Aconcagua River (a bit north of Valparaíso) and Chiloé.

Most mapuche cultures called themselves just "che" or people. The specific regional varieties thus are named in relativistic terms. Pikunche (northern people), Huilliche (southern people) for instance. In this sense, I would recommend separating them in Pikunche, down until Chillán (it can be understood that these were the main mapuche group that was integrated in the historial chilean colony, and the main indigenous ancestry of modern chilean mestizos). Mapuche would be south from Pikunche up until the start of Huilliche, and Huilliche should extern to Chiloé, were it ends in contact with Chono (not such thing as Guaiteco culture). There also exists the term Cunco, which really corresponds to the result of contact between Huilliche and Chono cultures, and should not really exist at start.

In terms of organization and statedom, the Mapuche were quite curious in this regard. They existed as a series of separate local chiefdoms, well aware of the existence of each other, with different tiers of organization between family lands (Rukas joining into a Lof) up to more extensive chiefdoms (Lofs joining into a Lebo) , unified by their religions altars as jurisdictions (a Rehue). In most circunstances, they ruled themselves as a patchwork of uncoordinated chiefdoms. During wartime, however, the mapuche considered war to be a culture-wide affair. They organized first, for smaller conflicts into Ayllarehues (9 Rehues or religious jurisdictions), and then into Futalmapus ("great lands", essentially temporary wartime states composed by federations of chiefdoms, that were able to raise armies and coordinate different territories and resources.

Modern researchers consider that Mapuche were aware of potentially higher organizations, and just selected to maintain their traditional ways as their land was fertile and resourceful enough that they felt no need for more advanced systems of organization and taxation in regular circuntances.
This system of war federalism lead by a wartime Toqui as leader (originally developed as a Judge figure to solve problems between different chiefdoms) was not a post-contact innovation, as during the Battle of the Maule (circa 1485), a Pikunche Futalmapu formed to stop the expansion of the Inca state from the north, and was able to provide enough resistance as to stop the southern expansion and set a boundary between the free pikunche remaining and the inca-ruled central Chile.

While such system does not provide for permanent statedom (at game start at least), I believe that most of, if not all of the Che peoples should have SoPs, at least up north there should be a Pikunche SoP between Santiago and the Maule, to represent the historical Inca-Picunche conflict. In my opinion, the most "accurate" representation would be a locationwise series of SoPs for different Pikunche, Mapuche and Huilliche peoples that might represent Ayllarehues, that might band together against external aggression, but in the most limited case, at least one SoP for each might do to represent some level of historical resistance. Chile is *not* a place that will go colonized without resistance.

Diaguitas

The Cacán speaking peoples (known in Chile as Diaguitas), are one of the most interesting peoples after the Mapuche. While nowhere near as populous and extensive, the Diaguita, that lived as settled peoples in the fertile interior river valleys from River Choapa to River Copiapó in the southern frontier of the Atacama Desert, are noted for their extensive material culture, with a rich and ancient history of pottery, and evidence of prehispanic metalworking as well. They inhabited their river valleys in settled chiefdoms, independent of each other and with little evidence of conflict. After the arrival of the Inca, they quickly made alliance and joined the empire, and adopted many political and technological innovations, such that they were the most developed and organized people in Chile at the time of the arrival of the Spanish.

In general, there is no evidence of resistance to the Inca at all (unlike the Pikunche of which there is extensive knowledge about this). As such, the selection of representing them as SoP or not might not make a lot of historical accuracy impact. I would, however, their advanced material culture I think makes the case for some kind of SoP between Elqui and Huasco, as it might be interesting.

Population

Since this information was not given in this Tinto Maps; most historians consider that the population of Chile pre-contact was around 1 million people, with most of it being the different Mapuche peoples.


Location Density

I believe considering its population as well as its geography, the number of locations in Chile is rather limited. It is important to consider the basic relief of Chile:

View attachment 1234693

Essentially, the vast majority of Chile can be divided from coast to Andes into a coastal flatland, a coastal mountain range, an intermedian geographical depression and the lower Andes. This provides logistical challenges to move from Coast to the fertile interior, navigating different mountain passages and such. I believe most of Chile should have a separate coastal and interior location to show this divide. This is an important geographical barrier that is also notorious in particular in the northern cultures. There is evidence that the Changos inhabited the coast as far south as Elqui, but only and exclusively the coast.

The interior valley was inhabited by the Diaguita and the less populous Atacameños (Likan Antay). Both of these societies had completely different lifestyles (the Changos being seafaring nomads that lived from fish and shellfish, while the Diaguita and Atacameños were settled agriculturalists with advanced pottery and material culture). In this same sense, the interior valley cultures were integrated into the Inca empire, but the Changos were never integrated to any society that occupied their land. I believe dividing the northern locations into coast and interior valley is absolutely necessary to show this.

Northernmost

As for the northernmost territories across the Atacama Desert, where the Aymara and Quechua can be found, my only real feedback is part of a common sentiment in this thread; the Quechua-Aymara-Andean cultural complex was possibly the most advanced in the americas, with millenia old organized civilization. I would like to see some further state and SoP density across all of the area, at least to the level of Mesoamerica. What is Arica and Tarapacá should really be held to this same standard. At least historically, this region seemed to have felt under the dominion of the Aymara señorío of Carangas, a settled state by all means.

I wholeheartedly agree with this post. I think that the main topographic features of Chile were completely missed by the devs, which is disappointing. Chile is in the top 10 countries with the highest median altitude in the world, yet in this map all the territorry is considered as flatlands. In the north, down to the Aconcagua River, there should be wastelands representing the coastal mountain ranges, the "transversal valleys" and most of the desert, with corridors of population in the coast, the main rivers and "quebradas" on which 99% of the population lives even today. Representing all that as flatlands is just plainly wrong and leads to other mistakes like having the Changos in places that aren't the coast.

Diaguitas should 100% be a society of pops, they were reasonably advanced and served as a "buffer" between the mapuche (i.e., picunches and so on) people in the center and south and the Andean (later Inca) society in the north. The picunche also should be represented, either separatedly or as a part of a bigger mapuche SoP.

 

[LordOfAnts]

Moving it to this threat, but this is my suggestion for vegetation spread in Brazil at the start date. Sources and further details below.

1 - Woods
2 - Forest
3 - Desert
4 - Grasslands
5 - Jungle

Main sources:
Brazillian map of biomes (sadly, couldn't find a more detailed one)
More detailed Caatinga map of biomes (thank you so much for that, Ulfreig)

Note that imprecisions could arise from the fact that I just had those maps side by side with the location map of Paradox and just guessed where the borders of each biome would be.
It's also to be noted that my characterization of the Caatinga is much, much more detailed than that of the other biomes - that's just because Ulfreig posted a much better source than the ones I could find by myself.
I would also like to note that Paradox's map is not at all that different, so their sources were clearly good. The main differences will arise from me in some points wanting to be somewhat overzealous to represent a few things (like the Lençóis Maranhenses, which inclusion is debatable), and from what I believe to have been a core misunderstanding of Brazillian biomes (which even a lot of Brazillians struggle with, including myself until I actually visited said biomes).
One of the more obvious one is the Mata Atlântica, but since the issue here is mostly related to the Wasteland areas and not to the representation of the forest cover itself, I will let other people to comment on that, as my focus in this post is just on the biomes themselves. The lack of proper locations does make it significantly harder for me to suggest biome borders in the southern region, though (as well as in the north).
The other issue is with the Cerrado biome. I can see how the fact that it is a Savanah-type biome would make one want to characterize it as Grasslands, but it's far from that. The Cerrado is characterized by a dense concentration of medium-sized bushes, which often make it as hard to traverse as any other Brazillian forest. I have therefore opted to suggest it be represented as Woods, with Forests being present in the transition zones with Jungle areas, and Grasslandas in the transition zones with the Caatinga. I have also treated those areas where it's not clear to me what biome prevails over the other as transition zones (which can be specially noted in the state of São Paulo and Goias).
Regarding the Caatinga, I'm not sure if the issue with how it was represented came from a misunderstanding of how it differs from the Cerrado, or of how diverse it can be. In any case, I have opted to represent it as a mix of Sparse and Grasslands, with the Grasslands being more present in those areas which the indicated source for the Caatinga biome pointed as being majorly covered by "Decidius Thorn Woodland", with little presence of other types of vegetation coverage. Grasslands were used elsewhere, and Woods in the transition areas.
The Pampas I have kept mostly the same way as Paradox - they are as stereotypical a Grassland region as you can get. Reviewing my initial post, I realize I missed the location above Cacequi and Ibicui (can't read the name) - it should be grassland, not jungle.
I have touched little in the Amazon as well, with the exception of the transition zones with the Cerrado, which I think would be best represented as Forest (something that Paradox has done, but not to the extend I think the presented sources point to). I do have a vague memory of the Marajó island having a more specific biome configuration, though I couldn't find any sources on that. Would appreciate if someone could add to it.
Finally, regarding the Pantanal, I have not at all touched it, as it is characterized as Wasteland and I don't see much reason to change it, since it was neither inhabited by large indegenous people groups (at least afaik), used to transport large armies or settled by the Europeans in the game's time period.


EDIT: I am very certain that Marajó island is more diverse than a pure jungle island, but I could not find sources for that, so I haven't touched it.
EDIT 2: updated post in page 22 of this thread

 

[JoeDiamonds91]

I have two questions:

Are you at all considering recent archeological evidence (search: lidar archeology Amazon on google scholar, I unfortunately couldn’t link to it)
suggesting that there was dense networks of civilisation extending beyond the waterways of the Amazon?

Further consideration should also be given to other areas:

Our results put to rest arguments that western Amazonia was sparsely populated in pre-Hispanic times. The architectural layout of large settlement sites of the Casarabe culture indicates that the inhabitants of this region created a new social and public landscape through monumentality. We propose that the Casarabe-culture settlement system is a singular form of tropical agrarian low-density urbanism—to our knowledge, the first known case for the entire tropical lowlands of South America. The scale, monumentality, labour involved in the construction of the civic-ceremonial architecture and water-management infrastructure, and the spatial extent of settlement dispersal compare favourably to Andean cultures and are of a scale far beyond the sophisticated, interconnected settlements of southern Amazonia, which lack monumental civic-ceremonial architecture. As such, the data contribute to the discussion of the global wealth of early urban diversity, and will help to redefine the categories used for past and present Amazonian societies.

It might be quite hard to model in game as there still isn’t enough evidence to paint clear pictures, but it should influence the decisions on wasteland placement and extend in my opinion.

How are agricultural systems modelled in game? Are you including agroforestry and aquacultural systems in that consideration or is it limited to crop farming?

 

[nyetflix2]

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

It looks like it can mostly be replaced by Lokono, but there might be a couple areas where you're using it to represent some other language/people.

 

[Cotoshky]

Chilean wine experienced a "boom" in the 19th century, after the many European grape varieties were introduced. For much of Chilean history, the País grape was predominant.

Flavor involving Chilean wine is something that could be done in Victoria 3, not in the Not-Eu5 timeframe.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Indeed, the Chilean wine boom was in the 19th century; but that boom is about exports of European wine to the rest of the world. We are talking about Chile taking thousands of vines in the colony and they were fundamental for the economic development in this era. What you call the "19th century boom" is simply when we began to export said Bordeaux wine to other markets; since the colony, Chile was already self-sustaining with its own wine; you know as a "País" that they were brought in the 16th century and those from Bordeaux a little later; they simply were not valued by the external market as much as French wine. I suggest you reconsider this comment so as not to confuse the developers with your comment.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Considering that we already have a huge number of feedback related to the excess of wastelands in southeast Brazil, I will focus my feedback to be about the indigenous people of Brazil, all sources are legally availabe for free on the Internet and these are my toughts:

Part 1: Macro-Jê

The diversity o macro-jês cultures is good but there are 3 main branches missing in the map: Jeoromitxi (also named Jabuti), Kamakã and Puri. I consider that is ok for Jeoromitxi to be missing. However, I think that Kamakã and Puri should be present in the map because of his early colonial importance and relatively early contacts with portuguese settlers and because Kamacã and Puri territory, that are currently mainly wastelands, will probably become new provinces after the revision of the Brazil map.

The macro-jê family language is traditionally divided in: Karaja, Besiro (also named Chiquitano), Jeoromitxi (also named Jabuti), Maxakali, Krenak, Kamakã, Puri, Kariri, Yate (also named Fulni-ô), Bororo, Ofaye, Rikbaktsa, Guato and Jê (jê is a really big group with its own sub-divisions). All of these groups (with the exception of Jeoromitxi, Kamacã and Puri) are already represented in the map as a culture.

Sources:
1) ESTUDO ARQUEO-ECOLINGUÍSTICODAS TERRAS TROPICAIS SUL-AMERICANAS; 2017; Marcelo Pinho De Valhery Jolkesky; PAGE 257 (LINK)

2) PROTO-MACRO-JÊ: UM ESTUDO RECONSTRUTIVO, 2020, Andrey Nikulin; PAGES 3-30 and PAGES 64-81 (LINK)

- Jeoromitxi (Jabuti): This population lives in the south of Rondônia. Rondônia provinces are located inside the Amazon rainforest and these lands are treated as wastelands in game. Considering that it is improbable that the devs open more Amazon rainforest land outside of land near major rivers, I am of the opinion that its absence in the map is OK. Source

- Kamacãs: This population lived in the south of Bahia and north of Minas Gerais, they were traditional rivals of the Pataxos (Pataxós are already present in the map as part of the Maxakali culture). The Kamacãs and Pataxós were forced to live together in villages during the colonization and in current days fused in the Pataxó Hãhãhãe people.

Sources:
1) About the forced cohabitation of pataxós (maxakali) and kamacãs and about the source that they lived in the south of Bahia: Ordem imperial e aldeamento indígena Camacãns, Gueréns e Pataxós do Sul da Bahia, 2018, Ayalla Oliveira Silva. LINK

2) About the current Pataxó Hãhãhãe people, their original ethnic composition and their location in the south of Bahia. LINK

There is a map showing the approximated location of the macro-jê languages pre-contact, including the Kamacãs. The creator of the map is a researcher named Andrey Nikulin and the map was published in 2020, he is of the opinion that the there is not enough evidence to consider the Puris as part of the macro-jê language family, because of this reason the Puris are not present in the map below. For the game, I believe that the Puris should be considered as part of the Macro-jê family because it is the traditional classification and I dont think that recent controversies in the academia should be relevant here.
In the map below we can see the approximated location of the kamacãs:

Source: PROTO-MACRO-JÊ: UM ESTUDO RECONSTRUTIVO, 2020, Andrey Nikulin, PAGE 4 (LINK)

I believe that in the game map the Kamacã region is correspondent to this wasteland circled in black:

So, when this wasteland is fixed and becomes provinces, part of these new provinces should be of a new culture named Kamacã (Kamacã language branch, inside the macro-jê language family).

- Puris: The Puris lived in the southeast of Brazil, with the main presence in the Vale do Paraíba.

Sources:
1) O Paradigma da Extinção: Desaparecimento dos Índios Puris em Campo Alegre no Sul do Vale do Paraíba; Enio Sebastião Cardoso de Oliveira (LINK)

2) OS ÍNDIOS PURIS DO VALE DO PARAÍBA PAULISTA E FLUMINENSE, Cel Cláudio Moreira Bento (LINK)

The Vale of Rio Paraíba is this region:

In the game map this region would be approximatedly this wasteland region circled in black:

So, when this wasteland in the southeast Brazil becomes normal provinces, part of these new lands should be a new culture named Puri (language group Puri, macro-jê family).

 

[sbadkins4]

Please forgive me if this has already been addressed, but are we getting nothing for the cities in the Amazon rainforest or their (apparently rainforest cultivation based and soil enriching) civilizations? I know we have very little knowledge of them, and it might be quite difficult to do them justice, but omitting them entirely also seems… problematic?

 

[Sapa Inca]

Part 2: Macro-Jê languages

All macro-jês languages are represented in the game's map as: Jê.
I consider this division oversimplistic, it is like naming all european languages as Indo-european. i believe that a more granular approach can be taken here.

Current Jê family language should be divided in:
1- Karaja
2- Besiro (also named Chiquitano)
3- Jeoromitxi (also named Jabuti)
4- Maxakali
5- Krenak
6- Kamakã
7- Puri
8- Kariri,
9- Yate (also named Fulni-ô)
10- Bororo
11- Ofaye
12- Rikbaktsa
13- Guato
14 - Jê (the big group, divided in Central Jê, Southern Jê and Northern Jê).

Sources:
1) ESTUDO ARQUEO-ECOLINGUÍSTICODAS TERRAS TROPICAIS SUL-AMERICANAS; 2017; Marcelo Pinho De Valhery Jolkesky; PAGE 257 (LINK)

2) PROTO-MACRO-JÊ: UM ESTUDO RECONSTRUTIVO, 2020, Andrey Nikulin; PAGES 3-30 and PAGES 64-81 (LINK)

Each culture in the map that currently is classified as Jê should be individually revised and reagrouped in the approriate family in my opinion, in a few cases the tribe in question will have an unclassified language by lack of documentation, in these cases these cultures could default to the jê language or another language, case by case.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Part 3: The Tremembé and Cataguá cases

Tremembé culture is incorrectly classified in the map as member of the Tupi-Guarani language. Pre-colonization the Tremembés were NOT tupi and his original language pre-colonization is an unclassified language, but this was not tupi. Tremembé language and culture should be present in the map as an isolated culture and language.

Sources:
1) Handbook of South American Indians PAGES 572-574 (LINK)

2) PibSocioambiental: Tremembés, see the "Cultura, tradição e etnicidade" section (LINK)

Cataguá culture is also incorrectly classified in the map as member of the Tupi-Guarani language, the Cataguá language and culture have a controversial classification but it was not Tupi, there are some controversial theories that the Cataugás were descendent of Tremembé migrations while others argue there they were part of the Macro-Jê group.
So, we have 2 possibilities: Change Cataguá language and culture to be an isolated language/culture OR put it in the same group as the Jês language/culture. Personally I like of the first option more, however one thing is certain, they were not Tupi.

Sources:
1) Indígenas de Minas Gerais, Oiliam José, PAGE 13 (see the table where is written that the Cataguás were a tapuia group, in another words, they were not a tupi group), also see PAGES 19-21 (see Cataguás starting on page 19) (LINK).

2) XXVII Semana de História da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora- Brasil em Conflitos Armados: Guerras, Revoltas e Revoluções. Entre fontes e representações: um estudo dos Cataguá na historiografia mineira, 2010, Renata Silva Fernandes, PAGES 108-120 (LINK)

 

[otaman1]

Is this the last Tinto Maps? You forgot Antarctica. Penguins deserve some recognition too.