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Tinto Maps #4 - 31th of May 2024 - Poland, Ruthenia, Baltic

Hello everyone, and welcome to the fourth Tinto Maps! The feedback that we've received so far has been great, and there will be news soon regarding the map fixes that we've already done.

This week we are showing you Poland, Lithuania, Ruthenia, and the Baltic region. Let’s check it with no further ado:

Countries
Countries.jpg

A bigger picture of what’s going on in this region today, as we hadn’t shown it entirely before. To the west, the Kingdom of Poland is ruled by Casimir III of the House of Piast. It is not a completely unified kingdom, as there are several powerful vassals under him, most of them also Piasts themselves.

To the east, the Duchy of Lithuania is ruled by Gediminas, who has greatly expanded the influence of the country into Russian lands (side note: Gediminas entitled himself in his diplomatic correspondence ‘king’, but was considered by the Pope ‘king or duke’, and the title of Grand Duke wouldn’t be formally adopted until later [most likely replicating the Russian title ‘Grand Prince’]. That’s why Lithuania starts as a Duchy, although it will have an event that would make it possible to adopt the dynamic country name of ‘Grand Duchy’).

To the south, the principalities of Kyiv and Galicia-Volhynia have recently fallen under foreign influence, the first ruled by Theodor, brother of Gediminas of Lithuania; and the second by Yuri II, also from the Piast dynasty.

To the north, the Teutonic and Livonian Orders, which conquered the lands of Prussia and Livonia a century ago, are at war against Poland and Lithuania, after a long-established rivalry.

Also, a side note: we will talk about Moldavia in the Tinto Maps devoted to the Carpathian region, as it’s currently in a ‘placeholder’ spot.


Diplomacy.jpg

A new map mode, the Diplomatic one! The game starts with an ongoing war between Poland, Lithuania, and their respective vassals, on one side, and the Teutonic and Livonian Orders, and Bohemia and its vassals, on the other.

Locations
Locations.jpg

Here you have the locations of Poland, Lithuania, Ruthenia, and the Baltic region. Some issues that have already been reported by our Polish coworkers are the inconsistencies in the location naming in Polish (we’ll use proper Polish letters more thoroughly), and we’ve also started to review both the Polish and Baltic locations based on the early feedback you gave us. Oh, also, the Vistula and Curonian Lagoons missing is a bug, we’ll properly re-add them while doing the map review.

Provinces
Province.jpg

Any suggestions for provincial naming are pretty welcome, as in the last DD!

Terrain
Climate.jpg

Topography.jpg

Vegetation.jpg


Cultures
Cultures.jpg

The Baltic lands have an interesting mix of different cultures. ‘Western Baltic’ culture represents the people speaking a West Baltic language (Old Prussians, Yotvingians, Curonians, etc.), while ‘Prussian’ is the culture of the German settlers of that area; on that style, we have a ‘Baltic German’ culture in the lands of Livonia and Estonia that also got settled by German-speaking people. The divide between Polish, Ruthenian, and Aukstaitian might be too deep, so we will most likely add a bit more mixed situation in the borders between these cultures.

Religions
Religions.jpg

A region with a more interesting religious setup! Apart from the Catholic-Orthodox divide, you can also see the Romuva religion, which was a hot topic in 1337 (shall the Dukes of Lithuania convert to Catholicism, or stay Pagan?). Red stripes to the north are other Animist populations. Also, disregard the Sunni region to the southeast, as we have to review all the pops of the Pontic Steppes, as well.

Raw Goods
Raw Goods.jpg

From the distribution of the materials, maybe a couple of things might catch your eye. The first is that there’s an Amber good present on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The second is that the Tatra Mountains, in Slovakia, have a bunch of precious metals, which makes them a very interesting area to exploit and develop.

Population
Pops.jpg

Pops 2.png

The population of the region is divided into country and location views. Two notes: The total population of Estonia is not 711K people, that’s the total for its owner, Denmark. Second, we’ve read your feedback regarding the population map mode, and we’ll take a look at how to improve the visualization of the data, making it better for you.

EDIT: Markets
Markets.jpg

And that’s all for today! The region that we'll show next week is Italy! Cheers!
 
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I dont get why Grondo, Breslauja, and Lida are of aukstaitian ethnicity, they are all ruthenian lands and Grondo and Braslaw were made in ruthenians states while Lida was made in 1390. The Aukstutiaks did not pose a policy of assimilation and would not possibly be able to assimilate lands that fast in the span of under 100 years.

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I'm personally fine with the Samogitians being a separate culture because they historically were quite rebellious even against Lithuania in this period (like a pagan revolt in a few parishes in 1418, or the more well known 1440 rebellion that led to the creation of the title "Duke of Samogitia" to strengthen their autonomy, hence the later full title "Grand Duke of Lithuanians, Samogitians and Ruthenians"). Besides, in this time period Samogitians spoke a lot more distinct dialect than they do today, closer to Western Baltic.

This legally distinct not-EU5 project ( :) ) also divides cultures really liberally. French is divided to what, 15 cultures or something?
Well I don't have that much problem with separate samogitian culture, I have a bigger problem with non existant lithuanian culture. As there is Lithuania without lithuanians.

But every neighbor was talking about neighboring pagan lithuanians not aukstaitians as far as I'm aware. Even in france we can see French as a culture but there is no Lithuanian culture in Lithuania acording to this map.

And there is a letter from Vytautas in 1420 where he states that samogitians are lithuanians, speaking the same language and samogitians for a long time are calling themselves lithuanians and never samogitians.

Well and the wiki states that samogitians became ethnically lithuanians somewhere between 13-16th century so there's some wiggle room in my opinion
 
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I would like to ask a question regarding cultures, @Pavía.
I don't know if it has been asked before, but will the Project Caesar culture system be similar to that of CK3, with the possibility of cultures fragmenting to smaller ones, and creating "hybrids" between the different culture groups (heritages) throughout the game?
Or will it be more similar to EU4 approach, where cultures are rigid, and new ones appear only by the event/decision?
Personally I would like to see it being closer to CK3. While players probably shouldn't create new cultures on a whim, it would make sense if for example: the ruling class of an area is from different culture than the majority of people they rule over, so there is an option or game mechanic, that allows a new culture to form in the next X years.
Could You reveal, or at least tease, how it will be handled?

Also, big thanks for all the good work You do! ;)
 
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I'm personally fine with the Samogitians being a separate culture because they historically were quite rebellious even against Lithuania in this period (like a pagan revolt in a few parishes in 1418, or the more well known 1440 rebellion that led to the creation of the title "Duke of Samogitia" to strengthen their autonomy, hence the later full title "Grand Duke of Lithuanians, Samogitians and Ruthenians"). Besides, in this time period Samogitians spoke a lot more distinct dialect than they do today, closer to Western Baltic.

This legally distinct not-EU5 project ( :) ) also divides cultures really liberally. French is divided to what, 15 cultures or something?
Yet Ruthenia is one big culture group for some reason
 
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It is a little bit awkward to comment here as clearly these maps are heavily WIP. Still, there are some interesting discussions to be made, so I'll allow myself to add fire to the flames here:
- I agree that "Silesian" and "Polish" cultures should not be separate, however splitting Polish into 4-5 cultures might be even better. 2 cultures just don't work from historical standpoint, Polish culture (like any culture before printing press) was varying between regions. I think French setup is useful here as a reference.
- Not all Silesian duchies should be under Bohemia. People were pointing this out already, I just hope the Silesian setup will be revised.
- I believe this is a period when Masurian colonization begins. I have no idea if representing this would be worth it though.
- "Western Baltic" is an awful name. This is one of these cases, where Pruthenians should not be denied their name only because somebody might confuse them with "Prussians". People might laugh at it, but this is an example of colonialist though and it should be fought against, as it in fact is in the academia.
- More farmlands in Silesia? This is the region of modern Poland known for its good soil, I'm not sure if it was being utilized at the time though.
 
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1337-1654 is longer than 1654-18XX, so by your logic, it should be called Kijow.

Anyway, modern names make the most sense and confuse the least people. Besides, it's clear PDX has already chosen to use modern spellings, and changing it would entail a bunch of problems (what if names changed from 1337-18XX, having to change so many location names, etc.).
There are decisions to change countries/cities/regions names. And "modern spellings" doesn't fit with historical accuracy, see Constantinople/Istanbul, and there are lots of examples like that. Kijow is fine as long as it's polish-lithuanian name of the city, Kiev should be non-polish name. There are dynamic names so that shouldn't be a problem to have multiple names for one city/region.

PS. And yes, I doubt anyone who sees Kiev would say "What city is this?", it's been called Kyiv for barely a decade. And, as you mentioned before "The latter two maps are in Russian, so of course Kyiv would be called Kiev in them, as that's the Russian name". Well, English, French and Spanish gave their names to the whole map of USA, such as Russians did in Ukraine, Bielorussia and other countries, what's wrong with that? It's history.
 
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Opavsko should be in Silesia, not Moravia.
Opava was historically split from Moravia.
Another thing, I'd like to ask, how is the Spisz pledge, the situation where Poland (and later the PLC) held sovereignty over several rich mining towns in what is now eastern Slovakia going to be represented?
The Polish Crown owned/held those Szepes localities, but did not have sovereignty over them AFAIK.
I think the area of the towns is a bit too small and patchy even for PC's level of detail. Maybe a location modifier that gives Poland some of the location(s)' revenues might work best in this case.
 
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Do I make map of ethnogroups in Nowy Sącz district?
I'm glad you show the Góral presence in Nowy Sacz it's pretty neat you got the full map? Big fan of these about gorals. But even then Szczerez and mlynczynska aren't 'Goral' in the modern day depending who you ask, at least on etnozagroda . pl or the polish wiki page about them, on the polish wiki your map is an exaggeration if I understand it correctly that the 'coloured' is goral.
The pope claimed to be Góral when he's from Wadowice, nowhere near to what I'd call modern day 'Gorals' as the 'gwara' is simply dying out to the Polish language. When the game is set you didn't have schools forcing kids to speak in the 'standard' dialect so I'm sure the 'dialect' or 'culture' spread farther than the map you might be familiar with. Janosik was born somewhere in Slovakia where nobody today would claim to be Góral at least on maps and on the census you'll see 'Slovak'. But yet he was, at least I think.

It's fine either way they add the culture or not.
 
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I have a suggestion: remove Kielce and name that province Radom.
There is nothing wrong with the fact that this province is called Kielce, since it has been an important gord and later city since ancient (from Poland's perspective) times.
 
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