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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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That's too deep, we will focus on covering historical naming as much as possible (and I doubt that we'll be able to cover all the possible combinations, in honesty, as you might notice that we have a lot of locations and a lot of cultures...).
One thing that greatly annoyed me in EUIV is that if England/GB colonises say California it keeps the native place names rather than use the Spanish one that persisted after California became English speaking. If there is no English name for a province please give us an option for the game to automatically apply the names used by the European empire that colonised it rather than native names. Please:)
 
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The name Khmelnytskyi did not exist at that time. It appeared as the name of the region and settlement in 1954. Before that, it was called Proskuriv (a later date during the years of the Russian Empire) or Ploskyriv (an earlier name from the river).
 
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Windau should be called Pilten, as Ventspils/Windau wasn't nearly important enough yet, only would be more important by like 1700s, and Pilten should be called Talsen or Kolken, as it does not contain Pilten - those are probably the most important settlements in that area in that time period
 
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The Black Death not affecting Poland study is very contested in academia. There is evidence that directly contradicts it.

The study is based on grain pollen counts staying relatively similar and thus "proving" that there was no agricultural decline due to depopulation.

However there's plenty of other signs that do show the Black Death hit them. For example Poland shows a dramatic increase in wages (due to depopulation), and it shows a sharp rise in people living in smaller fortified towns (like other parts of Europe did) so that they could literally shut the doors during episodes of disease as if it was a siege.

So yeah this is one of the reasons why Wikipedia should not be treated as a 100% correct source. It's depicting this as definitive, but in reality it's contested.
It is very "research in progress" from what I see. Some historians say it did (based on Dlugosz Chronicle), some say it had no significant impact (based on no significant change in Peter's Pence tax which was "head tax", when it did change in the West due to black death)
 
Kiev is a fairly modern English name for the city too. It's first recorded existence is in 1804.

If it does get called by it's Russian name, it should be properly Romanised as Kiyev.
Yeah, Kiyev was also mentioned on the texts and maps I dropped here. I'm fine with it, as long as it's not Kyiv as it's not a historical name of the city. This is just the biggest flaw I saw as I'm not a historian and I have no idea how other cities and regions were named, but Kyiv is the most polemical one.
 
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Now that's a source one can trust, free of human bias!
You can pretty much add every forested region in Central or Eastern Europe into the 'exported honey/beeswax' category.
ChatGPT sometimes speak bull shit, and it hardly provide any references.

But if we keep asking ChatGPT and force it to answer, it may be closer to the reality. Anyway, it’s not smart but it does have read a lot.

A good reference is one with many good references inserted.
 
Hi once again Pavia.

I'm Polish and have some feedback regarding Silesia(Śląsk) region
I made a correct map of Silesian Duchies.
I corrected duchies's borders

1717177792125.jpeg

Though from my mistake I made it for 1333 year instead of 1337.
(E.g since 1335 Bohemia controlls Wrocław)

Despite this slight mistake, in 1337 Duchies of Niemodlin, Ziębice, Świdnica, Jawor were still independent and not the vassals of Bohemia

1 - Duchy of Oświęcim / Jan I the Scholastic / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_I_the_Scholastic
2 - Duchy of Cieszyn / Casimir I / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_I,_Duke_of_Cieszyn
3 - Duchy of Racibórz / Leszek of Racibórz / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leszek_of_Racibórz
4 - Duchy of Opawa / Nicholas II / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II,_Duke_of_Opava
5 - Duchy of Bytom / Władysław of Bytom / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Władysław_of_Bytom
6 - Duchy of Strzelce / Albert of Strzelce / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_of_Strzelce
7 - Duchy of Opole / Bolko II of Opole / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolko_II_of_Opole
8 - Duchy of Niemodlin / Bolesław the Elder / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolesław_the_Elder
9 - Duchy of Wrocław & Duchy of Nysa(vassals to Wrocław's Bishop-princes) / Henry VI the Good / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VI_the_Good
10 - Duchy of Ziębice / Bolko II of Ziębice / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolko_II_of_Ziębice
11 - Duchies of Lignica-Brzeg-Namysłów / Bolesław III the Generous / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolesław_III_the_Generous
12 - Duchy of Oleśnica / Konrad I of Oleśnica / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_I_of_Oleśnica
13 - Duchy of Świdnica / Bolko II the Small / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolko_II_the_Small
14 - Duchy of Jawor / Henry I of Jawor / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_I_of_Jawor
15 - Duchy of Ścinawa / John, Duke of Ścinawa / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John,_Duke_of_Ścinawa
16 - Kingdom of Bohemia (Duchy of Głogów) / John of Bohemia / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_Bohemia
17 - Duchy of Żagań / Henry IV the Faithful / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_the_Faithful

I based this mainly on these images:

1717178351818.png


1717178410094.jpeg


Bye
 
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Also, I want to suggest that Drohobyc(my hometown in western Ukraine) has been a big producer of salt since the Middle Ages instead of stone. The salt-making is still the trademark of the town, it is even present on the town flag. The local salt producer functions since the Middle Ages and was interrupted only during the Soviet occupation.
 
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The figure on the map is given for the part of polish lands significantly smaller than what belonged to kingdom of Poland by 1410, less than half of it. And if the population before black death was 1,9 and went to 1,2 later on, more than one third population perishing would probably cause more visible effects, including records. I also think that those estimates counted the numbers for kingdom of Poland together with vassal provinces.

Those estimates tend to account for 1370, then are reverse estimated back for 1340 under wishful thinking that plague didn't happen, and Poland had positive growth of population, ergo pop in 1370 >1340. Or they just slap data from 1370 for 1340 (or 1350 table), because why not, like on one of the tables back many pages ago in this thread.
Screenshot (17956).png

The thing is, I. Giesztyrowa, source of that 2m in 1370 is claiming that those estimates based on Peter's Pence are heavily underestimating polish population of that era. K. Buczek straight up says, that they are completely unreliable and shouldn't be used. T. Ledenberg notes, that those tax records are not unified in any way, and it's quite hard to estimate population based on them. And of course the plague and the myth that it didn't affect Poland is heavily contested by modern historians. So suddenly culling polish pop by half of whatever, just to give magic button "avoid the plague", doesn't make sense. Especially when current number is not unreasonable.

1370 borders are pretty much the same as in 1410.

Most of Europe recovered its population by about end of 15th century, so let's check some of the tables:
Region/Voivodeship/pop density/area/pop in k/number of towns,cities /pop in towns,cities/% of pop in ("big") cities
1 Ludnosc krolestwa polskiego 1500 Guzowski.png



People in towns as % of population (For 14th century it's ~14%/ Silesia is most urbanized region of Poland)



5 urbanizacja 1500 1578 atlas.png


Density of towns(km^2 per town):

6 gestosc miast 1500.png



How many towns were given city rights in 13-15th century(without Red Ruthenia and Podole):
crownland
clergy owned land
noble owned land

7 liczba lokacji miast XIII-XV.png
 

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Nowy Sącz Province should be hills not flatlands.
Source: I live there, it is not flat anywhere here and we have some higher (over 1000 meters above sea level) mountains here.
 
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It is a pity that the Polish experts whose services you use do not care about historicity. Grodno and Brest had nothing to do with Polish culture at that time; the Polonization of these lands began much later, guess why. It's the same with Catholicism in these lands. There was no Catholicism there at all in 1337. To create Baltic cultures, you decided to use data on the settlement of Baltic tribes. But it’s not at all clear what you did with Slavic cultures. One of the cores of the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group was the Krivichi. The Krivichi were a very large tribal association. Krivichi is much broader than Pskov, Polotsk and Smolensk, but even looking at these principalities we don’t see a single culture? Why? I’m already silent about the Krivichy Vyazma Rzhev and Tver. If you decided to form one big Ruthenian culture, then why did you limit yourself to what you limited yourself to? This is all very sad!
 
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It is a pity that the Polish experts whose services you use do not care about historicity. Grodno and Brest had nothing to do with Polish culture at that time; the Polonization of these lands began much later, guess why. It's the same with Catholicism in these lands. There was no Catholicism there at all in 1337. To create Baltic cultures, you decided to use data on the settlement of Baltic tribes. But it’s not at all clear what you did with Slavic cultures. One of the cores of the formation of the Belarusian ethnic group was the Krivichi. The Krivichi were a very large tribal association. Krivichi is much broader than Pskov, Polotsk and Smolensk, but even looking at these principalities we don’t see a single culture? Why? I’m already silent about the Krivichy Vyazma Rzhev and Tver. If you decided to form one big Ruthenian culture, then why did you limit yourself to what you limited yourself to? This is all very sad!
Your manner, dude. I understand that you’re very angry for now, but I beg u to calm down. The anger helps no one but just makes everyone sad. Take a deep breath and speak with me: “One” “Two” “Three”

Congratulations! U r calm now, and welcome to join us. The rule here is that, if you can make others convinced, they’d stand for your idea. To achieve that, you need to raise reliable references, and make others interesting in this topic. A manner is indeed a need.

Btw, you can delete your post written in Russian or Belarusian or Ukr which I do have no idea. There’s a button for that.

And btw, the border of East Slavic might be highly WIP because they are all sharp. You can prepare a presentation / thread for that, making it detailed and reliable, then Tinto would definitely treat your idea serious.

I am personally happy to see a Krivichi thread, though I’m not familiar with Belarusian history. I’m sure other forum users and Tinto won’t reject this either. You have a chance to be a (maybe the only) Belarusian expert here.
 
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I know this is a bit unrelated but I was wondering if Project Caesar will have a focus on Central Asia on launch. This is time period is probably one of the most interesting for the Chagatai since there was a large rural urban divide existing between the Tengri nomads and the Muslim cities which allowed tribes to rise up and challenge the Khan. Also since the game takes place around the birth of Tamerlane who is probably one of the most consequential leaders to ever exist.
 
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