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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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Hi !
Will the Hel Peninsula be added as a location to the Gdańsk (Danzig) province?
I see that there is a shadow where this area would be, but the area itself is not there :/ .
I know it probably didn't look like it does now, but it would be nice to see that there was something there besides a shadow :)
 

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I did not see any Warsaw or Warszawa on location map. There does be one Warszawa on province map.

Maybe the name of the location was not Warszawa in ancient name - which I’m not familiar with.
Warsaw already existed then, but it was only a minor gord. In later centuries, Sejms were held on its fields - this is one of the reasons why the capital of the state was moved there from Kraków.
The fact is that Warsaw already existed then and should have been on the map. Just add it, but do not remove Czersk or any other location in Masovia. Among the Masovian locations, the lack of Łomża is surprising (the location Wizna should be called Łomża and Goniądz should be renamed into Wizna). You can also add Kolno by dividing the "Wizna" location into two separate ones: Łomża (southern half) and Kolno (northern half).
 
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Really great job but I think it would be better if the provinces in Mazovia were like that in the graphic

View attachment 1141428
It's ziemia warszawska (administrative unit (ziemia) of the Duchy of Czersk - later ziemia of united Duchy of Mazovia). This is not a duchy!
 
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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.

View attachment 1141373
Because balts lived there way before :) names of the towns for example Lida (Lyda) is lithuanian, many rivers and names of variuos locations were lithuanian and many lithuanian surnames are mentioned in local mansions. For example in Lida at the start of XIX century the majority of population spoke lithuanian. And according to the polish historian Jerzy Ochmanski XVI century lithuanian language was spoken up to 50 km south of Lida. At least that's what I could find with a short google search without digging in to the actual historical literature. But basically there were way more balts living in the east of the current lithuanian territory
 
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The more I look at the culture map, the more I like it. There are JASZ and CUMANS in Hungary! There are tons of Eastern German cultures! Ashkenazim and probably (if not, please add) Lipka Tatars. The only thing spoiling my enjoyment is Rusyn. Rusyn just means Ruthenian, and only arose as a culture after the Austrian Hapsburg Empire promoted a separate culture there to curtail pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian nationalisms of the locals. Please merge them into Ruthenian. Krivichi or Byelorussians could be okay, but no need for Rusyn at all.
 
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People that specifically only take offense with Kyiv and not every other location ending with -iv are so silly.

The real anachronistic name is Uzhhorod, though. That name was made in the 19th century, before that only the Hungarian name Ungvár was used.
 
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I trust archeological data more than long dead communist era historian and according to this research
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01652-4
black death really avoided Poland
There's some serious circular logic right at the start there.

We validated our BDP approach by examining two well-studied, but contrasting, regional case studies of the Black Death’s mortality, in Sweden and Poland. (...) By contrast, historians have long demonstrated that central Europe, particularly Poland, experienced economic growth over the fourteenth century, related to the centralization of royal power following a period of partition, few wars in the central provinces of the country, large-scale colonization of uncultivated lands and the development of cities
That paper's entire premise is "we've shown that Sweden was more affected than Poland with a method that we've verified by checking if it would show that Sweden would be more affected than Poland."
 
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I remember in EU4 the reason for no nation being at war at the start was that the AI couldn't build up and needed months of preparations.Are there changes to AI behavior in PC to make this situation less nasty?
 
I trust archeological data more than long dead communist era historian and according to this research
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01652-4
black death really avoided Poland
It seems to be saying that, for places far away from grain trade and war, the Black Death does not have great impact.

Is it because that the center of Poland is not that developed in that time?
 
That's a lot of Wheat in Poland. Also surprised about Sand as a resource. What is it used for?

Also if I can suggest - somewhere in the triangle of Legnica/Lubań/Jawor there is the oldest city in Poland on Magdeburg Laws called Złotoryja (Goldberg in German). It was created by gold miners at the end of XII century. It has been given town priveleges in 1211 and since it's inception it has been a centre of gold and copper mining. In 1290 was granted with a privilege to trade salt which is kind of a big thing. Is there a chance you will add it on a map?

Here you can read some more (I know Wikipedia is not a good source, but it is one I can give you in a short amount of time) if you want to know.

1717180818968.png



Also it feels weird to have Sudetes Mountains classified as Hills on the map, not gonna lie. Especially since other Paradox titles categorize them as mountains. What is the reason for that? Are they too short in global scale or something?

1717181453963.png
 
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Warsaw already existed then, but it was only a minor gord. In later centuries, Sejms were held on its fields - this is one of the reasons why the capital of the state was moved there from Kraków.
The fact is that Warsaw already existed then and should have been on the map. Just add it, but do not remove Czersk or any other location in Masovia. Among the Masovian locations, the lack of Łomża is surprising (the location Wizna should be called Łomżan and Goniądz should be renamed into Wizna). You can also add Kolno by dividing the "Wizna" location into two separate ones: Łomża (southern half) and Kolno (northern half).
It would be helpful to Tinto to draw a map for that.
 
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In this thread, which we review each week to later implement the feedback.
In regards to the population map mode questions I think there are 2 main problems. 1 - Location population text is completely unreadable at distance as there is too much text on too little space. 2 - Everything is grey which makes it quite visually boring and the colour pallette where used is too dark to be able to read text behind it.
My suggestion would be as follows;

The location population map mode should be colour graded to make the data visible at a distance. I would consider removing the text altogether above a certain zoom level as the data is unreadable anyway (play around and see what works well), and then adding the text back in once the zoom level is close enough to read it more comfortably. Change the colour palette by having a uniform brightness and only change the shade of colour to show the pop difference. (Instead of having very low pop being a very dark red that is almost black, and having very high pop being a neon green, have the very low pop be a bright red, a high pop be a bright green, and everything in the middle be more of a spectrum of reds turning more orange then yellow then green etc.) See screenshot from the France Tinto Maps that showed the French population numbers on the colour map, the text is only readable on the orange/yellow and higher dev, and having text that is written in different colour all over the place would be hard to look at.
 
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Also it feels weird to have Sudetes Mountains classified as Hills on the map, not gonna lie. Especially since other Paradox titles categorize them as mountains. What is the reason for that? Are they too short in global scale or something?
Is it possible to have a few locations among these hills considered as mountains?
 
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There are so many pages here already...


I was born in, what is called in this super secret project, Duchy of Oświęcim (pol. Księstwo Oświęcimskie). I was interested in it's history so I know a bit about it. The first thing I've noticed, it didn't reach that far into the east, as the current map suggests.

Here is the best map I've found (source: histmag.org). It's "Księstwo Oświęcimsko-Zatorskie" on the map.
Now I think this map can be used for other locations too.

reg_hist_2.jpg



Someone also made a map diving it into Oświęcim, Zator and Żywiec (and it would be great if it had those three locations).

Ksi%C4%99stwo_o%C5%9Bwi%C4%99cimskie.png



As for the raw resources, I'm not sure Stone is the best pick. From what I know it was mostly known for either lumber of wild game (but I have no sources for this).
 
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When it comes to the names of the provinces in Estonia, I personally think that it would be better if they were named after the actual region names Estonia uses currently, unless there are more historical versions of them, of course. Names like Harjumaa, Viljandi and Võrumaa could fit better.

Speaking of alternative names for provinces, will provinces have localised names i.e. do the names of provinces change based on the language of the country controlling them? Will this feature only apply to locations?
 
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That paper's entire premise is "we've shown that Sweden was more affected than Poland with a method that we've verified by checking if it would show that Sweden would be more affected than Poland."
This figure does not exist. This figure is just a mere hallucination

1717182346085.png
 
Also @Pavía if I can suggest for the future Tinto Maps to have one big map divided into several zoomed in squares for the ease of looking at the map (especially in some maps with greater detail modes than the one I used). Something like this:

1717182510553.png
 
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