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Tinto Maps #9 - 5th of July 2024 - Carpathia and the Balkans

Greetings, and welcome to another Tinto Maps! This week we will be taking a look at Carpathia and the Balkans! It will most likely be an interesting region to take a look at, with a lot of passion involved… So I’ll just make an initial friendly reminder to keep a civil discussion, as in the latest Tinto Maps, as that’s the easiest way for us to read and gather your feedback, and improve the region in a future iteration. And now, let’s start with the maps!

Countries:
Countries.png

Carpathia and the Balkans start in a very interesting situation. The Kingdom of Hungary probably stands as the most powerful country in 1337, but that only happened after the recovery of the royal power enforced by Charles I Robert of the House of Anjou, who reined in the powerful Hungarian nobility. To the south, the power that is on the rise is the Kingdom of Serbia, ruled by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, who has set his eyes on his neighbors to expand his power. The Byzantine Empire, meanwhile, is in a difficult position, as internal struggles ended in Andronikos III being crowned sole emperor, at the cost of dividing the realm; both Serbia and Bulgaria have in the past pressed over the bordering lands, while the Ottomans have very recently conquered Nicomedia. The control over the Southern Balkans is also very fractioned, with a branch of the Anjou ruling over Albania, the Despotate of Epirus under the nominal rule of Byzantium as a vassal, Athens, Neopatria and Salona as vassals of the Aragonese Kings of Sicily, Anjou protectorates over Achaia and Naxos, and only nominal Byzantine control over Southern Morea. It’s also noticeable the presence of the Republics of Venice and Genoa, which control several outposts over the Adriatic and Aegean Seas. A final note: in previous maps, Moldavia was shown in the map, but we’ve removed it from it, and it will most likely spawn through a chain of events in the 1340s.

Dynasties:
Dynasties.png

The House of Anjou rules over Naples, Hungary, Albania, Achaia, and Cephalonia; they’re truly invested in their push for supremacy over the region. Apart from that, each country is ruled by different dynasties, except for Athens and Neopatria, ruled by the House of Aragón-Barcelona.

Locations:
Locations 1.png

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This week we’re posting the general map of the region, along with some more detailed maps, that can be seen if you click on the spoiler button. A starting comment is that the location density of Hungary is noticeably not very high; the reason is that it was one of the first European maps that we made, and we based it upon the historical counties. Therefore, I’m already saying in advance that this will be an area that we want to give more density when we do the review of the region; any help regarding that is welcome. Apart from that, you may notice on the more detailed maps that Crete appears in one, while not being present in the previous one; because of the zooming, the island will appear next week along with Cyprus, but I wanted to make an early sneak peek of the locations, given that is possible with this closer zoom level. Apart from that, I’m also saying in advance that we will make an important review of the Aegean Islands, so do not take them as a reference for anything, please.

Provinces:
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Provinces! Nothing outstanding to be commented on here; as usual, we’re open to any feedback regarding them.

Terrain:
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Terrain! The climate of the region is mostly divided between Continental and Mediterranean, with some warmer and some colder regions. Regarding the topography, the Carpathian mountains are famously important and strategic, while the Balkans are a quite hilly and mountainous region, which is also greatly covered by woods and forests.

Cultures:
Cultures.png

Here comes the fun part of the DD: The cultural division of the Balkans! A few comments:
  1. Hungary is full of different minorities. Transylvania, especially, is an interesting place: there we have a mix of ‘Hungarians’, ‘Transylvanians’ (which are the Romanian-speaking inhabitants of the region), ‘Transylvanian Germans’, and ‘Szekely’ people.
  2. We have divided the Southern Slavic-speaking region into their dialectal families of Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian.
  3. The Southern Balkans are mostly divided among Bulgarian, Albanian, and Greek cultures.
  4. We’re also portraying plenty of other cultures, such as Dalmatians, Aromanians, Sclavenes, Arvanites, Cumans, Jasz, or Ashkenazi and Romanyoti Jews.

Religions:
Religion.png

This one is also interesting. Apart from the divide between Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, we have the Krstjani in Bosnia, Bogomils (the pink stripes both in Bosnia and Macedonia), and Paulicians in Thrace. The Jewish populations do not pass the threshold percentage to appear on the map, but there are plenty of communities across the region.

Raw Materials:
Raw Materials.png

The materials of the region. Something very noticeable is the richness of minerals, with plenty of Iron, Copper, Tin, Lead, Gold, and Silver. Specifically, Slovakia is very rich, and you definitely want more settlers to migrate to the region, and exploit its resources. The region is also very rich in agricultural resources, as you can see.

Markets:
Markets.png

The region is mostly divided among four markets: Venice, Pest, Ragusa and Constantinople.

Country and Location population:
Population 1.png

Population 2.png

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Population 4.png
Country and location population (which I’ve also sub-divided, and is under the Spoiler button).

And that’s all of today! I hope that you find the region interesting; we certainly think that it is. Next week we will go further south, and we will take a look at the Syrian Levant and Egypt. Cheers!
 
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Well they're going to have another 111 if they don't do the border changes correct
I already know I'm gonna give feedback on the province setup or on Albania lol
 
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I already know I'm gonna give feedback on the province setup or on Albania lol
Yeah, I hope people don't get their hopes down when some things aren't 1:1 what they thought it would be. It's been quite some time, but some things could have been overlooked or not within the developer's vision.

I hope all of us can stay as constructive as we've been here for most of the time.

Quick, concise feedback may be sufficient, as we've seen in some of the other feedback-threads.
 
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Yeah, I hope people don't get their hopes down when some things aren't 1:1 what they thought it would be. It's been quite some time, but some things could have been overlooked or not within the developer's vision.

I hope all of us can stay as constructive as we've been here for most of the time.

Quick, concise feedback may be sufficient, as we've seen in some of the other feedback-threads.
It's already taken significantly longer for the Balkans feedback thread to come out than it did for the Poland/Baltic one, which actually did have sweeping map changes. If the thread goes up and little has changed, then that poses a very legitimate question: what were they doing with all that time?
 
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It's already taken significantly longer for the Balkans feedback thread to come out than it did for the Poland/Baltic one, which actually did have sweeping map changes. If the thread goes up and little has changed, then that poses a very legitimate question: what were they doing with all that time?
They spent it with the same thing that made this thread long too in the first place (pointlessly arguing back-and-forth about the detailed interpretation of fundamentally unreliable sources interlaced with personal insults and posting propaganda material).
 
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It's already taken significantly longer for the Balkans feedback thread to come out than it did for the Poland/Baltic one, which actually did have sweeping map changes. If the thread goes up and little has changed, then that poses a very legitimate question: what were they doing with all that time?
The released "teasers" we've seen actually show quite a lot of locations were added in the North, though most of the changes will likely be demographic
 
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I just want to say it has been a pleasure reading 111 pages of schizoposting (the balkans aren't real they can't hurt you)
 
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I believe the topography of the northern borders of the Hungarian Kingdom is not realistic. You have the High and Small Tatra mountains as unpassable terrain, along with the mountain range of the Small Fatra (the westernmost unpassable terrain in northern Hungary). However, mountain ranges are also running along the borders with Czechia and western Poland (Western Beskids mountain range). They are only about 1000m to 1500m high, but they do offer significant strategic advantages, as evidenced by the fact that this border has essentially remained unchanged since the 13th century. The areas were heavily forested and not viable for crossing. In your topographic map, the terrain is shown as hills, which does not make for realistic gameplay, as it makes invasions from the north easy, which was not the case in reality. Note that the real historical borders weren't even heavily fortified, yet they remained stable.

Moreover, the Small Fatra unpassable terrain that you have in the map is, in practice, split into two regions by a river canyon and is therefore passable in the middle. Essentially, the entire northwestern border of the Hungarian Kingdom, present-day Slovakia, is lined by a large river valley (the Váh River), flanked by mountains on both sides. The roads along this river valley were historically guarded by a number of castles, which enabled Hungary to easily control the northern areas. Since the area was naturally defensible, it was the center of the historical Slovak population.
 
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Rusyn culture was propagated by the Habsburgs to undermine Russian and Ukrainian nationalisms, and Transylvanian is an eyesore too
To the contrary. Hapsburg propagated Ukrainian culture to the detriment of the often Russophilic Rusyn elites. Why would a country that undermined Ukrainian nationalism hire Hrushevkyi to set up Ukrainian education in Galicia? Take the Rusyn genocide in Europe's first concentration camp in Thalerhoff. If you stated that you were Ukrainian and not Rusyn, you were let go.
 
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