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

[gabadur]

I feel like serbian and croatian and bosnian should start as one culture of southern slav and as religious differences and different empires control various regions over time the cultures diverge into their respective parts. Bosnians attribute vast amounts of their differences due to their religion. They aren't muslim yet. Croatians and serbians while having different dialects aren't that different yet either. Their language is closer than french and occitan at this point.

 

[Wildrake]

Rădvan's At Europe's Borders goes into greater detail regarding the ethnic makeup of various parts of Moldavia in that period. I'll write more about it in a later post but the TLDR is that there were quite a bunch of ethnicities present, and Slavs were only a part of it.

Thank you, I meant that Moldavia was in no way homogenous, especially in 1337

 

[Scythianchvd]

"Budapest" was not a concept until the late 19th century, I suggest a renaming of that province.
Also, I think the other province is supposed to be called "Bácska", not "Bácsa" (though I think a more historically appropriate name would be just "Bács").
Others have also pointed this out, but Transdanubia is by no means flatlands either. There are many hills and even small mountains there, same goes for the region around Eger.

 

[gabadur]

Forestation attempts were made during Austria-Hungary and it looked way worse in the 14th century. It's an area covering 300 square kilometres

That looks more like a dry Mediterranean climate similar to Morocco or California than a desert

 

[Fredde the Duck]

You said there is a small number of Jewish population, how is that balanced so that they just don't quickly assimilate and disappear? Especially in regions where changes in culture and religion happen quite a lot. Is there a system of main, accepted, tolerated and excluded cultures and religion?

 

[Atromb]

Are gypsie minorities in the byzatine empire represented? Will there be events about gypsie migrations into the balkans and later western Europe?

 

[marxismycopilot]

It was a fairly small minority, but will the Carpathian Germans in Upper Hungary be represented in game?

 

[CocoBZ]

Thank you, I meant that Moldavia was in no way homogenous, especially in 1337

Oh, definitely, you'll find Greeks, Armenians, Saxons and others.

 

[Dukemanman]

We have planned to add it through an event.

The Duchy/Princedom of Dobruja (Karvuna) should be a playable vassal nation of Bulgaria at the start of the game. A semi-independent orthodox regional metropolitan church was mentioned in documents dating back to 1325. So even as early as the mid-1320s the region was decently autonomous from the Bulgarian church and logically also from the central authority of the Bulgarian state. (Since the church was very much tied to the state and quite subservient to it when it comes to Orthodox Christianity).
Also just because Wikipedia suggest that is was founded in 1340 doesn't mean that this is correct as there is plenty of evidence to suggest the regions autonomy dating back to the mid 1320s.
There should be an ingame event which ties its church closer to Constantinople in 1340 while remaining a Bulgarian vassal and a later event in 1356 which makes it an independent state.
Also it should be called Karvuna as Dobruja as a name for the region almost certainly arose later.

 

[Lord Lambert]

My only complaint/desire would be for the impassible mountains to be a bit more prevalent in Greece. Imperator really nailed it when it came to this imo, though Im sure the ability of armies to move through and people to live in these places certainly became easier in the 1600 years between the games, it would still be nice to get a bit more movement hindrances in the game as it was a great part of Imp.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

Placeholder for tomorrow, will post feedback with sources here.

Kinda glad you are doing this, the whole "I have the ear of the devs" thing always felt kinda smug. Anticipating your responses from now on.

 

[bokorthedust]

Couple of points after glancing over the map of Transylvania:
1. Koloszvár is spelled Kolozsvár
2. I believe Korosbanya should be Kőrősbánya, unless the accents are only missing because of the zoom level. Korosbanya would mean old hag, while Kőrösbánya means Kőrős mine, named after the Kőrös river.
3. While my heart skipped a beat to see my hometown represented as a location, Kézdivásárhely in the southeastern corner is a bit anachronistic for the time period, it should be named Torjavására and maybe change name through a DHE later.
4. Are the naming inconsistencies between Romanian, Hungarian and German intentional, or would you like input on those too?

Calling the Transylvanian Saxons as Transylvanian Germans feels a bit weird, and calling the Romanian population of Transylvania Transylvanian seems also wrong. I am by no means knowledgeable on the subject, but I don't think there ever was enough difference culturally between Romanians living in Transylvania and Romanians living outside the Carpathian Basin to warrant splitting them into multiple cultures. Not to mention Transylvanian and Transylvanian German/Saxon next to each other of awfully confusing to read on the map too.

 

[Pavía]

Wonderful DD! Now, the elephant in the room is obviously Transylvanian. Why not just make them Wallachian? There was no real ethnic and cultural difference between Transylvanian and Wallachian Romanians at the time, nor today. Splitting Transylvanian off Romanian would probably only make sense if you split Wallachian into Wallachian and Moldavian, which isn't really justified in the era either.

Other than that, I notice the lack of wetland environment along the Tisza, parts of the Danube and the Drava, and along the Southern shore of Lake Balaton. These areas were marshy, swampy, wetland environments for most of history until their drainage in the 19th century, so you should make at least some of those areas wetlands for additional accuracy/detail.

1. We think that this makes for a bit better cultural divide (and, yes, in that case, it would probably be better to have Moldavian differentiated over time). In any case, we're open to feedback, and reviewing this specific topic.
2. We're aware, but it's a bit tricky; there's a group of people which are already in contact with @SulphurAeron (shot!), to help us portray the Hungarian wetlands on the best possible way.

 

[J_Master]

I'd like to throw in my 2 cents. Much like the Flemish-Dutch split in 1337 was just wrong and anachronistic, a Wallachian-Transylvanian split based on the geographic boundary of the Carpathians is wrong, especially when you group Moldavian in with either of them, like is the case now. Just make it one Romanian culture or make Moldavian its own culture, especially because the Serbocroatian cultures are no smaller than a Wallachian or Moldavian. If you refuse to call a unified culture Romanian because of the Rome connotations and Rhomania being a possible name for the Byzantine Empire, just call it Vlachian instead. It's a arbitrary compromise, but so is Lower Franconian. Speaking of Serbocroatian, I really doubt that this is a split based on dialectal families. I've had to mod the pops of the region in V2, and some Balkaners more versed in the subject helped me with it. If you're basing this on dialects, the northwest of Croatia should be Slovene, basically the entire border area north of Zagreb. It only really became Croatian with the process of the standardization of Croatian and the spread of education and literature in this standardized form of Croatian.

 

[kagami1999]

We have planned to add it through an event.

Why? There's good evidence that it had de-facto independence by 1337, just see my post on page 2. Wouldn't it be so much better to just let people play as Dobruja from the 1337 start instead?

Vidin was not authonomous in 1337. It was authonomous at some point in the late 13th, early 14th century. Then it was declared authonomous by Sratsimir in 1355 after Shishman had been declared heir to the throne. In 1337 there were feudal holdings and appanages, but gamewise, Vidin is totally Bulgarian.

The two sources I cited pretty clearly say otherwise. Also, what do you mean by "totally Bulgarian"? Bulgaria was deep in the throws of feudal fragmentation by the early 14th century, it's impossible to portray the fall of the Bulgarian state if you leave it as unrealistically centralized as it is in Paradox's map.

 

[So_MeOne]

Hello! I have a question... It is not necessarily related to this TM, but rather TM#4, sorry for that.

Since Poland and Baltic region is going to be reviewed for some more time, I wanted to ask, is there a releasable country "Lauenburg and Bütow Land", from the locations of Lębork (Lauenburg) and Bytów (Bütow)? It is holds importance to me, so I wanted to know if it will make an appearance in Project Caesar...
And if it is not implemented yet, can I post some info about it in the TM#4 thread, will it still be relevant?

 

[Pavía]

I think Bulgarias colour (along with the culture colour)should be changed to a darker grey or possibly a green as it looks much better (in my opinion) and fits with other paradox games. Also sticking with colour I think a system like CK3 where the colour of a dynasty changes to the colour of the most important realm would be cool.

Also the Greek culture colour looks very dull and way to similar to Turkish which is especially important to not have considering the cultural mixing in border provinces. I think either I light blue or light purple would be good although not entirely certain how to change the Greek culture colour.

Noted. We don't want green, as that may be too close to Ottomans' color, but grey might do the trick; we'll take a look.

I think that blue for Greek culture was a good suggestion, and we may end up checking that, as well.

 

[chriserit1]

considering moldavia is gonna spawn in 1340 (only 3 years after game start), i think it's better to have them at the start of the game so that you can start the game playing with moldavia. it would be pretty weird to have to wait 3 years just so that you can play them.

 

[marxismycopilot]

The area near Torna (Smolnik) was a major copper mine in this time period and was the first European mine to employ cementation (doi: 10.5194/hgss-12-179-2021). I don't think clay was nearly as significant of an industry here.

 

[asrelk]

It should be Peć, not Peč.