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Tinto Maps #5 - 7th of June 2024 - Italy

Hello everyone, and welcome to the fifth Tinto Maps! This week we will be sharing the map of Italy.

One comment before we start: we know that you might be eager to discuss other regions that may appear partially on the DD, such as the Balkans. Let’s try to keep the conversations separated in different threads, please; every region will get its own Tinto Maps, and we will show them and gather feedback in due time, in their own DD.

With that said, let’s start!:

Countries
Countries.jpg

The situation of Italy in 1337 is quite interesting. The main power in the peninsula is the Kingdom of Naples, ruled by King Robert I, who is also ruler of Provence, and a few minor countries in Northern Italy; his efforts towards the domination of Italy also made him the leader of the Guelph faction in Italy, which backs the Pope. Speaking of him, the seat of the Curia is at Avignon, and regaining control over the Papal States and moving it back to Rome might take some time and effort. Opposite to all of them, there is the Ghibelline faction, led by the Signoria of Milan, ruled by the Visconti dynasty. They are backed by other important powers in the Italian region, such as the Superb Republic of Genoa, or the Duchy of Verona, ruled by the dynasty of della Scala. There are also neutral powers, like the Republics of Venice or Siena, although they could be attracted to join one of the factions. And we also have foreign powers that have already set a foothold in Italy, such as the Crown of Aragon, which has established a branch of its dynasty as Kings of Sicilia, while also recently conquering some lands in Sardinia.

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Guelphs.jpg

Ghibellines.jpg

Guelphs and Ghibellines factions! They are International Organizations part of a Situation.

Dynasties
dynasties.png


Locations
Locations.jpg

There is an interesting density in Italy, especially in the North, where there are plenty of communes - the Italian city-states. You might also notice something a bit different from previous Paradox GSGs: Venice is not an island, but the location has lands around the lagoon. We aren’t 100% sure that this will be the final design, as we have a few ideas to try to keep its special position on an island inside the lagoon while addressing the issue of it being too small to appear in the map; in this regard, we’re open about feedback and ideas on the topic.

Provinces
Provinces.jpg

Any naming suggestions about the provinces are well-received, as usual.

Terrain
Climate.jpg

Topography.jpg

Vegetation.jpg

Three usual terrain layers. Something that I want to comment on is that we’ve been following this thread about ‘Revising Flatlands and hills’, and we are trying to get a bit more granularity in the Topographical map with the help of @SulphurAeron .

Cultures
Cultures.jpg

Italy is also a region with a sharp cultural division, and also plenty of minorities; although they don’t appear on the map, there are Italki Jews, or Greek and Albanian people in the South, among others.

Religions
Religion.jpg

Another boring region, with more than 90% of the population being Catholic, with most of the religious minorities being Italkim Jews and Orthodox Greeks. We're considering implementing Waldensians, although adding more diverging Catholic heresies/confessions is a bit of a low priority for us right now. As a side note, it might catch your eye the Krstjani of Bosnia; we’ll discuss them later on, in the Tinto Maps devoted to the Balkans.

Raw Goods
Raw Goods.jpg

Italy is a rich region with plenty of interesting raw materials.

Markets
Markets.jpg

There are three market centers in Italy: Genoa, Venice, and Naples (which was a very, very rich country in 1337, the wealthiest of the region). As usual, take into account that. 1. We don't script in the setup which locations belong to each market, they're automatically assigned to each market. 2. This starting distribution is not final, and it might change, as we do tweaks to the market access calculations over time.

Population
Pops Countries.jpg

Pops Locations.png

There is around 10.5M population in the Italian region as of now. Taking into account how divided the political landscape is, Naples looks scary…

And that’s all for this week! For the next one, we will be talking about the British Isles, with @SaintDaveUK . See you!
 
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First off does anyone have a good idea on what the abbreviated tags are that I circled? Similarly can you make the Naples North Italian tags more purpleish?
Papal States, Canavese, Chieri, Asti, Alessandria, Malaspina, Volterra, Pitigliano, Imola, Paenza, Cesena, Perugia, Rimini, Pesaro, Cortona, Gubbio, Citta di Castello, Macerata, Ancona, Camerino, Fermo, Ascoli Piceno.
Most of these can be easily identified in the location map.
 
In general I'm not a great fan of the concept of wasteland, especially in Europe, in general I prefer the current HoI option, where the "wastelands" are unpassable militarly but have still population, resources and can be owned by a political entity for the civil matters (with some bonus\malus about the terrain).
 
Currently, they're locations, but Lampedusa is most likely not going to make the cut. For comparison, it has 25 pixels, while the Jersey and Guernsey has 114 pixels. Rijeka has 59, and that's why I've previously said that it will most likely be reviewed. Just so you know, we have a soft limit of around 100 pixels, which is the bare minimum we consider to be a playable location (although it's not completely set in stone, that's why I say that it's a soft limit).
Have you abandoned the previous policy of exaggerating the sizes of small but notable islands? Certainly lots of islands, like Fernando de Noronha or Diego Garcia that are commonly represented due to their strategic location despite their tiny size. I.e. Lampedusa is somewhat interesting historically as it was used as a base by Arab pirates during much of this period

Though I'm happy to see Pantellaria is in!
 
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Are you guys planning on representing the Papal Enclaves of Pontecorvo and Benevento in southern Italy?
I'm just watching a YouTube video about this Tinto Map of my home peninsula and came straight here just for this, given the new small locations this should be doable!
 
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Sure:

View attachment 1145320
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About the dependencies, is too early to showcase them, sorry about that; but if you could provide with the specific relations (Robert was lord of this signoria, overlord of that other polity, etc.), it would still be helpful for us.
Hi @Pavía, I'll try to explain the relationship between the Guelph communes and Robert of Anjou, though there's not a definite solution. From around 1305 to 1340, all the Piedmontese communes south of the Tanaro River were ruled by the Guelphs. The distinction between Guelph rule and vassalage to Provence was often unclear. However, between 1339 and 1345, a league led by John II of Montferrat defeated the Guelphs in several battles, with minimal support from the Anjou states. After these events, the only city that remained under Angevin influence was Cuneo, which later passed to Savoy in 1382.

For historical and gameplay reasons, I believe only Cuneo should be under direct Angevin control. The mechanics of the Guelph League should represent the rest of the Angevin diplomatic relations. Therefore, Mondovì, Alba, Asti, and Alessandria should be part of the Guelph League, while Montferrat should align with the Ghibelline League.

Imagine if Provence controlled both the Kingdom of Naples and southern Piedmont, the Anjou would likely quickly dominate all of Italy in most games without strong railroading.
 

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In general I'm not a great fan of the concept of wasteland, especially in Europe, in general I prefer the current HoI option, where the "wastelands" are unpassable militarly but have still population, resources and can be owned by a political entity for the civil matters (with some bonus\malus about the terrain).
How much population would you say lives here? What resources are produced in this location?
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Just wanted to know, does the game support the apostrophe? Cause in such case, Aragonese and Catalan languages would call their dynasty "d'Aragon" and "d'Aragó" respectively
 
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Why do the Eastern Mediterranian sea tiles (Orange-Pinkish) extend all the way to Caligari instead of the Western Mediterranean (Green) having everything West of the Sicily-Tunis line?

Seen in the Provinces map.
 
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The borders and names for Slovenia are a bit weird.
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Here are my suggestions to rename the lands and change the borders.
Ljubljana should be named Kranj and merged with Bled and what I assume is Škofja Loka. Since their lords are not shown on the map I don't see why the lands are needed.
Besides the weird borders, Kočevje didn't exist yet. If I'm not mistaken Ribnica was more important, so it could be renamed to Ribnica. Or, this is a bit more wanky idea, it could be renamed to Auersperg after the castle and family that were the most powerful lords.
Novo Mesto and Postojna also didn't exist yet, but I don't know what the alternate name would be.
 
First off does anyone have a good idea on what the abbreviated tags are that I circled? Similarly can you make the Naples North Italian tags more purpleish?

As for actual feedback:

I am unsure of the history but I know that Sicily has a very lively tuna industry that has been in recent decline.

The Alpine culture seems to be out of place. I feel like Provençal should be expanded and largely expanded

I am unsure if this is a point of concern but the Genoa market should be more constrained by the Alps.
For the abbreviated tags, from west to east, north to south:

- Ora. is the principality of Orange, historically part of the HRE.
- P.S. are the Papal States, owning Avignon, which is then the seat of the popes.
- Can. is the March of Ivrea, which was the capital of the area called Canavese?
- Chi: Republic of Chieri.
- Asti: Commune of Asti.
- Ale: Commune of Alessandria.
- Mal: Malaspina (they've got lands a bit more to the northwest too). The area encircled is Lunigiana, but apparently it was in the hands of Malaspina family in that time.
- Imo: Commune of Imola.
- Fae: Commune of Faenza.
- Vol: Commune of Volterra
- Big junk of tags: Communes of Cesena, Rimini, Perugia, Urbino, Pesaro, Cortona, Gubbio. C.d.C. is for the Commune of Città di Castello.
- Pit: is Pitigliano (capital of the area, chosen instead of Sovana, probably a free commune of Italy too).
- Last chunk of tags: An. for Ancona, Mac. for Macerata, Cam. for Camerino, Fer. for Fermo, and finally, AP for Ascoli Piceno.
 
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Hello everybody, I would like to point out some mistakes with the locations in Ticino/Tessin.

If I’m reading correctly the location map, the celeste one (the one that is controlled by Como in the political map) is called Bellinzona, while the orange one is Locarno. If that’s the case, it’s incorrect, the two should be switched (Bellinzona is the orange one to the east, while Locarno is the celeste one to the west). This is because of where the cities/towns are compared to valleys, rivers, etc., so it was the case even in the past.

Between the two locations there is also a weird “triangular shape” I assume it should be a valley, but it’s not there in real world (not as big, at least), not connected to the nord like that (in the image it’s more clear).

Another detail, Lugano should not border Mesocco, as that’s literally where the town of Bellinzona is (so, of course, it should be in the orange location as Bellinzona). Lugano is dived from the other two locations by mountains, so it’s not something that may have changed with time. Basically Bellinzona should be a “funnel” for the mountain passes through the alps (Novena/Nufenen for Brig, San Gottardo/Gotthard for Altdorf) and by the Mesolcina valley (the Mesocco location) to the San Bernardino/Sankt Bernhardin, those are all correctly in the map, but should all border only Bellinzona in the Ticino. There is also the Lucomagno/Lukmanier pass that would connect it to the Belmont location, but I assume it’s an higher level of details as it’s all “impassable” mountains (I honestly was surprised to see the three towns/cities as locations!).
If you think “but than you just build a fort in Bellinzona to block a huge chunk of the alps”… well, that’s probably why Milan built three castles there and why when conquered by the Swiss they added a wall to literally block the entire valley xD

I’m adding a map of the locations with the correct borders (in red) and the names of the three locations/towns (in yellow).
Because the borders are mostly mountains, a current map should be enough (border changed, but it’s a level of details of pixels, probably), so as a proof I’m also adding a google maps image with mountains etc (I added some yellow lines to show the tops of mountains, currently used as border for the municipality etc).
Hope it’s clear enough.
 

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Basically Bellinzona should be a “funnel” for the mountain passes through the alps (Novena/Nufenen for Brig, San Gottardo/Gotthard for Altdorf)
The Nufenenpass road was built in 1969, the first mention of the pass was in the middle of the 19th century as a walking trail. Not something you'd take an army across in Project Caesar's time period.
The Lukmanierpass definitely should be included, it was one of the most important passes in the Alps at the start of the game.

The Bellinzona and Faido locations from my suggestion could be merged into one location like in your suggestion, but that would give it a pretty strange shape.
Faido was the capital of Leventina when Uri owned it and it was important for controlling trade through the passes, that's why I suggested it as a location.
 
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Why are the provinces in Italy small, while in Hungary the provinces are massive? "Somogy" is gigantic compared to Abruzzo Ultra.


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Here are the medieval counties of Hungary. These look like the perfect size to be the provinces in the game, and they were very important historically as political units. Why can't the game use them?
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