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Tinto Maps #7 - 21st of June 2024 - Anatolia

Hello everyone, and welcome to the seventh edition of Tinto Maps! I am once again asking for your support back to the duty of showing a new region of the map of the super secret Project Caesar, which this week is Anatolia!

Countries:
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A beautifully divided Anatolia! The disintegration of the Sultanate of Rûm in the 13th century, caused by the Mongol invasion, led to multiple Turkish Beyliks grabbing power over their area. Probably the strongest in 1337 is the Ottoman one, founded by the Turkoman leader Osman Ghazi, but there are other strong contenders such as the Eretnids, the Germiyanids, or the Karamanids, which will be fighting for hegemony over the region. You might also notice that the Byzantine Empire//Eastern Roman Empire//Basileía Rhōmaíōn//[insert here your favorite naming option] still holds a few positions in Anatolia, the most notable being the city of Philadelphia. Apart from them, other interesting countries in the region are the Despotate of Trebizond, held by the Komnenoi, the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, and, of course, The-country-known-in-another-IP-as-Hisn-Kayfa, the Ayyubid remnant in al-Jazira. And you might also notice some Genoese outposts, making them important players as well.

Dynasties:
Dynasties.png

The dynastic map is pretty straightforward, as a different dynasty rules each Beylik. We have fixed the issue with the random dynasty names, so no more weird 'the XXXX of XXXX' dynastic names anymore. To spice things up, we could maybe start a Byzantine discussion: Palaiologos, or Komnenos?

Locations:
Locations.jpg

As usual, please consider that dynamic location naming is not yet a thing in this region, and therefore the inconsistencies in the language used. As an additional note of caution, please don’t use the Aegean Islands as a reference or benchmark for comparison, as a review of them is something that we’ve got on our list of ‘to do’. You may be able to see that the location density in the region is gradual, from denser coastal regions to bigger inland ones.

Provinces:
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We have changed the coloring of the provinces, making them more different, and easier to understand, though. Apart from that, suggestions in this matter are welcomed, as usual.

Terrain:
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The terrain in Anatolia is quite interesting and unique, as it’s composed of very different features: the central Anatolian Plateau, with a colder climate and more sparse vegetation, is opposed to the rugged and more forested coastlines to the north and south, while only having fluvial flatlands to the west, and in Cilicia (an area that always has been a choke point between Anatolia and Syria. And to the east, the territory becomes increasingly more mountainous, as it approaches the Caucasus.

Cultures:
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Anatolia is the first region of the Middle East with cultural and religious minorities added, just in time for this Tinto Maps, so we can have endless discussions about the divide between the Greek and Turkish cultures! Hurray! Now seriously, we’ve made what we think is the most accurate division for 1337, given the scarcity of data. The stripes point to a variation of the pop percentages in each location, from let’s say 70% of Greeks in Izmit or Bursa, to 80% of Turks in Ankara or Konya. We have also added some subdivisions of these cultures, with the Pontic and Cappadocian Greeks; and the Turkomans (you might note a majority of them around Sivas and Malatya), that portray more a ‘class//social grouping’ divide than an ethnic or language divide, as these Turkoman pops are always tribesmen, while we consider the settled population as Turkish. Other than that, we have a good amount of Armenians distributed between the areas of Cilicia and Armenia; Laz people to the north; and Kurds to the east (the brownish-greenish culture). Also, please ignore the chunk of Syria that appears, as the minorities there are not yet done.

Religions:
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We’re back to interesting religious divisions! We have in Anatolia Orthodox, Sunni, Miaphysite, and Nestorian pops. And if you wonder what are those pink stripes in Thrace, they are a Paulician minority.

Raw Materials:
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There are some interesting materials distributed all over Anatolia, such as Alum (which was a main export to Italy, usually handled by the merchant republics), Silk, Marble, or Copper. And if you’re wondering about the Spices, they were previously Saffron.

Markets:
Markets.jpg

The market centers of the region are Constantinople to the west, Trebizond to the north, and Damascus to the south. Nothing speaks against a Turkish Beylik conquering one or all of them, or creating a new market center, probably in the middle of the Anatolian Plateau, although probably it will require some infrastructure to make it fully functional.

Location and Country Population:
Pops Locations.jpg

Pops Country.jpg

And populations. Byzantium has some edge over each of the Beylikz, but not if they ally with each other, or if they ally with its Balkanic rivals… Also, have I heard about a 66K Ayyubid challenge?

That’s all for today! We’ll most likely be uploading the French feedback results by the end of next week or at the start of the following one (as next week there's an important bank holiday for this company, Midsommar St. John's Day, and some people will be on vacation a few days), and in the meantime, we'll also be reading and answering your feedback about Anatolia. And next Friday, we will be taking a look at Russia. See you then!

PS: I had a flight today that was delayed, therefore the delay on the DD until an (interesting) hour in which I'll be available for replying.
 
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Of course there's a larger question that always comes up in cases like that: most of the best farmland in the world was once forested, so what happens if large parts of it were only cleared during the game's time period? Or if it fell into disuse due to demographic shift, and then was farmed again later? Should it just be woods, without any reference to the fact that it's actually prime farmland?

I think in farmlands in game terms refers to basically areas put under intensified agriculture artificially rather than it being about specifically soil quality or agricultural potential. I think it's generally okay to represent this humanmade feature under geographic terms because before 19th century land reform laws and state agricultural investments and regulations this sort of thing was mostly out of state control and happened somewhat autonomously depending on demographic and climate conditions.

In such consideration, it is generally true that Anatolia ceased to be an agriculturally potent geography somewhere after 7th or 12th century and indeed remained mostly poor agriculturally. There were many reasons for this, including low population density, presence of nomadic pastoralists and their legally acquired pastures, low agricultural intensification due to capital and population poor nature of Anatolia. In case of Ottoman Empire, even with 19th century land reforms it was more about putting new land under till and reclaiming agricultural frontiers from nomadic pastoralists rather than agricultural intensification until 20th century.
 
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I think in farmlands in game terms refers to basically areas put under intensified agriculture artificially rather than it being about specifically soil quality or agricultural potential. I think it's generally okay to represent this humanmade feature under geographic terms because before 19th century land reform laws and state agricultural investments and regulations this sort of thing was mostly out of state control and happened somewhat autonomously depending on demographic and climate conditions.

In such consideration, it is generally true that Anatolia ceased to be an agriculturally potent geography somewhere after 7th or 12th century and indeed remained mostly poor agriculturally. There were many reasons for this, including low population density, presence of nomadic pastoralists and their legally acquired pastures, low agricultural intensification due to capital and population poor nature of Anatolia. In case of Ottoman Empire, even with 19th century land reforms it was more about putting new land under till and reclaiming agricultural frontiers from nomadic pastoralists rather than agricultural intensification until 20th century.

Well but in game terms, farmland will probably give you higher population capacity (as well as agricultural output) and we've seen this referred to as "Available Free Land". So surely it does represent natural factors more than human development. After all, you have to expand raw material production to get more people to work in agriculture, which in my opinion exactly represents investments into agricultural expansion. While farmland vegetation would represent natural suitability for farming.

From the standpoint of player agency: if you wanted to establish settled farming communities with high agricultural production, these fertile areas (which today are intensively farmed) would be were you do it, even if historically it wasn't done until much later.
Which is why I would personally prefer this natural potential to be represented, instead of everything just being covered in trees and producing livestock.

Also, considering how many Greek people there are living on the coast at the start of the game, I think it makes sense to represent their farming communities and cities with pockets of farmland.
 
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Well but in game terms, farmland will probably give you higher population capacity (as well as agricultural output) and we've seen this referred to as "Available Free Land". So surely it does represent natural factors more than human development. After all, you have to expand raw material production to get more people to work in agriculture, which in my opinion exactly represents investments into agricultural expansion. While farmland vegetation would represent natural suitability for farming.

From the standpoint of player agency: if you wanted to establish settled farming communities with high agricultural production, these fertile areas (which today are intensively farmed) would be were you do it, even if historically it wasn't done until much later.
Which is why I would personally prefer this natural potential to be represented, instead of everything just being covered in trees and producing livestock.

It could definitely be possible in theory but in practical terms as stated this wasn't really done much even in Europe until land reform laws were passed, perhaps with exception of colonies. I am not sure if we should give the states to ability to engage in functionally modern agricultural practices right from start instead of things like farmlands being basically natural occurrences in effect. Including affecting things like higher population capacity. I think this argument holds even more true when we consider that these affect things like population capacity, I don't think Anatolia achieving its theoretical population capacity with state-led 5-year plan agricultural reform should be a thing in 15th century or really anywhere else. We can just consider farmlands to be things that happened outside of state control and just mostly remained that way until 19th century.

One possible addition would be if a region that is not farmland reaches a certain population density and tax revenue while having forest or grassland terrain perhaps it could turn into farmlands via an event or a pop-up or something but it shouldn't really be a state employed effort (except perhaps indirectly via encouraging migration) rather than having that innate potential ambiently without any feasible dynamic to lead to that outcome.
 
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It could definitely be possible in theory but in practical terms as stated this wasn't really done much even in Europe until land reform laws were passed, perhaps with exception of colonies. I am not sure if we should give the states to ability to engage in functionally modern agricultural practices right from start instead of things like farmlands being basically natural occurrences in effect. Including affecting things like higher population capacity. I think this argument holds even more true when we consider that these affect things like population capacity, I don't think Anatolia achieving its theoretical population capacity with state-led 5-year plan agricultural reform should be a thing in 15th century or really anywhere else. We can just consider farmlands to be things that happened outside of state control and just mostly remained that way until 19th century.

One possible addition would be if a region that is not farmland reaches a certain population density and tax revenue while having forest or grassland terrain perhaps it could turn into farmlands via an event or a pop-up or something but it shouldn't really be a state employed effort (except perhaps indirectly via encouraging migration) rather than having that innate potential ambiently without any feasible dynamic to lead to that outcome.
But again, farm output is expanded by expanding raw material production, which employs more people. So why would the process of expanding agriculture be tied to switching locations to farmland vegetation when there's already a game mechanic that represents it much better? And don't forget that as you expand agriculture, it actually gets less efficient, since you always use the most fertile land first. So it wouldn't make sense to get farmland, which increases agricultural output, as a reward for expanding agriculture to less fertile land.
There are surely technological advancements as well that will increase farm output.
So for me, I really see no way to interpret "farmland vegetation" as anything other than naturally fertile land that is very suitable for farming and sustaining a lot of people.

Also in terms of "theoretical population capacity", it's reached almost nowhere in the world during this game's time frame anyway. Ireland yes, France and Slovakia come close, as do some Chinese states, but in most places around the world, population increased a lot after the period. Java went from 5 million people at the end of the period to 150 million today. Ankara today alone has a population that can rival that of all of Anatolia in the past.
So we're really talking about a pretty arbitrary value when it comes to population capacity, not something that is perfectly historically accurate.
 
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As usual, here are my comments on topography and climate:

Climate
- Oceanic seems underrepresented along the Northern coast and Western hills.
- Ahtopol (Byz) should also be oceanic.
- Arctic zones are designated as impassable, but for consistency's sake it would be nice to mark them as such.

Tinto's designKöppen 1901-1930 reclassified to Tinto's design
View attachment 1151372View attachment 1151373

Topography
Eastern Anatolia
  • I LOVE the way you represented the Cilician gates! But please extend the same love to the Amanian gate ;)
    • Xarani needs to be largely impassable (northeastern half)
    • Anavarza and Kapan should have to maneuver through Ulnia
    • Ulnia should be hills instead of Mountains
  • Centrally, I'd switch some province terrains around:
    • Siran -> mountains
    • Bayburt -> plateau
    • Zara+Hafik+Sivas -> plateau
    • border of Divrigi/Afin/Arapgir needs rework to include the mountain massif
    • Kemah -> mountains
    • Tercan -> hills
View attachment 1151390View attachment 1151405 View attachment 1151394View attachment 1151393View attachment 1151409View attachment 1151396View attachment 1151395
Western Anatolia
  • The border between Beyschir - Manavgat seems to be rather impassable in real life, while it's a plateau-flatlands transition in game.
  • The 2 mountain ranges in the Aydin Province are neglected. Perhaps an east-west impassable could emulate the fact that armies need to go around them?
  • - Akcakoca (North) should be hills instead of flatlands
    - Inegol-Bursa-Domanic needs an impassable range on their borders
    - Northern Edremit needs an impassable in the northernmost part
Linear DEM (0-3500 m)Tinto's designReclassified terrain based on ruggedness index
View attachment 1151369View attachment 1151370View attachment 1151371
I absolutely agree with adding the impassible terrain in Western Anatolia. Not only is this physically accurate, but I think it would make the game more fun and lead to more historically plausible gameplay. Those land features directed much of the Turkish-Byzantine conflict to narrow areas in the Meander River valley and the funnel (I forget the name) which Dorylaeum guarded in the north.

To the fun part, I think players enjoy fighting and maneuvering around historical impassible terrain. I think it also makes playing tall much more satisfying as it gives a naturally defensible point to expand to and defend, rather than a just "I'll stop here because I remember this was a historical border." IMO, more impassible terrain was one of the best strategic gameplay elements added in Imperator.

EDIT: I also wanted to say that I love the team's work on the map! Ultimately, regardless of any small items anyone can bring up, you have done an amazing job on these!
 
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'The Rise of the Turks'.

We also considered 'The Turkish Thunderdome!', but we want the flavor of the game to be historically immersive... :p
A fun latter addition would be something like fallout’s “Wacky Wasteland” in which the devs could throw in all their wacky puns and historical jokes they like to do into the tooltips and formatting - maybe a future April Fools idea?
 
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I didn't want to be aggressive but I'm not going to respect a mutt who's joking about my people's (and probably his if he takes a DNA test) genосide.
I did not joke about anything at any point, I have always been genuine and respectful. Nice of you to call me a "mutt", I guess that won't get you banned since they didn't ban the racist cartoon posting idiot yet.
Your replies nevertheless explain the Turkish national IQ pretty well.
You seem like a reasonable and civilized person.
The most agreed upon number is that the Pontic Greek population was 750,000-1,000,000 and the 1.5m number is a total sum of the lives lost and populations deported throughout the years of genocide and oppression.

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1.500.000 of the 750.000 present? However 350.000 of them were killed and 200.000 were admitted to Greece. Where did the rest go? These numbers are still contradicting each other. I think the most likely explanation is that you are conflating the number of overall Greeks with Pontic Greeks, otherwise the population numbers do not make any sense. The Greek census (1910-1912) estimates 320.000 Pontic Greeks. 1918 Ethnological Map Illustrating Hellenism in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor, composed by Greek archaeologist Georgios Soteriades, estimates 360.000 Pontic Greeks in total, living in Kastamonu and Trabzon sanjaks. (See Alexandris, Alexis' study "The Greek census of Anatolia and Thrace (1910–1912) in Ottoman Historical Demography" in the book "Ottoman Greeks in the age of nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the Nineteenth Century". Once again a Greek source, how surprising!) Your numbers aren't making any sense.
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Now, after this post, I will not be replying to you anymore as I can imagine what sort of slоb you are, hunched and typing out all of this in front of your shrine for Ataturk after offering your daily prayers.
You are just enraged someone questioned your sources and you realized you didn't have any outside of chauvinistic babble. Now, will you talk about 1337 or will you keep going on weirdly racist tangents about the events of the nineteenth century?
 
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But again, farm output is expanded by expanding raw material production, which employs more people. So why would the process of expanding agriculture be tied to switching locations to farmland vegetation when there's already a game mechanic that represents it much better? And don't forget that as you expand agriculture, it actually gets less efficient, since you always use the most fertile land first. So it wouldn't make sense to get farmland, which increases agricultural output, as a reward for expanding agriculture to less fertile land.
There are surely technological advancements as well that will increase farm output.
So for me, I really see no way to interpret "farmland vegetation" as anything other than naturally fertile land that is very suitable for farming and sustaining a lot of people.

Also in terms of "theoretical population capacity", it's reached almost nowhere in the world during this game's time frame anyway. Ireland yes, France and Slovakia come close, as do some Chinese states, but in most places around the world, population increased a lot after the period. Java went from 5 million people at the end of the period to 150 million today. Ankara today alone has a population that can rival that of all of Anatolia in the past.
So we're really talking about a pretty arbitrary value when it comes to population capacity, not something that is perfectly historically accurate.

Modern population capacity is also a result of modern irrigation techniques and technologies as well as expanded logistic chains with things like modern trucks, ships and refrigeration. What I mean by population capacity is basically density achievable by the standards existing then.

Let us consider what it is in the game instead. If farmlands are areas of agricultural intensification with effective and efficient farming methods with a significant amount of land put to organized agricultural use which allows to sufficient food surplus to allow increased population capacity and density then how would this be achievable? We definitely have to consider the soil quality and clime for this to be feasible in the first place and some areas are better for this than others yet this didn't happen in all areas this was possible. Because you have factors outside of natural limitations that turned this potential to reality and these factors remained mostly out of state control and reliant on artificial variables. You do have examples of state-lead or state-assisted initiatives such as extensive irrigation methods or even canal systems in places like Iraq, Transoxiana or China but even these happen as an iterative process across general regions to transform them in response to mostly demographic and artificial conditions.

That's why I think any prospective farmlands should not be just about theoretical potential dependent on natural factors. Because it shouldn't really be a passive, innate quality of these regions to just support greater population as a priori by their soil quality but be reflective of demographic (POPs!) and socio-economic dynamics that caused that transformation. As we can see in real history of Anatolia and other places despite innate attributes of the soil and clime these potentials can remain unrealized so they really shouldn't be achieved by default.
 
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Modern population capacity is also a result of modern irrigation techniques and technologies as well as expanded logistic chains with things like modern trucks, ships and refrigeration. What I mean by population capacity is basically density achievable by the standards existing then.

Let us consider what it is in the game instead. If farmlands are areas of agricultural intensification with effective and efficient farming methods with a significant amount of land put to organized agricultural use which allows to sufficient food surplus to allow increased population capacity and density then how would this be achievable? We definitely have to consider the soil quality and clime for this to be feasible in the first place and some areas are better for this than others yet this didn't happen. Because you have factors outside of natural limitations that turned this potential to reality and these factors remained mostly out of state control. You do have examples of state-lead or state-assisted initiatives such as extensive irrigation methods or even canal systems in places like Iraq, Transoxiana or China but even these happen as an iterative process across general regions to transform them in response to mostly demographic and artificial conditions.

That's why I think any prospective farmlands should not be just about theoretical potential dependent on natural factors. Because it shouldn't really be a passive, innate quality of these regions to just support greater population as a priori by their soil quality but be reflective of demographic (POPs!) and socio-economic dynamics that caused that transformation. As we can see in real history of Anatolia and other places despite innate attributes of the soil and clime these potentials can remain unrealized so they really shouldn't be achieved by default.
But my question remains: why? There are game mechanics to represent farming intensity. You need to expand raw material production to get people working on the land. There are development, prosperity and technology which will likely give modifiers.
Why should vegetation, something treated as inherent to the land (unless Johan reveals amazing new technology at some point) also represent this process?
Clearly there are natural factors that make land more or less suitable to farming. Why shouldn't these be represented?
I'm not sure how you're equating farmland vegetation with "achieving potential by default". Farmland vegetation IS the potential. To make use of it, you actually have to develop agricultural production in the location. Otherwise, all you're getting is just a modifier to basic food production.

I would say that there are absolutely regions that could support high populations because of their fertile land, not because people had especially advanced farming technologies. Galicia and Volhynia is an example. The region was certainly not particularly well developed, but it was still an exporter of grain and sustained a relatively high population.
 
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But my question remains: why? There are game mechanics to represent farming intensity. You need to expand raw material production to get people working on the land. There are development, prosperity and technology which will likely give modifiers.
Why should vegetation, something treated as inherent to the land (unless Johan reveals amazing new technology at some point) also represent this process?
Clearly there are natural factors that make land more or less suitable to farming. Why shouldn't these be represented?

I would say that there are absolutely regions that could support high populations because of their fertile land, not because people had especially advanced farming technologies. Galicia and Volhynia is an example. The region was certainly not particularly well developed, but it was still an exporter of grain and sustained a relatively high population.

I think the why of it, at least in my view, is to represent the regions which the necessary demographic and socio-economic changes already gave way to those dynamics. Which from the perspective of pre-modern state more or less functionally the same if it happened as a natural occurence in effect.

If farmlands wouldn't be representing this dynamic but simply the agricultural potential of the land sans the artificial reality then the solution would not be to add more farmlands but to simply remove farmlands as a terrain type altogether. As the factors you presented could be used to determine agricultural yield instead. So farmlands only make sense to represent the land already put to intensified agricultural use effectively which is reliant on natural factors but not just since it may remain unrealized.

Otherwise if you turn more territory in Anatolia farmlands then it will naturally tend towards more population surplus despite that emphatically not being the case in reality because all that land remained unused or underused for agriculture due to other demographic and socio-economic factors. As such I believe the deciding factor here is primarily the demographic and socio-economic realities rather and should be no more changeable than starting populations because that's just the configuration of the world in 1337. I do believe some land could potentially turn into farmlands over time with demographic and socio-economic impact of events (as happened especially in colonies) or even lose its farmlands status (as happened in Iraq, Transoxiana and indeed parts of Anatolia) due to depopulation and devastation but I don't think these should be innate.

Because if its innate then it means it's all realized by default which wasn't the case and frequently was the opposite.
 
As such I believe the deciding factor here is primarily the demographic and socio-economic realities
In my opinion, vegetation of a location should not be tied to demographics at all.
The player should be free to make use of his subjects as the land allows. If there are fertile river valleys, why not allow the player to make use of them for intensive farming? It's not like there's an inherent trait of Turks that means they can never make use of that fertile land.
The land is inherently fertile, but the people decide what to do with it. If they decide to be sheepherders instead of farmers, that doesn't make the land any less suitable for agriculture. In my opinion, this is something the player should have influence over.

This is completely opposed to my position on mineral resources, by the way. In my opinion, resources that weren't even discovered close to the game's time period should not be included in the game. But you don't need to discover farmland, you don't need any deep mining drills or helicopters (yes this is a reference to the Brazilian iron ore deposit that gets a special modifier in Victoria 3 despite having been discovered in the 1960s by someone in a helicopter, while the most important iron ore deposits of the time period get no modifier at all). You just need to be an agricultural society and you'll quickly figure out which land is the best.

So if the socio-economic realities meant that Turks in Anatolia were mostly pastoral and didn't make use of good farmland, that should be, in my opinion, represented with game mechanics like the tribal pops that we know won't participate in the economy. But some potential should be there if you want to reform your society.

I'm not arguing for making lots of locations in Anatolia farmland, of course. Just the pockets along the coast that had certainly been farmed by Greeks for centuries at the start of the game.

Oh and I also agree that farmland is not a good choice for a vegetation type. Farming isn't inherent to land, it's entirely just human development. So farmland is a misnomer and "fertile land" would be better.
 
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The Rise of the Ottoman Empire by Paul Wittek is a collection of lectures, about sixty pages long, and it is a fascinating read. I liked this so much I also read Paul Wittek's longer book on the Menteşe beylik, albeit from a Turkish translation (the site I used only had a German and a Turkish version). It is an excellent source on the Turkification of the Menteşe area. It mostly talks about how frontier versions were unique in how divorced from central territories they were and how much contact with the enemy people had. It says that there were indigenous elements on the Turkish side and nomadic elements on the Byzantine side always, which is interesting, and talks about a group of Cumans the Byzantines settled in the Aegean region. Below is some ethnoreligious information provided by Wittek in his lectures, a direct quotation:

"On the other hand, we have seen that the invaders held only those regions which as border districts had already assimilated to a certain extent the cultural features of the
invaders and which, as marches, stood in marked contrast to their hinterland in regard to racial composition and to cultural, social, religious and political life. The invasion of the eleventh century was thrown back by the Byzantines to the old cultural frontier, and there came to a standstill. Although western Asia Minor was thereby saved, it was at the cost of itself becoming a march. It had already undergone marked changes in its cultural and racial elements during the twenty to thirty years of the first occupation, and it now received, during the next 200 years, the characteristics of the mixed culture so typical of the frontier districts. So, after generations in contact with their foe, who lived under the same conditions and with whom they were brought into closer contact by having a similar racial composition, these districts were now ready to fall permanently into the hands of the Turks at their next onslaught."

The next onslaught mentioned here is the Menteşe lords arriving from Antalya to conquer the region, and "taking under their leadership the Turks who were pouring in from the interior" in his exact words. The lectures end at this point, but the Turkish edition of the book on Menteşe by Wittek has some more specific info on this, which I will translate below. I'll share a PDF with anyone who wants to confirm the translation themselves, but here I go:

"In 1300, merely half a century after this movement of the nations, Western Anatolia became Turkish politically as well, just as it was filled to the brim by Turkish groups ethnically. Inland, a few cities that would be taken in a few decades like Philadelphia, Prusa and Nicaea stood out like eyes of the storm, alongside these a few locations like Herakleia on the Pontic coast, Phokaia and Smyrna managed to hold out. The newly annexed regions soon coalesced under new political authorities, the ruling families of which were those who played a major role in the conquest and subduing of this land: the important people of the Seljuk state, older frontier warlords, and even the opportunists who came out of the woodwork for the first time in the chaos of these conquest years."

"It could be said that the land of Menteşe specifically had lots of Turkic groups before its political annexation by the Turks. The demographically poor, mountainous characteristic of this region made it the ideal grazing land for Turkoman groups and Hellenisn here pretty much never recovered itself from the initial damage the eleventh century Seljuk invasion applied. Very few of the inland regions like Milas, Muğla and Davas managed to preserve their ancient or Byzantine names -Mylasa, Mogóla, Távai- unlike the coast in which a whole series of localities managed to preserve them, for example Meğri (Makrí), Darahiya (Tracheía), Dadiya (Stádia), Gereme (Kéramos) and Balat (Palátos). It could be inferred from this information that the annexation of these places on the coast, which were invaded first and by the sea, was conducted with something of an agreement with the Greek locals and that the old inhabitants quickly got along with the newcomers. The vast majority of the inhabitants on the coast had no interest in resisting as they had no ties to the central state authority. In this case it is possible that a deliberate surrender like in the case of the town of Kula where the locals found it pointless to resist against the Germiyanid Turks and opened the gates, or the fortress of Furni; rather than a murderous and destructive conquest like in the case of Tralles, a recent settlement built for the purpose of fending the Turks off. The plains got fully Turkified almost immediately after the conquest, while the urban areas Turkified much more slowly, with a gradual integration and assimilation of the Greek people that eventuallt reached completion. It is apparent that Hellenism reached a miserable situation in this region very quickly."

"It is known that after the widespread Turkification Christianity managed to hold on in only small pockets in a rather humble state. We do not know how correct this is in the case of Menteşe. But it is apparent that Christianity shortly lost its relevance in this region. The Milas episcopate is no longer talked about, and Miletus only possessed its own metropolitan until 1369. At that year, it was instead granted to Stavroupolis, the metropolitan of Caria, alongside the city of Antiocheia. The ancient Aphrodisias in the far northwest corner of the beylik is only mentioned up until the fourteenth century, and is then replaced by the village of Gere. Without a doubt, the patriarchate in Constantinople had to redirect the revenue of this metropole to another one, due to the extreme hardship experienced."

These translations start from the page 112 of the Turkish edition of Paul Wittek's work, published in 1934. I hope the devs take these into consideration!
 
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It's a dynasty assigned randomly from a dynasty pool at the game start, as we don't really know who could be considered their ruler in 1337.
A certain "Ahi Şerafeddin", son of "Ahi Hüsameddin" seems to be the de facto ruler at the time. A couple Turkish-language sources I found pointed at "Paul Wittek: Zur Geshichte Angoras im Mittelalter. Leipzig: Otto Herrassowitz, 1932. Festschrift für Georg Jacop zum Srebzigsten Gehurtstaa" for the details, though I can't access that article myself right now. It is noted that this political dynasty behaved in a manner "as if they were the rulers of Ankara", so similar to a Signoria such as Florence where Hüsameddin would be the most influential citizen of a "Guild Republic" or some form of mayoral rule could work perhaps?

From what I could gather, Ahi Hüsameddin died in 1330, while his son Şerafeddin died in 1350. I would guess Şerafeddin was 40-50 years old in 1337 - Assuming Hüsameddin was 60 when he died, Şerafeddin was likely born in the 1290's. He had some offspring whose names I can't figure out exactly. It seems a certain "Ali Hüsâmeddin Hüseyin b. Yûsuf" (died 1379) was buried with him. He might've been Şerafeddin's grandson - making "Yusuf b. Şerafeddin" his son, likely born between 1310-1320. Similarly, a "Ayşe Hatun", daughter of "Ahi Hüseyin" is also buried in the family mausoleum, who died in 1430 - though I'm not sure whether this "Ahi Hüseyin" is the "Ali Hüsameddin Hüseyin b. Yusuf" mentioned above, or another one of Ahi Şerafeddin's sons. Anyhow, I don't believe the family was still pseudo-mayor level influential in the 1350's onwards, since there weren't any references to Şerafeddin's sons being all that powerful by the time of the Ottoman takeover.

Of course, this being Medieval Anatolia, dynasty names don't really exist. I suggest simply having "Ahi" be the dynasty name could work - think of it like how the "Safavids" are named after the Safaviyya religious order, as the order's name was adopted to refer to the dynasty. An entrenched dynastic rule of Ahis could function similarly, adopting the Ahi order's name as a dynastic denominator. The format could either be "Ahi [RulerName]" or "[RulerName] the Ahi", but please no "[RulerName] Ahi", since it doesn't make sense and just looks odd in Turkish.

As an aside, the exact nature of Ahi rule in Ankara is often debated, with the consensus apparently being that the Ahis merely exercised a "caretaker" role in the power vacuum of the Ilkhanid-Ottoman interregnum. I personally don't agree with this interpretation: Given that the Ahis conspired with the Karamanids to restore their rule in the city after the initial Ottoman conquest in 1354, certainly they had some aspirations of independence. Portraying them as a full-fledged republic would be inaccurate as well though, as they don't seem to have established any trappings of state government. Perhaps a government type with low control/administrative efficiency where "Rulers" are selected from a pool of candidates including the previous ruler's sons after the previous ruler's death could work? And if they manage to consolidate their rule in Ankara, perhaps an option to reform the government and spread to other centres of Ahi influence in Anatolia could be provided? Sivas also had a brief Ahi-led government in this period, and we could say that Bilecik was governed by Ahis under Ottoman rule for some time. I don't know, adding the option to play a Sufi Turkish Peasant/Guild Republic in the middle of Anatolia seems just too good to pass up if you ask me. ;)
 
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Will there be a way to undo the schisms in the Christian world like in eu4 by just conquering the holy sites and maybe conquering the holy sites of the coptic religion sorry didnt want to write the long word and forcing them to reunite with the rest of the Christian world just saying it would be cool and yes I know that Religion will be a more hands off thing in Project Caeser [EU5] but it would be something to look at if the devs have time to look at it
 
A fun latter addition would be something like fallout’s “Wacky Wasteland” in which the devs could throw in all their wacky puns and historical jokes they like to do into the tooltips and formatting - maybe a future April Fools idea?
I would rather avoid pop culture history memes like this since it'll only draw the ire of nationalists and condescendingly smug globalists.
 
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I absolutely agree with adding the impassible terrain in Western Anatolia. Not only is this physically accurate, but I think it would make the game more fun and lead to more historically plausible gameplay. Those land features directed much of the Turkish-Byzantine conflict to narrow areas in the Meander River valley and the funnel (I forget the name) which Dorylaeum guarded in the north.

To the fun part, I think players enjoy fighting and maneuvering around historical impassible terrain. I think it also makes playing tall much more satisfying as it gives a naturally defensible point to expand to and defend, rather than a just "I'll stop here because I remember this was a historical border." IMO, more impassible terrain was one of the best strategic gameplay elements added in Imperator.

EDIT: I also wanted to say that I love the team's work on the map! Ultimately, regardless of any small items anyone can bring up, you have done an amazing job on these!
I also wouldn't mind Imperator's mountain pass system to make a reappearance. It really felt like a commitment that you'd better watch out once you crossed the mountain pass.
 
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the problem of people in this forum quoting turkish historians is that its known their facts are ... lets say "very imaginary".
they wrote them because of a politic reason and not for the truth...
i think what paradox shows here is 200% more accurat then what some people here seem to think it is
 
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