• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Maps #28 - 29th of November 2024 - North America

Hello everybody, and welcome one more Friday to Tinto Maps, the place to be for map lovers! Today we will be looking at North America, which is very handy, as we can deliver some Thanksgiving turkey maps to our friends from the USA (and Canada)!

But before I get started, let me have a word on some (shameless) promotion. You may know that we in Paradox Tinto have also been in charge of Europa Universalis IV in the past few years. Well, I just want to let you know that there’s currently an ongoing sale on the game, with several discounts on diverse packages, of which outstands the hefty Ultimate Bundle, which includes all the DLCs developed and released by Tinto in the past 3 years (Leviathan, Origins, Lions of the North, Domination, King of Kings, and Winds of Change), and a whole bunch of the older ones. I’m saying this as you may want to support the ongoing development of Project Caesar this way! Here you may find more detailed information, and all the relevant links: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...toria-bundle-up-for-this-autumn-sale.1718042/

And now, let’s move from the Black Friday sales to proper Tinto Maps Friday!

Countries & Societies of Pops:
Countries.png

SoPs.png

SoPs2.png

SoPs3.png

SoPs4.png

SoPs5.png
For today’s Tinto Maps, we thought it would be a good idea to show both the land-owning countries and the SoPs. As I commented last week, we’re trying to follow consistent criteria to categorize countries and societies. This is our current proposal for North America, with Cahokia and some Pueblo people being the only regular countries in 1337, surrounded by numerous SoPs. I’m not bothering to share the Dynasty mapmode, as we don’t have any clue about them, and they’re auto-generated.

However, we have been reading and considering the feedback we received last week, in the Tinto Maps for Oceania, so we want to let you know that this is our current design proposal and that we want to hear from you what are your expectations regarding the countries that you would consider landed in 1337*, and also which countries you’d like to play with in this region, either as landed, or as a SoP.

As you may already know, our commitment is to make Project Caesar a great, fun game with your help, and we greatly appreciate the feedback we receive from you in that regard.

* This is already quite tricky, as most of our information only comes from post-1500s accounts when the native societies were already looking very different from two centuries ago. Eg.: The first reports made by Hernando de Soto about the Coosa Chiefom around 1540 points it out to be organized in a way that we’d consider it a Tribal land-owning tag, as confirmed by archaeology. However, that polity was not organized at that level of complexity in 1337, as there isn’t any contemporary data comparable to that of Cahokia. And some decades after the encounter with de Soto and some other European explorers, the mix of diseases had made the Chiefdom collapse, being more akin to what a SoP would be. This type of complex historical dynamism is what makes it so difficult to make the right call for the situation in 1337, and also for us to develop with our current game systems the proper mechanics that would be needed for SoPs to be fully playable (and not just barely half-baked).


Locations:
Locations.png

Locations2.png

Locations3.png

Locations4.png

Locations5.png

Locations6.png

Locations7.png

Locations8.png

Locations9.png

Locations10.png
Plenty of locations, at the end of the day, are a big sub-continent… You may notice that we’ve tried to use as many native names as possible, although sometimes, we’ve failed to achieve that. Any suggestions regarding equivalences of Native and Post-Colonial will be very much appreciated, as this is a huge task to do properly!

Provinces:
Provinces.png

Provinces2.png

Provinces3.png


Areas:
Areas.png

Areas2.png

Areas… And with them, an interesting question that we’d like you to answer: Which design and style do you prefer, that of the East Coast, more based on the Colonial and Post-Colonial borders? Or the one for the Midwest and the Pacific Coast, more based on geography, and less related to attached to modern states? Just let us know!

Terrain:
Climate.png

Topography.png

Topography2.png

Vegetation.png

Some comments:
  • Most climates are portrayed in NA, from Arctic to Arid.
  • The Rocky Mountains are rocky!
  • Regarding vegetation, we wanted to portray the forest cover in 1337, which is tricky, and that’s why some areas may look too homogeneous. Any suggestions are welcome!

Development:
Development.png

Not a very well-developed region in 1337…

Natural Harbors:
Harbors EC.png

Harbors WC.png

Harbors3.png


Cultures:
Cultures.png

Cultures1.png

Cultures2.png

Cultures3.png

Lots of cultural diversity in NA!

Languages:
Languages.png

And the languages of those cultures!

Religions:
Religions.png

Religions2.png

We have a mixed bag here: On the one hand, Eastern and Northern religions look more like the design we’re aiming to achieve, while on the other, to the south, you can find the splitter animist religions based on cultures that we now want to group into bigger religions, more akin to the northern areas.

Raw Materials:
Raw Materials.png

Raw Materials 2.png

Raw Materials3.png

Wild Game, Fish, and Fur are king in this region! But we are also portraying the ‘three sisters’ (maize, beans, squash), the agricultural base for many of the native American societies, using Maize, Legumes (beans), and Fruit (squash). Cotton is also present in the south, as it was also native to the region (although the modern variant comes from a crossing with the ‘Old World’ one), and there are also mineral resources present here and there.

Markets:
Markets.png

Two markets are present in 1337, one in Cahokia, and another in the Pueblo land.

Population:
Broken map! But as this is an interesting topic to discuss, these are the current numbers we’ve got in the region:
  • Continent:
    • 20.487M in America (continent)
  • Sub-continents:
    • 10.265M in North and Central America (we have a pending task to divide them into two different sub-continents)
    • 10.222M in South America
  • Regions (roughly 1.5M):
    • 162K in Canada
    • 1.135M in the East Coast
    • 142K in Louisiana
    • 154K in the West Coast
    • 43,260 in Alaska

And that’s all for today! There won't be a Tinto Maps next week, as it's a bank holiday in Spain (as I was kindly reminded in a feedback post, you're great, people!), so the next one will be Central America on December 13th. But, before that, we will post the Tinto Maps Feedback review for Russia on Monday, December 9th. Cheers!
 
  • 186Like
  • 49Love
  • 20
  • 7
  • 7
Reactions:
I think that natural, geographic borders would be best. The straight lines look unappealing and they only really serve a purpose for the rare time that your trying to do a historical US play through or something.
 
  • 35
  • 6Like
  • 2
Reactions:
I guess I'm going to be in the minority, but I like having area borders be based on actual borders that existed during or shortly after the timeframe, rather than on completely made-up "natural" borders.
I absolutely do not understand why so many people don't like straight borders, they appear in other parts of the map as well...
Straight lines make for ugly map painting.
 
  • 35
  • 6Like
  • 3
Reactions:
Johan never confirmed 1837 specifically-- IIRC, his last mention was "approximately 500 years"
I'm just glad 1821-1836 is no longer a dark age where no one knows what happened(according to paradox games, anyway) and now is fully playable.

Also makes a bit more sense with Railroads being the last road type if there's 15 extra years for them to be relevant in late game.
 
  • 15Like
  • 13Haha
  • 2
Reactions:
Why is Virginia split into two areas? West Virginia only separated after the American Civil War, way out of the scope of the game. I'm sure most people during the colonial era would consider it to be a single region (or "area"). The same applies to Pennsylvania, which has never been split like that.
 
Last edited:
  • 12Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Do you want event/flavour suggestions in this thread or somewhere else? I remember you saying you were going to do flavour posts next year
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Also, regarding playable tags vs SoPs, I would want you to prioritise the gameplay experience for the European nations that will colonise these lands. I don't think there's a way to make native american tribes fun to play in a game like this. No point in filling the place with a bunch of tags that will inevitably just become annoying due to some overtuned features.
This is a very silly argument. A fun European experience requires there to be natives, and pressure exerted by those natives, otherwise the colonial game would be quite dull, as it would just be occasionally clicking to send colonists somewhere.
 
  • 50
  • 7Like
  • 1
Reactions:
In EU4 there was barely even an attempt at telling the story of native americans. Almost entirely the game told the story from the perspective of the colonizers and centered everything around colonizers when it came to content in North America.

Will EU5 PC attempt to tell the stories of the Native Americans of North America?
 
  • 12Like
  • 3
  • 2
Reactions:
I personally find the Areas being based on geography to be better. Dividing them by post-colonial structure doesn't make sense when playing as the natives, which probably didn't view the territory divided in those ways.
 
  • 18
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Might be a stupid question regarding the sealanes

But to me without any knowledge it seems weird that New York is so "cutoff" from to and from and bermuda seems weirdly not "integrated.

So is theres any reason the red parts couldnt be included in the lane? Or cut it in two areas at the blue so its a ocean lane and a "splitter" although that might go agaisnt design decisions with these lanes.

1732891971648.png
 
  • 62Like
  • 7
  • 4
  • 1Love
Reactions:
I would leave the Areas with the colonial borders, just so that they work as the designated regions in which colonial nations are formed. This is in order to have some semblance of similarity in the middle and late game of the "historical" borders of colonial nations.

However, I would have these areas use some Native American name, either the most prominent group of the area or prominent Native settlement, etc., even if they have colonial borders, I get it wouldn't be 100% accurate, maybe not even 50% accurate, but could be an intermediate solution.

For example, the Area of Virginia could have its colonial borders (including West Virginia, btw) but be name Powhatan before it is colonised by England, or Florida, with its colonial borders, could be named Timucua and then it changes its name into Florida when colonised by Spain, etc.
Unfortunately it appears province and Area names are completely static still, which I believe the majority of players were hoping would be dynamic
 
  • 4Like
  • 4
Reactions:
. Also, many of those state borders wouldn't even be established until after the game's timeframe.

The 1836 election map (aka just before end date of the game)
1732891751832.png



What does this teach us ?
- the colonial borders drawn is the absolute maximum amount of colonial borders acceptable.
- "Wisconsin" and "Lake Superior" should get merged
- northern Maine wasn't fixed yet (but is impassable if I see correctly ?).

Also, unless the number of locations gets multiplied to European standards, I'd definitely propose for New England to have THAT as the area, with the current states as provinces...
 
  • 10
  • 9Like
  • 3
  • 3
Reactions:
Screenshot 2024-11-29 at 14.55.01.png

Could you split the San Diego location in two? It is quite large compared to comparable locations in San Francisco, and reaches quite far into the interior for a natural harbour location.
 
  • 19Like
  • 11
  • 2
Reactions: