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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:
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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:
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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:
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Areas:
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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:
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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:
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Not a very well-developed region in 1337…

Natural Harbors:
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Cultures:
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Lots of cultural diversity in NA!

Languages:
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And the languages of those cultures!

Religions:
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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:
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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:
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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!
 
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Honestly I'm going to change my mind and throw my vote in for the geography borders rather than the colonial ones. Colonial borders' impact on the timeline is kinda minimal and it'll be weird to play with them as Cahokia.

When Europeans colonize this region, will it be possible to have each individual colony (Virginia, New Jersey, New York etc) be separate colonial subjects, perhaps united in an IO? Because that would lessen the need for colonial borders IMO.
 
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@Pavía could you please provide a more zoomed in photo of the Great Basin and Rockies areas? This is the area I will be working on a few proposals
Also the Pacific Northwest if you wouldn't mind :)
 
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Hi.
I think Montréal (Tiohtià:ke) and Québec should be a natural harbour. Also I hope Montréal is depict as an island I can't confirm with the picture. Thank you !
Just added a natural harbor to Québec (as Montréal is landlocked in the current map).
 
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Regardless of the specifics, I haven't seen a population estimate for California that's below ~130k and I don't see how you can get the current population for the West Coast with any of those estimates. But yes, the "most densely populated area" may not be fully accurate.
Population estimate for what time period though? Because it's kinda hard to find decent estimates for the 1300s.
 
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What are your standards for what makes a good natural harbor in North America? If you were using the same standard as Europe, there wouldn't be any black on the east coast. Although I know from other Tinto Maps that you use different standards in different areas.
 
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I have to assume Westsylvania is some sort of joke. I've literally never heard anyone ever refer to western Pennsylvania as Westsylvania. I have heard eastern Pennsylvanians refer to central/western Pennsylvania as Pennsyltucky quite a bit as a slur against its more rural, midwestern, redneck culture. Neither is an acceptable name in the context of this game. There are plenty of other good options.
 
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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.
This is a very silly argument *proceeds to argue against something I didn't say*

I didn't tell them to remove the SoPs (which I assume will do all those things you want to be there), I said they shouldn't prioritise making the native tags playable.
 
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I have to assume Westsylvania is some sort of joke. I've literally never heard anyone ever refer to western Pennsylvania as Westsylvania. I have heard eastern Pennsylvanians refer to central/western Pennsylvania as Pennsyltucky quite a bit as a slur against its more rural, midwestern, redneck culture. Neither is an acceptable name in the context of this game. There are plenty of other good options.
It's a real thing, but misplaced. Not the appropriate name for that area, as it basically just included greater Pittsburgh in the actual state of Pennsylvania.

 
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The southern border between Labrador and Quebec does not make sense historically as it was created as a compromise by the british. The rest of the border follow the Labrador watershed so why not the southern border too?
 
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I've got some geography feedback, specifically on the area of Indiana. Southern Indiana is rather hilly rather than being all flatland and so the locations of Aankwaahsakwa and Gichthanne (and possibly Agouasaque and Patoqua) should be hills. As well, northwest Indiana was historically wetlands, and so Kankakee and Pakamik should be wetlands (which also just crosses the border into Tiatiki should you decide to remove that straight line border in the future).

As for raw materials, its a bit funny that you placed fur in the north (which is grasslands) and maize in the south (which is woods); I'd mix it up some. There is both fur and corn in the north and south. Then as far as minerals go, the south-west tip of Indiana (Patoqua) has coal deposits, and at least one location in the Plankeshaw or Wapinippi provinces should produce stone, due to Indiana's limestone deposits.

Edit: To be more specific, the stone should be in either Aankwaahsakwa or Gichthanne.
 
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Just like in real life, it would be cool if players in the Americas get the option to form large intertribal confederacies (Haudenosaunee, Wabanaki, Iron, Northwest, Powhatan, Neutral, on and on). This would give polities in northern America a unique way to grow in scale to mobilize the large amounts of people and resources needed to possibly resist European colonization without needing to ‘westernize’ (although that should also be possible). I think this would make northern American gameplay more replayable, unique and historically based.
Just wanted to drop this suggestion in here. I'm light on mechanically how it would work because I could imagine five different ways of doing it and I trust that team tinto has a better understanding of how possible this is than I do.
 
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In regards to colonization, will project Caesar accurately represent british colonization by having seperate tags for say, Connecticut or Rhode Island, rather than merely just oversimplifying it and saying “13 colonies”. Also will there be an event for the Mohegan to break off from the Pequot, something that historically happened?
Also also (specifically cause I live in CT) I feel like you guys may have oversimplified the cultures there you can probably add more cultures in between (I’ll share a map that I made based off some information)

Sorry I really want a super accurate Connecticut and the ability to play colonial Connecticut. (Sources are the second image).



Also forgot to mention this but some countries should be able to change their like woodlands as native cultures used tactical burning to like cultivate their environment.


@Pavía
 

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This is a very silly argument *proceeds to argue against something I didn't say*

I didn't tell them to remove the SoPs (which I assume will do all those things you want to be there), I said they shouldn't prioritise making the native tags playable.
You said explicitly that there shouldn't be tags, because you claim they would ruin the European experience. SOPs are a type of tag.
 
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The density seems very good in Alaska and Canada (with perhaps the area around Vancouver and Vancouver Island as the exception), but most of the US seems like it could benefit quite a bit from additional locations, as current borders are just odd in a lot of places

Using modern county and state borders so obviously definitely contributes to the borders looking so goofy - basing them more on natural boundaries where possible would be better - and indeed locations following real life borders of that type do feel far more natural.
 
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A really disappointing Tinto map.

1. Including Cahokia is a very debatable choice, especially as such a large state. Cahokia in 1337 had been actively dissolving for nearly a century already. Some claim the city was already completely abandoned by this point though more likely it was just a small town with little of the reach and power it had a couple centuries prior. Complete abandonment is not far off regardless.

2. To include Cahokia like this but not include its various successor states which at game start were at their peak, and would have been larger and more powerful than the dying shadow of Cahokia is a huge shame. If Cahokia makes the cut then states like Etowah and Moundville easily should as well despite the fact that they too would decline or even dissolve completely in the coming centuries.

3. A near-death Cahokia could make for a fun player alt-history with some flavor events of rebuilding the once great city/empire.
Any suggestions regarding the specific starting setup of the Cahokia area are welcome.
 
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Population estimate for what time period though? Because it's kinda hard to find decent estimates for the 1300s.
For sure, I don't think there's any sort of comprehensive estimates for the 1300s, but I'm not sure why we'd assume significant population growth over the interval between 1337 and first contact. I am not an expert so if anyone has archaeological sources that suggest noticeable growth in California's population in that time period, I could be wrong, but as far as I'm aware things would have been fairly stable.

Admittedly, though, I am a bit out of my depth here as I mainly know about the Southeast, and I will defer to people who know more about pre-Columbian California. I only pointed it out because it immediately jumped out to me as weirdly low for the entire West Coast (if it were only California, it wouldn't be as strange) especially if Alaska (also all hunter-gatherers, and in a much less hospitable environment) has over 40k.
 
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[...]In a side note regarding minerals, as we usually put in the map those exploited during the game's timeframe (1337-1837).
Very good to know!

Now I'd just like to know if gold mines can run dry, because that'll colour my probable feedback for the South American maps.
 
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