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

[marcusdarmstrong]

I think this is a bit of a weird way to put it. In my opinion, European borders don't really follow geographical features any more than American borders do. American borders, especially in the East, follow natural boundaries all the time, like Kentucky's northern border being the Ohio river, Virginia and North Carolina's western borders being the Appalachians, Lousiana's eastern border following the Mississippi, It's just that when European borders stray away from natural features, they still look "rugged" (which is because the European borders were created after the settlements they partition) which lends them the false appearance of looking more natural, while American borders follow straight lines, which makes them feel out of place. But realistically speaking, those are both equally arbitrary. Like, if you look at Russia's borders with Ukraine and Belarus, that border doesn't follow any natural features whatsoever. It is based entirely on the ethnic zones that happened to exist in the early 20th century (which have since changed). The same can be said of the French-Belgian border, the Dutch-Belgian border, the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, the Romanian-Hungarian border, etc. But at the same time, there aren't really any European countries with egregiously unworkable borders (except maybe Kaliningrad and Gibraltar), and the same applies to the United States, there aren't any US states with borders that are actively un-geographical, at least in the East. The border between Virginia and North Carolina doesn't follow any geographical features, but it's also a reasonable border because it's situated in a plain that slopes in the same direction it does, and both of those states are bounded on each of their other three sides by geographical borders: rivers, mountains, and the ocean.

That being said, I still generally agree with the geographical borders argument, because these borders didn't exist for most of the time period.

I'd argue that there are a large number of actively un-geographical borders on our modern map, notably:
- MA/NH across the Merimack
- Quebec/VT/NY
- NY/NJ border: It's hard to imagine producing the Orange County or Rockland County border in any alternate history.
- The MD panhandle is obviously absurd, with its southern border obviously forming a reasonable boundary.
- The PA western border with West Virginia
- The VA/NC border you specifically called attention could easily be positioned on the Roanoke.
- The NC/SC border could easily be positioned on the Great Pee Dee for a natural border.
- It's hard to imagine another world in which the LA/MS border is created as such.

And indeed if one attempts to look at pre-colonial population groupings (the below from indigamerica) you see these areas as ones with significant divergence from modern borders:

View attachment native-1500s-map.jpg

 

[tpapp157]

I see the trade good in New York City is Legumes which isn't really the best option. It's been largely forgotten in modern times but New York Bay and the Hudson river actually had some of the richest oyster beds in the world and oysters were a staple food throughout pre-colonial and colonial times. It's why original water-front road in downtown is called Pearl St. Most the fill material used to extend the shoreline to its current point is crushed oyster shell. It wasn't until the late 1800s when oyster populations disappeared due to over-harvesting and massive pollution but there are ongoing conservation efforts to reintroduce oysters to the area.

I don't remember the full list of trade goods but something like oysters or shellfish would be good or even pearls if those goods exist.

 

[KiwiNova]

Yippee! North America!!!!! I made some suggestions on how Florida's setup could be improved here.

 

[AntarcticRanger]

I don't remember the full list of trade goods but something like oysters or shellfish would be good or even pearls if those goods exist.

Pearls do exist, they first made an appearance on the tinto map for Scotland i think

 

[Sirbab]

Pearls do exist, they first made an appearance on the tinto map for Scotland i think

Yup, it's also present in the map reference stickied thread

 

[Mav12]

As a resident of the Lower Hudson Valley, here is some feedback on the maps of this region:

- The location map seems to ignore the existence of the Hudson River. I think this is problematic because the Hudson River is very wide for a large portion of its southern end and acts as a natural barrier. Native tribes were separated by the river with different tribal bands along each side. I.e the Tappan location covering Rockland and Northern Westchester, is named for a tribe that was only on the Rockland side of the river. The East bank of the Hudson was populated by tribes from the Wappinger Confederacy. Frankly, the current location boundary of Tappan really just looks like the old lines of New York's 17th Congressional district.

- Kitchawank refers to a tribe of the Wappinger Confederacy that was around the modern Croton River, basically this would be the part of the Tappan location that is East of the Hudson. A more appropriate tribe based name for the current location named Kitchawanc would be after the Nochpeem of what is now Putnam county. If splitting locations along the Hudson, a location name for the west-of-Hudson would be Esopus and would also be the Western side of the Poughkeepsie location. (IIRC Esopus is also the name of the EU4 province in this location)

- The Poughkeepsie location is currently spelled with its European spelling. The native name is U-puku-ipi-sing. The current spelling only makes sense if the region is colonized by the Dutch culture.

- IMHO the Mannahatta Province follows the modern NYC borders to closely. I can make out the five boros and the Queens-Nassau border. IMHO Staten Island should be part of the neighboring Raritan province for a more natural look. Also speaking of the Mannahatta province, Mannahatta is only a name for the island. the actual tribes in the region are the Wecquaesgeek (who inhabited the lands on the east bank of the Hudson and Manhattan north of the southern tip) and Siwanoy (inhabited the side closer to Long Island sound). The name Manhattan was erroneously used to refer to the Wecquaesgeek, though they never inhabited the part of Manhattan the name comes from. The Siwanoy inhabited most of the location's land north of Manhattan, and named the land/their territory Wykagyl. My recommendation is to extend the borders to include the CT panhandle while ceding Staten Island to Raritan and more of Queens/Brooklyn to Massapequa. Should this occur, IMHO Wykagyl works more as a location name than the island you can barley see on the map.

- As noted above, give the CT panhandle to the Mannahatta location. The panhandle is a result of colonial border drawing and shouldn't exist outside that. The rest of the CT border is more natural itself due to the Taconic mountains and an IRL divide in approximately the same area between the aforementioned various Wappinger Confederacy natives and those of CT.

A rough draft of what all my changes could look like:


If only names are changed:


As for colonial names, here are some ideas.

Existing Map:

Manahatta:
English/USA: New York (duh)
Dutch: New Amsterdam (duh) or Manhattoe - the original Dutch name before New Amsterdam.
French: Nouvelle Angoulême - name given by Giovanni da Verrazzano, first European to vist NY Harbor; or New Rochelle - name of a prominent city-suburb in modern Westchester County first settled by French Huguenots in 1688.

Tappan:
English/USA - Brewster - city near CT border.
Dutch: Peekskill - city on East bank of river within location.
Others: Chappaqua; Haverstraw

Kitchwanc:
English/USA: West Point (for prominent military academy of same name within location on west bank of Hudson; or Newburgh - major city on west bank of Hudson; Hudson Highlands - geographic feature covering most of location.
Others: Direct translations of West Point.

Poughkeepsie:
English/USA: Kingston - City on west bank of Hudson.
Dutch: Poughkeepsie

My Map:

Manahatta: Same as above.

Tappan:
English/USA/others: Ramapo or Nyack - prominent settlements in Rockland county; Haverstraw.

Kitchwanc:
Dutch: Peekskill - city on East bank of river within location
English/USA: Brewster.
Others: Mahopac

Esopus:
English/USA: Kingston; Newburgh
Dutch: Catskill - nearby mountain range and small settlement within location.
Others: Esopus.

Poughkeepsie:
Dutch: Same.
English/USA: Beacon - city on East bank of Hudson, across from Newburgh.
Others: Wappinger Falls with "Falls" being translated based on colonizer.

 

[tpapp157]

I don't know how far you want to push this but basically the entire US east coast from Delaware to southern Texas is all wetlands. Some areas more extensive than others, of course, but it's largely contiguous.

Also, the Mississippi River features a lot of wetlands along its length, especially its lower half. The river migrated back and forth across the land quite a bit and flooded regularly. The map shows wetlands reaching the Louisiana state border but they could easily extend all the way to Cairo, where the Ohio river meets the Mississippi. Since the early 1800s and through to the present the US federal and state governments continue to spend billions building levees, reinforcing the shoreline, dredging, and controlling flooding along the Mississippi.

 

[Jacobchip]

Super minor point: I think that the Seward Peninsula should also be classed as Inupiaq. It feels strange to separate out three cultures there since the very earliest reliable data that exists (see: Alliance and Conflict by Ernest S. Burch) indicates that while there were regional clusters among the Inupiat, they were ultimately part of one continuous space. It seems that you have, after all, decided to pick out three tribes and count them as separate while not doing so for the the Inupiat further north.

 

[korandder]

With regards to travelling between the Great Lakes, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan joined by the wide (5.6 km) and deep (90 m) Straits of Mackinac effectively making them a single lake. The surface of Lake Superior is about 7 m higher than Lakes Huron and Michigan, requiring a set of locks at Sault Ste. Marie on the St. Marys River to allow traffic between Lake Superior. The first set of locks at Sault Ste. Marie was finished in 1798 but was destroyed in the War of 1812 in 1814. The first of locks I can get dimensions for were finished in 1855 and were 110 m long, 18 m wide and 3.7 m deep.

Lake Erie is only about 2 m lower than Lake Huron and one can use the St. Clair River, Lake St Clair and the Detroit River to travel between them without requiring any locks.

Going between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario is a challenge because of Niagara Falls:

(Photo source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:3Falls_Niagara.jpg)

To make the nearly 100 m change in elevation between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario requires using the Welland Canal. While the first Welland Canal was finished in 1829, its locks were only 7.3 m wide and 2.4 m deep. The Welland Canal would be expanded through out the 19th century to allow larger vessels.

To get between the Great Lakes and the Ocean by water you had two options at the very end of period the game covers. One was the Erie Canal, opened in 1825, connecting the Hudson River at Albany to Lake Erie at Buffalo. The original Erie Canal was 12 m wide and only 1.2 m deep although it was widened to 21 m and deepened to 2.1 m in 1834. The Hudson River is tidal to bit further north than Albany so any vessel transiting the canal could easily travel between Albany and New York as well.

The other option was the Rideau Canal between Kingston on Lake Ontario and what is now Ottawa on the Ottawa River. Finished in 1832, it only has a width of 8 m and a depth of 1.5 m. The Ottawa River enters the St Lawrence River at Montreal so you could use the Rideau Canal together with the Ottawa and St Lawrence Rivers to travel between Lake Ontario and Quebec City or beyond.

The canals built to allow travel between some of the Great Lakes and between the Great Lakes and the Ocean were in the period the game covers not large enough to allow passage by ocean going ships.

 

[korandder]

To translate this into gameplay, this Tinto Maps has it right to have Lake Michigan and Lake Huron connected. If you can build canals in game that allow ships to travel between bodies of water, then it should be relatively easy to connect Lake Superior to Lake Huron and Lake Huron to Lake Erie. Connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario with a canal large enough for ships to use should be a massive undertaking and connecting the Great Lakes to the ocean for sea going ships would be too large of a project for games time period.

Some of this is complicated by the decision not to make rivers navigable.

In terms of the three canals you could build in EU4, the first Kiel Canal (the Eider Canal) was finished in 1784 but was limited by to relatively small ships (29 m in length, 7.5 m in draft and 2.7 m in draft). Construction of the modern Kiel Canal, which does allow the passage of large vessels, started in 1887 and finished in 1895. The modern Suez canal was built between 1859 and 1869 although there were canals connecting the Nile to the Red Sea in the classical period (although typical ships of that time were small in comparison to ships at the end PC). Construction of the Panama Canal started in 1881 and finished in 1914.

It is worth noting that there were two major advances in civil engineering in the 19th century that allowed larger canals to be built. One was steam power that allowed both steam shovels to do the actual excavation and steam trains to move material. These were just starting to be a thing in the last decade of PC. The other was the invention of blasting agents more powerful than black powder, the first being nitroglycerine in 1846.

 

[Tritium666]

Why are there wastelands here? The Maritimes in general are pretty flat and not 'impassable' by any standards. Some of these wastelands are literally farmland.
Eastern Canada in general has more wastelands than mountainous BC, which is hilarious; it's like Poland having more wasteland than Tibet

 

[Linbot#6018]

I'm not personally an expert on the topic, but I think the main issue with carpeting the central and southern US with centralised tags is that pretty much all of them vanished about two centuries after the start date, with many of them barely leaving remnants behind. In order to represent this process properly for the entire civilisation, you would need really well-fleshed out mechanics for centralised tags to transform into SOPs and vice versa, and represent the spectrum of reasons that caused this to happen in real life. In what I presume to be the current state of the game, the only way you'd be able to do this is by kind of just giving them all events that make them explode, which would kind of render everything pointless for either people playing as them or people playing as the colonisers.

So I think it would be helpful for people to give suggestions on exactly how they think Mississippian gameplay should work and how the collapse should be represented and what the path could be to surviving it.

But unless that kind of mechanic is implemented, the only states with an ironclad case for their inclusion on the map would be, in my opinion, those states which survived into the late game. These would be, in my opinion, the Natchez/Emerald Mound polity, the Calusa kingdom and other polities in southern Florida such as the Ais and maybe others, and possibly the Iroquois (although I'm not sure if they should really be considered a state since from what little I know they are consistent with the kind of political structure that SOPs are supposed to portray). These all survived into the 18th century and the South Florida polities in particular had a long history of coexistence with the Spanish.

Other than these, I think there's a strong argument for showing the Coosa polity, the Moundville polity, the Winterville polity, the Angel Mounds polity, and the Spiro Mounds polity, just because these were the largest and most influential states, according to this post, and showing Cahokia but not them would be inappropriate.

 

[korandder]

Here is a contemporary land cover map for all of North America in the same style as the map of Canada I posted earlier http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-cover-2010-modis-250m/

An interactive version http://www.cec.org/files/atlas/?z=6...=landcover2010modis&opacities=100&labels=true

 

[Elzephor]

An academic argument for a settled Iroquois at game start.

Copying from my forum post - see that one for links to sources.

As it stands, the five nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) confederacy are Societies of Pops at game start, and not even united ones at that. Yet this flies in the face of modern evidence. Analysis of Haudenosaunee oral histories - the same kinds that have been used to date ancient tsunamis on the West Coast - suggests that the confederacy was alive and well by our start date, and in fact formed some 200 years earlier.

The following argument is a summary of A Sign in the Sky: Dating the League of the Haudenosaunee (1997, American Indian Culture and Research Journal , 21(2)), by then-University of Toledo PhD student (and now professor) Barbara A. Mann at the University of Toledo and statistician Jerry L. Fields.

Dates for the establishment of the confederacy are usually defined by archeological evidence of palisade building. There were two big spurts of this: one around 800-1300 CE, and another in the 1500s. Most historians have taken this later date as the dawn of the confederacy, since there's evidence that warfare continued after the first period - so it couldn't have been the pax Iroquoia they were looking for. But Mann and Fields suggest this is the wrong take. Actually, the *earlier* period is the one to go by.

For one thing, some warfare doesn't mean the confederacy didn't exist. They had plenty of other rivals to contend with. For another, the 1500s saw the arrival of Europeans - people the Iroquois had good reason to defend against. In that interpretation, European contact didn't *cause* the confederacy to form. In fact, it had existed for hundreds of years already, but only now needed to step up its defenses.

This would explain why Iroquois oral tradition regarding the formation of the confederacy has so little mention of Europeans. There is a "white panther" involved waiting to "take your rights an privileges away," but its only ever mentioned in prophesy. Indeed, the oral histories suggest this date was much, much earlier, in time immemorial. Mann and Fields cite writings from 17th century French missionaries who report the confederacy was formed in "the earliest times" and "in all antiquity" - not terms one uses for something that happened just a couple generations ago.

So what do modern Iroquois oral traditions say about the formation dates? "As far as can be ascertained," says one committee of Chiefs, "the formation of the league 'took place about the year 1390.'" Now we're talking.

They got to that date through a couple of ways. One was through back-counting generations. Another was through counting lifetime office holders. The position of Adodarho is one such role, and as of 1994 there were 145 such holders - meaning the league was formed 145 lifetimes before 1994.

Colonial-era sources back this up. In 1534, Jaques Cartier was told there had been 33 Adodarho's so far. The difficulty here is taking a guess at life expectancy. The authors compared lifetimes of European monarchs, Popes, and US supreme court justices to get a few ranges. All had a 12th century start date within range, and in every case, the 15th century was ruled out as being entirely too late.

Other evidence comes from stories of a battle with a cannibal cult immediately preceding the rise of the league. There's archeological evidence of warfare and cannibalism circa 1100 - 1300 CE, which coincides with the range of dates already on offer. Conversely, no such evidence exists for cannibalism in the 15th century.

(As an aside, there's a fascinating discussion here of this being a kind of gender ideology war related to the rise of agriculture, as women-led farming supplanted the traditional role of the male hunter, leading to a hunting-obsessed cannibal reactionary movement. See pg. 18 and onward.)

However, the best possible technique is that old pal of calendar-making: astronomy. As luck would have it, there was an eclipse involved in the making of the confederacy. Oral history tells that the Seneca were debating whether to join up when, on midday in late summer, a noticeable eclipse occurred. Awed by the "black sun" in the sky - a highly auspicious sign - they were sufficiently moved to set aside their grievances and join up, and thus the league was born.

The authors cross referenced that limited data with historical eclipse records, and found that the commonly-cited 1451 CE eclipse reached totality too far west of where the Seneca were deliberating to be noticeable. Other nearby eclipses at other dates were ruled out for similar reasons. The oral history is quite clear - the sun turned black, and stars became visible in the sky. Only a direct hit by a total eclipse does that, and the only one that fits the bill occurred on August 31 1142 CE. Thus, Fields and Mann declare that to be the date the Haudenosaunee League was founded.

1142 CE is, of course, well before EU5's start date, and we know the league was still going strong by the time the Europeans began poking around in the 1500s. There's firm evidence for including the Haudenosaunee as a settled state at game start.

 

[Tritium666]

Here's BC from satellite and as represented in-game (terrain-wise). Pretty bizarre choices, as this area is famously mountainous.
-All the white areas are snow-capped mountains, which need to be changed from hills in-game
-There shouldn't be any flatlands on the pacific coast really. It's all mountainous fjords, some of which could be considered hills
-Vancouver island should be mountainous in the centre and much more hilly
-Vancouver (city) is flatland, but the surrounding area (north) should basically immediately be mountains
-I hate to say it, but there needs to be more impassable terrain. I'll leave the specifics up to you guys

Tbh I'd recommend checking the topography on google earth

 

[Demetrios]

That's a nice continent you have there, Pop Societies. Shame if someone were to colonise it.

Also, all this wild game makes me wonder if you plan on really having dynamic RGOs, or if the gold available in these areas won't be discoverable in the game?
View attachment 1223586

Also, nice, Great Lakes Naval Battles

View attachment 1223592

As for the area question; I'd prefer a mixture of the two options, where the borders of areas have the vague shape of modern states, but not the outright geometric one. This way, you can simulate the colony divisions without making everything feel like it's adhering to an artifical IOTL system. The East Coast, therefore, is already pretty close to what I'd find ideal, but I'd make sure as much as possible that none of the lines go over major rivers or other geographical barriers, the way 'map-making by ruler' does.

Like, for example, stuff like this below, that was born out of American political inter-state rivalries and such, don't need to exist in the game and can instead go to more well-rounded state-like areas.

View attachment 1223626

PS:

@Pavía a friend who did research in Alaska in anticipation for this, asked me to point this out.


"Please make the North Slope flatland. The Brooks Range doesn't extend that far north. Local groups are Utkiavigmiut. And add Wainwright (Ulguniq or Kuuku) as a safe harbor."

View attachment 1223685

Michigan's UP was the result of inter-state rivalries, but Florida's panhandle is nothing of the sort. That's from Spanish colonial times, when the colony went from Pensacola in the west to St Augustine in the east. The oddity that was added on to Florida later is actually central and southern Florida.

 

[Elzephor]

Also, Toronto should absolutely be a natural harbour - the Toronto islands form a perfect natural barrier that contributed to it being selected for settlement.

A note about the name - Tkaronto was originally the name of a spot on the northern edge of Lake Simcoe, quite far to the north. It means "the place where the trees stand in water", and referred to fishing weirs along a river. Modern day Toronto was the starting point for a portage route that reached that area, and over time the name migrated south to refer to it instead. If you're looking for a pre Tkaronto accurate name, the site had an Iroquois village named Tejajagon as of this 1778 map.

 

[Tritium666]

All the flatlands on the Ontario Hudson's Bay coast should be wetlands. A huge chunk of northern Canada is muskeg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskeg ), which is basically a giant peat bog

 

[Mav12]

I can understand the argument that colonial borders should not be forced into alignment of historical colonial borders. This is an alternate history. The borders could have ended up differently. That makes sense.

The problem comes in when you extend that to say that the colonial borders couldn't align with those of history. So, a player could not recreate what historically happened. That doesn't make sense. Especially when it is compared with how other countries were treated.

I'd argue that there are a large number of actively un-geographical borders on our modern map, notably:
- MA/NH across the Merimack
- Quebec/VT/NY
- NY/NJ border: It's hard to imagine producing the Orange County or Rockland County border in any alternate history.
- The MD panhandle is obviously absurd, with its southern border obviously forming a reasonable boundary.
- The PA western border with West Virginia
- The VA/NC border you specifically called attention could easily be positioned on the Roanoke.
- The NC/SC border could easily be positioned on the Great Pee Dee for a natural border.
- It's hard to imagine another world in which the LA/MS border is created as such.

And indeed if one attempts to look at pre-colonial population groupings (the below from indigamerica) you see these areas as ones with significant divergence from modern borders:

View attachment 1225024

I think the genral conflict here is that some people want there to be only natural borders with no refrence to IRL state borders, and other wants natural borders, but to still be able to create something that vaugley resembels the OTL state borders if they want.

Honestly even as someone who is part of the later camp, I'd prefer the vanilla game have natural borders only if it has tobe one or the other, and if fits more with the lack of modern borders in Africa & Oceania. IMHO its easier for someone to make a mod recreating the OTL borders (espcially since we have this tinto maps diary to use as a refrence for this kind of mod now) than for pardox to use the current borders and someone mod a natural borders map. So I don't see this conflict as that big of an issue.

 

[korandder]

To go back to the peoples of the coastal Pacific Northwest and whether they should be SoPs, while these societies were traditionally seen by anthropologists as hunter-gathers, more recent scholarships shows that there was widespread (proto-)agriculture of the camas plant. The Garry Oak meadows that the first Europeans took to be natural meadows were actually the result of camas cultivation. Another argument for pre-contact agriculture presented here (along with more details and accounts of camas cultivation) was that the peoples of the Pacific Northwest started growing potatoes before widespread white settlement started in the 1840s. Camas was also traded from areas surrounding the Salish Sea were it was easiest to grow to other parts of the area.