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

[Ekyman]

this kind of brings up an interesting point, namely that some colonial power could have at least tried to colonize Australia in the 16th century if they wanted to, they just didn't, there were better options.
Or looking at this map, a lot of coastal Cascadia here, up to and including the Alaskan panhandle, is presently oceanic forest. Which is the same terrain as Trebizond, for example. Which sounds attractive enough that I doubt it will go uncolonized for the entire game, as it did in history.

So how can these places get colonized in their appropriate times? and do we want that?

I can't speak to Australia or Alaska but Cascadia didn't even get properly explored by Europeans and Americans until the very late 1700s. George Vancouver's voyage started in 1791 and discovered Puget Sound in 1792, Gray discovered the Columbia at the same time, and also the first circumnavigation of Vancouver Island was in this period. Even the earlier, less thorough, expeditions by Cook and multiple Spaniards were only in the 1770s. It was known generally from earlier of course, and there were a few earlier visits, but there were no details known that would make someone desire it. There's nothing about it that would make it particularly challenging to colonize, its just really far away from the people doing the colonizing and you run into lots of other interesting places to colonize along the way. As soon as proper exploration actually happened people realized it was good land and established some first footholds and started having ownership disputes, but it was still very far away.

When it's colonizable in game is pretty much wholly about the range requirements of colonizing and supporting that colony.

 

[wilcoxchar]

this kind of brings up an interesting point, namely that some colonial power could have at least tried to colonize Australia in the 16th century if they wanted to, they just didn't, there were better options.
Or looking at this map, a lot of coastal Cascadia here, up to and including the Alaskan panhandle, is presently oceanic forest. Which is the same terrain as Trebizond, for example. Which sounds attractive enough that I doubt it will go uncolonized for the entire game, as it did in history.

So how can these places get colonized in their appropriate times? and do we want that?

These are areas that weren't really even explored by Europeans until the late 1700s. If they're explored earlier by Europeans or anyone else capable of settling the lands, why shouldn't they be colonized earlier?

 

[LordThanatos]

This is kinda impossible to really prove, anyway there is good evidence to believe that smallpox didnt actually reach the Incas before the Spaniards so the actual impact of old world epidemics wasnt felt yet, so a surviving Incan state would have faced worse odds even without Pizzarro, people seem to underplay the fact the Spanish in fact largely fought and conquered native populations before they declined

Smallpox had almost certainly arrived before Pizarro, but while I don't want to put words in another's mouth, I doubt that @Sirbab was just referring to smallpox's direct consequences on the ensuing demographic collapse. The disease had already killed the Sapa Inca, Huayna Capac, and his heir, setting off a succession war. (Source, Source)

In addition, the wording of "Spanish in fact largely fought and conquered native populations" should raise the hackles of anyone who knows the history of the conquest. The Spanish did not conquer the Inca alone, they inserted themselves into the politics already there and used forces largely composed of native allies, and later, their own puppet Inca Empire.

(P.s. as ever, when saying there's 'good evidence' it's generally good practice to at least refer to what that evidence is. The name of an author, paper or etc is a minimum, really.)

 

[Idhrendur]

The map is missing the cascades. I think they deserve to be on the map; they must feel left out.View attachment 1226024View attachment 1226027

I'll agree with this. They're kinda a big deal. Even if you have no regional knowledge, you can clearly see their rain shadow on maps.

 

[Supernova90]

There are already some good comments with suggestions for Florida's location names and natural harbors, so I'll skip over those. I do think the terrain and vegetation need a little tweaking though.
I think the locations of Ho-bay, Ais, and Napituca should be flatlands rather than wetlands. In the case of the former two, the east coast of Florida has a small "ridge" keeping the coastal areas relatively dry, similar to the locations north of them. If anything, Surruque was more wetlands than Ais or Ho-bay. In the case of Napituca, that location is outside of the coastal marshes of the big bend to its southwest and the Okefenokee Swamp to its east. That area has gentle rolling hills similar to the location in Georgia to its north.
As for vegetation, the locations of Tequesta, Miyaimi, and Okeechobee should be grasslands, as that area was the only area in the southeastern United States to not have forests prior to the arrival of Europeans. Much of it is a vast sea of sawgrass with only some shrubs and small trees dotting the landscape.
Edit: The location of Uqueten should be wetlands rather than flatlands, being part of the big bend's coastal marshes.

 

[korandder]

I can't speak to Australia or Alaska but Cascadia didn't even get properly explored by Europeans and Americans until the very late 1700s. George Vancouver's voyage started in 1791 and discovered Puget Sound in 1792, Gray discovered the Columbia at the same time, and also the first circumnavigation of Vancouver Island was in this period. Even the earlier, less thorough, expeditions by Cook and multiple Spaniards were only in the 1770s. It was known generally from earlier of course, and there were a few earlier visits, but there were no details known that would make someone desire it. There's nothing about it that would make it particularly challenging to colonize, its just really far away from the people doing the colonizing and you run into lots of other interesting places to colonize along the way. As soon as proper exploration actually happened people realized it was good land and established some first footholds and started having ownership disputes, but it was still very far away.

When it's colonizable in game is pretty much wholly about the range requirements of colonizing and supporting that colony.

As I said above the Russians reached Alaska in 1743 and founded their first permanent settlement in 1784.

The Dutch knew Australia was there from their early voyages to the East Indies since their route ran the risk of colliding with the west coast of Australia. Abel Tasman was the first European to sight Tasmania and New Zealand at the end of 1642 and explored the northern coast of Australia in 1643 but none of this lead to any attempts at colonization. Little more would be done until James Cook's first voyage to New Zealand and east coast of Australia in 1769-1770. British colonization of Australia would begin with the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

 

[piefromhell]

I dont know if its been addressed or not but the parts of California the vegetation map should be different the central valley was filled with a major swamp that wasnt drained until the 1880-1930s (the white area most of that is either at or even below sea level, and should be wetlands in the terrain map, in modern day is now a few hundred islands surrounded by the rivers that drain into a single spot.) The forests should extend further south towards the golden gate since just on the northern side there are costal sequoias today that were growing there even before the 1300s the fog gives it a ton of water throughout the year which should also allow the coast to be woodlands as well since even now it still mostly filled with oak trees and some varieties of fir and a few patches with more coastal sequoias . The northern and central valley was much more grassland and was even noted by the Spanish when they were building their missions how thick the area was with grass that would ride up to the bottoms of their horses. since it receives the majority of the water it would be filled with large tule grass and would even flood badly enough that the area wouldn't drain until summer leaving it a marsh. the southern valley being sparse is correct but the areas that make up southern california were grasslands to sparse below the san gabriel mountains. Lake Tulare should also be bigger its surface area when properly mapped was almost 1800 km2.

 

[Zerodv]

Smallpox had almost certainly arrived before Pizarro, but while I don't want to put words in another's mouth, I doubt that @Sirbab was just referring to smallpox's direct consequences on the ensuing demographic collapse. The disease had already killed the Sapa Inca, Huayna Capac, and his heir, setting off a succession war. (Source, Source)

In addition, the wording of "Spanish in fact largely fought and conquered native populations" should raise the hackles of anyone who knows the history of the conquest. The Spanish did not conquer the Inca alone, they inserted themselves into the politics already there and used forces largely composed of native allies, and later, their own puppet Inca Empire.

(P.s. as ever, when saying there's 'good evidence' it's generally good practice to at least refer to what that evidence is. The name of an author, paper or etc is a minimum, really.)

https://users.pop.umn.edu/~rmccaa/aha2004/why_blame_smallpox.pdf

 

[LordThanatos]

https://users.pop.umn.edu/~rmccaa/aha2004/why_blame_smallpox.pdf

I've read that, and I think it's a pretty weak argument for it not being smallpox, personally. Given that it was largely just a call for more skepticism, I don't really mind that.

But alright, maybe it wasn't smallpox. That really doesn't change my point. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough, but it's a disagreement with this:

the fact the Spanish in fact largely fought and conquered native populations before they declined

This is entirely wrong. The Inca civil war - whether the deaths causing it were by smallpox or not - was definitely a decline by any metric. To say the conquest was before a decline is objectively wrong. The Spanish walked in on an actively tumultuous time and took advantage of it. This was not the Inca at the heights of power, or even stable by any means.

 

[Zerodv]

I've read that, and I think it's a pretty weak argument for it not being smallpox, personally. Given that it was largely just a call for more skepticism, I don't really mind that.

But alright, maybe it wasn't smallpox. That really doesn't change my point. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough, but it's a disagreement with this:

This is entirely wrong. The Inca civil war - whether the deaths causing it were by smallpox or not - was definitely a decline by any metric. To say the conquest was before a decline is objectively wrong. The Spanish walked in on an actively tumultuous time and took advantage of it. This was not the Inca at the heights of power, or even stable by any means.

It wasn't the height of the Incas but neither was it it nadir, the idea that the Spanish came at the perfect time is just wrong, any point after contact would have been just as bad as Incan population was going to stabilize any time soon.

 

[JohnCro]

Can (Or did) someone make some suggestion for locations on Baffin Island, apparently Martin Frobisher tried to make a settlement on Terra Incognita peninsula according to Wiki, and it is probaby Helluland from Viking sagas. Also so it is not just an empty land like in EU IV, it really bothered me how North it was pushed and now with correct geography it can have some interest. I would suggest the current town locations as in game locations. It can be a good base for Northwestern passage exploration.

 

[JohnCro]

I am not very good with suggesting locations and I tired to just make a concept for locations on Baffin Island. I just used sketchbook so sorry if it looks bad
Anyway here it is:

Frobisher Bay*, sorry for lower-case letter (autocorrect)

Kinngait - or maybe better name Sikusiilaq as original Inuit name or Cape Dorset as its English name it was given in 1631. Luke Foxe named it after Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset. This is well in time scale so it should be a location in my opinion.

Iqaluit - would be a location as it was a long known fishing ground for Inuits , if settled by English it would be called Frobisher Bay as it was for a while. Tho it was officially a settlement only in 20th century but again it was a long known location for fishing.

Kimmirut - or Lake Harbour, was a Hudson Bay Company outpost (and I think maybe makes more sense to be a location than Iqaluit which only gained importance as a settlement in the 20th century), around this area is Tanfield valley, a possible Viking trade post.

Pangnirtung - northenmost location I dare to suggest for the Island, (tho it did have only limited contanct as HBC only established an outpost in 1921)

Grey area between Iqaluit and Kimmirut is non-colonisable land passage for practical reasons, tho it may not have been traversed

I was inspired by @Maxipuchi posts to create something similar to his suggestions

 

[I_have_no_ideas_for_name]

Not a single Pacific Northwest SoP? Really?
Also, having Cahokia as the only settled Mississippian chiefdom is ridiculous.
I can't say much more on America since I have little knowledge on the topic, but there's an amazing post by one Tahami Tsunami that presents, history and gameplaywise, a very vibrant and interesting setup for pre-colonial North America:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/a-very-speculative-look-at-america-in-1337.1703108/

 

[Knightclub]

Hi could we get a zoomed in location map/resource for the South-East/ Deep South. When I have time I'm planning on making a big suggestion thread on the state of Alabama but I currently can't see most the location names.

 

[BongoBongo]

I absolutely can't wait to play this game.

There should be a natural harbor at St. John's, Newfoundland.

It's historically where people settled and I visit it every year and it's hard to imagine a more 'natural harbor' - a nice narrow channel separating the harbor from the Atlantic ocean, with hills to shield it from the wind.

I don't know what harbor the map is envisaging on the north coast - historically not that much happened there. Maybe there's a great harbor there, too, but there definitely absolutely needs to be on at St. John's - which has been the 'center of trade' for the island for centuries (and still is, and still is a thriving harbor)

 

[JohnCro]

I absolutely can't wait to play this game.

There should be a natural harbor at St. John's, Newfoundland.

It's historically where people settled and I visit it every year and it's hard to imagine a more 'natural harbor' - a nice narrow channel separating the harbor from the Atlantic ocean, with hills to shield it from the wind.

I don't know what harbor the map is envisaging on the north coast - historically not that much happened there. Maybe there's a great harbor there, too, but there definitely absolutely needs to be on at St. John's - which has been the 'center of trade' for the island for centuries (and still is, and still is a thriving harbor)

Yeah St. John's does seem like a good natural harbour. Tho for northen coast something did happen, the Vikings had a settlement there , but yeah for most of game time scale not a lot happened there as it seems.

 

[Rule Britannia]

With regards to location names, if we colonise a location with a country that does not have a name for that location, can you please give us the option to use the historical name from the country that did colonise it in real life. E.g. I understand you may not have a unqiue English name for the location of San Francisco or other locations in California, but I would prefer to get the location name change to San Francisco when colonising it with England, rather than keeping whatever the old native American name was. Could you not make this a game rule to give the player the option to specify one of the following choices before the game starts. Something like:

1) Always keep native names
2) Change names only when historical location name for colonising country/culture exist
3) Always use colonial names after colonising (defaulting to historical colonial name if no location name for colonising country/culture exists).

Of course when the native names were adopted in some shape or form by the historical coloniser this would naturally always be used. With the amount of locations it would be a pain to have to manually rename locations after colonisation in every playthrough, so it would be great to be able to get the colonial names automatically even if from other historical colonisers.

 

[Demetrios]

There should be way more settled civilizations in the east than just Cahokia. Cahokia had a large network of culturally similar agricultural neighbors referred to as the Mississippian culture, and it extended as far west as Oklahoma, as far north as Wisconsin, and as far east as Georgia. Many of these surrounding civilizations far outlived Cahokia and survived into historical times, with their people still being alive today. Many of these might be represented as one location minors, others could be multi location. Overall, I think it would make North America look way more filled out to give these areas representation.


This map gives a general image of the extent of settled sites in the Mississippian culture. I know you guys have pretty rigorous standards as far as sources, and I'm not an academic that can hold myself to rigorous standards, but this map could at least be used as a jumping off point. As far as direct historical accounts, many post-Cahokian Mississippian settlements were written down by the Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto.
View attachment 1225995

I'd say that the settlements with the larger symbols would make a good preliminary list of actual states. I mentioned Kincaid, Angel, Etowah, Ocumulgee, and Moundsville in another post (along with Wickliffe, which is the small one next to Kinkaid). I'm less sure about the others, but I'm sure other posters can chip in about them. My only additional contribution here would be that Serpent Mound appears to have been a more ceremonial than political center, and the actual state there would be based at Fort Ancient, which is the small one next to it, and the actual namesake of the regional culture (as seen on the map).

 

[_1ce]

I'll agree with this. They're kinda a big deal. Even if you have no regional knowledge, you can clearly see their rain shadow on maps.

Right they’re the reason why the biome that characterizes the Cascadian coast is a Temperate rainforest.

 

[ibvfteh]

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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Spoiler: Detailed SoPs Maps

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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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Spoiler: Detailed Location Maps

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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:
View attachment 1223579
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!

Why Iroquoisn and Haudenodanoan are two separate languages?