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Tinto Flavour #4 - 31st of January 2025 - Mali

Hello, and welcome one more week to Tinto Flavour, the happy Fridays in which we take a look at the flavourful content created for the super secret Project Caesar! But before we start, I want to share with you that we have a new job opening in Paradox Tinto: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/come-work-for-tinto.1727521/

Today we will be traveling throughout the Sahara toward the Sahel, where the Empire of Mali stands, ruled by the infamous Mansa Mūsā:

"The mighty Mansa Mūsā Keita of Mali astonished the world one decade ago, when he performed his Ḥajj ('pilgrimage') to Mecca. Such an event was recorded by chroniclers and chanted by minstrels, and it served to establish his fame as the richest man as he spread his prodigality, gifting Zakāh ('almsgiving') gold wherever his long and luxurious courtly caravan passed by.

This display of splendor might have reflected the richnesses of the Malian lands, after its Empire expanded and consolidated under the Keita dynasty. However, one day Mansa Mūsā will pass away, and his successors may not find it so easy to rule over his very diverse holdings..."
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Country Selection.png

The mighty Mansa Mūsā is still ruling Mali in 1337 (we don’t know exactly when he died, so we decided to have him as the ruler at the start of the game). As usual, please consider the UI, 2D and 3D art as WIP.​

And here are the lands of Mali:
Mali.png

Some more fun camera rotations this week! Today, with the flat map mode on again.​

Mali starts with one Vassal, which is Jolof:
Jolof 1.png

Jolof 2.png

Let’s take a look at some Government-related features of Mali, which can be checked in the Estates window:
Estates.png

There is one starting government reform for Mali, the Manden Kurufa:
Manden Kurufa.png

You might also notice that all Estates start with a privilege with the same icon, as it’s a similar one, made to portray the religious diversity of Mali, a country ruled largely by Mande-speaking Sunni people, but with a fragmented, but tolerant, society:
Protected Faith.png

Religions.png

The second screenshot comes from a tooltip on the Religious panel and shows the religious distribution of the country. Please note that we’ve already done the ‘Pagan’ split, but haven’t yet incorporated feedback from the West African Tinto Maps, nor reviewed the starting population.​

There are also a couple of unique privileges for the 'Umarā', the Nobility of the country, that may be available later on after an event triggers:
Office of the Farima-Soura.png

Office of the Sankar-Zouma.png

Mali also starts with a couple of unique policies enacted, the first for the Distribution of Power estate law, and the other for the Levy Law military law:
Gbra.png

Ton-tan-jon-ta-ni-woro.png

Mali also starts with 3 Works of Art:
Works of Art.png

Let’s now take a look at some unique advances:
Koroukan Faga.png

This advance is the one that unlocks the Manden Kurufa government reform.

Gold of Bure.png

Mali is famous for its gold exports, yeah…​

Mali has a bunch of unique units, also:
Mandekalu Levies.png

Here are the Levy units unlocked by it:
Mandekalu Infantry.png

Mandekalu Horsemen.png

You might note that the description of these two levy units refers to the Farari Corps, which is the following advance:
Farari Corps.png

That unlocks the following Regular units:
Farari Infantry.png

Farari Cavalry.png

Another unique advance:
Kele-Koun.png

That unlocks the Jonow Auxiliary, an Auxiliary unit:
Jonow Auxiliary.png

Finally, another military advance, that unlocks one more unit, and two more buildings:
Sofa Levies.png

Sofa Infantrymen.png

Sofa Barracks.png

Sofa Stockade.png

Let’s now take a look at the narrative content. This event will trigger while Mansa Mūsā is still alive, as an announcement of the potentially harsh time to come:
Zenith of the Mali Empire.png

This is the disaster that may end up triggering for your country, ‘Decline of Mali’:
Decline of Mali 1.png

It will trigger a number of nasty events, such as:
A fragmented realm.png

This event allows you to start playing with Songhai instead of Mali if you select the third option.​

If you overcome the disaster, you’ll get a reward, in terms of Prestige, Stability, etc. (we need to do some balance tweaks on it, so there might be more!).

Nonetheless, besides the disaster, you can also get nicer events while playing as Mali, such as some about the development of Timbuktu:
Bolstering Timbuktu.png

And that’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed it! Next week we will travel back to Europe, to the lands of the Crown of Aragon! Cheers!
 
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bretjemaine said:
Why did Mali deteriorate, or at least diminish, after Mansa Musa?

Paradox GSGs are at their best when they illustrate why certain nations acted as they did, and why certain events happened. But after this DD (which is otherwise great, don't get me wrong), I'm no closer to understanding what it was about the succession that brought the downfall. This feels a bit like there is a disaster just because there was a downfall in real life. What was the reasoning behind the pullback?
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The dynamic triggering conditions are (take them as WIP and matter of review, as usual):
legitimacy <= 95
stability < 20
ruler ?= {
is_adult = yes
OR = {
adm < 50
dip < 50
mil < 50
}
}
Click to expand...

And this is the flavour description:
"Weak rulership, civil wars, the rise of external threats, and internal stagnation are the great challenges the Mali Empire has to face. The stability and security of the empire is in peril, and only a strong hand can lead the state to once former glory."
Click to expand...

After the disaster is triggered and functioning, you can get several events about court intrigues, pretenders rising, social changes, and breakaway peoples, that try to make for an immersive experience. This is the description of one of those events, for example (with some dynamic localization in place, for those curious):

flavor_mal.3.desc: "The armies of [ROOT.GetCountry.GetName] used to be made up of #italic Horons#! - 'free men', who brought their own weaponry to the battle and were trained in the arts of war. With the increasing usage of [ShowUnitDefinitionName('a_sofa_infantry')], the character of our military is shifting. No more is the state protected by our well-trained part-time soldiers but by an army of #italic Jonows#! — 'slaves' — who once were just the carrier of the military equipment.\n\nOpinions are split if such development is to our advantage or not. While the quality of our army is less secure, it is undeniable that the quantity of the Sofa troops is a force to be reckoned with."
Click to expand...
 
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1738334171413.png


Feels like this should be available already in the Age of Traditions. Also to be pedantic, ”goldmines” is not a compound word, and also there weren’t actual mines there. Rather, gold was ”mined” from
the local rivers mostly by panning the water to get gold dust.

1738334452765.png

en.wikipedia.org

Placer mining - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Awesome dev diary btw :)
 
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matfer13 said:
Shouldn't it be in english though? Arab is the language of Islam but Mali isn't arab...
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Because it's a dynamic key; e.g., you get the 'Ulamā' naming for the Clergy Estate if the country's main religion is part of the Muslim religious group.
 
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Aretii said:
"Bolstering Timbuktu" says "the growth of Town." I assume this should either be "the growth of Timbuktu" or "the growth of our Town."

Anyway, this is neat. I don't know a lot about West Africa during this period, but I'm interested in seeing more.

Incidentally: Feedback left in the other Tinto Flavours after you stop posting in it is still being recorded by someone, right? I left some thoughts and suggestions in the Novgorod diary about the Orthodox clergy estate, but it was after you were done posting for the day. There have been a bunch of mentions about how the Tinto Map stuff gets constantly checked for new stuff to contribute to the reviews, but AFAIK nothing similar has been said for the Tinto Flavours.
Click to expand...
1. Corrected the sentence to "Other nations seem fascinated by its growth, and are regularly visiting it."
2. Yes, we will do the same, although don't expect 'Tinto Flavour Review' posts, as that would make less sense compared to Tinto Maps.
 
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Please, add total number of locations to the country info.
NLoc.png


P.S. much more beautiful without text underlining, really love it! Now, please, round the estates satisfaction % the same way as estates power :D
 
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titan.bevel said:
Why is there an advance to unlock a starting reform ?
Click to expand...
Because we're trying to create as much 'nested content' as possible, so the different game systems interact among themselves.
 
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There is evidence that Mansa Musa was already dead in 1337 and his brother Mansa Suleyman was in power that you guys must have missed. Also, will there be a special building for the university of Timbuktu itself besides the great works?
 
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While it is nice to have so much unique content for Mali, and in particular the unique disaster, I hope this game also has a generic disaster (or otherwise other kinds of generic mechanics) that lead to empires' decline. During the scope of this game there were many empires that went into decline and ultimately collapsed: Khmer, Delhi, Yuan, and later on Ming, the Mughals, the Ottomans etc. It is a concept that definitely deserves to be baked into the game's core mechanics as a possibility for any empire that reaches a certain extent.
 
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Pavía said:
The dynamic triggering conditions are (take them as WIP and matter of review, as usual):


And this is the flavour description:


After the disaster is triggered and functioning, you can get several events about court intrigues, pretenders rising, social changes, and breakaway peoples, that try to make for an immersive experience. This is the description of one of those events, for example (with some dynamic localization in place, for those curious):
Click to expand...

This is all interesting and informative, so thanks. But it doesn't address my question.

I'm asking why this happened to Mali historically. Not how you programmed it to fall. Your flavour description could apply to almost any state at almost any time.

I feel like the flavour of any country should be:
  1. encouraging/nudging the changes in a country that are caused, as much as possible, by the existing mechanics
  2. bringing that change to life through personalities, nomenclature, and choices
  3. adding in any major events or causes that cannot be caused by the game mechanics
The flavour talk has a lot of 2 and 3. But it seems in this country's case that the natural narrative of 1 has been bypassed. And without 1, the game can feel disjointed and inorganic.

I'm not criticising, just trying to understand why this is happening to Mali, and whether the historical causes have been taken into account as much as the historical outcomes.
 
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Desseabar said:
I'm sure you all looked into this more than me, but don't most depictions of Mansa Musa depict him with a beard?
Maybe there's some sources from during his Hajj that describe his appearance, but it feels like he should have a big, bushy beard.

View attachment 1249415
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AFAIK, there isn't an account of his physical appearance in Ibn Khaldun's work (although I don't know it so in-depth), and take into account that this depiction, which is the only one close to the period, is in the Catalan Atlas, crafted in the 1370s or 1380s by the Cresques family, Jewish Sephardi that resided in Mallorca. So it could perfectly be a convention on how a mighty ruler should look like (which is something that you might note that is already portrayed by the crown and regalia, which are very much of a Western European style).
 
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Great!! I haven't finished reading this tinto flavor yet, but I have a question: why does the fact that the nobility has religious freedom increase their power, and not just their satisfaction?
 
Pavía said:
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"Our economy, though, is used to a constant influx of gold and is more difficult to inflate."
What is the source for this claim?
I don't think it makes any sense. If you increase the money supply without a corresponding increase in available goods and services, you're going to have inflation.
Did Mali have a magic economic system that has since been lost to time?
 
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