Tinto Maps #14 Western Africa Feedback

[Pavía]

Hello, and welcome to another Tinto Maps feedback post! Today, we will be reviewing the region of Western Africa. However, I want to start today with some caveats regarding it, given the feedback we received last week regarding the Horn of Africa review, and to make for clearer communication.

1. For the Western Africa review, we mainly focused on adding the missing region of what is today's Central African Republic, inhabited during most of the game's period by the peoples of the Banda, Zande, Gbaya, and many others. Back in time, we had some doubts and issues regarding how to add it properly, but now we've been able to incorporate it fully.
2. Besides that, we also prioritized the redraw of the coastline of the Gulf of Guinea since it was noted that it looked a bit too artificial, so we made it follow more the topography and rivers of the area while still keeping the 'outpost' gameplay functionality. We are aware that there were a lot of proposals to add many more locations, such as those of @Gouda_boy or @Bosporus , but we also evaluated that they would add much more location density than the one we were looking for in this region.
3. There's still WIP to be done, such as a rebalancing of the Settled and SoP countries, as we received a ton of feedback on these. We also reviewed the pops we want in this region, and we agree with you that we need to raise its numbers; if it's approximately now 6M pops now, we plan to make it about 12.5M. We resumed the pop work recently since we have now fixed the already-mentioned issues, so it's not yet implemented; therefore, we will also share it with you in the future.
4. However, even given all of this, we didn't want to delay this Feedback post more than planned since we also have other valuable changes to share and get your feedback from, such as the breakup of the Animist religions of the region or the Languages maps. What we will do, then, is to share with you later on the changes we make about the previous issues, as we already said we'd do with other regions.

With that said, let's take a look at the change log and then at the new maps:

ADDITIONS

Added the following:

• Locations (44):
  • salamat
    sarh
    moissala
    ouham
    gbabiri
    gribingui
    ndele
    birao
    bria
    djemah
    kotto
    mobaye
    ouaka
    krebedje
    boali
    mbaiki
    mambere
    baoro
    sangha
    bangui
    bosobolo
    uele_ca
    isiro
    dungu
    kadey
    bomokandi
    aoukale
    bertoua
    abong
    sanaga
    akonolinga
    sangmelima
    nyong
    bakas
    eseka
    edea
    ebolowa
    ambam
    ebibeyin
    mongomo
    evinayong
    pende
    tiwal
    bahr_salamat
• Lakes
  • Iro lake
• Wastelands
  • niefang_jungle
  • maan_jungle
  • nkam_jungle
  • korup_jungle
• Cultures (13)
  • sara_culture
    mbay_culture
    mandja_culture
    gbaya_culture
    bulu_culture
    baka_culture
    gyele_culture
    madi_culture
    banda_culture
    bomassa_culture
    gula_iro_culture
    ngbandi_culture
    fang_culture
• Religions (4) - On top of the Folk African split
  • Ngbandi
    Ori
    Bua
    Banda
• Languages
  • bua_language
  • moru_madi_language

CORRECTIONS

Locations

• Completely redraw the locations on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea to make them more natural

Raw Goods

• Added Beeswax and reworked resources according to feedback

Terrain

• Reworked the entire Topography of the region

Religion

• Total Review, dividing the region into several Folk African religions

Countries + Societies of Pops

As mentioned in the intro, we already have planned to rework this intensely, we'll share with you when that is done, but we also wanted to share with you the SoP's already present since they weren't in the original map post. Also, there's a weird bug in how the border lines of wastelands and corridors are generated, which has already been reported, and we look forward to fixing it.

Locations

The first map shows all the locations of the region, including corridors, etc. The second shows the redrawing of the coastal locations. The third shows the entire new area added, that of the current Central African Republic.

Provinces

Areas

Topography

Development

There might be so future tweaks on this related to adding some more development to the lands of the Oyo people.

Harbors

Cultures

On the cultures, we plan to do some of the rework along with the country rework, so it's more efficient for us. You may see the new cultures added to Central Africa, any feedback on them would be appreciated.

Languages

We had to do some naming that we're not entirely happy with, such as the Nigerian or the Adamawa, so we might also be open to reviewing that.

Religions

The new religious distribution of Western Africa!

Raw Materials

Markets

And that's all for today! The next Tinto Maps Feedback will be in two weeks from now, on Monday 28th, for Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. See you!

 

[matfer13]

Good job as always! I've done some research on the region so here's some stuff I found:

-1-The locations of Gambia, Albreda, Bissau, Fernando Pò and São Tomé should all have some natural harbour suitability, while the locations of Cameroons, Èkó, Ikorundu, Ikosi, Àjàṣẹ', Assine, Grand Bassam, Costou, Mesurado, Iles de Los, Beer Dun and Ndar should have their ones improved
-2-Ife should be tier 4 as it was considered an Empire at the time while Jolof, Dagbon, Mamprugu, Ougadougou, Tenkodogo, Yatenga, Boussouma, Fada N'gourma, Bonoman, Mankessim, Borgu, Oyo, Benin, Owo, Nri, Zazzau, Kebbi, Gobir, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Daura and Rano should all be tier 3 as they were referred as Kingdoms or Sultanates in 1337
-3-Mali(and some of its subjects) and Kanem are the most advanced countries in the region and should have without a doubt a monarchical government type, while almost all the other tags in the region could be either classified as "centralized tribal societies" or "early feaudal states", the olny ones that are most certanly tribes are Kong, Gwiriko, Liptako, Bonoman and Mankessim who could even pass as Sops in 1337 and then there's Nri which is categorized as a "sort of theocratic state" on Wikipedia
-4-Borgu wasn't a unified state, it was a confederation made up of various Kingdoms, Bussa, Illo and Nikki were the three major ones
-5-Kano's state religion should still be pagan in 1337, Islam was made the official religion in 1350 by the first Sultan Ali Yaji, Katsina(and maybe other Hausa polities) was still pagan too
-6-The Kingdom of Ardra should already be enstablished by 1337
-7-There are some polities in the west that are missing, all of them should be autonomous subjects of Mali to represent how decentralized it was, these are: Gajaaga, Mema, Diarra, Takedda, Gao, Djenne, Takrur, Niumi, Kaabu, Kombo, Niani, Wuli, Namandirou, Baddibu, Sine, Baol, Cayor, Saloum and Walo; almost all of these are referred as Kingdoms inside or tributaries of the Mali Empire exept Kaabu which was a province, some of them will become part of the Jolof Empire in the future so it's possible that were already vassals or tributaries of Jolof in 1337 rather than Mali directly

 

[Signthe]

Good job as always! I've done some research on the region so here's some stuff I found:

-1-The location of Gambia, Albreda, Bissau, Fernando Pò and São Tomé should all have some natural harbour suitability, while the locations of Cameroons, Èkó, Ikorundu, Ikosi, Porto Novo, Assine, Grand Bassam, Costou, Mesurado, Iles de Los, Gorée and Saint Louis should have their ones improved
-2-Ife should be tier 4 as it was considered an Empire at the time while Jolof, Dagbon, Mamprugu, Ougadougou, Tenkodogo, Yatenga, Boussouma, Fada N'gourma, Bonoman, Mankessim, Borgu, Oyo, Benin, Owo, Nri, Zazzau, Kebbi, Gobir, Zamfara, Kano, Katsina, Daura and Rano should all be tier 3 as they were referred as Kingdoms or Sultanates in 1337
-3-Mali(and some of its subjects) and Kanem are the most advanced countries in the region and should have without a doubt a monarchical government type, while almost all the other tags in the region could be either classified as centralized tribal societies or "early feaudal states", the olny ones that are most certanly tribes are Kong, Gwiriko, Liptako, Bonoman, Mankessim who could even pass as Sops in 1337 and then there's Nri which is categorized as a "sort of theocratic state" on Wikipedia
-4-Borgu wasn't a unified state, it was a confederation made up of various Kingdoms, Bussa Illo and Nikki were the three major ones
-5-Kano's state religion should still be pagan in 1337, Islam was made the official religion in 1350 by the first Sultan Ali Yaji, Katsina also was still pagan
-6-The Kingdom of Ardra should already be enstablished by 1337
-7-There are some polities in the west that are missing, all of them should be autonomous subjects of Mali to represent of Decentralized it was, these are: Gajaaga, Mema, Diarra, Takedda, Gao, Djenne, Takrur, Niumi, Kaabu, Kombo, Niani, Wuli, Namandirou, Baddibu, Sine, Baol, Cayor, Saloum and Walo; almost all of these are referred as Kingdoms inside or tributaries of the Mali Empire exept Kaabu which was a province, some of them will become part of the Jolof Empire in the future so it's possible that were already vassals or tributaries of Jolof in 1337 rather than Mali directly

Fastest feedback in the west

 

[TheDeaconBosco]

 

[GenericUsername1444]

What we will do, then, is to share with you later on the changes we make about the previous issues, as we already said we'd do with other regions.

Thank you for the clarification.

 

[Mef]

I have a question that isn't directly related to this (but rather the info we got on Saturday), but considering there's no coal rgo in this region, maybe a bit relevant.
Since the game includes charcoal in the coal good, does that mean that locations that produced a lot of charcoal could also get the coal rgo?
I'd assume not, because there are probably late advances that make coal production better.
It just makes the charcoal building look like it's supposed to be a substitute for coal if you don't have access to it in an rgo, even though it was basically the opposite in real history for most of the time period of the game - charcoal was the industrial fuel used everywhere around the world.

We resumed the pop work recently since we have now fixed the already-mentioned issues, so it's not yet implemented; therefore, we will also share it with you in the future.

Are the pop updates going to be posted in each individual thread, or combined as a new Tinto Maps edition?

 

[antalguerrero]

As of today, fifteen Tinto Maps Feedback have been published: all between 1-18 except three (#6, #11, #16).
There are 30 Tinto Maps if we don't take into account the Extra ones, so

I really wanted to say that...
we're right at the halfway point of the Maps feedbacks.

 

[nyetflix2]

Ok, first of all I'll point out a couple of errors.
- Gonja is a Kwa language, not Gur.
- Bulala is not a Saharan language, it should be grouped with Baguirmi.
- Pretty sure the Godala Berbers should be fully Islamized, not animist.
- The Mali Empire and specifically the Mandinka, Bambara, Songhai and Fulani cultures should in fact be majority animist:

From https://www.worldhistory.org/Mali_Empire/ - “In contrast to cities like Niani (the capital), Djenne, and Gao, most of the rural Mali population remained farmers who clung to their traditional animist beliefs.”
From https://geography.name/bambara/ - “By the early 1900s some Bambara had converted to Islam, the religion of their longtime Muslim enemies, as a way of resisting French rule."

From https://www.worldhistory.org/Songhai_Empire/ - "King Mohammad may even have tried to impose Islam as the state religion but, as in the Songhai's predecessor states in the Sudan region, Islam was largely limited to the elite and urban populations while rural communities and the greater part of the population remained loyal to their traditional animist beliefs."

From https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/fulbe-religion
"a majority had become Muslims from the eighteenth century" and "Until the eighteenth century most of these Fulbe maintained a pastoral lifestyle and had relatively little attachment to Islam."

The name Bambara means "pagans" so they should have much less Muslims, if any, than Mandinka and Songhai. Also because there weren't many prominent cities in Bambara territory.

The Soninke seem to have been majority Muslim at this time, so that's fine.

 

[Goblin Slave]

Disappointed Mali wasn’t split up into at least a few vassals

 

[dw70676]

Would it be possible to see a Malaria outbreak map?

 

[nyetflix2]

I very much appreciate the ample communication on what is and what isn't done in the region, but I would have preferred you just take your time until you are finished with everything you planned. Frankly I see no substantial differences from the original tinto maps - the animism split already being shared months ago, and the Central African expansion being announced back at the time of the original TM (plus it's not a core part of this region and really doesn't have any content). So, what exactly are we getting out of this feedback post?

 

[bloof5k]

this might just be me being ignorant on the history, but why is Kano higher development in (presumably) their capital than Mali is in their capital?

 

[matfer13]

Fastest feedback in the west

Hell yeah!

 

[ivj9]

I have to ask about the North Atlantic extra, since we are now pretty well past it in the order of map posts. Will it get a map review? Since it's *just* an extra, I don't know if that was ever the plan. But waiting until release to know if Iceland's coastal wasteland is still there would be rough lol

 

[matfer13]

Can you give use the language family map please?

 

[ArVass]

Very nice! Can you post the vegetation maps aswell?

I think you should reconsider having Nigerian as one language at all. Nigeria is extremely diverse linguistically

 

[samgamer123]

thank you for the work on the maps feedback! hope u guys have a good Easter coming up!

 

[Mef]

All this saffron in the pepper coast definitely looks weird, considering there's pepper as a good in the game...

 

[Mef]

Very nice! Can you post the vegetation maps aswell?

Looks like vegetation and climate weren't changed, they're not mentioned in the changelog.

 

[matfer13]

Rather than calling them "minor tribes" wouldn't be better to call tier 1 tribal tags just tribes, tier 2 chiefdoms and tier 3 tribal kingdoms? I forgot to ask in the Mali TF, it's where this image is from