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I missed that in addition to Tinto Talks which are the weekly dev diaries on Wednesday, there are now also Tinto Maps, posted last Friday showcasing the Low Countries. It was stated that all parts of the world will be showcased this way, allowing for feedback and changes before launch. The most interesting thing imo is that terrain has now been split into topography, climate, and vegetation.
Countries.png
"The regional situation in 1337. The counties of Hainaut, Holland, and Zeeland are ruled by William of Avesnes, who is married to Joanna, daughter of Duke John III of Brabant. Another John, the Duke of Luxembourg, might be the strongest power, as he is also the King of Bohemia. The County of Flanders is the wealthiest country in the region, controlling such important cities as Brugge and Ghent. Up in the north, we have other interesting countries, such as the Bishopric of Utrecht or the Republic of Frisia (you might notice that we're using a dynamic custom country name for them, 'Frisian Freedom')."
Locations.png
Locations
Provinces.jpg
Provinces
Climate.jpg
Climate
Topography.jpg
Topography
Vegetation.jpg
Vegetation
"We are aware that the Netherlands looked differently in the 14th century, as several land reclamations took place during the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods, but we are using a 20th-century version of the map for the sake of consistency. Most of the regions throughout the world would look quite different from nowadays, and documenting those changes (especially the coastline shapes) would be a non-trivial problem to resolve. As a side note, we already removed Flevoland from it, and have already identified some other modern ones that slipped through and we'll eventually remove them, as well."
Cultures.png
Cultures
"The stripes mean that there are pops of different culture inhabiting in those location. Also, the German and French cultures are WIP, we’ll show you a proper version on later Tinto Maps. "
Religions.png
Religions
Goods.png
Goods
"Goods get regularly swapped around here and there to have a balance between geographical and historical accuracy, and gameplay purposes. So take this as the far-from-final current version of them."
Markets.png
Markets
"We reinstated a Low Countries market centered on Antwerpen, after doing some balance tweaks that made it more viable."
 
What a nice post.

I didn't know Johan threw shade at VicIII. It seems to me that VicIII got the short end of the stick and was programmed with too much social science and not enough basic economics.
Economics is literally one of the social sciences.

It got rebooted in 2017 to be a marxist game, there's a dev conference where they literally said it was built upon marxist ideology. Before then it was being developed as a 'Vic 2.5' according to Johan I think, that would have had a DLC cycle like CK2 and EU4. Oh, what could have been........
Where is this info from? Want to learn more about Vic 3 becoming such a disappointing trash fire.
 
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New Tinto Maps is out and oh mai gawd ambatukam ohhhhhh

This time they are showing off Iberia.

Countries.jpg

I am not gonna post every image, only the more interesting ones. For starters the terrain has been changed to account for climate and vegetation separately instead of the one biome and a modifier for winter like it was in EU4.

Topograhpy.jpgVegetation.jpgClimate.jpg

The Religion map mode now accounts for religious minorities. You can see this represented by stripes of the secondary religion of the region. Possbile you could have densely mixed regions looking like rainbows.

Religion.jpg

And the pop map mode showing the population of the provinces.

Pops.jpg
 
Another thing mentioned in the new Tinto Maps is that they've taken 70 action points that will soon be implemented in the game from the just the last weeks Tinto Maps, good to know they're taking tons of feedback.
 
New Tinto Maps is out and oh mai gawd ambatukam ohhhhhh

This time they are showing off Iberia.

I am not gonna post every image, only the more interesting ones. For starters the terrain has been changed to account for climate and vegetation separately instead of the one biome and a modifier for winter like it was in EU4.

The Religion map mode now accounts for religious minorities. You can see this represented by stripes of the secondary religion of the region. Possbile you could have densely mixed regions looking like rainbows.

And the pop map mode showing the population of the provinces.
Looks like you can finally do an Andorra WC
 
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Holy fuck. I just converted to a full price at launch customer.

Andorra is infamous in my family. When I was a little kid I read atlases for fun. My geographical knowledge of the world wasn't near as deep as it is now, of course, but I could do things like tell someone how to get from one US state to any other US state using the most convoluted circuitous route that went through every other state, from memory. Once I was upset with Risk's map for being overly simplified and I went and taped a dozen sheets of paper together and drew a map of Europe on it that had provinces like Galicia and Saxony marked out.

Somehow the topic of Andorra came up one day, and my parents didn't believe it was a real place. You don't see it on most maps, after all, or if it is marked it is so small that the eye easily glazes over it. But I was very insistent, went and got out the globe, got the atlas, and showed them. Not really much of a story, to be honest, but because I was so young it made such an impression on them that they've brought it up ever sense, usually when the Tour de France runs through the Pyrennees.

The time for destiny hath come
Andorra will colonize Appalachia
 
And the pop map mode showing the population of the provinces.

View attachment 5996998
Pop maps in PDX games have never been good. In Vicky2 the provinces were either too big or too small so it didn't really convey much due to scale, HoI4 and Vicky3 are useless in showing anything but Chinese and Indian provinces due to the sheer difference in population elsewhere, and this one isn't colored so you need to scan for specific numbers, calculate in your head, then apply your own mental estimate for which region is more populous.
 
Pop maps in PDX games have never been good. In Vicky2 the provinces were either too big or too small so it didn't really convey much due to scale, HoI4 and Vicky3 are useless in showing anything but Chinese and Indian provinces due to the sheer difference in population elsewhere, and this one isn't colored so you need to scan for specific numbers, calculate in your head, then apply your own mental estimate for which region is more populous.
It would probably be best if it were colorcoded, but operated similar to the culture mapmode in EU4. By default, it would compare provinces across the world (thus having the issue where stuff like China/India are all green), but when selecting a specific provice, it focuses just on that region, allowing better comparison to only provinces in that part of the world.
At the very least, they should truncate the numbers. 24,633 should either be 24k or 24.6k. Having it only truncate if you get to the hundreds of thousands is too busy.
 
Probably a case of it being a alpha build at the moment. I agree with both color coding and the truncation. The color coding should be like Development in EU4 where you have a absolute scale of color and one where it is tweaked to better show the scale between the least developed and most developed when you click on a nation.
 
Update on the first Tinto Maps, they've already introduced feedback into the game.
Provinces.jpgProvincesRedone.jpg
We standardized the Province names, and made some other changes that you suggested:
Vegetation.jpgVegetationRedone.jpg
The vegetation of the region has also been adjusted:
Cultures.pngReworked Cultures.jpg
Cultures - there is an important rework here, as we unified the Dutch and Flemish cultures into 'Lower Franconian', one of the possible suggestions you made; the Franconian cultures in the Rhineland are also more consistent among them (although we won't be talking in detail about the cultures of Germany until the Tinto Maps devoted to the region):
Goods.pngReworked Goods.jpg
Finally, the Goods rework

These are part of the tweaks that I mentioned yesterday that we've done, as there are more. Apart from the setup changes, the location map rework will take a bit more time; but we wanted to show you a sneak peek of how we're doing with your feedback. Cheers!
 
I want to give Crusader Kings another spin, should I go with 2 or 3? (So the actual question is apparently, is CK3 a proper game now) Any essential mods if so? I know it sucks when somebody walks into a thread and asks a question like that, but I haven't played any of these in years.
 
I want to give Crusader Kings another spin, should I go with 2 or 3? (So the actual question is apparently, is CK3 a proper game now) Any essential mods if so? I know it sucks when somebody walks into a thread and asks a question like that, but I haven't played any of these in years.
Depends on how many DLCs you have, CK2 with all DLCs and mods such as HIP is great, whereas I've found CK3 to be very inferior although I haven't used any DLCs. It's a sequel but is still lacking a lot of stuff from CK2 such as Republics, Nomads, a more simplified economic system even though CK2 was already really simple, no silk road, etc. (Yes I am biased against nu-Paradox but praise be to Johan and Project Caesar.)
 
(So the actual question is apparently, is CK3 a proper game now
It's in a better spot than it was on launch, but it still feels very "dry." You end up getting the same events on every character (or sometimes even the same character) and it makes a lot of the runs feel samey, despite being in totally different cultures and parts of the world. If you end up playing it, there's mods like VIET, RICE, CFP, and EPE (and their compatibility patches) that add more flavor and are pretty popular. There's also stuff like Unified UI (which allows certain UI mods), and Nameplates (so you can tell at a glance who each event is talking about.) I'd also get Knight Manager Continued, because by default, setting up who can and can't be a knight individually and by hand is a pain, and you really don't want your Prowess 3 firstborn son and heir to die on the battlefield because you forgot to click a checkbox.
 
I want to give Crusader Kings another spin, should I go with 2 or 3? (So the actual question is apparently, is CK3 a proper game now) Any essential mods if so? I know it sucks when somebody walks into a thread and asks a question like that, but I haven't played any of these in years.
Disregard CK3, CK2 is objectively superior unless you're only in it for the 3D rape mods.
Just play vanilla until you know what you're doing, perhaps try Iron Century as a West Frankish duke, whatever happens don't restart the whole charm of the game is that you're playing a lineage and not a single character.
The DLCs are all free from the russian counterstrike website and you shouldn't pay the retard tax to sw*d*n.
Once you figure out how fun intergenerational despotism is maybe try AGOT or Elder Kings for a change of scenery and mythical components or CK2+ if you want more base game, HIP is only for truly autisticly deranged manics who enjoy maps made of vomit. After the End used to be good but got trooned on and is now shit both setting and code wise (cowboy boat CTDs), only try Geheimnisnacht if your computer is capable of 5D modelling the surface of the sun in 1480p.
 
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