[Development] Map Suggestions

[GoldenBronze]

Hello. I've only had the opportunity to play DoC for a short while, but I liked it immensely, and upon finding out that a new and improved map is under development, I could not wait to contribute it it! Unfortunately, I do not currently have a computer, so I cannot use the actual state of the new map to demonstrate my changes. Therefore, I have resorted to creating a table myself for it.

The India-Pakistan-Bangladesh region (which I will call "India" hereon for the sake of brevity) is one of the most densely populated areas of the world, clocking in at around 1.4-1.5 billion people currently. China east of the Heihe-Tengchong line is also similarly populous and has a similar area. Yet in the new map, it seems that eastern China is somewhat larger than India, probably due to the map projection. Therefore, I have endeavoured to improve India a lil bit.

Spoiler Map :

If you're comparing this with the current map and are unable to anchor yourself, know that the lake in Tibet and the mountain near the Indus (immediately north of Quetta, at 1-5 on this map) have both not been altered at all.
This India has been increased in size by around 9-10 tiles, which makes it about as big as eastern China. Sri Lanka has been moved south by 1 tile.

H represents hill tiles, M mountain tiles, shaded tiles are the sea, the one shaded tile in Tibet is a lake, the solid lines inside land are rivers, the dotted lines denote modern international borders for convenience.

Here are the major points of this map:

• The Ganges-Brahmaputra plain is larger. The Assam plain is properly shown north of the Brahmaputra (south of it are the Garo-Khasi hills).
• The four largest tributaries of the Ganges (Ghagara, Gandaki, Kosi and Son) have been added. These have a significant volume of water flowing through them and should be considered rivers in their own right.
• The Peninsular rivers also get their major tributaries. For the Godavari, the Pranhita is represented. For the Krishna, Bhima and Tungabhadra.
• The tile marked R is represented as a sea in the original map, but in fact this tile is the Rann of Kutch, which is mostly salt flats IIRC. It is classed as "flooded grasslands" however. Marsh?
• I have removed some mountains to make space for Srinagar (6-2) and Kathmandu (12-5). In the gaps between the Himalayas, there exist passes which were quite important IRL.

If you like this map, I can make a list of every city name of every tile in this map, complete with historical changes. If someone can show me screenshots of the current map with resources visible, I can plot every resource on this map as well, and perhaps suggest some more resources.

Now, considering the history of India IRL, I have a proposal to make that can take advantage of this larger India.

Spoiler Proposal :

Historically, India was disunited, with dozens of rival kingdoms fighting each other and brief periods of hegemonic unity. DoC does an adequate job of representing this with three civs (North India, South India and Islamic India/Pakistan). However, considering the increaser size of India currently, I propose using five civilizations instead.

• Maurya -> Gupta -> Pratihara -> Sikh -> India
• Delhi -> Mughal -> Pakistan
• Satavahana -> Vakataka -> Rashtrakuta -> Chalukya -> Vijayanagar (-> Bahmani if Muslim) -> Maratha
• Chola -> Mysore (-> (appropriate Lankan state) if capital on Sri Lanka)
• Gauda -> Pala -> Sena -> Bengal (Sultanate) -> Bengal (Nawabate) (if vassalised) -> Bangladesh

This will create far more variety in India and more accurately depict the struggle it takes to unite this land, while also allowing the player to play through iconic situations in Indian history such as the Tripartite Struggle. I am of course open to suggestions as well.

 

[Leoreth]

Thanks, looking forward to seeing your suggestion in game.

Do you have an idea for a good umbrella name for the third civilization you propose?

 

[GoldenBronze]

The general area the third civilization represents is filled with many peoples and languages, most importantly Telugu, Kannada and Marathi. Nevertheless, this region has in the past been called "Deccan", an anglicised version of Prakrit "Dakkhina". As such, I feel that "Deccan" or "Dakkhina" would be good names for this civilization.
(Adjectival forms are "Deccan" and "Dakkhini" respectively.)

 

[BaneFire]

I disagree with your civilisation proposals for India.
I detailed mine here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-map-india.660779/#post-15843954
Maurya-Gupta-Pratihara-Sikh-India doesn't make much sense. Maurya and Gupta sure as the representation of Aryan civilisation around Pataliputra and the Ganges, the Pratiharas are less clear due to their murky origins out of Rajasthan. Sikhs even less so as they are explicitly out of the Punjab and Indus Valley, which by their origin had long been Islamicised, which itself was the origin of Sikhism.

I'm still slightly confused about how the new rise and fall system works, and therefore whether something like Harappa needs or doesn't need to be repurposed, but this is my synthesised proposal:
Aryan civilisation (based around the Ganges)
Punjabi civilisation (based around the Punjab)
Deccan civilisation (based around... the Deccan)
Tamil civilisation (based around southern India)
Bengali civilisation (based around the Bay of Bengal)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...nal_Councils.svg/800px-Zonal_Councils.svg.png
You can see how modern day India is divided like this.

 

[GoldenBronze]

Both of us propose Deccan, Tamil and Bengali civilizations, so that's something we all agree on and thus I won't talk about it now.

The question, therefore, is the two civilizations that share the Indo-Gangetic plain. Your proposal divides it geographically, mine divides it religiously. On balance, either is fine, I suppose, but I am partial to mine because India and Pakistan, the last states for both civilizations, were formed by a partition motivated religiously, not geographically.

I'd have rather made the Sikhs their own civilization, yes, but I figured that six civilizations might be a bit much for this region. My idea for the India civ is that its core should gradually shift northwest up the Ganges from Magadha to historical Punjab (at whose eastern edge Delhi, India's current capital, sits), and then spread back eastwards (and southwards as well) during the 19th and early 20th centuries, assuming that that is how the shifting core mechanic works.

The thing is, I'm looking at continuity, and there isn't any Hindu kingdom in the Indo-Gangetic plain between c. 1200 CE and British rule that was both large enough and sigmificant enough to warrant being represented in a civilization's evolution (that I know of at least)... except the Sikh empire, which wasn't Hindu of course, but it wasn't Muslim either, so it'll have to do.

Alternatively, I suppose one could use the Sikhs as a late Hindu version of the Pakistan line, thus making it a Punjabi civilization, while ending the India line at the Pratiharas and have it be reborn as India in the late game during decolonization.

 

[DC123456789]

Based on how most civs work, the distinction should probably ideally be cultural as opposed to strictly on religious (or geographical) grounds.

 

[GoldenBronze]

That's certainly a good ideal, but it doesn't really work here. Modern India and Pakistan were created on purely religious grounds, so that implies that Pakistan, at least, should descend from a Muslim Indian civ, i.e. the Delhi-Mughal-Pakistan chain, which leaves India to terminate the Maurya-Gupta-Pratihara-India chain.

(The reason I chose the Pratiharas here btw is to simulate the Tripartite Struggle, a roughly 200 year long struggle for dominance over north-central India, particularly the city of Kanyakubja (modern Kannauj). The other two empires (Pala and Rashtrakuta) are already represented in the Bengal and Deccan civs, so here is where I thought the Pratiharas, who probably emerged somewhere in Rajasthan but expanded eastwards into the Gangetic plain.)

Now, you could say that the Sikhs are ultimately Punjabi in culture, and should thus be part of the Pakistan line. But the problem with that is that the Pakistan line isn't very Punjabi in the first place: this line exists to represent North Indian Muslim states, not Punjabi states.

...That leaves the India line, which is awkward, yes, but better that than nothing IMO, especially since during that time period there was no other kingdom in the Indo-Gangetic plain worth representing in the India line.

 

[DC123456789]

That's certainly a good ideal, but it doesn't really work here. Modern India and Pakistan were created on purely religious grounds, so that implies that Pakistan, at least, should descend from a Muslim Indian civ, i.e. the Delhi-Mughal-Pakistan chain, which leaves India to terminate the Maurya-Gupta-Pratihara-India chain.

That's technically true, but you can still draw a pretty straight line from the Turko-Persian-Indian culture of Delhi/Mughals straight to Pakistan, and similarly from the Magadhan/Gangetic Mauryan and Guptan empires to the Hindi-dominated modern India. And even if it wasn't, we probably shouldn't be basing the entire identity of these civs on their final modern incarnations, given that they represent a lot before that as well.

(The reason I chose the Pratiharas here btw is to simulate the Tripartite Struggle, a roughly 200 year long struggle for dominance over north-central India, particularly the city of Kanyakubja (modern Kannauj). The other two empires (Pala and Rashtrakuta) are already represented in the Bengal and Deccan civs, so here is where I thought the Pratiharas, who probably emerged somewhere in Rajasthan but expanded eastwards into the Gangetic plain.)

I do think it's a bit weird to represent the Rajput Pratihara empire with the Magadhan civ, but it's probably good enough, especially if the Pala are going to be split off as part of a Bengal civ (not that I don't think that it makes sense from a cultural/historical POV, but is there enough space?).

Now, you could say that the Sikhs are ultimately Punjabi in culture, and should thus be part of the Pakistan line. But the problem with that is that the Pakistan line isn't very Punjabi in the first place: this line exists to represent North Indian Muslim states, not Punjabi states.

...That leaves the India line, which is awkward, yes, but better that than nothing IMO, especially since during that time period there was no other kingdom in the Indo-Gangetic plain worth representing in the India line.

I would actually class the Sikh Empire as part of the "Muslim Indian" civ based on their continuing embrace of the Turco-Persian tradition, actually - it looks like they still used Persian as their court language like Delhi and the Mughals.

Is there a pressing need to represent the Sikh Empire in the first place? It only lasted as a prominent state for about 50 years and wasn't especially territorially expansive, and doesn't seem to be worth all of these contortions.

 

[BaneFire]

I think the Sikh Empire is absolutely worth representing.
1. It is the 6th largest clearly defined religion (eg not counting ethnic traditions, although including Chinese religions), well beating out Judaism and
2. It represents an important third balance between Hinduism and Islam in the Northern India region.
3. It has spread worldwide and has important political influences on Canada and the UK.
4. It fits in as an interesting civ and gives some diversity to a well-neglected map region.
Still though you may be right it doesn't need a full representation as a fully fledged civ, though I think the Sikh religion absolutely deserves one. If only because we have the abominations that are "Taoism" and "Confucianism".

Also I would reject the Sikh Empire as being part of the Mongol-Turco-Persian tradition, instead existing in defiance of it. It instead represents the resistance of the native Punjabis and others to Islamisation, which imo makes it fit in most as a Punjab civ (which might even share its ID with Harappa).
I refer to my older suggestion of an Afghan civ. Going by this, the Afghan civ can represent both the Ghurids and the Mughals. The rest of India fits already into our Aryan/Bengali/Deccan/Tamil dichotomy, and then the Punjabi civ can just be a later spawn akin to the Netherlands revolting against Spanish oppression (as the Sikh Empire, or as Pakistan).

 

[GoldenBronze]

Represent the Sikh Empire... as a respawned Harappa? Makes sense, considering the Harappa civ isn't being used for anything by then. I completely support adding Sikhism as a separate religion as well, that would be a very nice touch.

When it comes to the Afghan civ, the idea is great, there are many historical states in that region worth representing, like the Greek kingdom, the Kushan Empire, the Ghaznavids and Ghurids, the Hotaks, the Afsharids, the Durranis and modern Afghanistan.

However, I'm less sure about using them to represent the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals. On one hand, it is historically accurate to let these states begin from Afghanistan, since the Delhi Sultanate were founded by the conquests of the Afghans in India, while Babur first began his conquest of India from Kabul.

On the other hand, wouldn't it be weird for a purportedly Afghan civ to not be in Afghanistan for several hundred years, which is what would happen with the Delhi Sultanate? (Not to mention that the first dynasty of Delhi was the Mamluk (slave) dynasty, which was both unrelated by blood to the Ghurid dynasty, and ruled by a succession of sultans who were all unrelated to each other. The bloodletting was unreal.) Moreover, in the case of the Mughals, the Hotaks, Afsharids and Durranis would all rise in Afghanistan during the Mughal era, and indeed the latter two would go to war against it.

So, I don't think using the Afghan civ for these two is a good idea here, though I am in favour of having an Afghan civ in general.

Also, presenting Pakistan as the same civ as the Sikh Empire and different from the Mughals would not be a good idea, considering Pakistan is very Persophilic (yes I made up a word and I don't care) and draws much of its history and heritage from the Islamic rulers in the region, including the Mughals. Considering that a negligible number of Sikhs live in Pakistani Punjab (or in Pakistan in general, really), and that modern proposals for a Sikh state tend to exclude Pakistani Punjab for this reason, I can't see the Sikh state and Pakistan being included as the same civ.

 

[DC123456789]

I think the Sikh Empire is absolutely worth representing.
1. It is the 6th largest clearly defined religion (eg not counting ethnic traditions, although including Chinese religions), well beating out Judaism and
2. It represents an important third balance between Hinduism and Islam in the Northern India region.
3. It has spread worldwide and has important political influences on Canada and the UK.
4. It fits in as an interesting civ and gives some diversity to a well-neglected map region.
Still though you may be right it doesn't need a full representation as a fully fledged civ, though I think the Sikh religion absolutely deserves one. If only because we have the abominations that are "Taoism" and "Confucianism".

Yeah, those are pretty reasonable arguments for representing Sikhism, but not really arguments for the Sikh Empire as an important polity that needs to be represented in a substantial way.

Also I would reject the Sikh Empire as being part of the Mongol-Turco-Persian tradition, instead existing in defiance of it. It instead represents the resistance of the native Punjabis and others to Islamisation, which imo makes it fit in most as a Punjab civ (which might even share its ID with Harappa).

I mean, there's no contradiction between describing the Sikh Empire as being Punjabi and following the Turko-Persian tradition - the Delhi and Mughal Sultanates were essentially Urdu/Hindavi, after all, for most of their history, but that doesn't make them any less Persianate. I also definitely wouldn't describe the Sikh Empire (or Punjabis in general) as "resisting" Islamization in any way, considering the majority of Punjabis were probably Muslims at the time (and certainly are today) and that the Sikh Empire was quite religiously tolerant.

I refer to my older suggestion of an Afghan civ. Going by this, the Afghan civ can represent both the Ghurids and the Mughals. The rest of India fits already into our Aryan/Bengali/Deccan/Tamil dichotomy, and then the Punjabi civ can just be a later spawn akin to the Netherlands revolting against Spanish oppression (as the Sikh Empire, or as Pakistan).

I would agree with GoldenBronze that that doesn't really make sense - the Delhi and Mughal sultanates were fundamentally Indo-Persian, which is simply a completely different thing from being Afghan. The Mughal Empire in particular doesn't really have much of a relationship at all to the Afghans, and even for Delhi it's quite tenuous and practically nonexistent for much of the timeline.

Also, presenting Pakistan as the same civ as the Sikh Empire and different from the Mughals would not be a good idea, considering Pakistan is very Persophilic (yes I made up a word and I don't care) and draws much of its history and heritage from the Islamic rulers in the region, including the Mughals. Considering that a negligible number of Sikhs live in Pakistani Punjab (or in Pakistan in general, really), and that modern proposals for a Sikh state tend to exclude Pakistani Punjab for this reason, I can't see the Sikh state and Pakistan being included as the same civ.

I don't think modern politics is really all that relevant in discussions about states that far predate most of these issues. Remember also that most of the territory of the Sikh Empire, including its historical centre, is in modern day Pakistani Punjab rather than Indian Punjab (which is rather small) - though of course back then both areas would have been much more religiously mixed - and that the Sikh Empire was also fairly Persianate, if not Islamic.

 

[GoldenBronze]

I don't think modern politics is really all that relevant in discussions about states that far predate most of these issues. Remember also that most of the territory of the Sikh Empire, including its historical centre, is in modern day Pakistani Punjab rather than Indian Punjab (which is rather small) - though of course back then both areas would have been much more religiously mixed - and that the Sikh Empire was also fairly Persianate, if not Islamic.

The first point is fair, but your insistence on Persianate culture is a bit absurd. The entirety of north India, from Punjab to Bengal, was part of the Persianate sphere, as well as much of the south, especially Hyderabad. Does it make sense to lump them all together simply because they enjoyed Persianate culture at one point?

Clearly not, so the Persian cultural point is not a useful distinction. This leaves us with geography, ethnicity or religion, and since Pakistan was created because of religious discord in colonial India among Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, I choose to prioritise religion over geography and assign it to continue the Delhi-Mughal civ, since that is the only continuously Muslim civilization in India, leaving the Sikh Empire to another civilization.

Also, while the Sikh Empire was quite Persianate in culture and it did integrate Muslims into its framework, it was not Islamic by any reasonable definition. Being Persianate =/= being Islamic. Even though both were closely related in practice, they are not synonymous: the first is a cultural thing, the second is religious.

 

[DC123456789]

The first point is fair, but your insistence on Persianate culture is a bit absurd. The entirety of north India, from Punjab to Bengal, was part of the Persianate sphere, as well as much of the south, especially Hyderabad. Does it make sense to lump them all together simply because they enjoyed Persianate culture at one point?

Yes? I mean, I don't really see what the problem with that is. I mean, all of those polities were an offshoot of either Delhi or the Mughals and clearly had a shared culture, so it follows that it makes sense if they're regarded parts of the same civ. (I'm also not entirely sure what your point is, since all of those polities were also Muslim.)

Clearly not, so the Persian cultural point is not a useful distinction. This leaves us with geography, ethnicity or religion, and since Pakistan was created because of religious discord in colonial India among Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, I choose to prioritise religion over geography and assign it to continue the Delhi-Mughal civ, since that is the only continuously Muslim civilization in India, leaving the Sikh Empire to another civilization.

Also, while the Sikh Empire was quite Persianate in culture and it did integrate Muslims into its framework, it was not Islamic by any reasonable definition. Being Persianate =/= being Islamic. Even though both were closely related in practice, they are not synonymous: the first is a cultural thing, the second is religious.

I'm simply trying to find a cultural/ethnic basis for the so-called "Muslim Indian"/Mughal civ, since that is the standard that all other civs are defined by. Besides the fact that it's inconsistent with other civs, basing a civ definition on religion is particularly problematic given that civs can and will convert over the course of game. Basing the split on Indo-Persian culture is the obvious solution, at least in my opinion.

 

[GoldenBronze]

Yes? I mean, I don't really see what the problem with that is. I mean, all of those polities were an offshoot of either Delhi or the Mughals and clearly had a shared culture, so it follows that it makes sense if they're regarded parts of the same civ. (I'm also not entirely sure what your point is, since all of those polities were also Muslim.)

Um, no. The Persianate world and South Asia are each kinda comparable to the East Asian world, insofar as there were shared cultural links originating primarily from a central region that was the seat of a great empire at some point in time (Iran, India and China in rach case), including influences in religion and philosophy (Buddhism and Confucianism in East Asia, Hinduism and other dharmic faiths in India, Islam in the Persianate world), art and architecture, language and the written scripts in particular (Chinese characters, Perso-Arabic scripts, Indic scripts) etc. Yet, as you can see, in East Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia are all separate civilizations, and I hope Vietnam is is also introduced here.

I'm simply trying to find a cultural/ethnic basis for the so-called "Muslim Indian"/Mughal civ, since that is the standard that all other civs are defined by. Besides the fact that it's inconsistent with other civs, basing a civ definition on religion is particularly problematic given that civs can and will convert over the course of game. Basing the split on Indo-Persian culture is the obvious solution, at least in my opinion.

I mean, I think the split between Hindu India and Muslim India in current DoC is religious itself? I've never seen Hindu India convert to Islam or Muslim India convert to Hinduism or Buddhism, and they both correspond to Hindu/Buddhist and Muslim states respectively and neatly continue into the modern era as India and Pakistan.

 

[DC123456789]

Um, no. The Persianate world and South Asia are each kinda comparable to the East Asian world, insofar as there were shared cultural links originating primarily from a central region that was the seat of a great empire at some point in time (Iran, India and China in rach case), including influences in religion and philosophy (Buddhism and Confucianism in East Asia, Hinduism and other dharmic faiths in India, Islam in the Persianate world), art and architecture, language and the written scripts in particular (Chinese characters, Perso-Arabic scripts, Indic scripts) etc. Yet, as you can see, in East Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia are all separate civilizations, and I hope Vietnam is is also introduced here.

I mean, I'm not talking about the whole Persianate world here - it's not like I'm proposing that the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals should all be one big civ. I'm taking about the Indo-Persian world, which is definitely similar and concise enough, IMO, to be single civ (since the only polities that really need to be represented are Delhi, Mughals, and Pakistan).

I mean, I think the split between Hindu India and Muslim India in current DoC is religious itself? I've never seen Hindu India convert to Islam or Muslim India convert to Hinduism or Buddhism, and they both correspond to Hindu/Buddhist and Muslim states respectively and neatly continue into the modern era as India and Pakistan.

There isn't really a difference between splitting the (northern) Indian civs based on religious and cultural lines - to my knowledge, the Sikh Empire is the only non-Muslim polity that anyone has even mentioned in the context of a civ that is not Muslim but would be considered Persianate. So both definitions are equally consistent with how it's set up right now. (And I've definitely seen Hindu Mughals lots of times.)

 

[Leoreth]

This is the thread for map suggestions. Could you discuss new civs elsewhere?

 

[GoldenBronze]

Okay, back to map stuff.

Some time ago I read here that India was apparently a famous centre for saltpetre production. I looked into it and WTH why didn't I know this.

To preface, it's difficult to understate just how huge the saltpetre industry in India was. Around 80-85% of the world's entire supply of saltpetre was manufactured in various parts of India (especially in Bihar and Bengal, which produced immense amounts of high quality saltpetre), which gave the British, once they conquered the place, a near-complete monopoly on the good stuff till the discovery of nitrate deposits in the Atacama desert. Sheesh, this is the kind of stuff that should be taught in world history:
"So kidz, one of the reasons Britain ruled the world in the 19th century was that it controlled the majority of the world's saltpetre production, including the most high-quality stuff there was, through its Indian colony which it secured between 1760 and 1840."

Okay, now onto the history. Indians had apparently known the stuff since antiquity, but used it as a fertilizer till the uses of its incendiary capacities was made known from Chinese sources in the mid-twelfth century. The earliest organized commercial production of the stuff happened in Bihar and Bengal in the 1460s, though I don't know when it began in the other regions I'll be listing here.

The largest centres of Indian saltpetre production were:

• Bihar and Bengal
• Areas around Hisar and Agra in north India
• Areas around Lahore and Multan in Punjab
• Malwa in central India
• Areas around Guntur, Kurnool, Anantpur, Coimbatore and Mysore in south India

Now, I understand that there is a nitre resource meant to represent saltpetre, but there might be a bit of a problem with it, and it has to do with how the saltpetre is made.
See, unlike in places like Chile, where the stuff was mined, in India it is extracted from the soil. As in, it is present rather homogeneously in the soil of some parts of India, especially in the lower Gangetic plain, i.e. Bihar and Bengal. The crucial thing to note is that there are no deposits to be mined. Individual villagers would collect soil from their farms and extract the mineral from it by themselves, before selling it to merchants who owned factories to process it. Individual villages didn't produce much saltpetre on their own, but the soil is really rich with the stuff (especially when the monsoon floods wash silt onto the farms) and India is a land of villages even to this day, which is why cumulative production is so huge (seriously, somehow India apparently still competes with German industries synthesizing it).

I suppose you could still fudge it and use the regular resource for most of the regions I listed above, since they're relatively small in area and did not produce as much saltpetre. However, it probably wouldn't work for Bihar and Bengal. This region is pretty large in area, and historically it produced most of the saltpetre of India, and thus of the world. I doubt filling all of those floodplain tiles with nitre deposits sounds very appealing.

So, maybe we could do something special about it? Instead of using the resource deposit in this region, perhaps give those specific tiles a special bonus effective upon discovering Gunpowder that grants one Nitre resource per 1, 2 or 3 tiles to a civ controlling any of those tiles? I dunno, I'm just shooting into the dark but maybe you all could come up with something better?

Edit: I want to add that historically, two compounds were used as saltpetre in making gunpowder: chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate) and Indian saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Historically, I understand that India and later Chile were by far the largest producers of natural saltpetre, though thete was historically significant production of it in some other parts of the world. Nevertheless, I have no idea what the current situation is: I haven't looked into it much and the data I do have is... fuzzy. It seems to indicate that Indian output has remained fairly constant while production from other places shot up in recent times. This, combined with the synthesization of the boom stuff, should be taken into consideration.

 

[Crimean Lord]

Okay, back to map stuff.

Some time ago I read here that India was apparently a famous centre for saltpetre production. I looked into it and WTH why didn't I know this.

To preface, it's difficult to understate just how huge the saltpetre industry in India was. Around 80-85% of the world's entire supply of saltpetre was manufactured in various parts of India (especially in Bihar and Bengal, which produced immense amounts of high quality saltpetre), which gave the British, once they conquered the place, a near-complete monopoly on the good stuff till the discovery of nitrate deposits in the Atacama desert. Sheesh, this is the kind of stuff that should be taught in world history:
"So kidz, one of the reasons Britain ruled the world in the 19th century was that it controlled the majority of the world's saltpetre production, including the most high-quality stuff there was, through its Indian colony which it secured between 1760 and 1840."

Okay, now onto the history. Indians had apparently known the stuff since antiquity, but used it as a fertilizer till the uses of its incendiary capacities was made known from Chinese sources in the mid-twelfth century. The earliest organized commercial production of the stuff happened in Bihar and Bengal in the 1460s, though I don't know when it began in the other regions I'll be listing here.

The largest centres of Indian saltpetre production were:

• Bihar and Bengal
• Areas around Hisar and Agra in north India
• Areas around Lahore and Multan in Punjab
• Malwa in central India
• Areas around Guntur, Kurnool, Anantpur, Coimbatore and Mysore in south India

Now, I understand that there is a nitre resource meant to represent saltpetre, but there might be a bit of a problem with it, and it has to do with how the saltpetre is made.
See, unlike in places like Chile, where the stuff was mined, in India it is extracted from the soil. As in, it is present rather homogeneously in the soil of some parts of India, especially in the lower Gangetic plain, i.e. Bihar and Bengal. The crucial thing to note is that there are no deposits to be mined. Individual villagers would collect soil from their farms and extract the mineral from it by themselves, before selling it to merchants who owned factories to process it. Individual villages didn't produce much saltpetre on their own, but the soil is really rich with the stuff (especially when the monsoon floods wash silt onto the farms) and India is a land of villages even to this day, which is why cumulative production is so huge (seriously, somehow India apparently still competes with German industries synthesizing it).

I suppose you could still fudge it and use the regular resource for most of the regions I listed above, since they're relatively small in area and did not produce as much saltpetre. However, it probably wouldn't work for Bihar and Bengal. This region is pretty large in area, and historically it produced most of the saltpetre of India, and thus of the world. I doubt filling all of those floodplain tiles with nitre deposits sounds very appealing.

So, maybe we could do something special about it? Instead of using the resource deposit in this region, perhaps give those specific tiles a special bonus effective upon discovering Gunpowder that grants one Nitre resource per 1, 2 or 3 tiles to a civ controlling any of those tiles? I dunno, I'm just shooting into the dark but maybe you all could come up with something better?

Edit: I want to add that historically, two compounds were used as saltpetre in making gunpowder: chile saltpetre (sodium nitrate) and Indian saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Historically, I understand that India and later Chile were by far the largest producers of natural saltpetre, though thete was historically significant production of it in some other parts of the world. Nevertheless, I have no idea what the current situation is: I haven't looked into it much and the data I do have is... fuzzy. It seems to indicate that Indian output has remained fairly constant while production from other places shot up in recent times. This, combined with the synthesization of the boom stuff, should be taken into consideration.

It's so great that there is such detailed posts
Perhaps You have any plans to make particular skreenshoots which help to see whole picture!

P.S. India will have more s-p than Arabs have oil tyles, am I right?)

 

[GoldenBronze]

It's so great that there is such detailed posts
Perhaps You have any plans to make particular skreenshoots which help to see whole picture!

P.S. India will have more s-p than Arabs have oil tyles, am I right?)

Thank you. I wish I could just make the map myself and show you the result, but I don't currently have a computer to run Civ4 on. That's why the map I made to show my ideas for expanding the subcontinent a few posts above was handmade! The reason I'm making all these detailed posts is so that I can proceed quickly when I do get one. The resource placements I talk about are intended for my expansion of the Indian subcontinent, but they can just as well be used to inform resource placements on the current map as well.

As for the second, maybe? I don't yet have a clear picture of what the industry is like these days, so I can't give an exact answer, but I will agree that India should have a significant amount of saltpetre to reflect its historical dominance in its production.

Moving on: jute. This is a natural fibre, produced from a plant of the same name. It is one of the most important plant fibres around, second only to cotton. It is used in making gunny bags, rope and things like that. Almost all of it has been grown for millenia in Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam and Bihar (which together account for like 95% of the world's production of the stuff), where it and its processing industry is very big. In fact, it caused a little problem in the immediate aftermath of partition, as most of the jute-growing area back then was in East Bengal, but nearly all of the jute mills were in West Bengal. Nevertheless, cultivation expanded in India while new jute mills were set up in what is now Bangladesh. Moreover, in the past (i.e. before the 1890s), raw jute used to be exported to jute mills in Europe and America, especially to "Juteopolis" in Dundee, which remained a major centre for jute processing till the 1960s.

So, I would argue to include jute as a resource due to its historical and economic importance, with two copies placed around Dhaka, one near Kolkata (the historical centre of the processing industry) and one in northern Bengal, to represent the output from there as well as from Bihar and Assam.

Moving on: tea. India is the world's second largest producer of the stuff, but production only took off relatively recently. We may spawn three copies of it in northeastern India: one in eastern Assam, one in western Assam and one in Darjeeling, all in the 1850s.

Concerning coffee, India is a significant producer of it. The major region of cultivation is the hills of Chikkamagaluru (why are south Indian place names literally impossible to spell no wonder the British simplified them) and Coorg, a little west-northwest of Mysore, where there should be one resource, spawning in the early 1700s? Coffee was first introduced in 1670, but the first large-scale plantations came around in the 1840s, so choose whichever one you prefer I guess? I'm not too sure how important south Indian coffee was till the British era.

Going on a slight tangent, Ceylon used to be one of the world's largest producers of coffee between the 1840s and the 1860s. However, in 1870, the coffee leaf rust struck the region, and while Indian coffee plantations recovered, in Ceylon the coffee was largely replaced by tea, which now makes Sri Lanka one of the world's largest tea producers, whereas coffee is now much less important. Perhaps this could be represented by a coffee resource spawning in the Kandyan highlands in the 1830s, disappearing in the 1870s and being replaced by a tea resource in the 1890s?

Finally for today, rubber. India is one of the world's largest consumers and producers of natural rubber, so it makes sense for there to be one rubber resource (spawning in the 1900s decade) in Kerala, which produces 90% of it in India.

India's southern cone is really resource-rich tbh, there's a lot of cool stuff that's found here, like rubber, coconuts, coffee (not just in Karnataka but also in the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu), tea (again in the Nilgiris), probably sugarcane and rice in several regions, tons of spices, gold in certain places (particularly Kolar in Karnataka), diamonds in Golconda, a recently-discovered uranium deposit of very large size in Andhra Pradesh, millets and cotton in the Deccan and so on. There might be so many non-food resources around that we need to add more fishes to ensure that cities here actually get the food they need to grow respectably large (Kerala and Tamil Nadu alone contain like 100 million people, more than Germany, which is a lot).

 

[stormogulen]

Recently I happened upon some info on the important Al-Ahsa Oasis in Saudi Arabia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahsa_Oasis) and began to wonder if it could somehow be represented. For optimal accuracy it should probably be placed on the marked tile in the image below, however putting an oasis there would prevent settling the somewhat large and historically important city of Hofuf/Al-Ahsa which is located in the oasis. As an alternative, one could perhaps put the oasis 1SW to boost mostly the same cities and also allow founding Riyadh on the adjacent dates or 1W of them.

Spoiler Arabia :

Another minor idea is to replace the dates in Yemen with millet/wheat since sorghum seems to be its most important crop slightly ahead of wheat, while date production per capita is low by regional standards (Saudi Arabia/Oman/UAE/Kuwait are all 15-50 times higher on that metric). Also, maybe there could be savanna trees on the coffee instead of a regular forest.

As an off-topic sidenote, do you guys think a Sabean/Himyarite civ could work? It seems to me that it could be quite cool and exotic, and the Arabian incense somehow seems slightly wasted without it (since it was most relevant by far during classical antiquity).