Should the Roman Empire accept all european cultures?

Its a Roman Empire, not EU28. How many electors did the Lombards have in HRE?

I really think that's a good Idea, and would make the Roman Empire even more special. Also, it's both historical, since the real Roman Empire was very tolerant, and logical, since you have to assume that if someone managed to form the Roman Empire in CK2, he probably, nay, he has to control a very large Realm with many different cultures. I have the same problem with my Mongol Khanate. At the end I control almost all of Europa, to make it realistic I gave titles to people of the same culture of the region, since historical that's what the Mongols did. All was fine, most of my subjects liked me, half of them were Tengri. And that for at least 50 years, most longer. But when I converted my Game to EUIV, hell broke loose. Rebellions everywhere, from Mongolia to Europa, Regions formerly loyal suddenly rebelled, and for some reason, the only accepted Culture is Italian and Greek. All that made my Game unplayable, since I don't want to spend 200-300 years, if not longer, fighting Rebels. I'd understand it if it happens at the end of the game, when Nationalism began, but not at the beginning.

Well, as it is now, it is definitly no fun converting a large Empire from CK2 to EUIV, at least not if you didn't convert all of Europa to one Religion and Culture, which I would never do since it's stupid.

TLDR: "My incredibly large empire is suffering the stress of an incredibly large empire! Rome needs to be OP, because it never suffered any stability problems in real life!"

Getting behind in tech is pretty much what's supposed to happen when you are an incredibly large empire. That's why it costs monarch points to both invest in tech and solve any problem you would get from over-expanding.

Remember: EU4 is not history. It's a game. Don't play how it should work, play how it does work. Does it make sense that the Irish become fully English in 5 years of trying to convert their culture? No. You do it anyway, because who wants -33% manpower and taxes in half their provinces?

As for advice on another playthrough of the save? Don't. There's a reason why there aren't that many lets plays of people going from CK-->EU2-->Vicky-->HoI2, and that's because the game gets boring when suddenly you own the entirety of Europe and now have to deal with actually micromanaging it, as well as the constraints of the game events not being able to constantly adapt to what's happening, which would be pretty much impossible unless you made a mod specifically for your playthrough. The game is much more entertaining when you pick an underdog and claw your way to the top, going through 15 comet events a month, 3 0/0/0 monarchs in a row, Austria being allied with everyone between Russia and Timbuktu, and France conquering all of Europe in 2 years (before blowing all its money and manpower on colonizing Africa, of course). I'd suggest England. It provides a pretty balanced playthrough, and while you're in a pretty decent position, you still have to work it to really contest with Spain and France.

@ ringhloth

Well, I don't want the game to be anything like "easy", and I don't mind micromanaging, or even my great empire falling apart, my Problem is when Regions formerly Loyal rebel nonstop because of different culture, at a time where Nationalism didn't yet exist, at least not in the beginning. And after being in my Empire for more than 100 years. The only way I'd be able to counterbalance that is by making all of the provinces in CK2 Mongol, but I don't want that because it's stupid. And I absolutely don't want to, and I don't do it, to convert any culture in EU4 except the Native Americans when I colonize.

And remember, both the different Mongol Khanates and the Ottoman Empire had really many different cultures in their realm in real history, and they manage not only to survive a very long time, but the Ottoman Empire even grew nonstop until a certain time. And the main reason why it fell wasn't the different cultures, at least not before the Time Period of Victoria 2 and very late EUIV, but the decadence of the Ottoman Rulers.

And yeah, your Point about it being a Game is one reason why I don't like me having to spend ALL of the game crushing rebellions.

And your other point about people not doing CK-->EU2-->Vicky-->HoI2, if the developer give me the option to do that, well, I should be able to do just that in a fun way, shouldn't I?

Talking Bout said:

Off topic: Is it really necessary that large empires fall behind in tech? That's what happened to Spain, the Ottomans and arguably China, but it wasn't exactly the case for Britain or France, was it?

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Well, the Chinese Empire was the leading Technological Force on the world for a very, very long time, up until the High Middle Ages. Many of the technologies we have/had originated in China. The reason why they fell behind was because of the Isolationist Policies of China. Most non-Chinese things were seen as bad.
The Ottoman Empire fell because of the decadence of the Ottoman Rulers and the Janissary
The Spanish Empire fell because of all the Gold and Silver from the Americas. It lead to a high Inflation, the same thing that may happen to you in EUIII and EUIV . Also, the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Great Britain and France were very stable, open Empire with advances Governments and high Administrative abilities.

Talking Bout said:

*snip*

Off topic: Is it really necessary that large empires fall behind in tech? That's what happened to Spain, the Ottomans and arguably China, but it wasn't exactly the case for Britain or France, was it?

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Well... no. And yes. There's not really a single thing we can point at too much...

Spain became a major power following the Reconquista and channeled that into a huge colonial empire that eventually chocked on too much silver. They couldn't adapt the economic situations (They didn't even have the terminology back then, and we can argue if we have the proper knowledge these days), and things fell by the wayside. They were still a major power, but fading.

The Ottoman Empire was fairly advanced in certain ages, but it was also fairly conservative, and didn't make changes being made in response to it's internal economic system, as well as failing to handle the nationalistic revolts of the various peoples within the Empire.

China? Which China. Yeah yeah. Overall, China was fairly rich and developed rapidly early on, and then... stayed that way. Kinda. Analyzing the rise and fall and development of all the various Chinese Empires in context and contrast with more Western-style Empires (Spain, Ottoman, France, England, Russia) would be a book, not a forum post made at 12:30 in the morning on a Monday. xD China rose and fell and rose again too many times to point to a specific issue, and each fall was different.

Hmm. There is a theme there - large, overlarge empires having to spend more and more resources keeping things stable until it all implodes. In China's case, repeatedly.

France, England, and to a lesser extent, the Netherlands starting rising around the time that the Spanish peaked and started on their decline, and had two very big things develop that Spain didn't: The rise of practical economic theories (State Banks, companies, early capitalism and mercantalism), and early stirings of the Industrial Revolution. The Dutch fell by the wayside - not enough 'tax' and 'production' and they depended too much on 'trade' that ended up elsewhere (A book, or at least a paper in of itself, 'The Failure of the Dutch Industrial Revoltuion'), but England and France managed industrialization and the wealth that comes with it.

Another three cases to look at would be the Germanies of Royal Prussia and Imperial Austria, and Russia. One could argue that Austria in the German Struggles due to a more diverse and divided internal Empire, but there's no question that they were still feeling the pain from the upheavals of the French Revolution and the followup wars. We can skip WWI and the followups, I think :3

Russia is an interesting thing to look at, as it was a fairly backward state that rapidly modernized - to the point that her neighbors feared a modern Russia. That Empire fell among corruption in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union into the componant parts, the modern State of Russia being the heart of the old Imperial.

TL;DR: China is a red herring, Spain and the Ottmans didn't adapt because they were the best, and felt no reason to change until it was too late, and France and England got 'lucky'.

Talking Bout said:

Soooo, enough boasting about my super-awesome playthrough, I'm asking your opinions on whether the Roman Empire should get a bonus or have an idea (beyond "Pax Romana") that counts all "european" cultures as "accepted"?

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No. It is not needed. The penalties for being a wrong-cultured province are negligible.

If you are having trouble with your Roman empire in SP, it is not because of problems with culture, but because of a lack of experience with EU4 and spending your monarch points unwisely.

Peter Ebbesen said:

No. It is not needed. The penalties for being a wrong-cultured province are negligible.

If you are having trouble with your Roman empire in SP, it is not because of problems with culture, but because of a lack of experience with EU4 and spending your monarch points unwisely.

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Well, no, I'd say I do have experience in EUIV, but that isn't of use when you start your game with more than half of your Provinces having a 15% Rebellion Chance.

And the penalties for wrong cultures is NOT negligible if you have a Multicultural Big Empire. As I said, I'd expect having such an Empire to be difficult to maintain, but to have even those cultures who are part of my Empire for hundreds of years to suddenly Rebel, and having to spent ALL of my Game trying to crush them, is stupid. That's why I think if you *convert* an great and big Empire from CK2 to EUIV, they shouldn't suddenly have that much Problem, especially Empires that are historically known to be tolerant like the Roman Empire and the Mongols.

Comintern1919 said:

Well, no, I'd say I do have experience in EUIV, but that isn't of use when you start your game with more than half of your Provinces having a 15% Rebellion Chance.

And the penalties for wrong cultures is NOT negligible if you have a Multicultural Big Empire.

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They sure are. They make up 2% out of the 15% RR you are complaining about, as well as providing a hit to tax income and manpower, neither of which is severe given how modifiers stack additively. In other words, your problem with your multicultural empire is not culture.

I have ruled big multicultural empires in EU4, and I absolutely hate having high revolt risk in a big empire, and I do know that when you have high revolt risk in a big multicultural empire you will frequently see cultural rebels, but that does not make the underlying problem that the provinces are a wrong culture - the reason you are in trouble is because of all the other factors that add up RR, not the mere 2% you get from not being an accepted culture. The most frequent causes are low stability (probably not an issue or you would have noted it), religion, war exhaustion, and nationalism (if not cored yet), all of which are much, much, worse for RR than culture.

All the above is said without having tried a converted game, so please, prove me wrong, as I might be wrong about converted CK2 games and have to eat humle pie. Show me a breakdown of RR in your provinces that gives you that 15% RR, or even better, is it possible for you to upload your EU4 savegame in its initial state after conversion to a server/filedump so we can all see a) your glorious empire, and b) try to understand your problems?

Peter's comments mirror my Roman Empire experience. I've had the same borders for 600 years now, and the biggest two factors in keeping RR to negligible amounts is religious harmony and cores that have made my territory mine. (Absolute crown power during conversion is essential to make the transition easy.

Something seems really different between my conversion and yours.