Let's revisit the English Melting Pot, please
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Sorry, I think I got carried away by the title. "Revisit the English Melting Pot."
Melting pots are actually really easy to write if one uses the lrovince_event model adopted by Paradox post Old Gods.
Adding fictional cultures that could have arisen in real life would make a good DLC.
Forgive me if this has been stated above.
One of the problems with the English melting pot event, starting in 769 anyway, is that, first, the Norman melting pot event has to happen. So you need a Norse ruler to gain control of a Frankish, Occitan or Breton province. Then you need Norman culture to stick around long enough for a Norman to take an Anglo-Saxon province.
This was close to inevitable in the 867 start, but 769 starts lead to far more divergent outcomes than would allow for English culture to emerge with any regularity.
It seems, in my 769 starts, it's way more likely to see Denmark or a hardy Saxony take lands in West Francia/Germany than along the English Channel or Franco-Occitanian Atlantic coast.
Perhaps, as suggested by other forumites, a broader range of hyphenated cultures and, thus, more paths for the melting pot to take.
This is the kind of shit that will make a bunch of amateur historian punks lose their minds over though.
One of the problems with the English melting pot event, starting in 769 anyway, is that, first, the Norman melting pot event has to happen. So you need a Norse ruler to gain control of a Frankish, Occitan or Breton province. Then you need Norman culture to stick around long enough for a Norman to take an Anglo-Saxon province.
This was close to inevitable in the 867 start, but 769 starts lead to far more divergent outcomes than would allow for English culture to emerge with any regularity.
It seems, in my 769 starts, it's way more likely to see Denmark or a hardy Saxony take lands in West Francia/Germany than along the English Channel or Franco-Occitanian Atlantic coast.
Perhaps, as suggested by other forumites, a broader range of hyphenated cultures and, thus, more paths for the melting pot to take.
This is the kind of shit that will make a bunch of amateur historian punks lose their minds over though.
Or a decent mod... although, I'm pretty sure that CK2+ handles a lot of the other mutt cultures not in the base game. I think English is a clear slam dunk that can be rewritten in the base game similar to the Russian melting pot where "English" became a thing mostly due to the French influence.
I'm not sure what people are talking about with English showing up anyway.
Apparently English courtiers will start popping up even if English culture doesn't exist, and then one thing leads to another, and you end up with Saxon characters turning English and English culture spreading all over England. I'm not 100% certain how the courtiers lead to this, but apparently they do.
The way it SHOULD work, to make sense historically, is when a Latin ruler rules a county with Anglo-Saxon culture, instead of it naturally flipping to HIS culture after a period of time, it should flip to English. Thus, a Latin culture wouldn't be able to convert an Anglo-Saxon province; it would just make English. This event should NOT convert the ruler to English culture immediately, but should give the ruler the option of converting eventually under current game mechanics. Thus, you shouldn't have Middlesex becoming Norman in culture and THEN English in culture-- it should just go directly to English from Anglo-Saxon.
This sounds more like mod work. Ideally, cultures would be a lot more specific, would be very difficult to conform to your characters whims, and split off into sub groups. But this appears fairly accessible to modify judging by CK2+. In general devs have decided to cater to a sense of accomplishment when we somehow change Rome culture to Komi. It's not at all realistic, but they're going for a type of satisfaction that you would get from playing a game of Risk/world domination in the vanilla game. If they added more features or made code more accessible then mods could make culture more interesting and dynamic.
I would say Latin or Iberian Culture groups as for some reason paradox decided to put Castilian, Portuguese and Catalan into their own separate group instead of in the Latin group.
Fair enough.
In game terms, you have a culture that replaces Huscarls with Huscarls, and a -10 penalty to a culture thats dying anyway. Also the 1066 AS culture already has a substantial scandanavian influence - how much stronger would it have become in reality?
The huscarls issue also raises the other problem with melting pots - theres no particular logic to Norman + Anglo Saxon producing a culture that likes longbows, and there's no obvious reason why the Anglo saxon military system would have survived another 400 years if WtC didn't successfully invade (a lot of region's military systems changed over 700 years).
Basic problem with numerous fictional melting pots is a) cultural differences are not terribly relevant anyway (it affects relations, retinue & buildings & the tactic is always to spread your own culture no matter what it is) and b) what happens in game can always extend beyond what your melting pots cover (which is why we get lots of ossified lombard and visgothic provinces in many games).
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I think the English melting pot's ok compared to the (incredibly sloppy) CM ones. The devs haven't put any conditions in place to prevent, say, Italian culture immediately reverting back to Lombard, same with all the others. No events to change character culture either, it all just relies on the province.
And does the Pictish/Scottish melting pot still only work with a Pictish province and a none-Celtic ruler?
And does the Pictish/Scottish melting pot still only work with a Pictish province and a none-Celtic ruler?
I don't remember it ever working like that. Scottish is formed by someone who is not Pictish ruling over a Pictish province.
I'm pretty sure all it requires for the nobles to start turning English is for Englishmen to be in the court, and then when the nobles turn English, the provinces follow. As the player you're forced to either kill all Englishmen through the console, convert the cultures of nobles, or edit files to rectify this. I've seen it happen before. I would test further in my England save but it keeps crashing.
This is an aside but I thought you might be interested to know: The first in-depth genetic scan of the British Isles shows their violent history of invasion after invasion lives on in the people. According to this study, the genetics actually support that an invasion did occur.
To conclude: Anglo-Saxon DNA makes up less than half of the genetic mix in southeast England. This suggests a more subtle takeover, in which the invaders intermarried with and perhaps imposed their culture on the locals.
I saw that study too, Zolotaya. Was also surprised that they said there was minimal Viking DNA in the British isles too, ie the Scandinavian invasions weren't as impactful as is sometimes thought.
On the current English melting pot the OP is obviously correct, Norman is to specific for the current base game now.
I'd love to see a revamp of the military system which would also separate culture and fighting styles. Although there was a cultural aspect to military strategy, it was also heavily influenced by the local terrain, neighbouring threats, etc. England adopting longbows shouldn't be due to having French-speaking overlords, it should be due to fighting the Welsh regularly and getting the option to copy their tactics (possibly a council mission for your Marshal, similar to tech spread, which spreads a new tactic).
I love the idea of more sandboxy melting pot options, but without a more sophisticated model it wouldn't work.
On the current English melting pot the OP is obviously correct, Norman is to specific for the current base game now.
I'd love to see a revamp of the military system which would also separate culture and fighting styles. Although there was a cultural aspect to military strategy, it was also heavily influenced by the local terrain, neighbouring threats, etc. England adopting longbows shouldn't be due to having French-speaking overlords, it should be due to fighting the Welsh regularly and getting the option to copy their tactics (possibly a council mission for your Marshal, similar to tech spread, which spreads a new tactic).
I love the idea of more sandboxy melting pot options, but without a more sophisticated model it wouldn't work.
Indeed, in my latest Anglo-Saxon game, I got a random English guy popping up in my court (while the English culture didn't exist).
I quickly murdered him to prevent his culture from spreading and preserve my Anglo-Saxon ways.
Still, I find this mechanic just as hilarious as it is ridiculous, since the game seems to treat englishness as some kind of epidemic disease, with random patient-zero appearing now and then, that you have to quarantine and eliminate.
I'm playing CKII, not Plague Inc...
No, not in 1066. Norman is totally one of the old french cultures (and old french languages). The "norse" were assimilated really fast (2-3 generations at most).
As a french, you don't understand middle french / old french.
Moreover, the Normand you're using to prove your point is in fact an awfully reconstituted kind of Picard. You may also find similarities with chtimi.
Normand in 1066 was a french culture with a germanic substrate (not only Norse but also Saxon and frankish), just like everyone in northern France...
The idea that the English are strongly germanic people is born from English nationalism and English-French rivalry. It was cooler to be a scion of the Vikings than a French transplant. The reality is a lot more complex of course, but in game replacing "norman" with "french" (or even "breton" but not occitan) would be enough.
Also, I don't know if it still work like that but Norman was also used to appear when a Norse ruled over Celtic people. That is completely a-historical.