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CK3 Dev Diary #65 - One Culture Is Not Enough

Hello everyone!

Last week we had a rundown of what a culture looks like in the upcoming overhaul. This time around, let’s have a closer look at how you go about creating your own culture! There are two different ways of doing so, forming a hybrid culture and diverging your culture. Both are slightly different in their approach and in what they allow you to do with your new culture.

Now, while the cultural overhaul is a free feature that will accompany the Royal Court expansion, the ability to create a hybrid or divergent culture will require you to own the DLC.

Before we start, culture creation is quite dependent on the new cultural overhaul, so if you have yet to read last week's DD, I suggest you give it a read for context. Also, keep in mind that everything shown in screenshots is still a work in progress!

Form a Hybrid Culture
Forming a hybrid culture is a way for you to meld the aspects of your current culture with that of another, in any way you so choose.

There are a few restrictions you’ll have to keep in mind before you are able to form a hybrid. First, the culture you want to form a hybrid with has to be present within your realm. No weird hybridization with cultures on the other side of the world please. Secondly, you’ll need a certain amount of cultural acceptance. You cannot go in and conquer an area to only create a new culture immediately, but the required amount can vary depending on your current traditions. And finally, you cannot hybridize with a culture of the same heritage as you. The reasoning here is that the two cultures have to be different enough to warrant them being combined into a single culture, rather than just assimilating one in favour of the other.

Once you are able to form a hybrid culture, you’ll need to come up with a good name for it. We pick a default name that is a combination of the two cultures you are attempting to hybridize, such as “Andaluso-French”, or “Greco-Persian”. For added immersion and flavour, however, we have a set of names that can appear depending on which cultures you hybridize, or where you are creating your new culture. For example, hybridizing a culture of a Frankish heritage with one of a central germanic heritage in the area in and surrounding Lotharingia, you can have a culture named Rhinelander. You are, of course, free to name your new culture whatever you want as well!

Starting with the pillars. You can freely pick between the two cultures' pillars, mixing ethos, heritage, language, and martial custom as you’d like. For example, you could pick the heritage from culture A, but language from culture B. One caveat is that you have to pick at least one pillar from each culture. It isn’t much of a hybrid otherwise, is it?

01_hybrid_pillars.jpg

[Image of pillar selection when forming a hybrid culture]

The same principle applies to traditions. You can pick and choose which traditions you want to keep, from either culture, as long as you don’t go above the slot limit. You can even choose to only pick a few traditions, leaving slots empty and give room for future traditions that you may want to adopt later. Some traditions are unique to certain cultures, regions, or heritages however, so this is the only chance you might have to acquire traditions that normally would be out of your reach.

02_hybrid_traditions.jpg

[Image of tradition selection when forming a hybrid culture]

Aesthetics work in the same way. You are free to pick and choose all of the subcomponents from either culture. For some of the categories, you are even able to choose a “hybrid” option, using the preset from both cultures! The hybrid option exists for names, fashion, and CoAs. Are you hybridizing a culture from East Africa with an Indian culture? Perhaps you’d like to go for the Indian unit, hybrid naming, Indian architecture, African fashion, and finally hybrid CoAs. Actual combination is entirely up to you!

03_hybrid_aesthetics_1.jpg

[Image of Military Equipment, Naming Practices, and Architecture when forming a hybrid culture]

04_hybrid_aesthetics_2.jpg

[Image of Fashion and Coats of Arms when forming a hybrid culture]

The new hybrid culture will automatically acquire any innovation that either parent culture has discovered already, giving you the possibility to gain access to innovations that your previous culture has yet to discover.

Before we move on, there’s a prestige cost to forming a hybrid culture. Normally, creation isn’t very expensive, and relies more on having enough cultural acceptance for it to be valid. A high acceptance will reduce the cost though, making it fairly cheap if you have managed to greatly increase acceptance.

The initial size of a hybrid culture on the map also depends on the acceptance you’ve built up between the two cultures. If you decide to hybridize at the lowest required acceptance level, the hybrid will start out rather small. Rulers of hybrid cultures have a much easier time using the ‘Promote Culture’ council task in counties belonging to either of its parent cultures for a set amount of years after it has been formed.

Diverge Your Culture
A divergent culture is essentially a culture that deviates from their original culture, allowing you the opportunity to shape it as you see fit.

Similar to forming a hybrid, you get to choose a name for your new culture. The default name here on the other hand, depends on your primary title. Diverging a culture as the king of Anatolia can give you an Anatolian culture, or Austrian if you are the duke of Austria. This makes sure that divergent cultures always have a sensible name to them. At least most of the time. I did see a Wormsian culture in a recent observer game, from the county of Worms. As with hybridization, you are free to name it however you want if you don’t want to use the default name.

As for the pillars, options are slightly different. You can pick and choose any ethos. Language won’t have any additional options for you most of the time. Martial custom can be changed as long as you fulfill the conditions for them, which would include things such as having a corresponding succession law. Aesthetics will also rarely have additional options, except in some historical cases. Diverging from Norse in Sweden, for example, will give you access to Swedish Aesthetics.

You have to change at least one pillar in order to diverge your culture. Most of the time you won’t have a lot of valid alternatives for the additional pillars, so your only option will be to change your ethos.

05_diverge_pillars.jpg

[Image of pillars when diverging from an existing culture]

Traditions can be replaced with something new, as long as you are able to afford the tradition cost. Unlike hybridization, you will have plenty of options, and can replace a tradition with any other tradition that your culture fulfills the requirements of.

06_diverge_traditions.jpg

[Image of traditions when creating a divergent culture]

Diverging also costs prestige. Here the cost scales on how much of your own culture you control. Attempting to diverge Greek as Byzantium will be fairly expensive. Meanwhile, attempting to diverge a small part of your culture, such as a small Andalusian emir on the Iberian peninsula will be significantly cheaper.

Dynamic Culture Emergence
The above options describe how you as a player will be able to create new cultures, that doesn't mean that cultures won’t also appear dynamically. Over the course of a campaign, cultures may diverge depending on their situation.

For dynamic Divergent cultures we decided that we wanted them to feel immersive and logical whenever they showed up. There are many factors that go into this, such as the culture size, if the culture is ‘united’ under strong rulers, etc. Divergent cultures will appear either in border regions where a culture meets another (or several others), or in island regions. Divergences also do not appear in the capital lands of the Culture Head, in order to safeguard what is most likely the ‘heartland’ of the culture.
For example, one of the cultures that usually Diverge a few times (1066) is the Bedouin culture. It’s large, spread out, and some of its lands are under rulers that are not Bedouin themselves. On the other hand we have Greek; a large culture, but with practically all counties of its culture united under one ruler - they tend to not diverge unless territories go independent.

Hybridization, on the other hand, is something powerful rulers strive towards! If a ruler finds themselves ruling a large swathe of land of a foreign culture while at the same time having no motivation to assimilate, they’ll try and increase Cultural Acceptance until they’re eligible for Hybridization. They tend to want to hybridize with large cultures in their realm, the prime example being the Oghuz Seljuks wanting to Hybridize with Persian above all other cultures they have in their realm. Some AI rulers do not pursue hybridization though, such as large Elective realms (HRE) where cultures take turns being the top ruler, or realms such as the Papacy.

By default, the AI will not create hybrids-of-hybrids (unless historical hybrids, such as Maghrebi or English), as the naming schemes can quickly go out of hand. Though if you’d like the AI to do this, there’s a game rule you can enable...

There’s also a small chance that hybrids appear in realms of not so powerful rulers, this allows interesting hybrids such as Hiberno-Norse to appear even from tiny realms. This happens through an event that can also occur for the player. These events will most often happen for Cultures that have certain traditions that allow them to more easily create Hybrids with other cultures.

Naturally there’s a host of Game Rules that allow you to customize your experience. Do you want no Divergent or Hybrid cultures to appear at all? Set their frequencies to none. Do you want the AI to create hybrids of hybrids of hybrids of hybrids? Set the Hybrid Culture Restrictions to Very Relaxed!

07_game_rules.jpg

[Image of the new culture Game Rules]

To round things off, let’s take a look at a few examples of what the AI did during an observer game. First up, from the 867 start, and 200 years in. You’ll see quite a few new cultures here:
  • Ango-Norse, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 918.
  • Cumbro-Norse, Hybrid Culture, formed in 948.
  • Norse-Gael, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 1029.
  • You can also see that English has largely replaced Anglo-Saxon as the dominant culture in England.
08_cultures_in_britain.jpg

[Image of AI created cultures on the British islands]

Started in 867, and 100 years into the game:
  • Kufan, Bedouin Divergence, emerged in 933.
  • Badarayani, Mashriqi Divergence, emerged in 956.
  • Kurdo-Mashriqi, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 911.
  • Nihawandi, Persian Divergence, emerged in 907.
  • Shirvani, Persian Divergence, emerged in 946.
09_cultures_in_persia.jpg

[Image of AI created cultures in and around Persia]

In another game, started in 1066, a Swedish noblewoman was made queen in the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, following a successful crusade. After a few generations, the local cultures merged into what would become Mashriqi-Swedish! Ushering the kingdom into a new era of prosperity.

10_mashriqi_swedish_jerusalem.jpg

[Image of the Kingdom of Jerusalem becoming Mashriqi-Swedish]

11_mashriqi_swedish_culture.jpg

[Image of the culture window of Mashriqi-Swedish]

As mentioned earlier, we have a number of historical names for cultures that can appear in specific circumstances. If you have any cultural names that would make sense for a divergent or hybrid culture, let me know! Who knows? Perhaps your suggestion ends up in the game!

That's it for this time!
 
I'm pretty sure Rus IS an endonym and Ruthenia is an exonym.
Ruthenian wouldn't work for the same reason Russian doesn't – nowadays it's commonly associated with a specific subset of the Rus, not all of them.

Rus is both an endonym and an exonym. We don't say Kievan Russia or Kievan Ruthenia, we say Kievan Rus. More and more scholar articles use Rus as a name of the people.

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This is horribly wrong, I'm afraid.

The Copts are the actual Egyptians, as opposed to the Greek, Arab, etc. conquerors who at various times made their capitals in Lower Egypt. Only their writing system is (derived from) Greek.
yes i am aware. but as long as coptic dousnt exist in the base game you kinda have to improvise
i think Beja is in the same Language Family as coptic so i was just trying to see what the closest thing to it is
 
Right, but by that logic we could also just make the entirety of Catholic Europe Latin-speakers aswell.
Nah, they're not quite the same.

First of all, the European ethnicities aren't tied to Catholicism to the same extent that Ashkenazi and Sephardi are to Judaism.

Second of all, the European ethnicities have pretty obvious languages. The Jewish ethnicities don't, as they were scattered among other population groups. What language would you give them if not Hebrew? Aramaic or Yiddish for the Ashkenazi, perhaps? I don't know much about the Sephardi - maybe Arabic?
 
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i think Beja is in the same Language Family as coptic so i was just trying to see what the closest thing to it is
Coptic, Beja, Hausa, Kabyle, and Arabic are all Afro-Asiatic languages, but they're in different branches (Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic, Berber, and Semitic, respectively).
 
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Putting Hebrew as language even if it wasn't spoken is just an abstraction/assumption that needs to be made because something need to be put here. If this culture is present only on some spawned character then it doesn't really matter what language is put there, but if it manages to spready in provinces, then again it would all depend in what regions, making the whole mechanic of Jewish cultures setting the local language where they spawn? Too many "if"s there. Setting something like Arabic wouldn't fit too because since it's not in any province, if driven by player it can reemerge everywhere. So it's just an abstraction

In worst case, the player with one of those cultures can then make a hybrid of their Jewish culture and local (like Arabic) culture in their realm and then switch the language to which they like
 
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Coptic, Beja, Hausa, Kabyle, and Arabic are all Afro-Asiatic languages, but they're in different branches (Egyptian, Cushitic, Chadic, Berber, and Semitic, respectively).
yeah so i thought with the absense of coptic culture the closest thing would be to fuse beja and greek together.
 
They said they will be tweaking some culture (like Hindustani) so unless I'm missing something when pdx said they don't want add it at all, I think people should just push for adding it directly while there's still time for devs to change things instead of thinking about workarounds like it's already a 100% settled matter that it won't get added
 
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If you read the DD and the dev responses, you'll see that there will be measures to stop names being repeated.
Nothing of the sort has been mentioned. The only "measure" against this is prohibiting the AI from making hybrids of hybrids altogether in more strict (and default) rules about hybridization. Precisely because, by Paradox's own admission, the naming scheme quickly goes out of hand. And their own example of what happens when the rules are set so that the AI can make them literally contained the word "greco" twice. You're conflating their comment on the naming scheme of divergent cultures with the naming scheme for hybrid cultures.
 
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Rus is both an endonym and an exonym. We don't say Kievan Russia or Kievan Ruthenia, we say Kievan Rus. More and more scholar articles use Rus as a name of the people.
Endonym used in other languages is still an endonym. See "Moldova". It's most definitely an endonym and yet it's used in English (and for quite arbitrary reasons since there is still "Moldavia").

Honestly, I'd be more than happy with saying "Kievan Ruthenia", "White Ruthenia", "Red Ruthenia" and so on and going back to the roots of the meaning of the name. Especially since we're talking about the period over 1000 years ago.
 
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Both of these questions are answered in the dev diary, at such length and depth that it'd be impossible to miss the answers if one read it. Come on, man, please read the diary before asking questions about it. :(
I read the dev diary multiple times and I'm still not seeing it. As with neutrondecay's comment on the naming scheme of hybrid cultures that I answered a few posts earlier, it appears to me that you're conflating parts of the dev diary about divergent cultures with the part about hybrid cultures (which is what the questions made by @naq29 were about). Because while the dev diary shows that multiple cultures can diverge from the same culture, I can't see anything about whether it's possible for there to be multiple Romano-Mongol (for example) hybrid cultures or not.

At best it can be inferred from the part about restrictions for the creation of hybrid cultures as that bit does not mention it, but that's a far cry from it being answered in the dev diary directly, let alone "at such length and depth that it'd be impossible to miss".
 
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I read the dev diary multiple times and I'm still not seeing it. As with neutrondecay's comment on the naming scheme of hybrid cultures that I answered a few posts earlier, it appears to me that you're conflating parts of the dev diary about divergent cultures with the part about hybrid cultures (which is what the questions made by @naq29 were about). Because while the dev diary shows that multiple cultures can diverge from the same culture, I can't see anything about whether it's possible for there to be multiple Romano-Mongol (for example) hybrid cultures or not.

At best it can be inferred from the part about restrictions for the creation of hybrid cultures as that bit does not mention it, but that's a far cry from it being answered in the dev diary directly, let alone "at such length and depth that it'd be impossible to miss".
Ok, fair enough about the first question: "Can two cultures be hybridized multiple times?" In my eyes that answer is a fairly obvious yes based on the dev diary, but as you say, it is by implication rather than explicit statement. Perhaps I expressed myself too strongly in that regard, and my apologies to you and @naq29 if that is indeed the case. The third question is really the same question, but asking if there's a difference between players and AI.



The other question, though:
"Will we see wacky names like "14th Neo Italo-Norse" or something?"

That is, in my opinion, unarguably answered explicitly and in adequate detail in the dev diary. :)
 
How does this work with religion, since religion always had a strong impact on culture. Religion was able to integrate different cultures. Are there cultural traits which are only enabled when you have a certain religion?
Well, to start with, the screenshots show that two cultures sharing the same religion (I'm going to assume by majority counties) have greater baseline cultural acceptance, and cultures sharing the same faith even more so.
 
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So if Languages are still intentionally in a rather simplistic state, with room for future expansion, I hope there's eventually room for Cultures to have both an "elite" language and a vernacular. This could be the result of Hybridizing, or a "dominant" Culture influencing neighbouring ones.

Characters know one and are expected/encouraged to learn the other (maybe even having a bonus for it), and also have the chance of being natively bilingual.

The example of Basque was brought up earlier, with Spanish being the language of nobility and Basque of the common people. Similar set-ups would also make sense for English, Turco-Persian, etc.
 
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Nah, they're not quite the same.

First of all, the European ethnicities aren't tied to Catholicism to the same extent that Ashkenazi and Sephardi are to Judaism.

Second of all, the European ethnicities have pretty obvious languages. The Jewish ethnicities don't, as they were scattered among other population groups. What language would you give them if not Hebrew? Aramaic or Yiddish for the Ashkenazi, perhaps? I don't know much about the Sephardi - maybe Arabic?
The language which plays the same role for Sephardi that Yiddish does for Ashkenazi is Ladino.

Wouldn't it be great if characters got a language from their religion as well as their culture? It would also add some helpful granularity if languages were in families.

1) You are Ashkenazi, so you get Yiddish (a Germanic language), and your faith is Rabbinical Judaism, so you get Hebrew (a Semitic language).
2) You are French, so you get French (a Romance language), and your faith is Catholic Christianity, so you get Latin (also a Romance language).
3) You are Norse, so you get Norse (a Scandinavian language), and your faith is Orthodox Christianity (your father converted), so you get Slavonic (a South Slavic language).

And so on.

nd
 
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@Servancour Will it be possible to diverge or hybridise from/with cultures that are already divergent or hybrid?

For instance, could I make a new hybrid culture from two other hybrid cultures?

If so, is there any sort of limit to this?
In the initial images in the first post it shows a cool down of 50 years to hybridise again from a hybrid culture, and a 200 year cool down to be able to diverge from a divergent culture.

As for hybridising with hybrids, sure. There's a game rule to stop the AI doing it too much, but that won't/shouldn't stop the player.
 
The language which plays the same role for Sephardi that Yiddish does for Ashkenazi is Ladino.

Wouldn't it be great if characters got a language from their religion as well as their culture? It would also add some helpful granularity if languages were in families.

1) You are Ashkenazi, so you get Yiddish (a Germanic language), and your faith is Rabbinical Judaism, so you get Hebrew (a Semitic language).
2) You are French, so you get French (a Romance language), and your faith is Catholic Christianity, so you get Latin (also a Romance language).
3) You are Norse, so you get Norse (a Scandinavian language), and your faith is Orthodox Christianity (your father converted), so you get Slavonic (a South Slavic language).

And so on.

nd
The problem with that is that the majority of people didn't speak sacred languages, even among the nobility. That was mainly for the clergy, and IIRC the new update will have Catholic clergy, for example, attempt to learn Latin. :)
 
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Honestly, I'd be more than happy with saying "Kievan Ruthenia", "White Ruthenia", "Red Ruthenia" and so on and going back to the roots of the meaning of the name. Especially since we're talking about the period over 1000 years ago.
If I saw a state called "Kievan Ruthenia" in CK3 I would complain about it even faster than I complained about starting an EU4 game as Vijayanagar and finding a Kannada Hindu advisor named "Shams-al-Din Afghan" in my starting advisor pool.

The long-established historiographic norm in English-language works is Kievan Rus'.
 
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