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EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of June 2016

Hello and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This is probably the last one I’ll write for some months, as I’m taking some paternity leave. I’m leaving you in the capable hands of DDRJake though, who’ll give you weekly diaries in June, August and September.. As you all know, we’re a swedish company, so July is sacred and holy, and must be worshipped in the sun.


Speaking of Swedish, I guess it is time to talk about something related. Culture.

Culture in Europa Universalis, as most of you seem to grasp, have nothing with linguistic relations to do, but more of a semi-arbitrary limits of who gets along better with who, and who could rule others easier through history.

Which cultures were accepted in your nation in EU4 has not really been controllable though before, as you get gaining or losing, depending on the presence of a culture in your country.

In 1.18, which we aim to release in the autumn, we have completely removed the cultural acceptance percentage system, and instead give you control over which cultures are accepted or not in your empire.

First of all, there is now a limit on how many cultures a nation can accept.

There is a base of 2 accepted cultures, The Humanist Idea ‘Cultural Ties’ gives you 2 more slots, Enlighetened Despotism increases it with up to 3 at Empire level & Several Nations have ideas giving them an extra slot. There are also policies that can give you an extra slot each if you so desire and Diplomatic Technology gives you up to 5 more slots, currently from level 8, 14, 20, 26 & 31.

If you have too many cultures, you will lose the last one you accepted.

Any accepted or same culture group can be made into primary culture, if its at least 50% of your cored state development. This costs 100 diplomatic power and obviously this means that the cultural shift decision has been made obsolete and is now removed.


You can promote any culture in your nation that has at least 20 cored development in a state. It costs 100 diplomatic power.

You can also remove an accepted culture if you so wish, which costs 10 diplomatic power, and adds 5 unrest in all the provinces with that culture.


Here is a look of the new government window, which includes the culture lists.

fN0Ylyn.jpg


Stay tuned, next week Jake will all tell you about WHY it is better to be a great power than a minor.
 
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Aww no more Genocide... :(

:p
 
Culture in Europa Universalis, as most of you seem to grasp, have nothing with linguistic relations to do, but more of a semi-arbitrary limits of who gets along better with who, and who could rule others easier through history.
"as most of you seem to grasp" - way to be disrespectful and patronizing. Just because someone doesn't agree with your point doesn't mean they're too stupid to understand it.

I don't see any correspondence between the new culture map and "who gets along better with who", or "who could rule others easier through history". The new culture map looks like a modern political map of Europe miraculously superimposed on the 1445 map, with smaller modern states arbitrarily grouped together to make aggregates of roughly equal size. If I asked someone to design a set of culture groups for better play balance in multiplayer, I'd be very pleased with the new culture group map. But from a historical point of view, it seems quite arbitrary to me.

"Who gets along better with who", or "who could rule others easier through history" is a great goal, but it's completely impossible to measure. Linguistic relations seem to have been a pretty good proxy for those things, however, and linguistic relations are measurable. If the goal is "semi-arbitrary limits of who gets along better with who" (emphasis added), linguistic relationships are a pretty good, objective, way of getting there. (Especially if you supplement them with period sources, e.g. Machiavelli.)

That being said, this rule change looks like a good one from all points of view. (The old system for determining accepted culture had the sole virtue of being easy to implement, but the results often seemed absurd: the English perma-hating the Welsh, for example, simply because Wales was a small part of the UK.) It's a pity the OP had to lead off the post by being patronizing and insulting.

(Edited for rudeness on my part *blush*).
 
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I think that a culture should be removed as accepted based on the number of provinces with that culture within an empire instead of the last culture accepted.
Not sure I like that. From an immersion POV it does make sense that it is the latest---although you deciding would make more sense. Since your smallest accepted culture could be a close sister culture of your primary (or even the primary itself!) E.g. say you are playing Denmark and have Swedish as accepted (and you aren't an empire yet so you don't have automatic group acceptance). Lets say you can have 3 accepted cultures. The first obviously goes to Danish since that is your primary culture. Then you add Swedish. Now you do a large landgrab in Anatolia and makes Turkish accepted. Later you conquer Persia and makes Persian accepted too. Then with your suggestion Danish would be dropped. And if primaries can't be dropped Swedish (assuming it has fewer than Turkish and Persian; not entirely sure on that). Immersion wise it doesn't really make sense that your people accept Turks and Persians, but not Swedes despite them having basically the same culture and speaking basically the same language.

Aww no more Genocide... :(

:p
What do you mean? This doesn't prevent you from culture converting if you so desire.
 
Any accepted or same culture group can be made into primary culture, if its at least 50% of your cored state development
- so blobs can't change culture to one in a different group.

- Is the same culture group reduced penalty still present?

It looks like a lot less cultures will be accepted with this change.
 
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