Anybody else think the culture/tech game play is a bit too dull?

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I prefer it for two reasons. First, the system is unobtrusive most of the time and allows you to focus on other important realm matters in the game. Second, I like the flavor aspect of it. I'm not just researching improved keeps but specific building practices of the era. And the culture-specific techs are neat.
No, that's exactly what you're doing. There's also zero player interaction in the current system, when at least in CK2 you could plan out how you wanted to develop things and there were definitely sacrfices to be made with different choices. Here, the choice is obvious: MAA first, castle upgrades 2nd as they gate every other upgrade, and then whatever order you want after that.

Also, the tech system in CK2 at least made physical sense and was tied to your domain- specifically your capital province, which was influenced by the provinces around it. It makes logical sense. In CK3, your tech rate is dictated by your development, but any connection to reality stops there. Your actual tech level is actually tied only to a single character: your ruler. And more specifically, your rulers culture. It has no connection to your land, or it's people, at all. This is beyond asinine, and by far the worst system they could have come up with. Falling behind in tech? No problem, just culture switch A SINGLE CHARACTER and you're instantly tech leader again.
 
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The tech is tied to the cultured lands in your empire not your ruler alone.

If you have lands of some backwards culture you will NOT be able to build up stuff in those lands.
 
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No, that's exactly what you're doing. There's also zero player interaction in the current system, when at least in CK2 you could plan out how you wanted to develop things and there were definitely sacrfices to be made with different choices. Here, the choice is obvious: MAA first, castle upgrades 2nd as they gate every other upgrade, and then whatever order you want after that.

You should consider taking the innovation that ups the development cap first. Having all counties of your culture develop faster boosts your research of later innovations.

Also, I usually don't take MAA first if I am using expensive MAA, as I cannot afford to use my cap anyway. Then I'd rather have castle upgrades + economy upgrades first. But if you are just spamming bowmen / light footmen as your MAA, then you probably want the cap increase first.
 
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The tech is tied to the cultured lands in your empire not your ruler alone.

If you have lands of some backwards culture you will NOT be able to build up stuff in those lands.

Except the most important tech isn't gated by provinces, but culture of your ruler only: MAA. Also, you really only need the duchy capital to be heavily built up to get the most benefit (specifically the MAA bonuses from your duchy building). A decent steward will flip a counties culture in 3 years.
 
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Why would you personal army be tied to anything other than your personal culture?

Because your professional army is likely drawn from the nobility of your realm and should have demographics reflecting that, rather than the one guy at the top who could be a different culture from literally everyone else?
 
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Yet the system was unique to the ruling class which was totally different culture, which totally proves my point?

It doesn't matter what the ruled class is, it matters what the ruling class is.
 
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Saying there is zero player interaction is blatantly false and any arguments starting with that are disingenuous at best.

If you're the culture head you have agency in how to interact with the system. First you get to decide what to research, the biggest interaction of all! 2nd you have numerous ways to improve the research. You can build up your learning, increase development in your land, and pick up perks that help both tech research and development.

If you're not the culture head, there's a lot less you can do, but you can still interact with the system! The biggest being: become the culture head! Even if you're not the culture head, you can build the development up of same culture counties to help boost this along.

Are they flashy interactions? Deep and complex or convoluted? No, they're pretty straightforward choices with immediate impact.

Its not perfect and it can probably be improved. But don't say there's no interaction.
 
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I prioritize inheritance law above MaA, tbh.

Confederate Partition is a pain. (and yes, even in the 1066 start there are Catholics without the Hereditary Rule innovation)
 
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The romans too I guess? I am not too sure, did they only draft from core provinces?

No. They drafted auxilia from all sorts of non-citizen inhabitants of their empire. They tried to equip and train them in the roman style, though many also fought in whatever fashion was common in their homelands. But there were definitely legionary-like regiments of non-roman soldiers, though they are noted (by Romans) to be less disciplined and skilled than regular legions.

Many multi-cultural empires tried to integrate local soldiers into their armies. It was the only practical way raise enough troops to protect such large expanses of land. Sometimes they adapted their own army tactics to accommodate the foreign styles of their new allies, other times they tried to train the foreigners in styles of combat that fit with their current strategies. Most times it was somewhere in between, where the foreign recruits were relegated to the simpler roles of the overall army tactics. As long as you can hold a shield and swing a sword, you can learn to be part of a shield wall.
 
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Saying there is zero player interaction is blatantly false and any arguments starting with that are disingenuous at best.

If you're the culture head you have agency in how to interact with the system. First you get to decide what to research, the biggest interaction of all! 2nd you have numerous ways to improve the research. You can build up your learning, increase development in your land, and pick up perks that help both tech research and development.

If you're not the culture head, there's a lot less you can do, but you can still interact with the system! The biggest being: become the culture head! Even if you're not the culture head, you can build the development up of same culture counties to help boost this along.

Are they flashy interactions? Deep and complex or convoluted? No, they're pretty straightforward choices with immediate impact.

Its not perfect and it can probably be improved. But don't say there's no interaction.

Compared to CK2, that is zero level of interaction. You'll develop your lands regardless, because it does things like increase tax income. Saying "hey there's a choice here" when it's actually just doing something that would be done if the tech system as implemented didn't exist is not a choice. Also, not everyone wants to powergame and become emperor everytime. Some people might like to play a game as a count or duke and spread their family, rather than their own, personal holdings. In fact, I'd argue that the majority of people start out at count or duke level. Anyone doing so has zero choice when it comes to tech.

In CK2, choices had consequences. You could rush an economic tech ahead of time, potentially saving up decades of research to grab, say the next trade/harbour tech, that let you build another tier of building and give you a huge boost economic boost as well as increasing your fleet and letting you launch larger invasions. The cost for doing so was being behind on other techs, perhaps significantly and for a long period of time. Here, there's no choices to be made. It doesn't matter who you play, if you take the learning research foci- which is at the top of the tree and requires no investment- you'll hit the tech cap more than 100 years ahead of time regardless (except in the very early game during the tribal era), and then you'll just be sitting there waiting. There's not a real opportunity cost to choosing one tech over another, you'll get the next one in 5-10 years anyways and then be stuck waiting at the end with everything researched. And here's the thing- the system in CK2 wasn't even good! But it's still infinitely better than the completely empty system we have in CK3.
 
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Cannot disagree more. The system IS incredibly simplistic. There's zero player interaction. There's no planning involved, or thinking about trade offs between rushing one tech ahead of time or choosing something else. The best choices and order you should pick techs is incredibly straight forward. And that's even if your cultural head. If you're not, there's no point in even checking it ever. And if you're behind in tech, you just switch cultures to someone who isn't, which is ridiculous. The tech system in CK2 was not good. It's leagues ahead of CK3, though. It's by far the weakest aspect of the game, aside from all of the bugs that currently render it unplayable like AI not building buildings. But bugs are short term problems. This was a clear design decision which we are likely stuck with, and it's terrible.

Fair bit of planning in Africa/Asia tribal kingdons tbqh. Some factions struggle to switch to feudal.
 
Compared to CK2, that is zero level of interaction. You'll develop your lands regardless, because it does things like increase tax income. Saying "hey there's a choice here" when it's actually just doing something that would be done if the tech system as implemented didn't exist is not a choice. Also, not everyone wants to powergame and become emperor everytime. Some people might like to play a game as a count or duke and spread their family, rather than their own, personal holdings. In fact, I'd argue that the majority of people start out at count or duke level. Anyone doing so has zero choice when it comes to tech.

In CK2, choices had consequences. You could rush an economic tech ahead of time, potentially saving up decades of research to grab, say the next trade/harbour tech, that let you build another tier of building and give you a huge boost economic boost as well as increasing your fleet and letting you launch larger invasions. The cost for doing so was being behind on other techs, perhaps significantly and for a long period of time. Here, there's no choices to be made. It doesn't matter who you play, if you take the learning research foci- which is at the top of the tree and requires no investment- you'll hit the tech cap more than 100 years ahead of time regardless (except in the very early game during the tribal era), and then you'll just be sitting there waiting. There's not a real opportunity cost to choosing one tech over another, you'll get the next one in 5-10 years anyways and then be stuck waiting at the end with everything researched. And here's the thing- the system in CK2 wasn't even good! But it's still infinitely better than the completely empty system we have in CK3.

How is literally CHOOSING what tech you research not a choice? And there's ALWAYS opportunity costs. Just because you'll get all techs in the end means nothing. So there's no opportunity costs to techs in Civ 6 either? And powergaming as an emperor? As the Duke of Bohemia I was the culture head for Czech. As a Duke in Ireland I was the culture head for Irish. Some people might prioritize development due to the opportunity cost of going for something else at the time. If someone wants to start pushing tech now and they have development bonuses they haven't grabbed yet is still a way you can interact with the tech system. 5-10 years per tech sounds like a very high learning or a very high development. In the early game it definitely takes longer than that.

I am not going to argue which is better, but again, saying CK3 has zero choice or interaction is 100% false. It might not be the interaction we want, the choices might not have the consequences we want, but they are there.
 
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My main problems are a lack of cultures feeling unique and finishing techs being too easy. Most games where I get past the first hundred years, I end up capping tech level long before I can enter the next age. Introducing more (and more culture) specific techs is what I'd like to see for them to do that. Maybe changing the way the develop action for stewards works would be nice, too.

That said, I also really dislike how switching culture can throw you back in techs a lot. One of my favorite things in CK2 was to unlock hidden cultures and the like. Doing so in CK3 often feels like a penalty rather than a reward.
 
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I definitely think it could do with some events tied to the innovations your cultural head is currently fascinated with. Just some sort of flavor, perhaps with some random boosts to the research progress, to indicate that your culture is currently experimenting with mangonels or trying to institute a common currency. Have some foreign engineers be hired for a cost to help train your siege engineers (giving progress) or have the lords of the realm squabble over what form the common currency should take and how it should be minted (opinion loss etc.).

The events do not have to be overly powerful, but just some little bits of flavor to show how your culture is evolving over the ages. Much like how the lifestyles each have their own events to keep you feeling like your ruler is actually living that lifestyle. Perhaps also take inspiration from lifestyles in letting events from other undiscovered innovations pop up at a very low chance to signify that sometimes fortunate circumstances kickstart certain innovations outside the control of the cultural head.

I fully agree with this.

Being the cultural head should be a more then just setting a focus and nothing else. I think they will probably expand on this, in future patches/DLC's. There could also be events for scholars visiting your court or decision to invite scholars from a more advanced culture to help you.

In CK2 playing as a duke or king gave you at least some influence on which techs you wanted researched or at least you had the feeling that you had some influence over it. In CK3, there is no influence by the player at all, if he isn't the cultural head.
 
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In CK2 playing as a duke or king gave you at least some influence on which techs you wanted researched or at least you had the feeling that you had some influence over it. In CK3, there is no influence by the player at all, if he isn't the cultural head.

There should definitely be increased interaction between rulers of the same culture, such that even if you are not the cultural head you can try to contribute to innovations or influence the cultural head's current fascination. I guess you can already do the former by simply boosting development in counties of your culture or conquering and converting highly developed counties to that culture. However the impact of this is so incremental and flavorless, it could really benefit from events or some mechanic to properly represent the lesser realms of a given culture and how they are interacting with the "primary" cultural realm.
 
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There should definitely be increased interaction between rulers of the same culture, such that even if you are not the cultural head you can try to contribute to innovations or influence the cultural head's current fascination. I guess you can already do the former by simply boosting development in counties of your culture or conquering and converting highly developed counties to that culture. However the impact of this is so incremental and flavorless, it could really benefit from events or some mechanic to properly represent the lesser realms of a given culture and how they are interacting with the "primary" cultural realm.

Yes, the fact cultural groups are recognised as a group is a positive thing.
 
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A game mechanic isn't always better when it interacts with fifteen things in complex ways. Technology and progress was slow in this game's time period and not something that people had much control over. Tying it to culture was a really smart decision in my opinion, because it abstracts the previous by province spread to a point that is actually comprehensible to be worth interacting with. And I don't mind having no (or limited) control over the speed and direction of progress. I can see that it happens, know how it affects me, and respond. I don't need to influence it and don't feel the need to optimise it. It's not something I expect to have much involvement with in a medieval themed game.

I definitely think it could do with some events tied to the innovations your cultural head is currently fascinated with. Just some sort of flavor, perhaps with some random boosts to the research progress, to indicate that your culture is currently experimenting with mangonels or trying to institute a common currency. Have some foreign engineers be hired for a cost to help train your siege engineers (giving progress) or have the lords of the realm squabble over what form the common currency should take and how it should be minted (opinion loss etc.).

The events do not have to be overly powerful, but just some little bits of flavor to show how your culture is evolving over the ages. Much like how the lifestyles each have their own events to keep you feeling like your ruler is actually living that lifestyle. Perhaps also take inspiration from lifestyles in letting events from other undiscovered innovations pop up at a very low chance to signify that sometimes fortunate circumstances kickstart certain innovations outside the control of the cultural head.
Now that is a great idea, however. I would definitely prefer if tech tied more into the character/RPG element of the game. I have zero interest in more intricacy with the economic/empire building aspect.

I fully agree with this.

Being the cultural head should be a more then just setting a focus and nothing else. I think they will probably expand on this, in future patches/DLC's. There could also be events for scholars visiting your court or decision to invite scholars from a more advanced culture to help you.

In CK2 playing as a duke or king gave you at least some influence on which techs you wanted researched or at least you had the feeling that you had some influence over it. In CK3, there is no influence by the player at all, if he isn't the cultural head.
Yeah, I think it would be great if beyond the cultural head there were multiple influential people in a culture (such as, everyone with x+% of dev) who each had their own opinion what the cultural fascination should be. The cultural head still decides, but if he agrees with them he gets their learning bonus, for example. Cultural fascination could also tie into the hook system imo, like using a strong hook to change the fascination of the cultural head.
 
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