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CK3 Dev Diary #64 - Cultures Are Forever
Salutations!

Before we begin, first things first. We are working on an additional patch to fix some of the issues introduced in 1.4. The patch is still being worked on, but if everything goes as planned, we should be able to get it out sometime next week or so. We’ll let you know once the patch is ready.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about something I’m quite excited to share with you all. As you probably know already, we’ve talked a bit about how we are revisiting cultures for the next expansion: Royal Court. Unlike faiths, which got a lot of attention prior to release as we made them quite dynamic and customizable, cultures can feel a bit static, and aren't anywhere near as interesting as faiths. That is all about to change!

We are revising cultures as you know them. Most exciting is perhaps the possibility to create new cultures! Both for simulating historical events and to create plausible and interesting alt-history scenarios. But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, let’s start by looking at the foundation of a culture and the different components they are made of. This is what the new culture screen will look like.

01_culture_window.jpg

[Image of the new and updated culture interface]

Cultural Pillars

A culture has five main Cultural Pillars. These are Ethos, Heritage, Language, Martial Custom, and finally Aesthetics. Of these, the Ethos is perhaps the most significant, but all of them play a particular role in how a culture plays and how cultures view each other.

Ethos
Each ethos is framed around a particular theme that somehow ties into a fairly broad definition of what a culture is. A culture’s ethos not only provides effects and bonuses for having it, it also ties into how easy or difficult it is to acquire certain traditions (more on this further down). There are seven in total:
  • Bellicose
  • Communal
  • Courtly
  • Egalitarian
  • Inventive
  • Spiritual
  • Stoic

Here are a few examples of what they may look like in-game:

02_ethos_bellicose.jpg

[Image of the Bellicose ethos]

03_ethos_spiritual.jpg

[Image of the Spiritual ethos]

04_ethos_inventive.jpg

[Image of the Inventive ethos]

Heritage
A culture's heritage can be compared to the culture groups that you may be used to in the existing system. Heritages will roughly match said culture groups. You’ll see an Iberian Heritage for cultures like Basque and Castilian, or Turkic Heritage for Turkic cultures, such as Oghuz and Cuman. In terms of gameplay, the most outstanding effect of a shared heritage is the impact it has on Cultural Acceptance.

Language
Each culture has a designated language. Languages vary greatly across the map and between cultures. Some languages, such as Arabic, are spoken by quite a few cultures. Other languages are spoken by no more than two or three cultures, or in some cases, cultures even have their own unique language. An example of these would be Basque, who really don't have any closely related languages and it wouldn’t make too much sense to group them together with their neighbors. The vast majority of cultures share a language though, as a sort of “language group” rather than a specific language.

Characters can always speak the associated language of their culture. They are, however, also able to learn multiple languages over their lifetime. Knowing multiple languages has its benefits, as speaking the same language as another character of a different culture, and county, will reduce the opinion penalty that character, or county, has towards you. Knowing the native language (i.e. the language of their culture) of your vassals is therefore fairly beneficial as a means of increasing their opinion of you.

Noble Martial Custom
The martial custom decides which gender you may appoint as knights and commanders. As you’d expect, you can either appoint men, women, or both. We always felt that having the gender doctrine on faiths decide which characters can and cannot participate in battles felt off. The doctrine is about the right to rule and the holding of titles, more so than anything else. Just because you want the Equal doctrine to allow female rulers, doesn’t mean that women would automatically lead your armies or join you as knights. Revising cultures gave us the ample opportunity to move the functionality from faiths over to cultures. Which also means that you’ll have additional options in shaping your realm.

Aesthetics
This pillar is really a collection of several smaller properties for what a culture “looks” like. It decides what type of clothes characters wear, the coat of arms style for dynasties, what architecture holdings use, and the type of armor the units on the map wear.

This is also the pillar that contains what naming practices the culture uses. Mainly what character names to use, if they use a dynasty prefix, etc. The naming practice will also be used to change title and holding names, which used to be set per culture, so as to not have titles change names if you create a new culture.

For all of you modders out there; all of these can be set individually per culture. Allowing you to mix and match the different aesthetics to your heart’s content.

Traditions

Traditions are the meat of the cultural overhaul, and provide that extra layer of variety and immersion that can have a significant impact on gameplay. An important aspect of traditions is that they give us a clear means of visualizing and explaining existing mechanics that previously just “was a thing” and never explained. Take Anglo-Saxon as an example. They have access to the Saxon Elective succession for no apparent reason other than “they do”. Instead, they now have a tradition that grants them the succession law, making it clear as to why they have it. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, traditions serve as the perfect means of giving a culture additional flavour or gameplay bonuses that add a greater degree of variety across the map.

A culture can have no more than five traditions in total, but this number will increase as you enter a new era. Most cultures will start the game with around three or four, which leaves plenty of room for you to shape your culture as you play the game. As the cultural head, you’ll have the ability to establish new traditions.

Not all traditions will be available everywhere. We have both regional traditions, as well as traditions that are available depending on your heritage. The vast majority of them can be established regardless of circumstances, but might require certain conditions, such as ‘Hill Dwellers’ having the requirement that your culture must be present in a county with hills.

Traditions cost prestige to adopt. Which will be the largest hurdle for you to overcome if you want a specific tradition. The prestige cost is dependent on your ethos. Certain traditions will be more expensive than others, if you don’t have a matching ethos. Similarly, a tradition will increase in cost if your culture, or in some cases the cultural head, doesn’t fulfill a specific and thematic requirement. An example would be a tradition named ‘Only the Strong’, which is more expensive if you as the cultural head don't have at least six knights with at least 12 prowess. The increased cost is meant to act as a softer limit and make it slightly more difficult to establish certain traditions (depending on your circumstances), but not as much as to make it impossible to do so, should you want to go and unlock a particular tradition.

Instead of explaining traditions in detail, I’ll just show you a few examples of what traditions may look like, as well as the type of effects you can expect from them.

05_tradition_swordsforhire.jpg

[Image of the Swords for Hire tradition]

06_tradition_chivalry.jpg

[Image of the Chivalry tradition]

07_tradition_esteemedhospitality.jpg

[Image of the Esteemed Hospitality tradition]

08_tradition_seafarers.jpg

[Image of the Seafarers tradition]

09_tradition_landofthebow.jpg

[Image of the Land of the Bow tradition]

Cultural Acceptance

Cultural acceptance can be described as how well intermingled two cultures are, and how accepting they are of each other. Which means that given enough time, cultures will dislike each other less, and culture converting everything within your realm is no longer the only solution to combat cultural differences.

The opinion penalty of being of a different culture used to be a static value. Now, it will depend on the cultural acceptance between your culture and the target culture. Each culture has an acceptance value of another culture, visualized as a percentage. Depending on the amount of acceptance, the “different culture” opinion penalty will gradually be reduced. At 0% acceptance, you’ll have the full opinion penalty. At 100%, the penalty is removed altogether. Acceptance goes both ways. So if the French have a 20% acceptance towards Normans, the same will be true from the Norman perspective.

There are two ways for acceptance to change. The first is an acceptance baseline. Which increases if two cultures share similarities with one another. There are a number of different modifiers that can increase the baseline. Such as cultures that share the same religion or faith, ethos, or language. The most impactful modifier, however, is heritage. If two cultures share the same heritage, they have a significant bonus to their baseline.

If acceptance is above the baseline, it will slowly decay over time towards the targeted value. Being below the baseline on the other hand, will not make the acceptance increase. A bad relation between cultures won’t disappear overnight.

Secondly, acceptance very much changes depending on the circumstances. Don’t expect two cultures that never interact with one another to gain acceptance. If cultures exist within the same realm though, it will increase over time. This applies to both counties of another culture within your realm, as well as vassals. Acceptance is also reactive. Taking certain actions towards characters of a different culture will have consequences on your acceptance, such as declaring war or revoking titles. This generally scales on size. While the difference isn’t huge, revoking a single county from a small culture will decrease your acceptance more than if you would revoke a county from a much larger culture. At the end of the day, if you want to maintain a high acceptance and keep your Occitan vassals in France happy, you are at least gonna have to try and be nice to them.

10_cultural_acceptance.jpg

[Image of what the cultural acceptance between two cultures may look like]

There we go. That’s what a culture will look like in the near future. Oh! Before I forget; Best of all? The cultural rework is free, and will accompany the free update that launches alongside the Royal Court expansion!

Until next time!
 
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Hey everyone,

If you missed the recent information about our next expansion, have a look at our FAQ Royal Court!
General questions, Dev Diaries, Videos & Trailer, Press & Articles Previews.

As always, thanks for reading our news; Feel free to drop your questions to our development team :D

Cheers,
 
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Great work!
Question, are you ever going to rework the Baltic area in the future in terms of map, culture, etc. ?
There are some things that could be tweaked, like translation and borders.
Love you CK3 team <3
 
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Great work!
Question, are you ever going to rework the Baltic area in the future in terms of map, culture, etc. ?
There are some things that could be tweaked, like translation and borders.
Love you CK3 team <3
No immediate plans, but we always try to improve the map when we can, so we'll probably get back to improving the Baltic area at some point in the future.
 
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Do my eyes deceive me, or does the Bavarian culture end at Carinthia? Could it be? Is Carantanian/Alpine Slavic culture returning? :oops:
 
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Love this longer and more in depth Dev Diary, the culture rework looks fantastic so far. Will every culture receive unique traditions, or is it only a select few? And are Men at Arms types which were locked behind innovations now tied to tradition?
 
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Will it be possible for a culture to have more than one designated language? I'm thinking as one of the mod team members for Realms in Exile, a lot of the cultures in Middle-Earth speak multiple language - a Noldor elf likely speaks Westron, Sindarin and Quenya, a Rohirrim speaks Westron and Rohirric, a Gondorian speaks Westron and Sindarin, etc.
 
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Ooh this looks cool.

One thing I am wondering about is what about Languages that come into existance during this time frame? Things like Hindi which did not exist at either start date and came about with the various Turkish and Persian empires*. Or how English changed from Old English to Middle English.

*Hindustani also shouldn't be a culture at start but a melting port culture.
 
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The execution of ethoses is still a major concern for me.

I don’t hate the fact that you won’t be locked out of any type of gameplay due to your ethos, and it at least *kinda* makes sense that it would be harder to become a more learning oriented nation if war is the historic main focus of your people, from an irl perspective.

I still think that ethos and heritage should be dynamic, changing over many decades if a culture and its leader start acting a certain way for long periods of time. It makes no sense that I could be a nation which includes all the Norse in 900, save up to buy expensive intellectual traits, and then focus on being an isolationist until 1200, and new intellectual traditions still wouldn’t be cheaper, and I wouldn’t get bonuses ro learning at all.

The potential issues I’ve noted many times at this point with unintentional stereotyping and the fact that this does not reflect how cultures evolved without becoming new cultures or hybridizing unfortunately still stand as well.
 
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This looks fantastic.

Regarding the aesthetics parts of the pillars, can modders introduce new sets to choose from? Any plans to expand these options via DLC à la Stellaris?
 
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Love this longer and more in depth Dev Diary, the culture rework looks fantastic so far. Will every culture receive unique traditions, or is it only a select few? And are Men at Arms types which were locked behind innovations now tied to tradition?
We have a fair amount of both widely available traditions, as well as unique traditions. Some are culture specific, others are for a heritage. Most cultures will have a healthy mix of both.

Will it be possible for a culture to have more than one designated language? I'm thinking as one of the mod team members for Realms in Exile, a lot of the cultures in Middle-Earth speak multiple language - a Noldor elf likely speaks Westron, Sindarin and Quenya, a Rohirrim speaks Westron and Rohirric, a Gondorian speaks Westron and Sindarin, etc.
We wanted to keep the language feature fairly simple for now, so a culture will only have a single language.

Ooh this looks cool.

One thing I am wondering about is what about Languages that come into existance during this time frame? Things like Hindi which did not exist at either start date and came about with the various Turkish and Persian empires*. Or how English changed from Old English to Middle English.

*Hindustani also shouldn't be a culture at start but a melting port culture.
More on stuff like this in future DDs. ;)
We don't do anything to introduce new languages over time specifically though.
 
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Nice, I always hoped that PDS would do something like this to Cultures in their games. Hopefully other PDS games do something similar.

A few questions though:
1. Do cultures diverge only due to player choice, or can events cause divergences as well?
2. Can cultures fuse?
3. Are faiths connected to cultures in any way? Like cultures having a favored religion?
 
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