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?

[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.

[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!

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

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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!

 

[SupercanelP085]

Say you start out Norse and hybridized with Egyptian culture and then hybridized a second time with Italian culture. Would the probability of randomly-generated courtiers being ethnically Egyptian (Arabic) be 33%, 25%, or something else entirely?

Or are the pools of the cultures mixed so every random generated courtier have "Gene" or DNA from all of the three?

 

[TempestM]

Devs ignoring that question about hybrid-of-hybrid ethnicities for so long make me think it will be a solution many won't like

 

[Tuo]

Devs ignoring that question about hybrid-of-hybrid ethnicities for so long make me think it will be a solution many won't like

"Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, there is an equal chance for picking either ethnicity. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents."

I don't see how this would not apply to hybrid-of-hybrid cultures in the same way.

 

[TempestM]

I don't see how this would not apply to hybrid-of-hybrid cultures in the same way.

If there's a hybrid between X and Y ethnicity, which then is hybridized with Z ethnicity, what are the chances of getting Z? 33% for each because it's one of three in the whole pool or 50% (and X and Y having 25%) because it's a half of the new hybrid? It can be either

 

[Tuo]

If there's a hybrid between X and Y ethnicity, which then is hybridized with Z ethnicity, what are the chances of getting Z? 33% for each because it's one of three in the whole pool or 50% (and X and Y having 25%) because it's a half of the new hybrid? It can be either

Honestly, it's quite possible they're still working out the details regarding that and thus haven't clarified it. The simplest way I interpret it is that when a culture is hybridized, it inherits ethnicity from one of the two cultures and all generated characters of that culture will have that one ethnicity (so that no culture ever will have more than one ethnicity assigned to it) - but this might understandably make people upset.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Honestly, it's quite possible they're still working out the details regarding that and thus haven't clarified it. The simplest way I interpret it is that when a culture is hybridized, it inherits ethnicity from one of the two cultures and all generated characters of that culture will have that one ethnicity (so that no culture ever will have more than one ethnicity assigned to it) - but this might understandably make people upset.

That's broadly my understanding.

You create Norse-Andalusian, and it rolls to see which ethnicity you acquire.

When Norse-Andalusian then hybridises with Greek, it rolls randomly between whichever ethnicity Norse-Andalusian has and Greek for your new look.

If there's a hybrid between X and Y ethnicity, which then is hybridized with Z ethnicity, what are the chances of getting Z? 33% for each because it's one of three in the whole pool or 50% (and X and Y having 25%) because it's a half of the new hybrid? It can be either

From indications we have :

Hybrid X-Y forms. 50% chance to get X or Y, and this is now fixed.
Hybrid (X-Y)-Z forms. 50% chance to inherit the ethnicity rolled for (X-Y), 50% chance to get Z (and this is now fixed).

 

[Riamus]

That's broadly my understanding.

You create Norse-Andalusian, and it rolls to see which ethnicity you acquire.

When Norse-Andalusian then hybridises with Greek, it rolls randomly between whichever ethnicity Norse-Andalusian has and Greek for your new look.

From indications we have :

Hybrid X-Y forms. 50% chance to get X or Y, and this is now fixed.
Hybrid (X-Y)-Z forms. 50% chance to inherit the ethnicity rolled for (X-Y), 50% chance to get Z (and this is now fixed).

I think this could make sense and is what I'd also expect, but I have a feeling that every time a new character is generated, it will do the rolls. So I think it follows this, but with the exception that when a character is generated, it will make those rolls at that time. Otherwise, with only 2 cultures, you would always get a single ethnic outcome for every generated character instead of "randomly" getting some from one culture and some from another. And if that's the case, then for each character of a many culture hybridization, it would make sense to follow the same format of rolling at the time of generation. This does require the game to keep track of the order of hybridizations in order to do this every time, but that is a minor thing to do.

In the end, I see it working how you show, but having it do these rolls each time and not have it fixed.

 

[Karlington]

That's broadly my understanding.

You create Norse-Andalusian, and it rolls to see which ethnicity you acquire.

When Norse-Andalusian then hybridises with Greek, it rolls randomly between whichever ethnicity Norse-Andalusian has and Greek for your new look.

From indications we have :

Hybrid X-Y forms. 50% chance to get X or Y, and this is now fixed.
Hybrid (X-Y)-Z forms. 50% chance to inherit the ethnicity rolled for (X-Y), 50% chance to get Z (and this is now fixed).

I believe this is the most logical interpretation of what we've been told so far.

 

[FaustFelix]

"Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, there is an equal chance for picking either ethnicity. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents."

I don't see how this would not apply to hybrid-of-hybrid cultures in the same way.

Either usually means one of two, which is tripping me up. I know Paradox has no obligation to clarify details for the unreleased expansion, but I am so excited that I’m already planning my next game! So, I’d be happy if you’d divulge more information.

I want to know:
1. If a hybrid culture hybridizes once more with a default culture, will the latter’s genes be proportionally over-represented compared to the previous mix (2+)?
2. Is there a maximum number of ethnicities that can be combined (e.g. a hybrid culture seven times over can only draw from the nth most recent cultures assimilated)?

Also, this obsession has lead me to read about each of the in-game cultures that I’m unfamiliar with (i.e. googling statements like “what are Lithuanians known for?). So, thank you for motivating me to learn about the world! https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Culture

 

[wilcoxchar]

Either usually means one of two, which is tripping me up. I know Paradox has no obligation to clarify details for the unreleased expansion, but I am so excited that I’m already planning my next game! So, I’d be happy if you’d divulge more information.

I want to know:
1. If a hybrid culture hybridizes once more with a default culture, will the latter’s genes be proportionally over-represented compared to the previous mix (2+)?
2. Is there a maximum number of ethnicities that can be combined (e.g. a hybrid culture seven times over can only draw from the nth most recent cultures assimilated)?

Also, this obsession has lead me to read about each of the in-game cultures that I’m unfamiliar with (i.e. googling statements like “what are Lithuanians known for?). So, thank you for motivating me to learn about the world! https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Culture

"When you form a hybrid culture"

So upon the culture's creation, it will pick from one of the two ethnicities of the forming cultures to use as its ethnicity. Therefore, when you form a hybrid with any culture including from an already hybridized culture, it will only ever have two cultures to select from for the ethnicity the created culture will use.

 

[Unknown Sage]

"When you form a hybrid culture"

So upon the culture's creation, it will pick from one of the two ethnicities of the forming cultures to use as its ethnicity. Therefore, when you form a hybrid with any culture including from an already hybridized culture, it will only ever have two cultures to select from for the ethnicity the created culture will use.

Well that is the thing though, you see if this were true then why is it randomly chosen by the game? Why is there not the option to choose which ethnicity you end up with when all the other things you can choose.

This would mean that if I were to do for example a varangian adventure to the mashriqi culture area and hybridize the game could then decide to use the nordic ethnicity, turning all of the general population of that area from arabic ethnicity to nordic ethnicity. The inability to choose here makes no sense if they did go with that system.

This to me seems a very good reason why surely it can't work that way. And that instead the game must save both ethnicities in the new hybridized culture to then randomly pick between one of them when generating a new character of that culture. (the either doesn't make sense if it were to blend them together).

Regardless though, I do think that we definitely need the option to choose what ethnicities the new culture gets to allow for hybridized cultures that represent the following:
- Few conquerors of ethnicity 1 ruling over majority population of ethnicity 2 -> option to choose ethnicity 2 as the ethnicity of the new hybrid culture.
- Roughly equal mixing of the ethnicity 1 and ethnicity 2 by merging the cultural areas -> 2 options to choose: either a blended ethnicity, or a double ethnicity (characters get one of the two parent culture ethnicities upon generations) for the new hybrid culture
- Majority of a culture with ethnicity 1 is vassalized by different culture of ethnicity 2. And over time the populations don't really mix, but the new vassal ethnicity 1 takes on cultural values of culture with ethnicity 2 -> option to choose ethnicity 1 as the ethnicity of the new hybrid culture

 

[wilcoxchar]

Well that is the thing though, you see if this were true then why is it randomly chosen by the game? Why is there not the option to choose which ethnicity you end up with when all the other things you can choose.

This would mean that if I were to do for example a varangian adventure to the mashriqi culture area and hybridize the game could then decide to use the nordic ethnicity, turning all of the general population of that area from arabic ethnicity to nordic ethnicity. The inability to choose here makes no sense if they did go with that system.

Except as said in the dev diary that's not really how it works. The number of counties the culture converts depends on the cultural acceptance you have of the two cultures, so if you as a varangian adventurer expand into the Mashriqi culture area and try to hybridize your culture right away, it will only convert a very small area on the map to that hybrid culture at start even if you've conquered a large realm. It also will not affect the ethnicity of any already created characters when they convert or their descendants, so even if you've taken the time to build up cultural acceptance (which is going to mix the ethnic background of the commoners as represented on the map anyway) so that a large area changes culture on the map when you hybridize, you're still only going to see it slowly shift to the ethnicity it randomizes to as new characters are slowly created of the new culture. And even then, over the medium term the effect will still be dampened as marriages with preexisting characters before hybridization and their descendants will be marrying into the newly created characters so the ethnicity will still take a long time to actually build to where most of the area's characters are around the new hybrid culture's ethnicity range.

And yes, it will work that way because that's how the code for cultures are written into the game. When a hybridized culture is created it's going to create a new culture with everything in the game files that goes into it - including the ethnicity range. There is zero reason to believe that for some reason the new hybrid culture in the game file would just not have an ethnicity range or that it would for some reason work differently from how any culture in the game works.

 

[Unknown Sage]

Except as said in the dev diary that's not really how it works. The number of counties the culture converts depends on the cultural acceptance you have of the two cultures, so if you as a varangian adventurer expand into the Mashriqi culture area and try to hybridize your culture right away, it will only convert a very small area on the map to that hybrid culture at start even if you've conquered a large realm. It also will not affect the ethnicity of any already created characters when they convert or their descendants, so even if you've taken the time to build up cultural acceptance (which is going to mix the ethnic background of the commoners as represented on the map anyway) so that a large area changes culture on the map when you hybridize, you're still only going to see it slowly shift to the ethnicity it randomizes to as new characters are slowly created of the new culture. And even then, over the medium term the effect will still be dampened as marriages with preexisting characters before hybridization and their descendants will be marrying into the newly created characters so the ethnicity will still take a long time to actually build to where most of the area's characters are around the new hybrid culture's ethnicity range.

And yes, it will work that way because that's how the code for cultures are written into the game. When a hybridized culture is created it's going to create a new culture with everything in the game files that goes into it - including the ethnicity range. There is zero reason to believe that for some reason the new hybrid culture in the game file would just not have an ethnicity range or that it would for some reason work differently from how any culture in the game works.

The number of counties converted upon hybridization and the cultural acceptance levels are completely irrelevant to the concept of ethnicity change. If you do a varangian adventure and end up with only a handful of your cultures rulers it still doesn't make sense for the nordic population to increase in numbers. You aren't going to be importing them all the way from scandinavia. Similarly as you said existing rulers will keep their ethnicity but slowly move towards the cultures set ethnicity. It therefore equally makes no sense for that ethnicity to not be able to be that of the majority population.

The current way ethnicities work however is not necessarily representative of how ethnicities work after the culture rework though. Regardless I never stated anything like what you imply. Nowhere did I mention hybridized cultures not having an ethnicity range, or that it would work differently from regular cultures. But it very well could have slightly changed.

The only thing mentioned by the devs about the system for ethnicity in this thread is the following post. (no mention of anything ethnicity related in the dev diary proper)

Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, there is an equal chance for picking either ethnicity. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents.

This was originally phrased differently though before it was edited. The original text said this

Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, we consolidate these values to give you something in-between. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents.

In short this very concept is not communicated well with the playerbase, and many questions asked to clarify have either not been answered, or gave even more conflicting information. I don't remember exactly though since it's been a while since this dev diary went online. (at least none of the blue dev comments further clarify it). As such we have no idea which system is the one that actually is the one we end up with.

If however we go off the new text it implies a random 50-50 choice of either parent culture ethnicity, whereas the old text implies a merged ethnicity based on the values of the parent culture ethnicities for the new culture, these two make sense in the context of current ethnicity code.

But I also recall a third possibility being talked about in this thread about characters of the new hybrid culture being generated with either of the parent culture ethnicities. (it is this statement that needs further clarification because of its implication that a culture can now hold two ethnicities that do not merge which conflicts with current code and thus requires changes to the system and is mostly speculation on our end).

The old version makes sense from the perspective of two different peoples merging in culture. You obviously would get a mix between the two original ethnicities. The new version very much does not. It makes no sense for a norse masriqi hybridization in the levant to slowly turn entirely norse in ethnicity. It being slow is irrelevant when it should not happen at all in the first place. So in my opinion it makes much more sense to combine these two versions into the same system for the other hybridization options. Namely that the new culture uses either of the following as chosen by the player in the hybridization menu:

Ethnicity 1. In code this would be

ethnicities = {
1 = ethnicity_1
}

A mixture of Ethnicity 1 and 2. In code this would be:

ethnicities = {
1 = ethnicity_1
1 = ethnicity_2
}

Or Ethnicity 2. Which in code would be

ethnicities = {
1 = ethnicity_2
}

A system where we can choose any of these options ourselves upon culture hybridization is much better than a random 50 percent chance to end up with either of the parent ethnicities, or a system where you have forced merging of the two cultures. Specifically to take into account the case where the population of one of the two ethnicities would be vastly outnumbering the other. Some examples for such situations are given in my previous post.

 

[Riamus]

Just a couple points for the discussion. The original dev post stated that the ethnicities would be combined to form an ethnicity somewhere in the middle of the two original ethnicities. That post was edited not long after being posted and changed to state that it would pick one or the other of the original ethnicities (not merging them). As it was backtracked that quickly, it would be my guess that the original plan was to merge the ethnicities and the dev thought that was still how it was going to be, but difficulties or whatever caused the plan to change to just doing a 50/50 pick and the dev was notified of that change after someone saw the post. Of course, my guess could be wrong, but as it changed that quickly without any clarification, I think it's likely to be accurate.

Based on that information and other information regarding ethnicities posted previously, it seems to be the case that current cultures have an ethnic "look" set up already and that is what's used to determine the ethnicity of the generated characters of that culture. It seems clear that this "look" does not vary over time, but is static (it may be a range, I don't know, but it doesn't change regardless how intermarriages between cultures change the look of the people throughout a game). So, if you merge two cultures and go 50/50, you end up with generated characters who match that original ethnic look of either culture A or culture B. So far, so good. I think most people understand how that would work.

The real question comes from what happens if you merge a hybrid culture with another culture. There are various possibilities, some more likely the others, but none are confirmed or have any dev posts that suggest they are correct.

Option 1: When the new culture is formed, it does a 50/50 roll and that result will be the new culture's static ethnicity for all generated characters going forward. This of course makes little realistic sense as every generated character would be from only one of the original cultures instead of there being a mix of the two. However, it does allow you to always have a single static (or static range) value for ethnicity on every culture, no matter how many times you hybridize it as the roll is done only upon creation of the culture and then remains static, so you'll always only be doing a 50/50 check when hybridizing a culture.

Option 2: Whenever a new character is generated, it looks at the parent cultures and does a 50/50 check to determine the ethnicity to use. This is more realistic in that you'll have roughly 50/50 of each ethnicity for generated characters rather than only one ethnicity. The problem comes in when you want to hybridize multiple times. How do you handle it?

Option 2a: One possibility is tracking all cultures that make up the new culture and then rolling against all of them when generating a new character. That requires a lot of tracking of how cultures hybridize, but offers a good representation of all ethnicities in generated characters. It's possible that this is how they would do it as it doesn't require a lot of effort, but just more saved data.

Option 2b: Alternatively, it could store a static ethnicity when the culture is created and then use that in a 50/50 when hybridizing with a new culture. With this, you'd always be working with only 2 ethnicities and doing a basic 50/50 roll between them. The problem here is that if, for example, you hybridize culture A and culture B and the 50/50 roll marks culture B as the new culture's ethnicity, then you hybridize with culture C, you end up with a 50/50 chance of generated characters being either culture B or culture C, but never culture A. You'll always lose out of ethnicities that don't get chosen in the 50/50 roll when the culture is created, which isn't a good option. Even though each generated character would be potentially one of the two ethnicities, it would lose the third.

There are of course other possibilities, but these are some of the more likely, imo. Still, the ideal way is for the ethnicities to be merged upon creation of the new culture as the original dev post stated. With this, culture A and culture B hybridize and their new ethnicity is set (static) somewhere between the original ethnicities. All generated characters use this new merged ethnicity (plus or minus to give a range). Then when you hybridize with culture C, your new culture merges culture AB with culture C so the new culture ABC has an ethnicity somewhere between that of culture AB and culture C (plus or minus for range). This is the most realistic option and I really don't see why this would be a difficult thing to implement, but they changed the post, so I don't know why things are going a different direction.

Another option not suggested by anything devs have said, but that would provide more realism is that whenever a character is generated, to look at all living characters in the culture and find an average ethnic "look" and then use that. This allows you to see an ethnic drift over time as cultural intermarriage occurs. The biggest issue here, I believe, is that it would likely be somewhat CPU intensive to check every living character of the culture (at least if it's a large culture) and then calculate an average look from those characters. It still isn't perfect as someone can change cultures, but never be married into it and this method would still use their ethnicity to calculate the average culture's ethnicity, which isn't realistic. But in the overall scheme of things, it is at least more realistic than the original options listed.

 

[SupercanelP085]

The ethnicity and culture are something kinda unrealistic, because you can educate a child from Culture Z to your Hybrid-Hybrid Culture AB/C
The Child will be displayed then (if the culture "adoption" works) as an AB/C, but will sill have ethnicity Z in his dna.
Imo it would be better to see culture / ethnicity in different fields.

Or am I getting this wrong?

 

[Unknown Sage]

The ethnicity and culture are something kinda unrealistic, because you can educate a child from Culture Z to your Hybrid-Hybrid Culture AB/C
The Child will be displayed then (if the culture "adoption" works) as an AB/C, but will sill have ethnicity Z in his dna.
Imo it would be better to see culture / ethnicity in different fields.

Or am I getting this wrong?

I mean yeah in an ideal world the two are separated. But that is more problematic from a design perspective due to the nature of how to implement it. Currently all we have to identify newly generated characters are their culture and religion. If not based on either of those, then what would define the ethnicity of a newly generated character? The geographical area they come from? I myself think that could definitely work. However it also means that it will be impossible to simulate ethnic migration.

Do note however that the ethnicity defined in the culture only affects newly generated characters. So your example of educating children to different ethnicities is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

So in short unfortunately it is not so simple to just separate the two. (depending of course on how much value you assign to having your arabic migrated culture still generate arabic ethnicity characters despite you now living in the tibetan plateau.)

 

[Tuo]

The ethnicity and culture are something kinda unrealistic, because you can educate a child from Culture Z to your Hybrid-Hybrid Culture AB/C
The Child will be displayed then (if the culture "adoption" works) as an AB/C, but will sill have ethnicity Z in his dna.
Imo it would be better to see culture / ethnicity in different fields.

Or am I getting this wrong?

Character ethnicity isn't fixed (as in a character technically has no ethnicity, they are a product of ethnicities, either that of their culture or that of the cultures of their first generated ancestors and a mix thereof), as ethnicities are just defined ranges on the values that make up how the character look, and those values are inherited from parents. Such field would serve no purpose whatsoever and would not function for far majority of the characters in the game.

EDIT: I realize this might sound a bit confusing, so I'll rephrase: All that an ethnicity in this game is is a range of values that make up the appearance of a newly generated character (that is, one without parentage). This range is attached to cultures only, and has no bearing on the characters after they have been generated, and any children they might have will inherit their appearance based on those values that their parents have, with the original ranges of values set for that culture having no influence at all.

 

[SupercanelP085]

Ah yes, now I see what you mean
Thanks Tuo & Unknown Sage

 

[wilcoxchar]

The number of counties converted upon hybridization and the cultural acceptance levels are completely irrelevant to the concept of ethnicity change. If you do a varangian adventure and end up with only a handful of your cultures rulers it still doesn't make sense for the nordic population to increase in numbers. You aren't going to be importing them all the way from scandinavia. Similarly as you said existing rulers will keep their ethnicity but slowly move towards the cultures set ethnicity. It therefore equally makes no sense for that ethnicity to not be able to be that of the majority population.

Not sure why you keep assuming the new ethnicity won't be the existing one when that has a decent chance of happening. You also keep acting like this is some completely new thing when it's already how the game works when you convert a province to a new culture. So what you're talking about it no different from say if you did a varangian adventure and converted the culture of a county in the Middle East to Swedish, which you don't seem to have any problem with.

The current way ethnicities work however is not necessarily representative of how ethnicities work after the culture rework though. Regardless I never stated anything like what you imply. Nowhere did I mention hybridized cultures not having an ethnicity range, or that it would work differently from regular cultures. But it very well could have slightly changed.

That hybridized cultures would not have a defined ethnicity range and that they would work differently from regular cultures is certainly what both you and the original post I replied to said. The original post I replied to said

"2. Is there a maximum number of ethnicities that can be combined (e.g. a hybrid culture seven times over can only draw from the nth most recent cultures assimilated)?"

to which I replied, explaining how ethnicity works in the culture files and that no, it does not "draw from the nth most recent cultures" because since ethnicity ranges are static in the culture file, the ethnicity of a culture would be determined in the moment a culture is created through hybridization and wouldn't change after that.

To which you replied

"This to me seems a very good reason why surely it can't work that way. And that instead the game must save both ethnicities in the new hybridized culture to then randomly pick between one of them when generating a new character of that culture."

Which according to what you said in the context would be hybridized cultures working differently from regular cultures and not having a defined ethnicity range because they would have to keep referring the ranges of the parent cultures, which makes no sense because that's simply not how ethnicities are written in the culture files if you actually look at the files.

The only thing mentioned by the devs about the system for ethnicity in this thread is the following post. (no mention of anything ethnicity related in the dev diary proper)

"Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, there is an equal chance for picking either ethnicity. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents."

This was originally phrased differently though before it was edited. The original text said this

"Cultures all have different ethnicities set in script. When you form a hybrid culture, we consolidate these values to give you something in-between. Of course, this only applies to generated characters, as children always get the ethnicity of their parents."

In short this very concept is not communicated well with the playerbase, and many questions asked to clarify have either not been answered, or gave even more conflicting information. I don't remember exactly though since it's been a while since this dev diary went online. (at least none of the blue dev comments further clarify it). As such we have no idea which system is the one that actually is the one we end up with.

If however we go off the new text it implies a random 50-50 choice of either parent culture ethnicity, whereas the old text implies a merged ethnicity based on the values of the parent culture ethnicities for the new culture, these two make sense in the context of current ethnicity code.

That sounds a little badly communicated, but that's because the first one wouldn't make sense with how ethnicities are coded in the culture files. The merging values wouldn't make much sense with how the values are coded since it's not by a strict percentage, and was possibly thinking of the skin color values in ethnicity files only instead which also wouldn't make sense with how culture files are created, so it's pretty obvious what it was corrected to - that it will be an equal chance of picking either previous culture's ethnicity - is correct in how it will work.

But I also recall a third possibility being talked about in this thread about characters of the new hybrid culture being generated with either of the parent culture ethnicities. (it is this statement that needs further clarification because of its implication that a culture can now hold two ethnicities that do not merge which conflicts with current code and thus requires changes to the system and is mostly speculation on our end).

Yes, that third possibility was what the person I was responding to said in their post and is what I was explaining was not how the culture files worked. Which you then responded to seeming to support that poster's interpretation, so I'm glad you agree that makes no sense for a hybridized culture to refer to its parent culture's ethnicities and not have an ethnicity of its own.

The old version makes sense from the perspective of two different peoples merging in culture. You obviously would get a mix between the two original ethnicities. The new version very much does not. It makes no sense for a norse masriqi hybridization in the levant to slowly turn entirely norse in ethnicity. It being slow is irrelevant when it should not happen at all in the first place. So in my opinion it makes much more sense to combine these two versions into the same system for the other hybridization options. Namely that the new culture uses either of the following as chosen by the player in the hybridization menu:

Ethnicity 1. In code this would be


A mixture of Ethnicity 1 and 2. In code this would be:


Or Ethnicity 2. Which in code would be


A system where we can choose any of these options ourselves upon culture hybridization is much better than a random 50 percent chance to end up with either of the parent ethnicities, or a system where you have forced merging of the two cultures. Specifically to take into account the case where the population of one of the two ethnicities would be vastly outnumbering the other. Some examples for such situations are given in my previous post.

The old version doesn't make sense with how the culture files are written though, and the new clarification clearly fits with how the files are written. Say you have Andalusian culture hybridizing with Yemeni culture.

The ethnicity section for Andalusian is

ethnicities = {
10 = arab
10 = mediterranean
}

while Yemeni is

ethnicities = {
10 = arab
6 = east_african
}

It would make no sense to "merge them, because how would you even do that. There's really no good way to merge them and keep the ethnicity weights roughly close to the same (adding up the numbers to "20 arab 10 mediterranean 6 east african" wouldn't work because you can have base weighting numbers that are off, and because then you start getting really weird weightings after a few merges), and even if they converted the number to a percentage rather than a whole number weight, you'd still be getting values with way to many decimal places than necessary after just two or three merges. So simply picking one at random to transfer over to the new culture's data is just the best option to work within how the ethnicity section is coded.

 

[Unknown Sage]

Alright so I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. That could be because of lacking explanation of my statements. Or maybe something else. So I'll just go over each point again to clarify.

Not sure why you keep assuming the new ethnicity won't be the existing one when that has a decent chance of happening. You also keep acting like this is some completely new thing when it's already how the game works when you convert a province to a new culture. So what you're talking about it no different from say if you did a varangian adventure and converted the culture of a county in the Middle East to Swedish, which you don't seem to have any problem with.

So regarding this. I assume the new ethnicity won't be the existing one always because clearly it says in the dev post that there is a 50% chance of it not being the one of your current culture.
If it seems like I keep acting like it is an entirely new thing then I apologise for being unclear. Of course that is not what I mean at all.
Regarding converting middle eastern counties to swedish. It's not that I don't have a problem with that. Just that now with hybridized cultures it should allow us to increase the realism factor for the situation in which a varangian adventure of say a 1000 swedish warriors conquer the area but due to the large arabic population there slowly turn arabic ethnicity. Of course that is only if you can choose which parent culture ethnicity you want to keep instead of it being random. That is my problem with the current system. It leaves it up to random chance whether I get the norse or the arabic ethnicity. Meaning I could end up with the aforementioned ethnically norse arabia. Ideally of course I'd like to see ethnicity decoupled from culture. But I don't see that happening anytime soon. So instead I am here asking for more customization options.

That hybridized cultures would not have a defined ethnicity range and that they would work differently from regular cultures is certainly what both you and the original post I replied to said. The original post I replied to said

"2. Is there a maximum number of ethnicities that can be combined (e.g. a hybrid culture seven times over can only draw from the nth most recent cultures assimilated)?"

to which I replied, explaining how ethnicity works in the culture files and that no, it does not "draw from the nth most recent cultures" because since ethnicity ranges are static in the culture file, the ethnicity of a culture would be determined in the moment a culture is created through hybridization and wouldn't change after that.

To which you replied

"This to me seems a very good reason why surely it can't work that way. And that instead the game must save both ethnicities in the new hybridized culture to then randomly pick between one of them when generating a new character of that culture."

Which according to what you said in the context would be hybridized cultures working differently from regular cultures and not having a defined ethnicity range because they would have to keep referring the ranges of the parent cultures, which makes no sense because that's simply not how ethnicities are written in the culture files if you actually look at the files.

So this sentence of mine does not actually state that the hybrid culture does not have an ethnicity range, or that hybrid cultures work different from regular cultures. Just that the code for cultures might (<- key word here. But if it doesn't work like that then the design choice of it being random instead of choosable like the other culture options such as clothing is extremely weird. Making me conclude that it is certainly likely that the code is changed. Especially since I remember talk about something like I will describe below in this thread.) be updated in this update that overhauls the culture system. It would still very much mean that hybrid cultures and regular cultures use the same system though.

specifically I'm referring to the situation that I remember being posted in this thread about characters being generated with one of the parent cultures ethnicities.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, this is of course speculation because indeed currently the code looks like this and it blends together the ethnicities:
ethnicities = {
10 = arab
10 = mediterranean
}
But we do not know for certain that the culture code hasn't changed how this bit works. Sure it conflicts with the current system of 1.4 but that does not mean it will still be the same in 1.5 especially considering the entire culture system has been overhauled.
It might very well end up looking something like this:
ethnicities = {
1 = {
10 = arab
10 = mediterranean
}
1 = {
10 = arab
6 = east_african
}
}
for your potential andalusian yemeni hybridization. (this could represent a system which upon new character generation chooses one of the following choices with weight 1 to then blend the ethnicities inside those bits together. And effectively allow cultures to hold multiple unmixable ethnicities.)
But of course this is speculation. That does not however mean it is not possible for this to happen.

It would make no sense to "merge them, because how would you even do that. There's really no good way to merge them and keep the ethnicity weights roughly close to the same (adding up the numbers to "20 arab 10 mediterranean 6 east african" wouldn't work because you can have base weighting numbers that are off, and because then you start getting really weird weightings after a few merges), and even if they converted the number to a percentage rather than a whole number weight, you'd still be getting values with way to many decimal places than necessary after just two or three merges. So simply picking one at random to transfer over to the new culture's data is just the best option to work within how the ethnicity section is coded.

So skipped the examples here to save some space.
Merging them is actually quite easy. You even give a good example of how to do it. All you need to add to stop it from being annoying in the decimal numbers is to simply round the value to your desired amount of decimal places, if you have at least 3 or so anything further is just irrelevant to the big picture. As for getting really weird weightings. I consider this a non-issue. Because you do not ever see these hybrid culture values unless you go in and save edit the save file. For the game it doesn't really matter that the numbers are weird. The only thing you see after all is the blended end result in the generated characters.

I do certainly agree however that it is far simpler to just straight up grab one of the parent culture ethnicities as the one for your new culture. All I'm asking for is at least the option to choose which one the hybrid culture gets. And hoping for an additional third option for a blended ethnicity.