(2.3.4) changing culture destroys all cultural buildings

[Eslin]

It's happened several times so far - if I have a certain culture's cultural buildings (say, Gallowglass training grounds if I'm Irish) built and I change culture or my religion is of a different culture, those buildings promptly vanish. If a Scottish man rules for even a day apparently every Irish cultural building spontaneously and forever vanishes into thin air. The buildings don't change to a different cultural type and they don't come back if a ruler of the same type returns, they mysteriously vanish forever and must be rebuilt.

 

[mbeck449]

I'm not sure if it's a bug. As far as I know this feature has been in the game since the early days. I'll admit that it's a little strange that the buildings just vanish, but it makes sense from a game play perspective - you could end up getting several cultural buildings if they didn't disappear or get stuck with one that you can't fully upgrade. I've always considered it an additional penalty for switching cultures and it sometimes makes upgrading the cultural buildings a bit more of a strategic decision. Though, it would be nice if the game retains any cultural upgrades you've made so if you switch back you don't have to start from scratch.

 

[Eslin]

That's more the bit I'm concerned with - it's a little odd that cultural buildings become unusable considering you can keep cultural retinues if you switch cultures, but the cultural buildings don't just become unusable until you switch back - you can have a hundred war elephant pens in your realm and if a Persian rules the realm for a single day then even if you switch back to an appropriate ruler or culture then apparently in the course of that day every war elephant pen has been completely and irrecoverably destroyed, every pen razed to the ground, every elephant killed or released back into the wild, every warrior and handler has quit their jobs.

 

[mbeck449]

Yeah, when you spin it that way it does seem silly. You could waste tons of money and time on highly contested areas - though, then we kind of come back to investing in these buildings as more of a strategic decision. It probably boils down to some sort of coding limitation: the buildings have to be 'all or nothing'.

It would be nice if they could do something where cultural buildings would be permanent (perhaps reflecting a county's cultural heritage) and un-upgradable by other cultures. However, other cultures can still use these buildings albeit at a reduced efficiency: i.e., you get the same units but only a minor boost in unit combat skills. If you were a different culture, you'd also have the option to demolish non-compatible cultural buildings (so you can use your own) at some prestige cost or perhaps even a revolt risk modifier (to reflect the destruction of cultural heritage). Just spit balling though, I'm sure a system like this would hard to implement and even harder to balance.

 

[Eslin]

Surely just having the buildings be inactive unless the right ruler is in charge would be fine? CK2 strives to be fairly realistic, and hundreds of buildings and thousands of warriors all vanishing into thin air overnight is incredibly unrealistic. Kind of why I assumed it was a bug.

 

[rageair]

It's WAD, but could definitely be improved. I've added an improvement report to our internal database regarding this behavior, hopefully something will change in the future.