Can we talk about the awkward single-culture groups?

[Shadowstrike]

A lot of this would be easier if one could accept cultural groups as well as individual cultures. You could theoretically come up with a nation that is 20% Turkish, 19% Egyptian, 19% Syrian, 19% Bedouin and 19% Iraqi, and have none of the Arabic cultures accepted, even though they comprise 76% of your provinces. So under this system you could have:

Accepted cultures: full tax/manpower
Same culture group or accepted culture group: -15%
Non-accepted cultures: -33%

Also, the Miao/Hmong culture should probably be part of the Tai group. Although there alternatively might make sense to create a new cultural group to represent the highland groups in southwest China/northern Myanmar (even though they span Burmese and Tai language groups).

I don't get why Manchu is in the Chinese group - I would have thought that if Qing conquered enough of China, then it would begin to accept Chinese culture - this is just a textbook example of gaining an accepted culture.

Perhaps more controversially, the Chinese group is vast - it could be split between southern Chinese (Yue, Min, Wu, Gan, Hakka, Xiang), and northern Chinese (all the Mandarin-speaking cultures so Jianghuai, Zhongyuan, Shandong, Sichuan, Zhili, etc.)

 

[Frozen Yakman]

What if things were to go the opposite direction for the southern slavic people; remove South Slavic as a culture group and put each into their own monoculture group? This would help to actually balkanize the balkans.

 

[toroltao]

Is Hungarian even European culture?

 

[Chaos_TLW]

Is Hungarian even European culture?

The Magyar are one of the Finno-Ugric peoples, so they have a linguistic affinity with Finns, Karelians, Sami and Estonians. If you consider these to be European in culture then yeah, ok, although the Finno-Ugric languages are some of the few in the European continent that are not part of the Indo-European linguistic family.

 

[Thrac]

What if things were to go the opposite direction for the southern slavic people; remove South Slavic as a culture group and put each into their own monoculture group? This would help to actually balkanize the balkans.

) good ideea.
Thing with the Balkans is that evry1 'loves' evry1 for 1 or other reason.
Bulgarians vs Greeks
Bulgarians vs Serbs
Serbs vs Croats
Croats vs Bosnians
Bosnians vs Serbs
Hungarians vs Romanians
Hungarians vs Croats
Serbian vs Hungarians
Albanians vs Serbians
Greeks vs Albanians
And i think thats about it.... so much love...

 

[toroltao]

Finno-Ugric languages are some of the few in the European continent that are not part of the Indo-European linguistic family.

TIL Finno-Ugric is not considered IE

 

[Chaos_TLW]

TIL Finno-Ugric is not considered IE

It is one of the main branches of the Uralic linguistic family instead. Some linguists propose a bigger Indo-Uralic family connecting the two, but if I recall correctly that is far from the mainstream view.

 

[Giffica]

Uh, except for Korean being a language isolate, closer to both Mongol and Japanese than Chinese. Chinese was used as the written language, but that was the case in Japan as well. Korean sounds nothing like Chinese, and most definitely is not a Chinese dialect. That said, if Manchu is considered to be part of the Chinese culture group, Korean should be as well.

Language is a micro aspect of culture. They still used Chinese to write Korean. Basque is also a language isolate, but it is part of Spanish culture. Why? Korean still used Chinese characters at the start of EU4. The way they handled marriage, the way they handled religion, the foods they ate (kimchi not even being a staple of Korean food, and most of the "staple" foods of Korea coming after, or as a result of Sejong and later Kings), the way they viewed each other even. They didn't consider themselves Chinese, ofc not, but my point is that the Han Chinese considered Koreans not far off from them. In fact, the Manchu were far more different than Koreans were, as you point out.

This game uses language as the basis of culture far too often. If we go by that, an argument for Catalans being French could be made. Language is not the basis of culture in other regions of the game, for example, the German cultures. From my understanding, most of them spoke the same, or a very, very indistinguishable language. They were at most dialects of the same exact German. However, they are considered distinct cultures from one another even though the language is the same. So you cannot say "if they speak the same language they are part of the same culture."

Removing Korea from a "east asian" group is revisionist history. As someone who has FORMALLY studied Korean culture extensively, the legacy of the "Korean" people and the national identity of the Korean people was only formed AFTER Sejong's death. I have a feeling this game would place Gogoryeo Korean culture as it's own group, but they were more Chinese than the goddamn chinese were basically. The question becomes "When did Korean culture split from Chinese?"

If you want to go back to the 1000s in Japan, every SINGLE aspect of Japanese cultural life was spent imitating Chinese culture example. By this period Japan had easily developed unique elements of culture, but you can't disregard that Japan beforehand was Chinese.

 

[Koivin]

Call me crazy but weren't Hungarians outside of language extemely similar to both Czechs and Poles? Overlapping traditions, foods, historical similarities, same feudal nobility issues, large intertwinement (both high and low class), genetic similarity. Heck, for all intents and purposes and as a Hungary buff, shouldn't they belong to the west Slav group?

 

[Granite]

I think I just hit a new record for most downvotes on a single post.
Well, you win some and you lose some. At least, I'd like to think that I opened up a good conversation here.

 

[Woifee]

Is Hungarian even European culture?

How long has some civilisation to be on a place to be accepted as a local. Every European has his root somewhere out of Europe.

The finnougrics are not indoeuropean but they are as much european as the italians or the skandinavia s.

 

[toroltao]

How long has some civilisation to be on a place to be accepted as a local. Every European has his root somewhere out of Europe.

The finnougrics are not indoeuropean but they are as much european as the italians or the skandinavia s.

So you agree then hat Turkey is European?

 

[Woifee]

Yeah, sure.

 

[ringhloth]

So you agree then hat Turkey is European?

Sure. Most of the Turkey Turks have little genetically in common with Steppe Turk. Culture is where you "came from", so to speak, in small part, so the Turkey Turks came from the ashes of Byzantium, which is essentially Europe, and probably would have been considered as such if Byzantium had "thrived" for another 800 years or so.

 

[Jephery]

Any balance issues with specific nations having an unfair disadvantage due to culture groups can be rectified with national idea buffs if needed. Some cultures should be isolates

 

[Homusubi]

I think I just hit a new record for most downvotes on a single post.
Well, you win some and you lose some. At least, I'd like to think that I opened up a good conversation here.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...eason-to-protest-against-common-sense.855552/

I win.

 

[Demetrios of M]

The best thing is to discuss culture in gameplay context. Attempts to discuss in a real life context are sure to trip on numerous obstacles, one of them being that we are trying to rationalise 500-600 year old cultures with our "modern" mindsets.

Let me use Byzantium as a profound example. Even the terms Byzantium and Byzantine are neologisms that weren't used in the 1400s (at least not in the same manner as used today). The game designers know this, but they can't dismiss the terms apparently to avoid confusion by the casual player. So there we have Byzantium the country with Greek as primary culture and Turks as historical rivals. In reality, there was no such country as Byzantium, the Greeks, who called themselves "Romans", had become the primary culture due to the continuous shrinkage of the Empire's borders and not by choice and the Turks were not at all viewed as historical rivals yet. In fact, it was customary for prominent "Romans" to fight with the Sultan and for prominent Turks to fight with the Basileus (including the seige of Constantinople). Personal interest usually took priority over any national or cultural heritage.

The ancient Roman Empire had recognised by law that all its citizens were Romans. There was not no special/ primary/ priviliged culture group. The Byzantine Empire followed the same practice.
The last Emperor was half Greek and half Serbian; no-one cared. If Byzantium was to somehow thrive again it would probably care about religion, but no so much about culture. The EU:IV term of primary culture would have little meaning in such a real life 15th century restored Byzantine Empire. The same was also pretty much truth about the Ottomans who did distinguish between religious groups but not between culutural/ national groups.

However, for gameplay terms culture has to be there, compromises have to be made all over the place, and in the end the fun factor is more important than the simulation factor in a video game.

 

[talilu]

HAHA can't win an argument. Proof Bulgarians are Greek? You have none. There is absolutely NO relation between Greeks and Bulgarians

I don't get what is so wrong about being influenced by Greeks. Greeks influenced Georgians, Armenians, Circassians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Albanians, Romanians, Turks... That's because Greeks had many of the ancient knowledge and they were good traders, not because Byzantium ruled the land. People wanted to trade with them, befriend them and acquire the knowledge they had, they even adopted Greek alphabet/language as literary or nobility languages. It is just normal, Western Rome influence the west, Eastern Rome influenced the east.

 

[Tirenedon]

I think that most problems could be solved by splitting culture into culture and language. Culture is just the way people act, what their buildings look like, their common history, etc. and it can mean that Welsh and Irish can go in the British culture group or Hungarian into one of the Slavic groups. However they would have their own languages in the Celtic of Magyar groups.

Also perhaps we should have three levels of cultures so that the West, East and South Slavic cultural groups are all in one Slavic group. This way Russia owning Poland won't have the same penalties as Russia owning China.

 

[Homusubi]

Look, academic anthropologists can't agree on what culture means, so somehow I doubt EUIV players will be able to do the same.