Converting cultures?

[Aegisthus]

A few million dead Native Americans just might disagree.

They sure tried to 'disagree" but it didn't really work out well for them.

I think Paradox did a fine job for the time frame of the game. There are few examples of successful "ethnic conversion" in this period of time. The formation of nation states and the conversion of minorities to the national culture mainly took place in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The only places in Europe where I could see cultures change would be Spain Northern Ireland and Anatolia. Spain because of the expulsion of the moors. Northern Ireland because of the English settlers there. And Anatolia, well, there's no Byzantine Empire reconquering it, but otherwise I could see the area changing culture when colonisation efforts were to be made.

The new world is different.
In north America the native population was small in numbers and they were mostly displaced and or killed by European colonists. Today there are few Americans from mixed European / Indian descent and little remains of Indian cultures. The way the engine handles this with colonisation seems good.
Latin America is different as more efforts were made to convert the local people to Christianity and a class of mixed Spanish/Portuguese Indians developed.The way the game handles this through conversion is good too.
I'm no specialist in this matter but from what I know the Portuguese followed the same policy of mixing with the local population in Africa and Asia. They succeeded in creating a class of Portuguese speaking, catholic locals. For some African and Asian provinces this could be reflected in a successful cultural conversion. But maybe this would exaggerate the amount of intermarriage and not really reflect the fact that local culture remained dominant. Who knows more about this?
Events could be written to trigger these cultural changes. Personally I don't really see how to reflect cultural conversion in the game other than what we have now without using scripted events.

 

[unmerged(25273)]

How important is culture in game terms?

The discussion on ethnic cleansing and forced cultural conversion (America) is interesting. My point: everyone should be allowed their own culture in reality.
But now back to the game mechanisms, where you want to expand your empire and can feel that you ought to be able to spread your culture. I also thought this of great importance (also based on habits from playing EU2).
The effects are basically 2: 1. revoltrisk and 2. lower tax income 3. higher stability cost.
But in the static modifiers file you can change the effects of foreign cultures or religions if you feel it is too difficult to run a multi cultural or multi religuous empire. So you don't really have to make everyone convert to your own culture just to rule them or get tax money out of them.
Revoltrisk can also be adressed by making changes to national ideas: You can for example increase the effect of Bill of Rights or Tolerance.

 

[deanwebb]

Peasants are peasants. If they revolt, kill them. To think they have culture is absurd.

*I* am the king. *I* have culture. My advisers have culture. My allies have culture. My mistresses have culture. The rest of the world, including that boorish sot of my son who is only interested in drinking wine? Boorish louts, although I do have to credit my son for coming up with that perky little burgundy from 1465. EXCELLENT year.

If you want to build a nation-state, you have two options.

1. Play Vicky.
2. Haxxor your save game files.

Or a third option.

3. Write the events to do it or wait for someone else to write the events to do it.

But I don't see a need to rip the game mechanics apart to make it happen. It can be modded. Autosend merchants, though, is a necessary addition which needs immediate attention.

 

[unmerged(26224)]

Culture is not a static thing. Culture is the habits and traditions of the people of a given subset. So if we talk about the culture of an area this can change as new people move in, language changes, and each generation changes its mind over what is 'cool'.

We could also say that the culture of say Munster is different to the culture of Tyrone but they are both of an Irish culture.

I think the game mirrors this quite well by allowing cultures to be adopted by the country. Just like for example the Indians during the raj starting to wear suits and the British starting to eat curry. The cultures come closer together but are still distinct.

 

[RobRoy3]

Peasants are peasants. If they revolt, kill them. To think they have culture is absurd.

*I* am the king. *I* have culture. My advisers have culture. My allies have culture. My mistresses have culture. The rest of the world, including that boorish sot of my son who is only interested in drinking wine? Boorish louts, although I do have to credit my son for coming up with that perky little burgundy from 1465. EXCELLENT year.

If you want to build a nation-state, you have two options.

1. Play Vicky.
2. Haxxor your save game files.

Or a third option.

3. Write the events to do it or wait for someone else to write the events to do it.

But I don't see a need to rip the game mechanics apart to make it happen. It can be modded. Autosend merchants, though, is a necessary addition which needs immediate attention.

Frankly, the autosend "feature" in EU2 was a great way to lose money. Why anyone misses it or would want to waste programming resources to recreate it in EU3 is beyond me.

But no one is talking about building a modern nation state. People are talking about trying to model cultural changes that could and did happen in this time period, in places like Spain, Russia, Britain, France, Asia Minor, the Balkans... It's silly that there is no way, starting in 1453, to achieve the cultural settings that exist for later start dates. You simply can't get there from here. The accepted_culture mechanism doesn't really address this, either, though it would do a better job if cultures weren't suddenly unaccepted simply because a nation is a successful colonizer.

Nor is anyone talking about "ripping the game mechanics apart". The addition of certain historical events, or random events, or a change to the religious conversion mechanism to model cultural changes could all work. Since certain cultural changes could happen in EU2, people naturally feel that a feature has been removed. And I think most people would prefer to see some mechanism in the "official" game, rather than having to rely on user mods; the "mod it yourself" response, while surprisingly common, is pretty lame.

 

[Featauril]

Peasants are peasants. If they revolt, kill them. To think they have culture is absurd.

*I* am the king. *I* have culture. My advisers have culture. My allies have culture. My mistresses have culture. The rest of the world, including that boorish sot of my son who is only interested in drinking wine? Boorish louts, although I do have to credit my son for coming up with that perky little burgundy from 1465. EXCELLENT year.

If you want to build a nation-state, you have two options.

1. Play Vicky.
2. Haxxor your save game files.

Or a third option.

3. Write the events to do it or wait for someone else to write the events to do it.

But I don't see a need to rip the game mechanics apart to make it happen. It can be modded. Autosend merchants, though, is a necessary addition which needs immediate attention.

That's a nice point, except Machiavel disagrees with you. He says that the culture of the people plays a great part on how easy it is to hold on to a conquest. (To be fair, he doesen't use the word culture. He uses "Language and customs". However, I think it would be assinine to try and pretend that this isn't represented in game by culture).

And you know, there is no other authority on "How To Rule A Country Without It Revolting Against You" then old Machy.

 

[deanwebb]

Granted, the cultures did change over time, even if in some cases it was in a crypto-fashion, with the original culture underlying the changes on the surface - more so with religion than with culture - but can't this be done with an event?

Make it a random event, to keep with the non-deterministic flavour of EU3, and have the triggers fire on if the culture of a province <> any state culture, it's been owned for 50+ years (two+ generations), it hasn't had a recent revolt, and stability is high.

Then again, some places kept their cultures in spite of foreign dominance, sometimes CRUSHING foreign dominance. Ukraine, Holland, the Basques... how to simulate those? If they have frequent revolts, then they'd beat the top trigger, but how to show the stable Netherlands suddenly splitting with Spain? Religion is a factor there, so maybe the triggers need to include the province has the state religion.

But I still see an event mod as the way to solve it.

 

[SonofWinter]

A few million dead Native Americans just might disagree.

Ummm, stone age cultures loose against gunpowder age cultures. And Americans didn't go out of their way to exterminate the indians. That wasn't the goal, it might have been the result but not the overall goal.

 

[johho888]

I think this verges on ethnic cleansing with is something Paradox expressly avoids in all their games. Kind of a touchy subject I think.

You obviously haven't played the earlier versions of Crusader King. In one of my first CK games a Swedish pagan inherited the Golden Horde (or was it the Il-khanate) and started to convert the Middle East to Swedish culture and Pagan religion. I could really see those ex-Arabs in turbans doing the "little frog" dance around the midsummer pole and sprinkling wooden statues of the Norse gods with blood while feasting on pork...

 

[Bill3000]

The only places in Europe where I could see cultures change would be Spain Northern Ireland and Anatolia. Spain because of the expulsion of the moors. Northern Ireland because of the English settlers there. And Anatolia, well, there's no Byzantine Empire reconquering it, but otherwise I could see the area changing culture when colonisation efforts were to be made.

You're forgetting Prussia, (The baltic prussians were assimilated into germans) Russia, (Novorossiya is probably the largest example) the Ukraine, (Ethnogenesis didn't occur until later) and the like.

 

[Eccentric path]

It would be useful if the game had events or coding to change the culture of certain provinces under certain conditions. I do not think that every province's culture should be possible to change. Most provinces should retain the same culture from the start of the game to the finish. It appears that if one starts in 1453 then Ukranian culture will not be in the game. Yet Ukranian culture is in the game if one starts at a very late date. This is one example of problems with the current system. Ukraine could possibly form (would have to check this to be sure) without any Ukranian provinces on the map and no chance that there would ever be any (except through means other than game mechanics). EU 3 is excellent overall, however; the fact that province cultures (not including the pagan conversion and colonization situations) do not change unless the save file is edited causes some problems when starting with an early date.

Some of the provinces, in Spain (if you check the late scenarios they have more Castillian provinces in Iberia than the early ones) , France (similar to Spain), Russia, the Ukraine area (one of the larger cultural issues), Sweden (Norwegian and Danish culture in early dates yet not in late dates), and other certain provinces in certain other places (there are more than in this list) should be able to change culture under certain conditions. It would seemt that perhaps sometype of event or change could be set into the game based on the province files already in place. For example the Trebizond province file already has a date for when it has Turkish culture. An event using that date could change Trebizond's culture if the Ottoman Empire is holding it on the date. If the OE gained Trebizond after that date then maybe would take about five years for a culture change to take place. Perhaps Greekization of certain Ottoman provinces should be possible as well (like Trebizond if it is won back by a Greek state).

A lot of provinces in Russia are affected by this issue. The ability to gain "accepted cultures" is useful, however it does not fully mitigate the problem. If the OE or conquers a province in Russia then which culture the province has will affect the OE. One reason for this is that Turkish is part of a cultural group with some of the cultures in the area and is not with Russian.

Hopefully a patch will make some changes regarding this issue. A mod could probably work also.

Also, hopefully it is no longer possible for the pagan provinces in Africa to have their culture changed when these provinces are converted as happened in EU 2. Conversion of African provinces should definitely be possible however this should not change their culture like it does with many other provinces. Famines and plagues would not wipe out the African populations and they would not completely adopt the culture of the missionaries or empire of which they are a part. All sorts of cultural changes can happen in Africa in EU 2 since all pagan provinces are treated the same. I see why they made the culture change linked to conversion, however the occasional exception would help stop certain outcomes.

 

[Dysken]

Scania in southern Sweden would be a good example. It was very effectively ethnically cleansed in the end of the 17th century. Iberia is also a good example, expelling the moors.

While I'm no expert on the subject I am pretty sure this was not the case. The king on the 500kr bill (not sure about his name... Karl XI?) did have plans to cleanse Scania and moving Estonians there from Estonia. The king's advisors convinced him not to and that's the end of it AFAIK. Now there was definitely rebellions in Scania and Halland which resulted in executions but nothing as radical as "ethnic cleansing".

 

[unmerged(8351)]

It would be useful if the game had events or coding to change the culture of certain provinces under certain conditions. I do not think that every province's culture should be possible to change. Most provinces should retain the same culture from the start of the game to the finish. It appears that if one starts in 1453 then Ukranian culture will not be in the game yet it is in the game if one starts at a very late date is an example of one of the problems with the current system. Ukraine could possibly form (would have to check this to be sure) without any Ukranian provinces on the map. EU 3 is excellent overall, however; the fact that province cultures (not including the pagan conversion and colonization situations) do not change unless the save file is edited causes some problems when starting with an early date.

Some of the provinces, in Spain (if you check the late scenarios they have more Castillian provinces in Iberia than the early ones) , France (similar to Spain), Russia, the Ukraine area (one of the larger cultural issues), Sweden (Norwegian and Danish culture in early dates yet not in late dates), and other certain provinces in certain other places (there are more than in this list) should be able to change culture under certain conditions. It would seemt that perhaps sometype of event or change could be set into the game based on the province files already in place. For example the Trebizond province file already has a date for when it has Turkish culture. An event using that date could change Trebizond's culture if the Ottoman Empire is holding it on the date. If the OE gained Trebizond after that date then maybe would take about five years for a culture change to take place. Perhaps Greekization of certain Ottoman provinces should be possible as well (like Trebizond if it is won back by a Greek state).

A lot of provinces in Russia are affected by this issue. The ability to gain "accepted cultures" is useful, however it does not fully mitigate the problem. If the OE or conquers a province in Russia then which culture the province has will affecte the OE. One reason for this is that Turkish is part of a cultural group with some of the cultures in the area and is not with Russian.

Hopefully a patch will make some changes regarding this issue. A mod could probably work also.

Also, hopefully it is no longer possible for the pagan provinces in Africa to have their culture changed when these provinces are converted as happened in EU 2. Conversion of African provinces should definitely be possible however this should not change their culture like it does with many other provinces. Famines and plagues would not wipe out the African populations and they would not completely adopt the culture of the missionaries or empire of which they are apart. All sorts of cultural changes can happen in African in EU 2 since all pagan provinces are treated the same. I see why they made the culture change linked to conversion, however the occasional exception would help stop certain outcomes.

good post

I think the heart of the issue is that if certain cultural changes exist in later game states, this type of cultural spread should be represented in the game with some mechanic.

 

[unmerged(67880)]

Ummm, stone age cultures loose against gunpowder age cultures. And Americans didn't go out of their way to exterminate the indians. That wasn't the goal, it might have been the result but not the overall goal.

They also didn't take any great pains to protect against it. And took several rather brutal actions that helped to accelerate it. Not that its relevant, I was merely pointing out that the 'North American Experience' was not one of 'mere conversion'. I made no statement as to the rightness, wrongness, or varying levels of culpability involved.

As a general rule, I'm not terribly sympathetic to a cultural that was wheel-less, bronze-less, and hunting-gathering when other parts of the world were sailing across across oceans and developing guns. Stoneage cultures will be displaced, general rule and all. Even the somewhat more advanced central and south American natives were still backwards and in several notable cases, much less sympathetic than their north American counterparts. (I don't condone genocide and the Spaniards were probably worse for the locals overall, but the Aztecs weren't exactly nice people.)

As it stands, looking forward to reading Guns, Germs, and Steel that I recently picked up. I'm told it tries to answer the questions of why various cultures/regions advanced the way they did while others stagnated. Should be a good read.

 

[unmerged(25273)]

Ummm, stone age cultures loose against gunpowder age cultures. And Americans didn't go out of their way to exterminate the indians. That wasn't the goal, it might have been the result but not the overall goal.

It most certainly was. Why else were scout bounties paid for native men's, women's and child's scalps. Long time ago.
It got way more subtle in the late 20th century. Many Native American women complained throughout the 1980s that when they had been in hospital for any treatment they had been sterilised for no medical reason without being asked or informed. That was geonicide.
Until about 50 years ago native children had their mouth washed with soap when they dared to speak their own language in boarding schools - that was ethnocide. I admit though that the primary goal was to get all the Native land and genocide and ethnocide were the means to do so and will probably continue as long as 75% of US uranium are on Native land.

Anyway, coming back to EU3 it would be nice to have a chance of assimilating cultures after long control (50 or 100 years) but not as automatic events. Factors involved should be tolerance level for their religion, decentralisation (representing tolerance for their culture), stability, absence of revolts in the provinces concerned, prestige of the country and also whether all provinces of this culture are controlled by a country or whether independent countries exist having this culture as their primary culture. All these should influence the chance and also the speed of assimilation.

 

[unmerged(42174)]

While I'm no expert on the subject I am pretty sure this was not the case. The king on the 500kr bill (not sure about his name... Karl XI?) did have plans to cleanse Scania and moving Estonians there from Estonia. The king's advisors convinced him not to and that's the end of it AFAIK. Now there was definitely rebellions in Scania and Halland which resulted in executions but nothing as radical as "ethnic cleansing".

It's true that there were not really ethnical cleansing in Skåne, in the sense that all danes were executed. Many danes were killed by the swedish army though. Eventually, the culture was converted to swedish. It was changed mostly by introducing Swedish in the church and education. By replacing all personnel in the church and governing authorities with Swedes, it was possible to convert the culture in Skåne to Swedish.

Maybe it could be possible to create a generic event that lets the player decide if a conversation should be started, when it becomes a core? Of course, it should be quite expensive, create rediculously high revolt risk and maybe worsen relationships with all nations with this culture. It should also take a long time, at least 20 years (or one generation).