cultural unity and de jure claims: yay or nay?

[grumphie]

currently, leading the count of teviotdale t a unification of britannia i just usurped scotland and vassalised my daughter in law(duchess of moray), who in turn had asselised the old king, resulting in a unified scotland. i started my expansion into ireland, and now rule 3 of the 4 counties of the duchy of ulster. however, pressing de jure claims and vasselising old scottish nobility is steadily decreasing my realms cultural unity, with about 1/2 of scotland ruled by scots and 1/3 of my irish holdings ruled by irish, and thats without counting all mayors and bishops not converted. while the ruling class is mostly saxon(with only my daughter in law scottish, with her heir going to be saxon). however, if i would go ahead with claiming wales and ireland with large part de jure claims i fear this cultural split is going to hurt me, while on the other hand, the mixed cultural units of bonus archers, pikes and offensive/defensive heavy inf can actually be very good for my army.

what is your opinion on this? do you go for full cultural unity or mixed in the same culture group for mixed cultural units? do you go cobverting all non-your culture vassels or are content with letting your dukes/counts handle the people below them? do you go around pressing all de jure claims you can just for the extra land or try to promote stability by appointing rulers yourself?

anyway, i generally go for a vast majority of cultural unity with the upper class fully my culture, and let them adle the cultural stability problems, while reaping the benefits of mixed cultural units. other religions get exterminated, and other cultures will get progressivly exterminated in my core territories as the game progresses until i end up with a very solid base of 1 culture and reigion with only the border regions mixed. dee jure claims get pressed if i can handle morepeople joining factions.

 

[Ithvan]

I try to have as many vassals of my culture as I can. That -20 opinion modifier is a bitch. In my game of Scotland, it was also funny to see how the entirety of Ireland converted to Scottish culture.

Making your dukes handle those problems only moves around the problem, there will still be infighting, and every soldier they fight with is one you can't use.

 

[grumphie]

actually, with the new liege levy system not. so more infighting mainly weakens your vassels, with the only downsides a possible takeover by natives or easier losing sieges there at war.

 

[unmerged(458333)]

You can always focus on reeducation of the heirs [and the 2d and 3d in line as well] of vassals. Sending them to your culture mentors will solve the problem in a couple of generations. IIRC, you need a minimum of 20 relationship for a vassal or vassal of vassal to accept educate child option. Bishops are usually great options for sending these kids, since they are usually your culture. Heirs of more important vassals can get the personal touch of having yourself or your own heir tutor them so they can get the mentor bonus.

 

[Heartsbane]

Cultural unity is the best way to go but it isn't always feasible, especially with large empires. Although they are the quickest non-holy war form of expansion, de jure claims and pressing vassal claims tend to be poison for an ethnically homogenous empire, which is generally what you want. Given how precarious vassal opinion can be and how prevalent factions are when you have a big empire, the negative opinion modifier can make all the difference when it comes to keeping a stable realm.

 

[Theddude]

Playing as Sweden yesterday I found out the hard way of trying to maintain a multi ethnic kingdom. I tried to convert the Finns and Lapps without destroying their culture, but after they were converted, a few decades later they revolted for independence. Every single person with foreign culture. *Sigh*, I wish it wasn't such a big deal, I don't really like playing the Lebensraum model Borg conquests game. I mean, really, the nobility all spoke Latin at the time, so it's a bit annoying that it's such a huge penalty. I get that the peasants might not like them, but nobility really shouldn't be trying to do ethnic cleansing in the 12th century.

 

[unmerged(457738)]

Depends on how much land you plan to hold. If you plan to have just a handful of kingdoms then cultural unity is nice, but for a large empire it's way more trouble than it's worth. The -20 is very trivial compared to the other modifiers you're likely to have at that point (pressed my claim, revoked my titles, given a duchy etc) and either way in a large empire you're better off having weak vassals who tolerate you than strong ones who you 'need' to like you.

 

[unmerged(26764)]

With the new patch, same culture vassals are far, far, less likely to join independence factions. This is a very big difference. You definitely want to replace them as soon as you can. Either by revoking their titles and replacing them with loyal vassals, or by re-educating their heirs.

Making the problem your vassals' by butting a same culture duke over them solves the immediate problem. But I don't recommend it long term. That count may pull off a plot to take the duchy, making him an even bigger problem for you now. Or he may intermarry with the rest of your vassals, spreading his wrong culture poison all over your realm. If you have bad luck, just one wrong culture count in your empire can end up spreading his culture to your most powerful duchies. Better just to get rid of him.

The difference when a new king takes the throne when all your vassals are your culture and when they're not is noticeable.

 

[_krampe_]

With the new patch, same culture vassals are far, far, less likely to join independence factions.

Actually they NEVER join the independence faction if they have your culture, your religion and you're their de jure liege!

 

[Comradebot]

I try to have as many vassals of my culture as I can. That -20 opinion modifier is a bitch. In my game of Scotland, it was also funny to see how the entirety of Ireland converted to Scottish culture.

Making your dukes handle those problems only moves around the problem, there will still be infighting, and every soldier they fight with is one you can't use.

It's only -10 if you're in the same cultural group (so it would apply here, as Scottish and Irish are both in the Celtic group). With a focus on cultural flexibility, it can become a very negligible penalty.

 

[ASPGolan]

Playing as Sweden yesterday I found out the hard way of trying to maintain a multi ethnic kingdom. I tried to convert the Finns and Lapps without destroying their culture, but after they were converted, a few decades later they revolted for independence. Every single person with foreign culture. *Sigh*, I wish it wasn't such a big deal, I don't really like playing the Lebensraum model Borg conquests game. I mean, really, the nobility all spoke Latin at the time, so it's a bit annoying that it's such a huge penalty. I get that the peasants might not like them, but nobility really shouldn't be trying to do ethnic cleansing in the 12th century.

We can't know for sure that they spoke latin - all of them. In fact, its a bigger probability that the nobility was mostly illiterate still, even closer to the renaissance period. This holds true for most of the western areas, mostly true for orthodox areas (with few exceptions maybe in the BE, not that sure about it) and true for a big part of the muslim world (from this point of view, the muslims where the preservers of culture, science and the arts of the game's era). Just saying. I don't have all the facts, but my assumption is that reading was not viewed as a quality -> "I am king of the Romans and above grammar" - Sigismund... and that is only something that amuses, the conclusion is drawn from completely unrelated facts.

 

[ASPGolan]

@OP, minimising negatives in relations is the key to success. And it happens naturally too. You give a vassal some land, request a minor favour, "Oh, hey, about saying that you are Greek now, you Turk?" (or the other way around) -> "nothing" weird about it.

The game is not made to reflect multi-culturalism. And it focuses on aristocracy, so culture might be irrelevant except for little details that give negatives during the game. The fact that the aristocracy converts, shouldn't mean that everybody did - so you shouldn't see the game as a BORG kind of experience. The religious conversion is also interesting, especially if you think of porting your saves into EU4 at some point. Because you don't have a population overview of those regions and what this conversion (cultural-religious) means, you won't have a true reflection in EU4. And in EU4, you'll have nationalism manifest more intensely and the regions you conquered should have 60-70% of the population of a different culture than the nobility - which would mean really harsh revolts.

But this mechanic is missing. So its a reflection on history not possible, in either CK2 and EU3 (I doubt they will improve this in EU4 either...)