Culture:dynamics and mechanics

[AndrejK]

Hello,
This is my proposal for the new culture mechanics.
There should be two ways how a new culture is being created:

1. Separation : if the provinces of the parent culture are being separate for say 100 years into separate rulers, who now longer were unified under a common overlord, the cultures and habits and tongues would diverge. (This is what happened in Castille, Leon and Aragon). The names will be after the kingdoms or duchies which are separated
2. Merger: if two cultures live-by-side long enough, then the two would merge into a new culture (e.g. Norman+Anglo-Saxon= English) . The event will fire after continuous 75 years and will change the culture of all counties in the duchy at once, if:
   1. The only counties in the duchy have only one of the two merging cultures (e.g. either Anglo-Saxon or Norman)
   2. Each of the landlords belongs to either of the two cultures (Norman or Anglo-Saxon)
   3. The top lieges are from the "new" incoming culture (Norman)

• Once these conditions are met, then every province in the duchy changes its culture to the new one, as well as every character in the duchy who belonged to either of the merging cultures.
• The naming of the new culture:
  • If over 50% of all duchies within a kingdom are in the process of this cultural merger, then it will be named after the kingdom. Should already a culture be so named, the name will be based after the duchy where the process emerges first.
  • Otherwise the name of the new culture will be after the duchy where this process emerges first.

So historically let's take a look what happened, at least among the Romance languages

1. Latin
   1. Ibero-Romance
      1. (Merged with Visigothic into) Hispanic
         1. (Merged with Basque into) Aragonese
         2. (Merged with Arab into) Mozarabic
         3. Castillan and Leonese separated from each other
      2. (Merged with Gallaecian into) Galician
         1. Merged with Mozarabic into Portuguese
   2. Britanno-Romance:
   3. Gallo-Romance
      1. Merged with Franksih into French
         1. Merged with Norse into Norman
      2. Merged with Visigothic into Occitan
         1. Merged with Hispanic into Catalan
         2. Merged with Basque into Gascon
      3. Merged with Burgund into Arpetan
      4. Merged with Langobard into Cisalpine
         1. Separated into Piemontese, Lombard, Venetian, Romagnan
   4. Italo-Romance
      1. Merged with Langobard into Italian
         1. Separated into Tuscan, Umbrian, Beneventan
            1. Merged with Norman into Neapolitan
      2. Merged with Griko into Sicilian
   5. Illyro-Romance
      1. Separated into Dalmatian and Pannonia
   6. Daco-Romance
      1. Separated into Aromanian and Vlach
   7. Afro-Romance
      1. Merged with Vandal into African
   8. Rhaeto-Romance
      1. Separated into Friulian, Ladin and Rhetish
   9. Insular
      1. Corsican
      2. Sardinian

 

[Fire6all]

The idea is splendid. Maybe hard to code, but I think that it represents very well the evolutions of cultures in the world

By the way, great historical demonstration

 

[Rags17]

Culture conversion, generation and fusion has been mentioned many times and it is great to keep the subject active but the difficulties are huge. Forget the coding, that's easy, the real problem is the name list - what names do you put in the list and how do you generate them ? In essence you have to imagine what a new say Scottish Oultrejourdainian or Italian Abyssinian fusion language would sound like and you can't do that without a lot of linguistic manipulation and a lot of guesswork. Would you have guessed that a fusion of Aethelbalds, Ecgfriths and Leofrics with Thierry's, Guilliams and Hrolfs would produce Henrys, Edwards and Stephens ?

I suppose if you were happy with your own linguistic fusion assumptions then yes it would be fine, but now we get back to the coding - the ability is not there (yet) and I don't think that they will be adding it any time soon.

 

[Fire6all]

Your message is fun AND you're right

I think that the proposal of the creator is only talking about neighbor cultures, or, I agree, it will be a mess !
From here, the names can be created with local languages, name of duchies...there are lots of sources of inspiration

 

[AndrejK]

Culture conversion, generation and fusion has been mentioned many times and it is great to keep the subject active but the difficulties are huge. Forget the coding, that's easy, the real problem is the name list - what names do you put in the list and how do you generate them ? In essence you have to imagine what a new say Scottish Oultrejourdainian or Italian Abyssinian fusion language would sound like and you can't do that without a lot of linguistic manipulation and a lot of guesswork. Would you have guessed that a fusion of Aethelbalds, Ecgfriths and Leofrics with Thierry's, Guilliams and Hrolfs would produce Henrys, Edwards and Stephens ?

I suppose if you were happy with your own linguistic fusion assumptions then yes it would be fine, but now we get back to the coding - the ability is not there (yet) and I don't think that they will be adding it any time soon.

Regarding the names if you look into English its not that big of of a problem. As I look into it, most common English names (William, Henry, Richard, Edward ) are actually of Norman origin, just being adapted to English phonetics. Then ypu have the standard Christian names like John, Peter, Paul , James to name a few.

So the rule would be : take the 70% of the most popular culture-specific names from the prestige culture (e.g. Norman) and add 30% of the most popular names of the substratum culture (e.g. Angli-Saxon). Also you have some names spread due to the dominant religion (Catholics with John , Peters etc, Orthodox with Constantines, Michael, Sunnis with Muhammads and Abdulahs etc)

Italian Abessynian? Well I guess you could call it Eritrean. It would be spoken in Latin script, and I believe it still would be mostly Amharic-based.

Scottish in Outrejordain? Well using google translate I would call it Taobhthalliòrdanian, or just Taobiòrdanian.
Names:Arabized Gaelic ones: Alasdair could become Alasdar, Brian become Beraan , Calum becoming Qolam, Duncadh being Donqan., Tamhas becomung Tamhash, Tormod becoming Tourmudh... you get the idea. Arabic ibn is being displaced by Scottish gaelic Mac, which is Arabized into meq/mag

 

[Fire6all]

Nothing to had but my support : I agree

 

[Thure]

Regarding the names if you look into English its not that big of of a problem. As I look into it, most common English names (William, Henry, Richard, Edward ) are actually of Norman origin, just being adapted to English phonetics. Then ypu have the standard Christian names like John, Peter, Paul , James to name a few.

So the rule would be : take the 70% of the most popular culture-specific names from the prestige culture (e.g. Norman) and add 30% of the most popular names of the substratum culture (e.g. Angli-Saxon). Also you have some names spread due to the dominant religion (Catholics with John , Peters etc, Orthodox with Constantines, Michael, Sunnis with Muhammads and Abdulahs etc)

Italian Abessynian? Well I guess you could call it Eritrean. It would be spoken in Latin script, and I believe it still would be mostly Amharic-based.

Scottish in Outrejordain? Well using google translate I would call it Taobhthalliòrdanian, or just Taobiòrdanian.
Names:Arabized Gaelic ones: Alasdair could become Alasdar, Brian become Beraan , Calum becoming Qolam, Duncadh being Donqan., Tamhas becomung Tamhash, Tormod becoming Tourmudh... you get the idea. Arabic ibn is being displaced by Scottish gaelic Mac, which is Arabized into meq/mag

And how would a DYNAMIC system know that Duncadh would be Donqan?

 

[Fire6all]

It already knows it. The name of the provinces are changed when the controller changes

 

[Thure]

It already knows it. The name of the provinces are changed when the controller changes

This are predetermined names coded in the .txt. Provinces like Rome have this:

italian = Roma
arabic = Rum
english = Rome
They are not dynamically created
The game can't know that Duncadh in Arabic would be Dunqan with dynamic new cultures.

 

[Fire6all]

Ok, my bad

However, I think that we are here to talk about ideas and suggestions, not about coding. This is the problem of Paradox

 

[AndrejK]

Well I think we could tell the AI that if the substratum is Arabic, and it sees "ca" in the name it automatically changes it into "qa" .
If the substratum is Anglo-Saxon an it sees "gu" it automatically changes it into "w".

So you don't need to code a Scottish-Levantine culture.
All you need is to tell how to "Anglicize" "Arabize" "Hellenize" names of the prestige superstratum culture

 

[Fire6all]

Good idea, I agree

 

[Thure]

Well I think we could tell the AI that if the substratum is Arabic, and it sees "ca" in the name it automatically changes it into "qa" .
If the substratum is Anglo-Saxon an it sees "gu" it automatically changes it into "w".

So you don't need to code a Scottish-Levantine culture.
All you need is to tell how to "Anglicize" "Arabize" "Hellenize" names of the prestige superstratum culture

'Just'... you know how strange the English language can be for exemple? Hugh and Humphrey for exemple have a completelly different Hu.
What you're asking for is a GIANT task. And at the end it would result in stranges names which doesn't sound authentic at all. The Arabic form uf Salomon is Sulayman.... how exactly do you want things like this to work dynamically? Also you would need it for ALL languages.
You need it for Scottish > Arabic, Italian > Arabic, German > Arabic, Anglo-Saxon > Arabic, Polish > Arabic, Arabic > Catalan, Han Chinese > Arabic, Han Chinese > Basque, Basque > Scottish etc. etc.

 

[Fire6all]

Ok, ok. So why not just creating new names ? The names "English", "french" "latin", "hispanic", all has a root whichnas been created one time...

 

[AndrejK]

I meant you don't need to create rules Scottish ->Arabic, German-> Arabic etc.
I propose just to create rules how each culture adapts names from any random culture .
So I am just proposing that we create rules how to adapt any name (we don't care which culture it is from) to each specific substratum culture.

 

[AndrejK]

I meant you don't need to create rules Scottish ->Arabic, German-> Arabic etc.
I propose just to create rules how each culture adapts names from any random culture .
So I am just proposing that we create rules how to adapt any name (we don't care which culture it is from) to each specific substratum culture.

 

[AndrejK]

I meant you don't need to create rules Scottish ->Arabic, German-> Arabic etc.
I propose just to create rules how each culture adapts names from any random culture .
So I am just proposing that we create rules how to adapt any name (we don't care which culture it is from) to each specific substratum culture.

 

[Thure]

I meant you don't need to create rules Scottish ->Arabic, German-> Arabic etc.
I propose just to create rules how each culture adapts names from any random culture .
So I am just proposing that we create rules how to adapt any name (we don't care which culture it is from) to each specific substratum culture.

But English and Scottish and German have completelly different sounds! That makes absolutelly no sense. A german Z is different from an English one. Why should the Arabs make the same sound of it? In English Hu- is spoken as hyu. In German it would be Hu-. Also the Qu-. In Spanish Que- would be Ke- in German Kwe-... etc etc. You can't make an Arabization rule for all languages which works the same. That would result in nonsense.

 

[BrokenSky]

• The naming of the new culture:
  • If over 50% of all duchies within a kingdom are in the process of this cultural merger, then it will be named after the kingdom. Should already a culture be so named, the name will be based after the duchy where the process emerges first.
  • Otherwise the name of the new culture will be after the duchy where this process emerges first.

What about Norman, for example, though? IRL Norman is originally from North-man or Norseman. Normandy is named after the Normans. If your suggestion were implemented as is, Norman would be called something like Neustrian, because that's the name in the Charlemagne start. I think the naming system could probably do with a little more thought. In general though this suggestion would be really cool, especially if the kinks could be worked out.

This are predetermined names coded in the .txt. Provinces like Rome have this:

italian = Roma
arabic = Rum
english = Rome
They are not dynamically created
The game can't know that Duncadh in Arabic would be Dunqan with dynamic new cultures.

Presumably the new cultures would still exist within existing culture groups? Unless the groups could also split apart. You could have localised province names based off culture group instead of culture and retain most of this effect. If culture groups can split it could be based off parent culture group (so Latin -> French would use Italian sounding names; not perfect obviously but better than nothing).

 

[Fire6all]

You didn't reed everything the author proposes fusions AND splitting