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

 

[BrokenSky]

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

Who are you replying to? I don't understand how this comment applies to either my post or the post above it?

 

[Fire6all]

You said that the system needs culture splits too, and don't worry it as been mentioned by the author

 

[AndrejK]

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.

I do understand what is the issue here. My proposal was to look for the simplest solution possible, a way of dealing with althist scenarios. A more accurate way of using this mechanism is to have every name transcribed into IPA and the IPA will be "Anglicized" "Polonized" "Magyarized" etc. How to we determine the orthography? According to the orthography of the prestige , superimposed culture?

Or you could have lists for :

• Anglosaxon superimposed on Scottish.
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Welsh
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Irish
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Breton
• Welsh superimposed on Breton
• Welsh superimposed on Irish
• Welsh superimposed on Scottish
• Welsh superimposed on Anglosaxon
• Scottish superimposed on Anglosaxpn
• Scottish superimposed on Irish
• Scottish superimposed on Welsh
• Irish superimposed on Welsh
• Irish superimposed on Scottish
• Norman superimposed on Anglosaxon
• Norman superimposed on Scottish
• Norman superimposed on Irish
• Danish superimposed on Anglosaxon.... and we have still not left the British isles in 1066.

There are tons of combinations. That is not the way to go. Maybe just have all names transcribed to IPA before, but then how do you tell the new culture how to spell "ch" as in cheese : tsch? Tch? Ch? Ci?

 

[Fire6all]

I do understand what is the issue here. My proposal was to look for the simplest solution possible, a way of dealing with althist scenarios. A more accurate way of using this mechanism is to have every name transcribed into IPA and the IPA will be "Anglicized" "Polonized" "Magyarized" etc. How to we determine the orthography? According to the orthography of the prestige , superimposed culture?

Or you could have lists for :

• Anglosaxon superimposed on Scottish.
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Welsh
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Irish
• Anglosaxon superimposed on Breton
• Welsh superimposed on Breton
• Welsh superimposed on Irish
• Welsh superimposed on Scottish
• Welsh superimposed on Anglosaxon
• Scottish superimposed on Anglosaxpn
• Scottish superimposed on Irish
• Scottish superimposed on Welsh
• Irish superimposed on Welsh
• Irish superimposed on Scottish
• Norman superimposed on Anglosaxon
• Norman superimposed on Scottish
• Norman superimposed on Irish
• Danish superimposed on Anglosaxon.... and we have still not left the British isles in 1066.

There are tons of combinations. That is not the way to go. Maybe just have all names transcribed to IPA before, but then how do you tell the new culture how to spell "ch" as in cheese : tsch? Tch? Ch? Ci?

I think that your idea is impossible too. The proposal of the author talks about creation of new cultures by fusion. So you can't predict what will exists.
Seriously, I think that the debate is "Is it a good idea ?", not "Will paradox be able to do it ?". I think that Paradox is good enough in game programming...

 

[BrokenSky]

You said that the system needs culture splits too, and don't worry it as been mentioned by the author

I said that the way that new cultures get names ought to be given a little more thought and that new cultures could do dynamic names based on culture group, or (if culture groups were also able to split) based on original culture group? I know the suggestion already had culture splits..?

On balance I guess that it might be worth just defaulting to the original namelists and placenames of the super-imposing culture for generic culture-merges and the splitting culture for splits?

 

[Rags17]

I think that what a number of you are working towards is a set of linguistic transforms for various cultures. This is just making stuff up, but an example for Anglo-Saxon might be "a" gets turned into "ae", "t" gets turned into "th" or whatever. This would be far (vary far) from perfect but it could work.

Attached is an Excel spreadsheet that I made up to create "Stone Age" versions of all of the on map province names for my total conversion mod "The Dawn of Civilization". Note that the spreadsheet applies a number of transforms in sequence (which could be changed), the final results were then copied across to the mod's localization file. You could use this for any set of "standard names", or you could use this as a tool to set up the standard transforms for any of the in game cultures - the aforementioned "Scots-Abyssinian" might use 4-5 standard transforms then apply these to an equal mix of Scottish and Abyssinian names.

Just spitballing here

 

[Fire6all]

A tremendous work but I didn't understand why this sheet helps the proposal higher

 

[Rags17]

A tremendous work but I didn't understand why this sheet helps the proposal higher

I attached it to show how a simple set of linguistic transforms can create a seemingly "new" language. IRL we have no idea what transforms would occur if and when a Scots-Abyssinian or Italo-Persian or whatever language arose. If players are willing to squint their eyes a bit though then all I am saying is that it should in theory be possible to add a collection of transforms to each culture along with their name lists so that as and when any two languages merged a new, dynamic set of name lists could be generated, maybe with a new random set of transforms so that any future merger could then be generated.

In real life language itself is a bit of a random walk so we have no idea how and when these transforms would arise, for example the High German consonant shift or the Great English Vowel Shift. At the same time, the functionality simply does not currently exist to add these transforms so the whole exercise is moot anyway !

 

[Coga19000]

My only problem with this is that it assumes that all cultures eventually get assimilated- when in real life many strongholds of cultures remained adamant in occupied zones for centuries. They did get influenced by the occupier's culture, but they remained separate to it. While others did, in fact, successfully merge into a new culture or got fully assimilated. I think the present system, though clanky at best, is good at making cultural shift a slow and at times random chain of events.

 

[Fire6all]

My only problem with this is that it assumes that all cultures eventually get assimilated- when in real life many strongholds of cultures remained adamant in occupied zones for centuries. They did get influenced by the occupier's culture, but they remained separate to it. While others did, in fact, successfully merge into a new culture or got fully assimilated. I think the present system, though clanky at best, is good at making cultural shift a slow and at times random chain of events.

There could be determination of majors and minors cultures to fix this problem

 

[AndrejK]

Not every culture would get assimilated though. If they manage to keep hold of all counties in the duchy, they maintain their cultural integrity