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No Suebi culture in northern Hispania :/
The Suebian Kingdom was annexed in 585 when it was annexed by the Visigoths, and was a strongly vertically structured society where the ruling class kept themselves distinct from the governed and left little trace of their reign in terms of cultural impact. The start date is over 200 years on from this. There shouldn't be a Suebi culture in the area; Paradox are quite right not to include it.

indeed the implementation of suebi was always the weirdest part, in ck2 specially the fact that it was in the german culture group, as crab helemt allued to the impact of the subie directly was minor specially when compared to other Germanic invaders, in general ( and this is my best guess as to what they tried to represent with the inclusion of the suebi culture) was to break the dialectical continuum that existed in the Iberian peninsula give rise to what can only be called "Proto-Old Portuguese" this is of course sketchy since although we due have some textual evidence for early Suebi governance, that would certainly break a dialectic continuum, we have equally as much that that alludes that after awhile suebi governance "relaxed" putting the whole the "suebi unintentionaly created old-portuguese" into doubt

on the topic of suebic contributions to both Portuguese and Galician culture, we have a few place names and names for some agricultural tool, but perhapt the most significant contribution of the suebi was that of property division and consequent life style, in that to this day in both north Portugal and Galizia the so called "Minifudio" a type of small "freemanesque" property dominates

this article (sadly in only Portuguese) goes into greater detail
 
I mean, you need to provide a source for individual examples like that or they're quite hard to discuss. We also don't know the comparative. Maybe it was a monastery in Trapezus and would have treated people from Amisus as equally weird. Maybe it was a monastery predominantly composed of Armenians, who wrote in Greek as the liturgical language but spoke Armenian on a day-to-day basis, unlike their viistor from western Anatolia. What is the extent of the regionality? How would we know where to demark borders?

I think for cultures to be split up in CK2, you want good evidence of a) some of kind of significant political or legal divide, and b) some evidence that this political or legal divide was relatively 'durable' and persisted over long time periods. That isn't true of most of the Byzantine empire at the start date. Internal borders and political affiliations are extremely fluid. Diocletian's divisions didn't survive the period after Justinian. The themes that Heraclius set up were constantly redrawn and redivided. The Armeniacs theme was split into Chaldia and Koloneia and Mesopotomia themes, and the Mesopotomia theme was itself just a reused title of an older theme which didn't even share any of the same territory that had once existed to the south. The key political families in the area were in constant flux.

In our history, of course, the Pontic area was cut-off from much of the rest of the Greek-speaking community by the Turks. Small differences, instead of smoothing out or getting lost in the cultural mishmash that was any medieval polity, ossified, became fixed, became more permanent. Eventually it becomes a conceptually different thing. But that's backwards projecting history.
Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire
Byzantium, The Empire of New Rome
EDIT: There's also the wikipedia page on Byzantine Greeks and on Medieval Greek
 
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Distinsion between Swabian and Bavarian culture in 867 anachronistic (better united as Suebi/Alemannic);

Have to disagree on this one. Bavarian culture was dominant in those regions well before 867 and in terms of language it is not Alemannic nor Suebi.
Changing Swabian to Alemannic however is reasonable.
 
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"Old Portuguese" or Medieval Galician is Galician-Portuguese before Portuguese branched off from it.

Asturleonese is a language and/or language family of very closely-related Asturian and Leonese dialects and/or languages, and has been around since the transition away from Vulgar Latin.
true i'll admit my main reaction against the term is that I thought they where anglicising the Spanish Astur-Leonese rather then use the english language appropriate term (whatever that might have been in my mind) though fair point since it is the term in english and not a improtu anglisization the suggestion of "Galicoportuguese" falls flat, thould i will add that the spilt (i won't enter into discussions of who split from what since there is a degree of politics in that) happend outside of the time frame of the game event if the devs decide to count year zero portugese the 1200's language standardization laws (at that time the language was still called "fala" speeach so not the most elucidative of terms) that's still pushing it since those refroms had only scribal impact during the game timesframe
 
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Please give South Asia some love! I don't think this has been discussed elsewhere, but I find the culture map for India/South Asia to be very disappointing.
Judging from the screenshot from the 1066 culture map, there is a regrettably low number of cultures represented in game for a region that is so rich in terms of cultural and linguistic diversity, while calling a culture "Hindustani" in 1066 is anachronistic and wrong.

Understandably, the game cannot have the level of granularity to realistically portray the level of cultural diversity that South Asia had and still has, and for each culture added it also has to add a full list of localised names for the characters, which adds a lot of work. Also, as it has been mentioned in earlier posts, the lack of a system to represents religious or cultural minorities cannot allow for a fully realistic portrayal in the Middle Ages, especially so for a region with a demography as complex as India. However, representing such a massive region, both in terms of population and geography, with only 14 different cultures, while leaving out important ones such as Bihari, Malayalam or Kashmiri is - to me - quite problematic.

EU4 did actually a very good job in portraying India's diversity by picking enough cultures that the map doesn't feel oversimplistic as the CK3 (and the CK2) maps do, and is pretty much realistic. I would argue that this is the level of granularity the game should aspire to, however judging from the screenshot of the CK3 cultural map mode in other parts of the world, this is maybe too much to ask for, as they don't seem to want to go into too much details. Mapping the spread of languages in ancient South Asia is difficult as multilingualism was and still is a common thing. And of course most of what we know about these languages comes from literary texts produced by and for the upper castes and classes, while we have no idea about the language of the common people, as most of the literature was published in Sanskrit, and then in *some* vernaculars such as Tamil.

If the game does not go to the extent of portraying as many cultures as EU4, I would suggest the following cultures should be added:
  • Kashmiri: speak a Dardic language, a subbranch of the Indo-Aryan language family. The region of Kashmir was a major centre of Buddhism and Hinduism during the time period, home to Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE), a major theologian and philosopher who developed Tantric Shaivism. The region of Kashmir continued to prosper under Muslim rule after 1339 and kept a distinct identity. In the current CK3 culture map, the region of Kashmir seems to be portrayed as Bodpa, a Tibetan culture, which is very wrong as Kashmiris are ethnically closer to Central Asians. Only the region of Ladakh should be Bodpa.
  • Bihari: Bihari culture should be portrayed as culture distinct from "Hindustani" and Bengali. Bihar was historically a political and cultural centre which saw the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism, in a context culturally and linguistically distinct from the Sanskrit-speaking, religiously Brahminical Upper Ganges valley. Pataliputra/Patna was the capital of the Maurya Empire of the Pala kingdoms. While today Hindi is widely spoken in Bihar, local languages such as Maithili or Bhojpuri still retain a strong influence and were at times literary languages too.
  • Malayalam: Malayalam culture could be split from Tamil culture in the area corresponding to today's state of Kerala. Although there is no scientific consensus on that, the Malayalam language is considered to have split from Tamil between the 9th and the 13th century CE. Geographical elements such as the fact that Kerala is cut off from Tamil Nadu by the Western Ghats mountains, and looking West towards the Arabian Sea and not East towards the Gulf of Bengal, are other arguments to advocate for a separate Malayalam culture.
This still leaves out interesting options, like that of portraying Adivasi cultures, that is the culture of indigenous tribes, which were still numerous at this time period and regularly interacted with sanskritised/aryanised polities, adopting mainstream Hinduism while integrating their beliefs in larger religious systems. Playing as an animistic Bhil or Gond tribal ruler of central India surrounded by Hindu or Buddhist kingdoms could make for an interesting experience though!

Finally, the use of "Hindustani" as culture name for the Upper Ganges Valley (today's "Hindi Belt") is - in my opinion - plainly wrong. There was no such thing as a "Hindustani" language or culture in 1066 or 867. First, the name itself comes from Persian and originally designates people who live in Hindustan, that is the land beyond the Indus, irrespective of local differences. This is probably not the name by which people inhabiting the region of Hindustan would have called themselves. Persians and Arabs first used "Hind" or "Hindustan" to unspecifically name the entire subcontinent (at the time of our 867 start). Only after repeated raids and invasions by Turko-Afghans from the 11th century onwards did Hindustan come to designate North India. To come back to the CK3 culture map mode screenshot, it is correct to have this region named Hindustan, but incorrect to speak of a Hindustani culture.
The language that came to be called Hindustani - and today forms the common basis for Hindi and Urdu - only appeared later in the 13th century. Hindustani emerged in the region between Lahore, Agra and Kanpur, with Delhi as its centre, after the region was conquered by Turko-Afghans who founded the Delhi Sultanate. It is a mix of local Indic dialects (khari boli) such as Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, or Dehlvi, with a large number of Persian (the sultans' court language) loanwords, as well as some Arabic and Turkic words. Reflecting this process, the new language was called Rekhta ("mixed" or "scattered") or Urdu (from the same Turkic word "ordu" that gave us the word "horde", meaning "army", as it was the lingua franca spoken by the Sultan's soldiers in his camps). The first ever literary works in Hindustani/Rekhta/Urdu were published by Amir Khusrau (1253 – 1325), who is also credited with systematising the language.

TL;DR, my suggestion is: split Hindustani culture in two:
  • Braj culture, spread over both sides of the Yamuna river in the Upper Ganges valley
  • Awadhi culture: corresponding to the central part of modern Uttar Pradesh, around Lucknow and Faizabad.
However, Hindustani culture could very realistically be represented in game since melting pots are confirmed. After X years under a ruler of Turkic, Afghan or Persian culture, a Braj or Awadhi county could give rise to a Hindustani melting pot culture.
This allows for different gameplay options: either follow the historic route, conquer (North) India as a Turko-Afghan ruler and make Hindustani culture thrive as it did historically; or change the course of history and fend off Muslim invaders as a Braj or Awadhi Hindu king.
 
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true i'll admit my main reaction against the term is that I thought they where anglicising the Spanish Astur-Leonese rather then use the english language appropriate term (whatever that might have been in my mind) though fair point since it is the term in english and not a improtu anglisization the suggestion of "Galicoportuguese" falls flat, thould i will add that the spilt (i won't enter into discussions of who split from what since there is a degree of politics in that) happend outside of the time frame of the game event if the devs decide to count year zero portugese the 1200's language standardization laws (at that time the language was still called "fala" speeach so not the most elucidative of terms) that's still pushing it since those refroms had only scribal impact during the game timesframe
I suppose Galicoportuguese doesn't quite roll off the tongue as much. As for the development of Portuguese as an independent language, I think it should appear when Portugal becomes an independent country, or even if Portugal is the primary title of some ruler.
 
I suppose Galicoportuguese doesn't quite roll off the tongue as much. As for the development of Portuguese as an independent language, I think it should appear when Portugal becomes an independent country, or even if Portugal is the primary title of some ruler.
if the culture only comes into being due to political reasons (such as the creation of a kingdom of Portugal) than that is fine with me, so long as it doesn't just "pop" into existence for no discernible reason.
 
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I think Greek should be split into Pontic (in historical Pontus), Cappadocian (inland Anatolia), and Demotic (Peninsular Greece, the Islands, Ionia, around Constantinople, and Cyprus, basically Classical Greece except Pontus).

Additionally, I also think they should rename the Byzantine culture group to "Romaioi".
Demotic is a modern term which has no sense for the time period covered by the game. "Romaioi" (actually "Rhomaioi") is instead a classical Greek word that is easily translated in the modern languages of the game so to give it the sense of Byzantine Romans: "Romaic" in English, "Romée" in French, "Rhomäer" in German and "Romio" in Spanish; each of these word is distinct from "Roman", or "Romain", "Römer", "Romano" in the other languages.

In the same vein, I don't understand the attempts to rename the Byzantine Empire into weird endonyms such as "Rhomaioi" or "Rhomaion" (respectively the nominative and genitive Greek forms of the plural word "Romans"). If you don't like "Byzantine Empire", which is historically inaccurate but still works, "Romania", "Empire of the Romans" or "Roman Empire" are better alternatives than Rhomaioi/Rhomaion. The word "Romania" can be confused with the modern country; "Rhomania" is not too much better, the other two are confused with the classical version of the Empire - all in all I'd stick to "Byzantine".
 
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Inked6---kultur-2_LI.jpg
Inked1589688513526_LI.jpg
these areas should arguably be slavic... (Rus)
 
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Are you sure it shouldn't be Tocharian in 867 and Uyghur in 1066?

I'd say no, there's clear differences between the Khotanese/Saka and those two, though I would rather the southern Tarim Basin have those cultures than have Sogdian if I had to choose.

Linguistically, Tocharian is an extremely distinct branch of the Indo-European family (to the point it's an obsessive focus of some Neo-Nazi types) and is separate from the Iranian languages (and is only grouped with them in CK2 at least as a matter of convenience), whereas the southern part of the Tarim Basin was dominated by Saka speakers. The Kingdom of Khotan as mentioned earlier was a powerful entity in its own right, with significant cultural and religious influence particularly in the development of Buddhism.

In 1066, I could see the argument that Khotanese/Saka have assimilated by then, but that would only be about half a century after the conquest of Khotan by Muslim Turks so it wasn't that far off time-wise. Wikipedia's article on the Kingdom of Khotan links to a few scholarly articles mentions that the inhabitants of the area were not heavily Turkic speaking yet until the late 11th century. The devs have "Sogdian" at the bottom of the map anyways, so it seems they're going with this interpretation, so it would be nice if the Sogdian was changed to Khotanese/Saka in those areas.


Please give South Asia some love! I don't think this has been discussed elsewhere, but I find the culture map for India/South Asia to be very disappointing.
Judging from the screenshot from the 1066 culture map, there is a regrettably low number of cultures represented in game for a region that is so rich in terms of cultural and linguistic diversity, while calling a culture "Hindustani" in 1066 is anachronistic and wrong.

Understandably, the game cannot have the level of granularity to realistically portray the level of cultural diversity that South Asia had and still has, and for each culture added it also has to add a full list of localised names for the characters, which adds a lot of work. Also, as it has been mentioned in earlier posts, the lack of a system to represents religious or cultural minorities cannot allow for a fully realistic portrayal in the Middle Ages, especially so for a region with a demography as complex as India. However, representing such a massive region, both in terms of population and geography, with only 14 different cultures, while leaving out important ones such as Bihari, Malayalam or Kashmiri is - to me - quite problematic.

EU4 did actually a very good job in portraying India's diversity by picking enough cultures that the map doesn't feel oversimplistic as the CK3 (and the CK2) maps do, and is pretty much realistic. I would argue that this is the level of granularity the game should aspire to, however judging from the screenshot of the CK3 cultural map mode in other parts of the world, this is maybe too much to ask for, as they don't seem to want to go into too much details. Mapping the spread of languages in ancient South Asia is difficult as multilingualism was and still is a common thing. And of course most of what we know about these languages comes from literary texts produced by and for the upper castes and classes, while we have no idea about the language of the common people, as most of the literature was published in Sanskrit, and then in *some* vernaculars such as Tamil.

If the game does not go to the extent of portraying as many cultures as EU4, I would suggest the following cultures should be added:
  • Kashmiri: speak a Dardic language, a subbranch of the Indo-Aryan language family. The region of Kashmir was a major centre of Buddhism and Hinduism during the time period, home to Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1020 CE), a major theologian and philosopher who developed Tantric Shaivism. The region of Kashmir continued to prosper under Muslim rule after 1339 and kept a distinct identity. In the current CK3 culture map, the region of Kashmir seems to be portrayed as Bodpa, a Tibetan culture, which is very wrong as Kashmiris are ethnically closer to Central Asians. Only the region of Ladakh should be Bodpa.
  • Bihari: Bihari culture should be portrayed as culture distinct from "Hindustani" and Bengali. Bihar was historically a political and cultural centre which saw the emergence of Jainism and Buddhism, in a context culturally and linguistically distinct from the Sanskrit-speaking, religiously Brahminical Upper Ganges valley. Pataliputra/Patna was the capital of the Maurya Empire of the Pala kingdoms. While today Hindi is widely spoken in Bihar, local languages such as Maithili or Bhojpuri still retain a strong influence and were at times literary languages too.
  • Malayalam: Malayalam culture could be split from Tamil culture in the area corresponding to today's state of Kerala. Although there is no scientific consensus on that, the Malayalam language is considered to have split from Tamil between the 9th and the 13th century CE. Geographical elements such as the fact that Kerala is cut off from Tamil Nadu by the Western Ghats mountains, and looking West towards the Arabian Sea and not East towards the Gulf of Bengal, are other arguments to advocate for a separate Malayalam culture.
This still leaves out interesting options, like that of portraying Adivasi cultures, that is the culture of indigenous tribes, which were still numerous at this time period and regularly interacted with sanskritised/aryanised polities, adopting mainstream Hinduism while integrating their beliefs in larger religious systems. Playing as an animistic Bhil or Gond tribal ruler of central India surrounded by Hindu or Buddhist kingdoms could make for an interesting experience though!

Finally, the use of "Hindustani" as culture name for the Upper Ganges Valley (today's "Hindi Belt") is - in my opinion - plainly wrong. There was no such thing as a "Hindustani" language or culture in 1066 or 867. First, the name itself comes from Persian and originally designates people who live in Hindustan, that is the land beyond the Indus, irrespective of local differences. This is probably not the name by which people inhabiting the region of Hindustan would have called themselves. Persians and Arabs first used "Hind" or "Hindustan" to unspecifically name the entire subcontinent (at the time of our 867 start). Only after repeated raids and invasions by Turko-Afghans from the 11th century onwards did Hindustan come to designate North India. To come back to the CK3 culture map mode screenshot, it is correct to have this region named Hindustan, but incorrect to speak of a Hindustani culture.
The language that came to be called Hindustani - and today forms the common basis for Hindi and Urdu - only appeared later in the 13th century. Hindustani emerged in the region between Lahore, Agra and Kanpur, with Delhi as its centre, after the region was conquered by Turko-Afghans who founded the Delhi Sultanate. It is a mix of local Indic dialects (khari boli) such as Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, or Dehlvi, with a large number of Persian (the sultans' court language) loanwords, as well as some Arabic and Turkic words. Reflecting this process, the new language was called Rekhta ("mixed" or "scattered") or Urdu (from the same Turkic word "ordu" that gave us the word "horde", meaning "army", as it was the lingua franca spoken by the Sultan's soldiers in his camps). The first ever literary works in Hindustani/Rekhta/Urdu were published by Amir Khusrau (1253 – 1325), who is also credited with systematising the language.

TL;DR, my suggestion is: split Hindustani culture in two:
  • Braj culture, spread over both sides of the Yamuna river in the Upper Ganges valley
  • Awadhi culture: corresponding to the central part of modern Uttar Pradesh, around Lucknow and Faizabad.
However, Hindustani culture could very realistically be represented in game since melting pots are confirmed. After X years under a ruler of Turkic, Afghan or Persian culture, a Braj or Awadhi county could give rise to a Hindustani melting pot culture.
This allows for different gameplay options: either follow the historic route, conquer (North) India as a Turko-Afghan ruler and make Hindustani culture thrive as it did historically; or change the course of history, and fend off the Muslim invader as a Braj or Awadhi Hindu king.

Kashimiri is actually a culture in the game, it's hard to see but if you zoom in on the 1066 map in the first post, it's there! I was quite sad they weren't added in CK2, being fascinated with the Dardic peoples myself (and as someone who believes the best way to make Zunism semi-plausible is to use it as a catch-all for the various pagan faiths of various peoples of the region, including the Dards). Personally I'd even add in some sort of "Pamiri" culture or what not to the northernmost parts of where Kashmiri currently is, but I understand if that might be too obscure and granular for some (while not being adequate for others either, given it'd be a blob culture of various peoples around the Parmi mountains area).

I agree with your other suggestions though. Interesting point with the Hindustani culture too, and making it a melting pot.

Definitely the Adivasi cultures should be in - would you say a single culture works?
 
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Kashimiri is actually a culture in the game, it's hard to see but if you zoom in on the 1066 map in the first post, it's there! I was quite sad they weren't added in CK2, being fascinated with the Dardic peoples myself (and as someone who believes the best way to make Zunism semi-plausible is to use it as a catch-all for the various pagan faiths of various peoples of the region, including the Dards).

Thanks for pointing this out, I couldn't zoom enough. And I second your dream of crafting a mighty Dardic Zunist empire coming from the remotes valleys of Kafiristan or Chitral!

Definitely the Adivasi cultures should be in - would you say a single culture works?

Meh, that would be a rather crude way of doing it: Adivasi is an umbrella term for a large number of tribal peoples, speaking a wide array of languages belonging to very different language families: Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic, etc. They are spread on the subcontinent from Balochistan to Assam and from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka, with vast cultural differences and little to no contact between faraway tribes. However, as the alleged original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, they should be portrayed somehow as they played an important role. The history of India in the first millenium CE is often that of the gradual "civilisation" of the land, and its gradual deforestation to make way for agricultural societes: interactions between animistic hunter-gatherer tribes and settled urban Brahminical kings (and later Muslim rulers) were at times violent with conflicts over land and resources, but also led to the integration of tribal deities into the Hindu pantheon, with tribes also peacefully leaving the forest to live a settled life.
The best way to portray them in game would be in my opinion to have only one or two Adivasi cultures represented, for instance the Gond or the Santhal cultures, which today form the biggest Adivasi groups in India (7.4 million people and 4.2 million respectively). One could imagine having a few independent tribal counts in Central India belonging to those cultures, and there should be more of them in the 867 start than in 1066.
 
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Wait why did they delete Saka?
 
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I just want to add that "Occitan" is a relatively recent word, the appropriate ethnonym that was used during the middle ages by both catalans and occitans was "lemosin". As in many Romance languages, it was named after the most prominent region speaking that language ; in this case, Lemosin (modern Limousin).
Occitan refers to Lemosin spoken in France (but not in Catalunya), and often it even refers to occitan as a dialect different from catalan.

Btw the northern limits of that language and culture are hard to define, because there are no clear borders (instead there was a dialect continuum. Which doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a distinct Lemosin culture, but there would probably be people saying that it's the wrong place. But they will probably not be completely right, as it is very hard to have a definitive answer to that question. In reality, the extent of the Lemosin culture northwards depended a lot of the contemporary glory and fame of rulers. It would be tempting to use the borders from the golden age of the "langue d'oc", (11th - 13th centuries), but I'm not certain it would be a good idea.
 
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Catalan and Occitan should definitely be in the same culture group, as they were essentially the same language in this time period. I think Dutch and Franconian/Saxon should be in the same culture group as well, since the distinction between the Dutch and Low Germans was less defined.
 
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I am not fond of the Butr/Branes distinction within the Berber group. The Butr/Branes is a rather inconsistent distinction made by Arab historians based on, to make it short, two criteria:
- the way of life, Butr Berbers being essentially nomads while Branes were settled Berbers.
- the fact that they rallied quickly or not the Arabs during the Arab conquest, Butr Berbers from Libya, the Aures (Eastern Algeria) and Miknassa (Central Morocco) being among the first Berber groups to convert to Islam and to join the Muslim army (especially during the conquest of Spain) while Branes only did it a bit later and converted gradually.

Berber themselves much preferred a tripartite/quadripartite distinction between Masmuda (mainly Morocco), Sanhaja (mainly Sahara and large part and current Algeria. Distinctive feature: women had higher social status and some Sanhaja groups were even matrilinear, like modern Tuaregs), Zenata (who were indeed mainly nomads, but some of them settled in Libya, Southern Tunisia, the Aures Mountains and later on in the Rif) and Huwwara, who were kin to the Zenata. Linguistics also attest that the Zenata/Sanhaja/Masmuda classification is more relevant, although not flawless.
 
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Thanks for pointing this out, I couldn't zoom enough. And I second your dream of crafting a mighty Dardic Zunist empire coming from the remotes valleys of Kafiristan or Chitral!



Meh, that would be a rather crude way of doing it: Adivasi is an umbrella term for a large number of tribal peoples, speaking a wide array of languages belonging to very different language families: Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic, etc. They are spread on the subcontinent from Balochistan to Assam and from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka, with vast cultural differences and little to no contact between faraway tribes. However, as the alleged original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, they should be portrayed somehow as they played an important role. The history of India in the first millenium CE is often that of the gradual "civilisation" of the land, and its gradual deforestation to make way for agricultural societes: interactions between animistic hunter-gatherer tribes and settled urban Brahminical kings (and later Muslim rulers) were at times violent with conflicts over land and resources, but also led to the integration of tribal deities into the Hindu pantheon, with tribes also peacefully leaving the forest to live a settled life.
The best way to portray them in game would be in my opinion to have only one or two Adivasi cultures represented, for instance the Gond or the Santhal cultures, which today form the biggest Adivasi groups in India (7.4 million people and 4.2 million respectively). One could imagine having a few independent tribal counts in Central India belonging to those cultures, and there should be more of them in the 867 start than in 1066.

Ideally I'd also put in all those "tiny" little cultures in like the Kalash, Hunza, etc., but I figure the area they cover is too small in the Crusader Kings map to warrant their inclusion at least in the vanilla game.

As for the Adivasi, that's a good point. This would also justify adding in an Indian "pagan" religion for some variety. (I believe we might have one or two already, but not sure which off the top of my head)


Wait why did they delete Saka?

It appears CK3 does not have some of the later cultural additions/fixes of CK2, such as the addition of the Carantanians, Dalmatians, etc. My guess is that since the development of CK3 started before some of the later CK2 expansions were released, this explains why some of these later culture changes were not carried over including the inclusion of the Saka, while other new changes exist (like the addition of the Cumbrians and Yemenis).

Since it might be too late to add in new cultures at this point, I hope to badger the devs with making regular threads in the future suggestions subforum about this haha.
 
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Since it might be too late to add in new cultures at this point, I hope to badger the devs with making regular threads in the future suggestions subforum about this haha.

I wonder if new cultures might be included in flavor packs (or rather, associated free patches). Some of them seem like they wouldn't be prime targets for a full DLC expansion but would go nicely with new cultural clothing options etc.
 
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It appears CK3 does not have some of the later cultural additions/fixes of CK2, such as the addition of the Carantanians, Dalmatians, etc. My guess is that since the development of CK3 started before some of the later CK2 expansions were released, this explains why some of these later culture changes were not carried over including the inclusion of the Saka, while other new changes exist (like the addition of the Cumbrians and Yemenis).
But Saka wasn't a late addition. The other ones missing were added in 3.0, but Saka has been there since the Tarim Basin was added, which is especially jarring since Tocharian is still there.
 
I wonder if new cultures might be included in flavor packs (or rather, associated free patches). Some of them seem like they wouldn't be prime targets for a full DLC expansion but would go nicely with new cultural clothing options etc.

I assume it would be similar to CK2, new DLC (could be just a clothing pack or a big imperial focus DLC), Carantanian, Saka, Dalmatian and Frisian will be added in the patch for everybody in their respective regions.
 
I wonder if new cultures might be included in flavor packs (or rather, associated free patches). Some of them seem like they wouldn't be prime targets for a full DLC expansion but would go nicely with new cultural clothing options etc.

I agree with @Tschobo here, it will probably be like CK2. In past CK2 expansions the cultures were always added in the free patches. However, like you suggest, they might be added together with the appropriate flavor pack (so for instance Dalmatian would go with the Byzantine flavor pack, etc).

But Saka wasn't a late addition. The other ones missing were added in 3.0, but Saka has been there since the Tarim Basin was added, which is especially jarring since Tocharian is still there.

When the Tarim Basin was originally added in Horse Lords in 2015, the Sogdians were the ones occupying the Saka/Khotanese territory. If you recall, at the time the provinces in the region were much bigger blobs too.

I was one of a few people to raise concerns about this at the time, and I remember this issue very well too because (and if you may allow me to toot my horn a bit) I recall in 2017 that I somehow provided the devs with the namelist for the Khotanese/Saka, which I had compiled for my own personal use.

They were later added with Jade Dragon in late 2017 and indirectly revealed with the 69th dev diary about the map changes with Tibet and Central Asia. By then I presume development of CK3 was fully under way.

huge digression but I think it's interesting seeing how CK2 developed over time in this regard. But either way the Saka/Khotanese definitely need to be back.
 
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