Flipping the way Accepted cultures work?

[AmbroStoics]

Since the topic of culture conversion comes up a lot, but it appears that indivudual solutions always have some sort of caveat. I thought maybe we were going at this the wrong way. Don't change the way conversions work, change what we use them for.

One of the current problems is, that acquiring new territories leads to losing accepted cultures and converting more territories. This leads to all sors of sillyness, such as Austrian culture in the Netherlands, etc, which is not only ahistorical (less of a problem in EU) but also irreparable for the entire game. Small cultures with low BT provinces stand no chance of surviving the game (Sami cultures, South Slavic cultures, etc). Since in the timescale of EUIV nationalism was not a major issue, people of different cultures had no problem calling a ruler of foreign origins their home, in fact religion was a much more important issue.

What I suggest is to completely flip how accepted cultures work. Instead of checking whether a culture*BT is over % of your country (which shows their economic power within the state) it should check whether the provinces of X culture*BT is over % of the number of provinces of that culture*BT.

For example, Albanaian has only one province, so in the old system it is almost NEVER an accepted culture in a foreign country. However in the new system since you own 100% of Albanian provinces, it will automatically become an accepted culture once it is cored, letting Albanian survive the game, rather than be wiped in in the first few decades and replaced with Turkish.

This would be historical as well. If you look at the Austrian Empire which was a wash of dozens of cultures (Austrian, Italian, Slovak, Slovene, Czeczh, Silesian, Polish, German, Hungraian, Serb, Croatian, Romanian) and it flourished until the rise of nationalism towards the middle of the 19th century.

Of course, primary and "same culture group" would be kept as well, so that a German OPM would still not get non-accepted penalties for taking on its neighboring German states. But if Liege were to take a Flemish province, it'd not get it as an accepted culture leading the Flemish to be more likely to overthrow their Walloon oppressors.

Also, some tweaks to AI bahviour can be added, so that they will always try to convert native cultures regardless of their accepted status, for the sake of colonial nations, so that they are not dotted with 1 province indian cultures.

Thoughts?

 

[Incompetent]

This would make it a bit too easy to get accepted culture in the typical 'blob everywhere' game that people play. A big blob would end up with a huge, solid zone of cultural acceptance in the middle and only a relatively insignificant area of non-accepted cultures on the fringes.

 

[BFTeixeira]

I'm sorry, but i don't like that system. Making a culture being accepted or not, depending on how many provinces of that culture you don't control, doens't add up to me.
As long as EU4 works under the rule of only 1 culture per province, we're always going to have problems.
I don't mind provinces flipping cultures or at least having more than 1 culture heavily represented, like in Vic2. I think that one system should be implemented that better represents attempts to flip a province's culture. As an example, the Ottomans heavily colonized west of Constantinople to control those lands. So, maybe it should work like a accumulator, that the longer a province stays in the possession of a nation, the greater the influence of it's primary culture in that province. Maybe you could accelerate that process by simulating the colonization of the province by subtracting 1 BT of a neighbouring province that has your primary culture, in exchange of +20% of representation of that culture in that province.
But that can't be done with the current mechanics of the game, so maybe in EU5 this can be implemented...

 

[AmbroStoics]

This would make it a bit too easy to get accepted culture in the typical 'blob everywhere' game that people play. A big blob would end up with a huge, solid zone of cultural acceptance in the middle and only a relatively insignificant area of non-accepted cultures on the fringes.

Well currently blobs will just convert minor cultures anyway, leading to core loss for nations of that type. So after a 200 years of play you can't have Hainaut released, because Austrian culture deteriorates their cores. Which to me is a bigger problem, because if I want to weaken a blob whose provinces I do not want I would have a better deal releaseing nations. As it stands, I'd rather keep the integrity of cultures than remove the tinyist speedbump of blobs (I mean really, if the biggest problem you can throw at blob is that it has a few unaccpeted culture provinces, then we might as well just call it a day).

The fact that you cannot counter early blob cultural expansion is a much bigger problem IMHO. England converting Aquitaine to English, Austria converting the Netherlands, the Baltic and Balkan cultures being wiped out. Then if you are a late comer you cannot convert them back, unless you wipe out their entire nation. If you want to halt blob progress than add an X% coring malus over a certain number of provinces.

I'm sorry, but i don't like that system. Making a culture being accepted or not, depending on how many provinces of that culture you don't control, doens't add up to me.
As long as EU4 works under the rule of only 1 culture per province, we're always going to have problems.
I don't mind provinces flipping cultures or at least having more than 1 culture heavily represented, like in Vic2. I think that one system should be implemented that better represents attempts to flip a province's culture. As an example, the Ottomans heavily colonized west of Constantinople to control those lands. So, maybe it should work like a accumulator, that the longer a province stays in the possession of a nation, the greater the influence of it's primary culture in that province. Maybe you could accelerate that process by simulating the colonization of the province by subtracting 1 BT of a neighbouring province that has your primary culture, in exchange of +20% of representation of that culture in that province.
But that can't be done with the current mechanics of the game, so maybe in EU5 this can be implemented...

This would end with a bunch of 1BT provinces in the middle of your empire, as you expand outwards and reallocate tax. I'd rather make a country choose more carefully what it wants converted, like having to assign a colonist in a province. That way you remove the possibility of early conversion because most nations won't have colonists for a few hundred years. Then the curretn ieas can be reworked, so that a colonist is addedd to say the Influence branch, so you don't have to take Exploration or Expansion to convert provinces.