I'm interested in mechanical balance over sentimental fluff - these are really two separate issues, and I'm only interested in one of them, sorries
Great demo. Too bad culture is a joke
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I'm interested in mechanical balance over sentimental fluff - these are really two separate issues, and I'm only interested in one of them, sorries
well, in multiplayer you may have to conserve points for ideas and tech, but yes it seems rather easy
I get the point a lot of people are making, which is that culture conversions aren't worthwhile; there are better things to do with your monarch points than convert cultures. Having said that though, I think the OP's point still stands, which is that regardless of whether or not it is worth while, it really shouldn't be possible. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of any examples in the EU time frame in which there was a large scale conversion of an unrelated culture, with the exception of the Anatolian Greeks (who weren't really converted, but were expelled, although that would be the same in game terms), and New World cultures. In the V2 time frame, though,the French made an active attempt to encourage French settlement of Algeria, and never got further than 10% European in that country, of which Europeans only formed a majority in the Algiers and Oran areas. Unless the game wants to include borderline genocide tactics of eviction (which, even then, only really work if the colonizing country has a much larger population than the victims, unlike Portugal and Morocco), this should really only be possible in special circumstances.
I guess if the game WAS willing to simulate those tactics, it should incorporate an additional factor in calculating colonization costs, which is the population of the target province relative to the total population of primary culture populations; this would prevent countries from assimilating colonies more populous than themselves, which is very unrealistic and has never really occurred.
Prussians use to be a Baltic people but became Germanic.
Frankly the whole idea the Greeks didn't assimilate but were expelled is an unproveable theory. The ottoman census records were broken down by religion not culture. So if you were Greek or Armenian who converted there is no record that states you are a Sunni Greek/Sunni Armenian only that you are Sunni. So while its easy to say the Christians in an area are not going to be Turks you can't conversely assume that Sunnis in a province are just Turks. The idea that over the centuries large numbers of ethnic Greeks and Armenians did not assimilate just doesn't seem plausable in the age before nationalism. The petty and stupid nationalism that arises on the topic simply clouds the issue. In fact most of the die hard upset of this feature in the game I suspect is a direct result of nationalism.
Southern Spain. Convert or be expelled was an effective tool.
Steppes of European Russia had VAST tracks of land changed yet players ignore this because it doesn't fit the narrative of it didn't happen much. Yet with Russian you can see how with the current system you can get a very historical Russian situation. Poor navy, Poor trade, not all that great in technology. Why? Because the motherland spent so much time converting provinces to Russian.
There are enough examples of it happening that its not without reason to see it in the game. The penalty for doing so is already factored in to the MP cost you don't need any more.
And as I have stated about a 1/2 a dozen times. The act of flipping a culture isn't after x amount of time the entire or 50%+1 of the population suddenly changes their language, customs and beliefs. It simply represents a point when the ruling culture is accepted or at least no longer looked on as unwashed barbarians invading their homes. The actual process of cultural assimilation is ongoing and continues for as long as you own the province. I have also pointed out that the act of coring is going to cause cultural influence upon the population and proselytizing is not done in a cultural void. You are going to again influence a province culture when you convert them. I mean its no accident these are prereqs for culture flipping. This cultural influence isn't only started when you press the change culture button it happens much sooner.
If you spend vast amounts of MP on culture change it costs you. Again I have no problem with people making choices that are not historical because the whole fraking point of playing EU4 is to change history. The actual cost of flipping cultures provinces will create its own built in limitation on both the player and the AI. You can't core as many province when you flip culture you can't religiously convert as many provinces when you flip cultures so this actually directly slows down your ability to acquire territory. It also impacts your ability to make a favourable peace because peace treaties cost diplomatic points.
This is probably the best solution, and I wonder why more aren't buying it...
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I think because then the thread becomes a "Culture changing in North Africa needs tweaking," not "Culture is a joke" thread. But that doesn't fit the narrative of what many people want, the don't want their cultures to be changed because of nationalism. "Can't have those nasty Turks turning the Balkans Sunni green and making my people turks." That's the underlying narrative that appears to be at the heart of this. Its why the OP ignored any sort of post that directed him to the fact that provinces in Europe cost significantly more. And why those totally opposed to the idea also seem to ignore the fact that changing culture isn't free. One of two provinces isn't a big deal but do that for a dozen or two dozen provinces and its a huge drain on MP points.
They ignore it because that would be an example of widespread colonization of land that was underpopulated while assimilation of the local populations was more a 19th and 20th century thing, to the extent that it partially happened. So yeah, great historical simulation of events as they did not happen.
Reading on Paradox-boards is - without irony - worthwhile. I like the fact that most of the times a discussion about gameplay turns into a historical meta-debate
I disagree. The population recognizing your legitimacy does not mean they're going to be considered of your culture. Getting your claims accepted is making a core, that's all.
Systematic intentional assimilation is more something that happened when people actually had the motivation and the means to do so. Motivation by the growing importance of nationalist ideas, the means by increasing grip of the state on education and cultural life. Before the modern period monarchs were mostly just concerned with you paying your taxes and worshipping the right god, and if that was okay you could wear all the silly clothes and speak all the goobledygook you wanted while tilling your field. So it really only belongs in the latter half of the game: it should be very hard/expensive at the beginning of the timeline, with the cost dropping gradually as your diplomacy and/or administration tech level increases.
Untargeted assimilation, like the Ottomans or Spain assimilating their conquests near their heartland could happen when the attitudes and policies are very harsh towards non-conforming cultures. We used to have the narrowminded slider to represent that, but too bad that's gone. Perhaps conversion in the first decades should flip culture as well, since religion still had a strong grip on the daily life, and cultural identity separate from religion only became stronger afterwards. That would neatly make the Ottomans to assimilate their early conquests, without turning the whole of the Balkans Turkish.
You know there is this guy at paradox who has stated time and time again "Europa Universalis is NOT a historical simulation, it's a game."
You might have heard of him, he goes by the name Johan.
My solution to this would either be changing the power cost to 100 or 200, and/or making it use a colonist. This way cultures would be much more difficult to convert, and realistic/balanced.
oh god. You're honestly telling me that coring which in part represents organising your bureaucracy to govern the province will have no, as in ZERO, cultural influence on the populace? Because that is rubbish. Look at the British Raj, India's culture was influenced by the Raj. Indians did not become British but their culture was influenced and changed from exposure to the bureaucracy of the Raj. India today has a Parliamentary democracy, with Common law. These are rather significant cultural influences that can be directly traced to the colonial rule in India. And there was no government effort to convert or change the culture of India. In fact the British government was in opposition to missionaries coming to India, according to Lawrence James' Raj: The making of British India. So where did the cultural influence come from? In the mechanics of the EU4 the UK only used coring of the three changes you can make to a province. The didn't change their religion, they didn't try and force Indian's to be British but they did core India.
Which the current system in EU4 replicates is too bloody expensive to convert every conquered province. Its this fact that the anti culture change faction seem to fail to grasp. The system works. A few provinces changed like the scale of Granada and its not going to have much impact on your nation. In terms of cost. It still means you have less MP points in other areas but its not hugely noticeable. Thus the QQ of the mechanic. Yet you project this over a dozen provinces or two dozen provinces and you start to these cost add up to significant levels. We are not talking just a single tech level either we are talking multiple NI and tech all traded away for culture flipping.
As I have stated before culture flipping DIRECTLY slows down your ability to acquire new provinces. The more province you flip the few points you have to spend on coring new provinces. The more Provinces that you flip cultures in the fewer points you have for missionaries. The more cultures you flip the fewer diplomatic points you have available for peace treaties. The more cultures you flip the fewer MPs you have for colonization. It is EXPENSIVE to flip cultures the cost is represented not in just the points it costs but in what you have to give up which is directly tied to obtaining and managing new provinces. You also give up MILITARY power at sea, which is directly tied to trade power now which means you economy suffers once for having a weaker navy, and a second time for not having the points to invest in NIs that help trade. So while you gain one area of the economy you lose in another. Again giving to peter clearly shows you have to take from paul, to flip cultures.
As far as I am concerned it should be a viable option for players to try for a homogenized cultural and religious nation. There are enough examples of culture change to show it happened to bring it into the game. It should be just as viable an option as the multi-cultural, multi-religious empire like the ottomans. And if players wants to make all the Balkans Sunni Green and Turkish they should be allowed to do so. Without wah wah wah nationalistic temper tantrums over it. Why? BECAUSE ITS A GAME. Its also a strategy that comes at a cost. Doing so isn't free and it means that while you are strong in national cohesion you are weak in expansion as its clearly been shown as you need diplomatic points to acquire territory.
Pfft right because the slider system was so superior to the NI system of EU4. Sorry but I just have to laugh at this.
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Oh I don't know about that, I haven't played the demo since I'm on a mac.
I'm saying it's not an absurd or impossible thing that has to be rendered absurd or impossible. It might take a few years or decades, but you CAN and should be able to assimilate/destroy those foreign cultures.
-80% cost to culture conversion overseas is an absurd modifier. The MASSIVE -80% discount seems plausible for total of two generalizable cases to me: European colonies on previously uninhabited land (ie most colonies built from scratch) and converting North American and other native cultures in provinces with low enough population. It's possible to think of some extra rules too to add in.
But seriously, we're getting -80% to convert Chinese provinces for example when playing Europeans? How is this sensible?
But seriously, we're getting -80% to convert Chinese provinces for example when playing Europeans? How is this sensible?
Absolutely.
While you are right on many things with regards to culture flipping in EU4, these are not the particular costs - apart from the last one - that truly makes mass culture conversion in non-overseas territory such a remarkably bad idea compared to the alternatives.
Since cores cost AMP and culture costs DMP, your ability to core provinces and flip culture are not directly connected. Likewise, religious conversion does not cost DMP, it costs missionary time. Now, an argument could be made that since culture conversion requires prior coring and religious conversion, these are added costs to culture conversion.
However, consider the following: You will always want to core every single non-overseas conquest without fail unless you are attempting a world conquest, because overextension sucks. At 100% or below you get annoying modifiers hurting you in many small ways (and big ways if you rely on trade), above 100% it gets nastier. There is absolutely nothing wrong with racking up high overextension during conquest, but I can assure you that players will want to get rid of it rather than live with it, unless they have effectively given up on controlling it. So one way or another, you are going to core your conquests if you think you will be able to hang on to them for a while.
With respects to religious conversion, you will always want to keep every single missionary you have got active all the time so long as you have provinces to convert, because there is no benefit whatsoever to having a missionary-envoy inactive when he could be active, and there is a great benefit to be had from religious conversion.
So, having argued - for non-overseas territory mind you - that the preconditions for cultural conversion (coring and religious conversion) shouldn't rightly be considered part of the cost of cultural conversion, why is it that I nevertheless agree with you that a person should have his head examined if he goes on a spree of mass cultural conversion non-overseas?
To put it at its most simple, mass conversions of non-overseas territory may seem attractive because it is cheap in ducats (0d - things just don't get cheapter than that!
) and has an immediate reward in getting rid of the non-accepted culture penalties (which, as argued in my previous post are not actually that bad), but it significantly harms your economy in the long term and limits your opportunities.What mass culture conversion costs you is the opportunity cost of not spending the DMP on unjustified demands in war (as you mentioned), direct reduction of war exhaustion (seldom a major drain on DMP but a nice option to have available when things go pear-shaped), naval buildings, trade buildings, and some extremely important idea groups. It may even cost you expansion opportunities if you take it to the degree that you culture convert conquests rather than taking Exploration or Expansion when your country is otherwise in a position to significantly benefit from doing so.
Regardless of whether your goal is guns or steel, you gain most bang for the buck in EU4 by building a rock-solid economy and using that to spam the buildings appropriate to your goal everywhere in your realm. Manpower, in particular, so important to a warmonger, is to be found as much in province improvements as it is found in territorial expansion, and the manpower gained from having an economy that can afford to spam the manpower province improvements everywhere dwarfs the gains of culture converting provinces. And I really ought to write a small guide on manpower if nobody else can be bothered.
Of course, if one gets genius diplomatic monarchs time and time again it is possible that one will be able to get everything of the above including tech and have points to spare, in which case cultural conversion is in as a nice DMP dump. Likewise, if one plays a small country that stays small (only advised for singleplayer
), one can very well run into the surplus DMP situation and decide to culture convert rather than waste points. And finally, if one plays a country that is deliberately crippling its own tech progress in order to fall behind so as to westernize, there might be DMP to spare that cannot be spent otherwise.But these are all special case and not generally applicable.
For overseas it is simpler - if it is your core and your religion and you do not foresee it being lost in war shortly, culture convert it. With the 80% cost reduction and most overseas provinces having low taxvalues, there really is little reason not to.
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I believe Eurasia is viewed as one continent by the game so its there is no bonus for culture flipping south Asian or east Asian nations.
It appears that North and South America, Oceana and Africa are covered by this bonus. And it appears that Africa is where things break down as I have stated on the thread that North Africa should be treated as European.
Missionaries don't consume points. They consume money (and are tied up for months or years at a time).