GREAT idea for culture effects!

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The only way to change a culture is violence and stll this doesnt mean that you will always succeed unless you kill em all. Im eating olives and enjoy the same things my ansestors enjoyed 5.000 years ago and there was a crapload of occupiers that passed from here .

About hundling cultures into the game you can attach the tax loss to the government style and innovativeness or anything else but simply you can NOT turn french into german and visa versa

But in actual fact (relatively) peaceful culture change has occured, many many many times. It's the rule, not the exception, in history.

French and German in particular. Celtic Gaul became Romanised Gaul became Frankish (proto-flemish) and then, in areas, German. And remember, both Archæology and genetics attest to the fact that in none of these changes was there any significant population replacement. One ruling group supplanted another, and the underlying population assimilated to their language and culture (changing it a bit in the process.) Most of Germany was once Celtic, and again, both archæology and genetics agree that the population didn't change physically - those central european celts are overwhelmingly direct ancestors of Germans (and Swiss) living in the same area today. A german warrior-band moved in and took over the area, and over time the locals assimilated to their language and culture, but there was no 'ethnic cleansing' and replacement of population. Yet another example - look at Hungaria. The Magyar were a warrior band from the east, they took over the area and their language and culture is dominant there to this day - but again both archæology and genetics show that the previous population is still there today, just speaking a different language and identifying with a different culture.

It worked in many different ways as well - the Scandinavians who took over Normandy wound up assimilating to the base culture - French - instead of converting the local population to Scandinavians. Then later, when they conquered England, they again switched both language and culture and became English. In both cases their was a fusion - Norman-french is a peculiar subtype of French, and Middle English is noticeably different from Auld Ængelsk, just as Romanised Gaul was noticeably different Rome for instance. But the dominant strain in one set of events was that of the conquerors, while in the other set it was that of the land.

So, I'm sorry, saying that people or areas never change culture is just flat out wrong.

There are so many more examples, and so many different patterns... the Turks for instance DO appear to have displaced the previous inhabitants in many areas (in itself quite unusual,) but then assimilated to the prior culture at a later point in certain areas as well! The more you study the history here, the more complicated it gets. This is what makes it so difficult to code anything like a realistic system for a game. Ultimately a good system would be one that manages to both resemble reality (which entails a lot of complexity) and also advances gameplay (which entails, I think, that much of the complexity be essentially beyond player control.)

 

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French and German in particular

That's a very bad choice. Similar background and influences. Perhaps you should compare two more different cultures that came into contact ? Perhaps less centered on West-Europe ?

 

[unmerged(48283)]

That's a very bad choice. Similar background and influences. Perhaps you should compare two more different cultures that came into contact ? Perhaps less centered on West-Europe ?

Ok then, look at India.

An warrior band moved in, made strategic marriages and alliances, and became dominant to the point where a very large portion of what is now India and Pakistan belong to cultures descended from them. Yet (Mortimer Wheelers wonderful fantasy aside) there was no cataclysmic clash, no destruction of the previous population, and no massive population replacement. The preexisting population just wound up assimilating to the newcomers culture.

Then look at China. The opposite happened several times - the Manchu, for instance, ruled China, but the Chinese didn't become Manchu - the Manchu became Chinese.

The relative size of the populations involved were probably similar. It seems very likely the different outcomes are more the result of economics...

 

[Registered]

The preexisting population just wound up assimilating to the newcomers culture.

Really? Why isn't India muslim then?

Then look at China. The opposite happened several times - the Manchu, for instance, ruled China, but the Chinese didn't become Manchu - the Manchu became Chinese.

To some extent yes, they adopted Chinese institutions and some customs. But despite that they strove to remain seperate and retain their own identity.
The same is true for their Mongol predecessors.

 

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Really? Why isn't India muslim then?

I'm not talking about the Muslims. I'm talking about the Sanskrit speakers, many years before.

 

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Impressive posts Arkerless. Very informative and educating.

Thanks for taking the time to write them!

 

[unmerged(53923)]

Quite a bit of heat on this thread.

Anyway, from a gameplay perspective, I think culture penalties are a good part of the game, for reasons people have mentioned, and I think any quick and easy way to remove them kind of sucks in the long run. Like how you can magically turn a province of aztecs into good happy spaniards in EUII... anyway.

At the same time, I think it would be good (and more realistic) to have ways that these things can be changed. Not, generally, quickly though.

I'd like to see, perhaps as someone mentioned pie charts, with breakdown by culture and religion. And these could change, slowly, over time. There's immigration and emigration, as well as assimilation. If a kingdom maintains a good economy and high stability for many years, while its neighbors are wracked by war and inflation, those neighboring provinces could lose a few citizens each year, and they could be added to the more stable province. This might NOT be what the king wants, depending on the inhabitants of those provinces, of course, but there's very little he could really do about it, right? But at the same time, every year a few citizens assimilate (some to the ruling culture, and some to the majority local culture, when these are different,) and members of the rulers own culture immigrate as well, for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps province improvements could be created which affect these things in desirable ways. Building almost anything should result in a few immigrants from the state culture appearing to help organise/administer etc. Building churches might speed up the religious assimilation, and in some cases the cultural as well. That's how most of todays 'Greek' peoples ancestors became Greek, after all. Many were Turkish, or Slavic, or or Italian or even Anglo-Saxon (great story there, some of you may know it) and became converted to the Orthodox church, and through it the Greek language and eventually culture, to the point that if any of their descendents are reading this today I'll probably get flamed.

Well, there's my thoughts on it, hope someone finds it useful. Changes, yes. Slow ones, incremental ones, on some kind of percentage basis, never the sort of on/off one or the other culture we have in EUII. Modifiable by circumstances, including but not necessarily limited to neighbors, policies of the ruling party, economics, 'national' character if any of the state church...

Good Idea! This gets my vote.

It even lends itself to a new strategy: the do-nothing strategy. Don't get involved in wars for 100 years or so, let immigration boost your population while your neighbours are destroying theirs. After about 100 years, you should have enough of an advantage that you can consider expansion.

Not sure it will have many followers, though

 

[Gebhard Blucher]

I was going to write a longer post (had a few drafts that I ended up deleting), but it's too early in the morning and I'm still tired. Anyway...

Basically, I'd like to see domestic sliders play into this more. Say at low CENT, large multi-ethic "empires" become more viable but that comes at a cost in other areas. Similarly, high INOV would make multi-religious countries more viable, but again that comes at a cost. This makes sense from a game-play point of view (and arguably has some basis in history), and importantly presents the player with interesting choices to make in how to shape the development of his country.

EU2 comes close to this, but in that game no matter what, your provinces suffered the -30% tax penalties with wrong cultures and religion (and reduced manpower with wrong culture) if you didn't have the right culture/religion. At least with religion you could attempt a conversion (though in many cases it was pointless to even try), but regarding cultures you were SOL. You either had the culture or you didn't, and nothing short of cheating you could do about it either.

Mod-able slider effects are exciting because even if the game doesn't ship this way, we can tweak things like this if we want. (Assuming it is flexible enough.)

 

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and at the higher levels beginning to see the -30% on income become as low as -10%.. so a protestant german state could rule sunni turks at a total of -20%, rather than -60%!

Similar for manpower..


Ultimately being close in effect to the achaemnids.. and no doubt plaqued by the same local centrifugalism and complete breakdown just one step away..

 

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I think using MKJ's approach would be best for religious model, with some modifications.