Improper Implementation of Culture.

[Sergeant Flutter]

Many of the cultures we know today: Russian, Scottish, Danish, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Anatolian Turkish, Portuguese, and many more, originated in the Middle Ages.

These cultures came into being by:
A) A conquerer's culture mixes with the local culture.
B) A culture gets geographically split. The two chunks of this culture have separate factors influencing them, and become different entities.

In CK2 you can't have this happen. We have melting pot events for a few cultures, and triggers for some cultures to split. However, you can't have some sort of Greek-Bedouin Mashup.

Every CK2 game is dynamic, 200 years after it starts up, it's highly unlikely that the world will have followed the path it did in real life.

Naturally different cultures would have mashed together.

Say the CK2 Nords attack and settle in Italy instead of France, they don't get the a new culture like they would if they attack France (Norman), Italy will simply become Nordic instead.

I'm not saying that the way culture spreads should be changed, because that did happen historically.

However, I think there should be a decision, or button on a province, that allows you to introduce a merged culture.

I think there should be more melting pots, and more cultural splits.

The current system simply does not work in a way that's accurate.



I understand that the current engine may not be able to do this, but there's alway the possibility that it can!

When CK3 comes out, this should be one of the leading features, if it is not implemented in CK2.

 

[Rags17]

This topic has come up millions of times before so I will just summarize.

The most obvious (but not necessarily important) marker of culture is the defined list of character names. But how would you meld two character name lists if say Norse and Italian were fused ? A mix of both, a fundamental analysis of underlying terms and their gloss into the new language, or maybe just some made up gibberish just to make to all look right ?

For example, the name Sven means "young warrior" in Old Norse, according to my Google Translate the Italian for that would be "Giovane Guerriero". Do we call him "Giosven" ? "Svenniero ?". The simple fact is that because this particular language meld did NOT happen IRL we have no way of knowing how it WOULD happen if it actually did. Much, much more importantly there is no way to easily automate this process so the game could say meld Mande and Greek or Mongol and Saxon.

Everything else could be simply created via fusion and or random rolls (eg can_blind, can_use_rivers etc), but this part can't and unfortunately it is the most obvious and visible part of what makes each culture unique.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

This topic has come up millions of times before so I will just summarize.

The most obvious (but not necessarily important) marker of culture is the defined list of character names. But how would you meld two character name lists if say Norse and Italian were fused ? A mix of both, a fundamental analysis of underlying terms and their gloss into the new language, or maybe just some made up gibberish just to make to all look right ?

For example, the name Sven means "young warrior" in Old Norse, according to my Google Translate the Italian for that would be "Giovane Guerriero". Do we call him "Giosven" ? "Svenniero ?". The simple fact is that because this particular language meld did NOT happen IRL we have no way of knowing how it WOULD happen if it actually did. Much, much more importantly there is no way to easily automate this process so the game could say meld Mande and Greek or Mongol and Saxon.

Everything else could be simply created via fusion and or random rolls (eg can_blind, can_use_rivers etc), but this part can't and unfortunately it is the most obvious and visible part of what makes each culture unique.

I do see your doubts!

One possible solution is to merge the two name lists

Let me make two lists of names

List 1:
Henry
Sven
Michael
Jacob

List 2:
Fred
Elliot
Pete
Robert

Once the cultures merge, the lists would merge to make List 3

List 3:
Henry
Elliot
Michael
Robert

This could lead to some odd combinations, but it's a solution.

 

[SovereignGrave]

Not to be rude, but that looks like more of a duct tape situation to me. It'd be really weird to have a 'mixed' culture that, for example, includes both the names Þorgil and Guillaume as equally valid and likely names.

 

[Sergeant Flutter]

Not to be rude, but that looks like more of a duct tape situation to me. It'd be really weird to have a 'mixed' culture that, for example, includes both the names Þorgil and Guillaume as equally valid and likely names.

It's not unheard of though! When Alexander conquered Greece and then tragically died, the Macedonian Ptolemies came to rule.

Hellenic and Egyptian culture merged, including their names.

I understand that it's somewhat lazy, but the only other viable option is to have a list of names for each of these hybrid cultures. I believe that we could have a few plausible names under that system.

 

[Bernard95]

Frankly I wouldn't mind seeing a few more scripted melting pots (Sicilian really should be one), but the idea of having dynamic ones is a bit much because of the naming issue already brought up.

Granted, in the modding forum I know there are some name lists that have been created for melting pot cultures such as Arabicized Norse, Nordvind (Norse-Wendish), Borgognese (Italian-Occitian), and Surfranco (French-Castillian), but those lists of course can't handle every single combination possible.

 

[Lord_P]

I have nothing new to say here. I agree that there should be more melting pot cultures (Sicilian, Norse-Gael) and I also agree that dynamic melting pots would be too hard to do.

 

[Thure]

I do see your doubts!

One possible solution is to merge the two name lists

Let me make two lists of names

List 1:
Henry
Sven
Michael
Jacob

List 2:
Fred
Elliot
Pete
Robert

Once the cultures merge, the lists would merge to make List 3

List 3:
Henry
Elliot
Michael
Robert

This could lead to some odd combinations, but it's a solution.

An Italian-Norse melting put would make a list with
Vilhjalmr
Roberto
Sibrandr
Liutprando

Please... NO! That would destroy immerions massively for me.

 

[KlinkerFyren]

It's not unheard of though! When Alexander conquered Greece and then tragically died, the Macedonian Ptolemies came to rule.

Hellenic and Egyptian culture merged, including their names.

I understand that it's somewhat lazy, but the only other viable option is to have a list of names for each of these hybrid cultures. I believe that we could have a few plausible names under that system.

Correct, and that would be a way to solve some culture things. However considering that CK2 is an aging game with an engine that I doubt could handle such things, It would probably be better to wait for CK3. Which will doubtless have VR-support for maximum map immersion.

 

[SBolshevik]

Yeah, let's have Władysław and John in one namelist, everyone's gonna like that.
In any case, making such a dynamic system would be infinitely hard because it would actually have to have a system of evaluating the orthography of each and every culture and adapting it to another one, or else it would have to prepare variations for every culture, so you'd have to have Gion (Italian, and a stretch), Džon (Czech, Croatian, Serbian), Dżon (Polish, Pomeranian), etc. Not to mention that the latter two are technically impossible within the framework of Slavic languages before the 11th century, and then you'd have to make special variations for the Baltic languages in which nouns can't end in a null morpheme, so Džonas and Džons for Lithuanian and Latvian respectively (at least I assume so - someone may correct me). The argument could be made that these cultures already have this name, but then you lose the point of making a new namelist entirely and just have a culture identical to the previous one except in name and colour.

 

[zharliette]

I don't like the idea of creating dynamic melting pots because as others said before me, it really can't be done in a way that's realistic and not just weird

However, to take an example close to home - after Estonia was conquered by Germans, the local culture still remained Estonian(of course it was heavily influenced but that's not the point currently) but the ruling aristocracy, while they remained totally German, become known as Baltic Germans. I don't really know how unique their culture was compared to Germans living in Germany but that's that. So maybe if you conquer distant regions, instead of melting the cultures you could create some sort of subculture that is fundamentally the same as parent culture but has a regional marker in it, ie if you conquer Jerusalem as French, the the provinces won't change to Fench but Levantine French, or at least the characters will.

Though another question is what does province culture actually mean. Is it the peasants? Is it local minor aristocracy? Because at the moment I really can't tell and at times it seems more likely to denote aristocracy because local cultures really didn't get replaced with their conquerers culture as often as it happens in the game.

 

[SBolshevik]

So maybe if you conquer distant regions, instead of melting the cultures you could create some sort of subculture that is fundamentally the same as parent culture but has a regional marker in it, ie if you conquer Jerusalem as French, the the provinces won't change to Fench but Levantine French, or at least the characters will.

What would be the point, though? Also, this would likely be applicable to almost every large empire, it'd fracture quite a bit over time culturally.

 

[sreckom92]

Would it even be feasible to have mixed cultures, but only for provinces?
For example:
Greek rulers own a Serbian province. After some time, that province becomes Greek-Serbian. Characters in that province can never be of that culture, but either Greek or Serbian.
No awkward character names anymore. Greek-Serbian population would equally accept both Serbian and Greek rulers.

This probably isn't even possible to make in this game. Still, something has to be done with cultures.

 

[SBolshevik]

Would it even be feasible to have mixed cultures, but only for provinces?
For example:
Greek rulers own a Serbian province. After some time, that province becomes Greek-Serbian. Characters in that province can never be of that culture, but either Greek or Serbian.
No awkward character names anymore. Greek-Serbian population would equally accept both Serbian and Greek rulers.

This probably isn't even possible to make in this game. Still, something has to be done with cultures.

They need to disappear less. I see Bulgarians and Serbs disappearing within decades in 1066, one can only wonder what would happen to Albanians if they were added.

 

[zharliette]

What would be the point, though? Also, this would likely be applicable to almost every large empire, it'd fracture quite a bit over time culturally.

None tbh. Though I suppose some people would like the fluffiness of it.

 

[SBolshevik]

None tbh. Though I suppose some people would like the fluffiness of it.

It would be realistic, sure, but considering the fact that Paradox are unlikely to make a system for sound changes over time the cultures would remain almost identical. Hell, most cultures don't even get the case of placenames right (with all Slavic languages using the nominative for the "of + placename" dynasty name type instead of genitive for example, a problem that extends to Balts as well).

 

[Narvait]

Yeah, let's have Władysław and John in one namelist, everyone's gonna like that.
In any case, making such a dynamic system would be infinitely hard because it would actually have to have a system of evaluating the orthography of each and every culture and adapting it to another one, or else it would have to prepare variations for every culture, so you'd have to have Gion (Italian, and a stretch), Džon (Czech, Croatian, Serbian), Dżon (Polish, Pomeranian), etc. Not to mention that the latter two are technically impossible within the framework of Slavic languages before the 11th century, and then you'd have to make special variations for the Baltic languages in which nouns can't end in a null morpheme, so Džonas and Džons for Lithuanian and Latvian respectively (at least I assume so - someone may correct me). The argument could be made that these cultures already have this name, but then you lose the point of making a new namelist entirely and just have a culture identical to the previous one except in name and colour.

Ha ha
We already have Gunvald and Visvaldis in name list )
The Gunvald feels a bit castrated when used next to Visvaldis for native speaker.

Having said that, a mix of names might make sense. Norse rulers in Russia some had Slavic, some Norse names and no immersion was broken for locals back then.

 

[SBolshevik]

Ha ha
We already have Gunvald and Visvaldis in name list )
The Gunvald feels a bit castrated when used next to Visvaldis for native speaker.

Having said that, a mix of names might make sense. Norse rulers in Russia some had Slavic, some Norse names and no immersion was broken for locals back then.

Yet they were Russified over time and still exist today: Helgi, Helga, Ingvar and Hrøríkr became Oleg, Olga, Igor and Rjurik, with Valdemar being interpreted as Vladimir I imagine. The game cannot simulate such a system of nativisation.

 

[GeneralPetrov]

Honestly, this is just one of those features that sounds cool on paper, but in reality really isn't worth the amount of time and effort it would require. For example, if every culture in the game could combine with every other culture to create a new unique mixed melting pot culture, you'd have roughly 9200 different cultures in the game, which needless to say, is a ridiculous amount. Plus there's also the issue of merging name lists which others have mentioned, which really cannot be done eloquently in a procedural way.

 

[Woifee]

I said it before and I say it again: Culture shouldn't even be in the game. Of course we need a mechanic for naming. Obviously. But cultural Identity wasn't a thing in medieval times. So a relation hit for eating different food and dance weird in the eyes of the other isn't reasonable.

Instead there could be languages a character is able to speak. Missing language skills lower the chances of successful diplomacy, love relations, friendship (but still might happen). Also effects battles. Better direct communication in Battles might be good.

A character is able to learn more languages. Would make Learning useful.

Every Language has a list of Names for naming kids. Just like culture has (naming problem solved).

Cultures are to dynamic for a static representation the game provides. Food, behavior, clothes, music... changes over time so quickly.

Another benefit (maybe the best of all): An end for all the whining in forums of people who wants their culture in it. But seriously, I have nothing in common with my ancestors in Austria 800 years ago. Right now I have more in common with with my friends from Afghanistan as with people from medieval Austria. I actually even have almost nothing in common with my grandparents.

I know, languages also change over time. it can be represented with dialects, events of soundchanging and stuff.

CK2 won't get any of my suggested changes, but maybe CK3 some days.

That beeing said, there also shouldn't be culture as it is right now in EU4.