Italian culture(s)

[mudcrabmerchant]

Should Italian culture be split up? If so, how?

Support for a separate Sicilian culture is common, but should it just be Sicilian-speaking regions, or all of k_sicily? Should it be given Sicilian-language localized names, which are very distinctive, even from the names of the rest of southern Italy?

Tuscan was of course very distinct from other northern Italian languages/dialects, moreso than Siclian to, say, Neapolitan, but AFAIK northern Italy, what people in the Middle Ages thought of as Italy, was very distinct as a particular region, with much common political and material culture. In addition, Tuscan gradually developed into the lingua franca of this cultural region, so I don't think it's too far off to make it all a single Italian culture, with modern Italian/Tuscan localization. However, I don't know to what extent cultural differences between city states and feudal rulers sparked conflict in the region, and if it was any more than in regions of similar size which also have a blanket culture.

What say you, forum?

 

[Thure]

We need a own culture for the Langobardians in South Italy!

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

We need a own culture for the Langobardians in South Italy!

By that, do you mean Germanic Langobards? It's a bit late for them, even in 867.

And if South Italy gets a non-Sicilian, non-Italian culture, Lombard fits much better in the north of Italy, in Lombardy, of all places.

 

[iron0037]

What say you, forum?

I say to the modding forum with ye!

I think it highly unlikely that Paradox would split the Italian culture up. You'd have to draft a new name list, update certain province histories, and completely redo the culture settings of hundreds if not thousands of characters. And what would be the benefit exactly? A slight negative opinion modifier between northern and southern Italians? The ability to make southern Italian portraits have darker skin than northerners?

Even if I they went through all the trouble, people here would groan that it wasn't done correctly. Someone always gripes that the implementation was terrible. Someone else always begs for more to be done. So you'd be doing a lot of work just to open up a can of worms.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I say to the modding forum with ye!

I think it highly unlikely that Paradox would split the Italian culture up. You'd have to draft a new name list, update certain province histories, and completely redo the culture settings of hundreds if not thousands of characters. And what would be the benefit exactly? A slight negative opinion modifier between northern and southern Italians? The ability to make southern Italian portraits have darker skin than northerners?

Even if I they went through all the trouble, people here would groan that it wasn't done correctly. Someone always gripes that the implementation was terrible. Someone else always begs for more to be done. So you'd be doing a lot of work just to open up a can of worms.

Well, my ultimate goal was to get information for purposes of modding it in myself, but as this is (theoretically) something that Paradox could change, and could be the basis for a general discussion of game mechanics rather than pure modding suggestions, I made it on the forum that gets more traffic.

 

[WeissRaben]

To be honest, in light of the extensive generalization work CK2 makes with cultures, an "Italian" culture is...well, not fine, but at least coherent. Now, if they were to split up German, THEN we might have some basis to ask the same for Italian.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

To be honest, in light of the extensive generalization work CK2 makes with cultures, an "Italian" culture is...well, not fine, but at least coherent. Now, if they were to split up German, THEN we might have some basis to ask the same for Italian.

And what would you split German into? No reason we can't expand this thread into a general culture-splitting fest.

 

[Thure]

By that, do you mean Germanic Langobards? It's a bit late for them, even in 867.

Ehhh... The still lived in South Italy at this point. And use Germanic names.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Benevento

For exemple.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I say to the modding forum with ye!

I think it highly unlikely that Paradox would split the Italian culture up. You'd have to draft a new name list, update certain province histories, and completely redo the culture settings of hundreds if not thousands of characters. And what would be the benefit exactly? A slight negative opinion modifier between northern and southern Italians? The ability to make southern Italian portraits have darker skin than northerners?

Even if I they went through all the trouble, people here would groan that it wasn't done correctly. Someone always gripes that the implementation was terrible. Someone else always begs for more to be done. So you'd be doing a lot of work just to open up a can of worms.

Not to mention that if they split up the Italians, they would also have to split up other groups at some point - Germans, Persians, Russians, and other similar cases. The most I think PI should do is to have a Sicilian/Southern Italian culture, and that's really it. Anymore would be opening up a can of worms.

 

[The Blood Eagle]

To be honest, in light of the extensive generalization work CK2 makes with cultures, an "Italian" culture is...well, not fine, but at least coherent. Now, if they were to split up German, THEN we might have some basis to ask the same for Italian.

What would you break German into? What comes to the top of my head is Saxon, Hanoverian, Rhinelander, Hessian, and Bavarian... but I doubt any Germanic people see those as cultural differences as much as someone from Wisconsin sees someone from Illinois. Now, if Bohemia had been lazily listed as 'German' I think we'd have an issue.

 

[Neoptolemos]

What would you break German into? What comes to the top of my head is Saxon, Hanoverian, Rhinelander, Hessian, and Bavarian... but I doubt any Germanic people see those as cultural differences as much as someone from Wisconsin sees someone from Illinois. Now, if Bohemia had been lazily listed as 'German' I think we'd have an issue.

The argument is that the stem duchies (Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and Lotharingia) still represented ethnic tribes as well as political entities. At the very least, a cultural difference between the Saxons and the rest of the Germans would best represent the social and cultural tensions present in the Holy Roman Empire up through the twelfth century.

Only outsiders referred to all Germans as German throughout the Middle Ages. In the Germans' own chronicles, nine times out of ten, toponyms and demonyms were used.

 

[TeutonicDane23]

The argument is that the stem duchies (Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, and Lotharingia) still represented ethnic tribes as well as political entities. At the very least, a cultural difference between the Saxons and the rest of the Germans would best represent the social and cultural tensions present in the Holy Roman Empire up through the twelfth century.

Only outsiders referred to all Germans as German throughout the Middle Ages. In the Germans' own chronicles, nine times out of ten, toponyms and demonyms were used.

The Greeks thought every other Greek city state was "barbarian", especially Macedonia.

At the most at the 867 start date, I would say North and South Germans (Saxons/bavarians) and than a "Germanic Frankish" maybe for the rulers of France. All "Germans" still considered themselves "Germans". They just some times treated each other more like "cousins" instead of brothers. But the "Germans" were still mostly united against "outsiders".

I would say there is definitely a bigger difference in Italians than Germans. Northern Italy (Lombardy) should be different culture group than Sicilians.

I was advocating splitting up "group cultures" like this in the past, but the more I have thought about it the more I am against it. Because where do you stop? Where does it end?

 

[Prime624]

If someone makes a Italy Culture mod, I would buy it. lol

 

[Neoptolemos]

The Greeks thought every other Greek city state was "barbarian", especially Macedonia.

At the most at the 867 start date, I would say North and South Germans (Saxons/bavarians) and than a "Germanic Frankish" maybe for the rulers of France. All "Germans" still considered themselves "Germans". They just some times treated each other more like "cousins" instead of brothers. But the "Germans" were still mostly united against "outsiders".

I would say there is definitely a bigger difference in Italians than Germans. Northern Italy (Lombardy) should be different culture group than Sicilians.

I was advocating splitting up "group cultures" like this in the past, but the more I have thought about it the more I am against it. Because where do you stop? Where does it end?

Macedonia wasn't a city-state, though. It was a kingdom, the rulers of which might have been Greek, but the populace probably not. And besides, if we were making Crusader Kings III: The Peloponnesian War, we wouldn't have Greek as a single culture for all the city-states. There were substantial social and cultural differences between the various city-states that would need to be modeled by separate cultures for gameplay purposes. Athenians may have called themselves Greek, but in practice they were Athenian. Likewise, Saxons may have called themselves German, but in practice they were Saxon.

I mean, there's a massive revolt that defines the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, seven years after the 1066 start. It happens almost exclusively because of cultural differences between the Saxon rulers of northern German and Henry's Franconian background, which is important enough for even the Wikipedia article on the 1073-1075 Saxon Rebellion to mention it. This doesn't happen in game because, not only do the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria not hate their liege for his German culture, but they love him because they're that culture too.

It's unfortunate, really. We acknowledge that France wasn't entirely French in 1066, but somehow Italy and Germany, which unified last of all modern nation-states, are a single, uniform culture.

 

[mudcrabmerchant]

I've been strongly leaning towards a Saxon culture for quite some time. However, I can't decide whether to call it Saxon or Low German (vanilla German will get renamed to High German either way).

About Italy: Is there a great reason to split up Sicilian and mainland South Italian?

 

[Hackworthy]

Venetian should definitely be distinct. It is technically considered a dialect of Italian but in reality is so different from main-line Italian that it is not mutually-intelligible. On paper it looks more akin to French than to Italian.

 

[anomanderus]

Macedonia wasn't a city-state, though. It was a kingdom, the rulers of which might have been Greek, but the populace probably not. And besides, if we were making Crusader Kings III: The Peloponnesian War, we wouldn't have Greek as a single culture for all the city-states. There were substantial social and cultural differences between the various city-states that would need to be modeled by separate cultures for gameplay purposes. Athenians may have called themselves Greek, but in practice they were Athenian. Likewise, Saxons may have called themselves German, but in practice they were Saxon.

I mean, there's a massive revolt that defines the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, seven years after the 1066 start. It happens almost exclusively because of cultural differences between the Saxon rulers of northern German and Henry's Franconian background, which is important enough for even the Wikipedia article on the 1073-1075 Saxon Rebellion to mention it. This doesn't happen in game because, not only do the dukes of Saxony and Bavaria not hate their liege for his German culture, but they love him because they're that culture too.

It's unfortunate, really. We acknowledge that France wasn't entirely French in 1066, but somehow Italy and Germany, which unified last of all modern nation-states, are a single, uniform culture.

Macedonia was probably Greek.

 

[The Blood Eagle]

Macedonia was probably Greek.

In the classical period, Macedonia was entirely Greek.

 

[Prime624]

It's unfortunate, really. We acknowledge that France wasn't entirely French in 1066, but somehow Italy and Germany, which unified last of all modern nation-states, are a single, uniform culture.

Exactly! Even now, Italy is mostly split into parts: main, sardinia, sicily, naples... And the "German" culture encompasses areas that are to this date divided and separate.

 

[Theddude]

Venetian should definitely be distinct. It is technically considered a dialect of Italian but in reality is so different from main-line Italian that it is not mutually-intelligible. On paper it looks more akin to French than to Italian.

So are Ligurian and Piedmontese, though. I'd love to see all the Northern Italian cultures, but to split them all up would make their span too small. It would have a good effect of making Italy as fractious as it was historically, though.

Sicilian, Bavarian, and Saxon would probably cover it as far as new cultures in Germany and Italy go. Enough to fracture it a bit and represent history but not so many as to go too far. Any more and we'd probably have to add Galician and Aragonese (maybe Leonese) in Spain on similar justifications.