[Mod] Multicultural World (beta version)

[Fishman786]

Download HERE for Multicultural World V0.7b


Current supported patches:
[2.6.3]

Localisation Languages:
English

Important Notice:
This mod is a beta version. It may not function correctly. If it does not, please, please report the problem in the thread so it can be fixed. If there are any other concerns about balance, design, or if you just want to say that it is working properly for you, please also post them here! Thanks!

The Multicultural World mod greatly expands the vanilla events that deal with cultural assimilation, with the intention of making conversion games and megacampaigns much more interesting by preserving cultural diversity.

Vanilla CKII has two main cultural conversion events: one of them assimilates right-religion provinces to the ruler's culture, and the other one sends settlers which change both religion and culture. There's also an event that allows rulers to convert to the culture of a local province, but this doesn't appear much since it is disabled by the Rajas of India DLC (and the decision that replaces it is basically never used by the AI). And with Reapers' Due another event was added which uses the crown focus to quickly convert single provinces.

The Multicultural World mod has the following changes:

• Province assimilation, ruler assimilation and settler migrations are now separate mechanics governed by different groups of events
• All provincial culture-conversion events are much less likely, and it's quite possible for an individual province not to convert at all during the entire game
• Wrong culture group provinces can't be assimilated.
• Right religion group provinces can't be settled.
• Ruler ability has much less of an effect on cultural conversion speeds
• Cultural conversion speeds are heavily-dependent on culture type, province terrain, proximity to water and other socioeconomic/geographic factors
• Rulers are quite likely to adopt local cultures if their capital is of a different culture to them
• It is possible for the player to reject any province culture conversion event

There are a bunch of new non-vanilla factors that affect cultural changes:

• Culture type. All cultures are grouped into four types: Urban, Common, Rural and Nomadic. Urban cultures include city-dwelling 'civilized' peoples such as Greeks and Italians. Common cultures are fairly ordinary medieval societies and include the English and French cultures. Rural cultures represent peoples without huge cities and who inhabit the forests, hills and frozen wastes, such as the Welsh or the Finns. Nomadic cultures are similar to rural cultures but they inhabit wide open spaces like deserts and steppes, including Bedouins and Mongols.
• Culture prestige. All culture types are ordered in terms of cultural prestige, and there is a separate 'prestige cultures' category at the top including cultures such as Greek, Persian, Roman etc. Rulers will only adopt cultures more prestigious than their own, and the larger the prestige gap the more likely ruler assimilation becomes.
• Some cultures are classed as maritime cultures and find it easier to spread over the sea. Norse culture characters can spread their culture inland down rivers as well.
• Terrain permeability. This represents the physical ease at which ideas and travelers can pass through an area of terrain. Mountains and forests are less permeable than plains and farmlands. Terrain permeability affects province assimilation rather than settlement, and affects most culture types the same way. The exception is the nomadic culture type, who treat either steppes or deserts as fully-permeable (depending on the specific nomadic culture in question).
• Terrain habitability. This represents how willing settlers and colonists are to move to a particular territory. Different culture types prefer settling in different areas, urban cultures for example prefer farmlands and plains whilst rural cultures will settle pretty much anywhere.
• Adjacency. Usually culture only spreads to adjacent provinces. Unlike in Vanilla, adjacency also goes the other way, and isolated provinces with no same-culture neighbours are incredibly difficult to convert, meaning that small fragmented cultures will rarely ever disappear entirely.
• At sea, the local coastal culture will prevail unless the colonising realm has a coastal right-culture realm capital (ie the top liege's capital). Having a right-culture coastal capital adds in the necessary 'push factor' to start edging out the competition. Maritime cultural spread is halfway between assimilation and migration, and can convert right religion group, wrong culture group provinces.

There are a bunch of different game rules that control the different cultural spread systems. Random assimilation and migration can be turned off or set to twice the frequency, dynamic terrain-based migration can be turned off, and ruler assimilation can be turned off. In addition each of these can be set to restore the Vanilla functionality EDIT: as of v0.6b the option to restore Vanilla functionality is gone, you'll need to turn the mod itself off.

The mod does not change the crown focus events, or the melting pot events. I have plans for a lot of new melting pot events (to create all of the EUIV european cultures in fact) but this part of the mod needs to be tested first, and really it's a big job so if anyone wants to volunteer for it then let me know!

INSTALLATION:

1. Extract the files to your computer
2. Put the MulticulturalWorld folder and the .mod file in your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Crusader Kings II/mod folder (create the mod folder if it doesn't exist)

COMPATIBILITY:
This mod changes the following vanilla files:

• cm_culture_conversion_events
• culture_conversion_events

This is mainly to disable various vanilla events that conflict with the mod. All other content is in mod-specific files. The mod should be compatible with most other mods, but will probably conflict with things like CKII+ or HIP.

 

[Fishman786]

Version History:

v0.7b (31/10/16)
- Fixed prestige culture issue
- Changed some MTTH modifiers to years instead of months
- Province assimilation now requires either a border or sea access

v0.6b (30/10/16)
- Fully removed Vanilla culture spread events (not melting pot or crown focus)
- Removed option to switch on vanilla functionality

v0.5b (29/10/16)
- Initial release
- UNTESTED BETA

Known Issues:

- Vanilla events not being correctly removed from the mod [FIXED in v0.6b]
- Issues with conversion speed possibly being too fast
- Text for some events is too long for the box
- All cultures treated as prestige cultures [FIXED in v0.7b]

 

[Fishman786]

Initial hands-off test for the first version. Started in 769, run until 902.

Melting pots proceeding as planned in Europe, Francia inherited parts of Iberia for some reason though so that might slow things up. Afghan culture got hit hard when some decadence rebel event caused culture to flip to Bedouin in Afghanistan. Also the crown focus culture conversion rate seems to be a bit too fast, the capitals are converting which might stop rulers from assimilating into regional cultures. Steppe nomad cultures are working like in Vanilla since Nomadic government characters treat culture a bit differently.

 

[cosmeIII]

If all works as you say it does, I must say this is an amazing work. I will try it out as soon as possible. The cultural prestige and tiers mechanics look like very very cool concepts.

 

[Fishman786]

If all works as you say it does, I must say this is an amazing work. I will try it out as soon as possible. The cultural prestige and tiers mechanics look like very very cool concepts.

Thanks!

Be aware all these mechanics are under the hood so to speak, there are no interface elements to tell you which culture type you're in etc. They're all written down in the event files of course and there are a bunch of design documents, but the only way to know in-game is by reading the localisation text in the events. It might be possible to either add this sort of information to the game start info screen, or have a decision you can take that pops up an event describing the situation. I'd rather keep the details hidden in-game since it helps a bit with the role-playing/imagination side of things, I don't like putting all the cultures in pre-set categories like this and hiding the details creates a bit more leeway in terms of what you can create in your 'head canon' so to speak.

Here are the culture types from one of the design documents:

culture lists

    urban cultures:
        culture = catalan
        culture = portuguese
        culture = greek
        culture = levantine_arabic
        culture = egyptian_arabic
        culture = sogdian
        culture = tocharian
        culture = gujurati
        culture = kannada
        culture = italian
        culture = roman
        culture = greek
        culture = andalusian_arabic
        culture = persian
        culture = nahuatl
        culture = bengali
        culture = dutch
        culture = bohemian
        culture = sephardi
        culture = tamil
      
  
    common cultures:
        culture = swedish
        culture = norwegian
        culture = danish
        culture = german
        culture = lombard
        culture = old_frankish
        culture = suebi
        culture = english
        culture = saxon
        culture = frisian
        culture = norman
        culture = occitan
        culture = castillan
        culture = visigothic
        culture = scottish
        culture = prussian
        culture = russian
        culture = pommeranian
        culture = polish
        culture = bulgarian
        culture = nubian
        culture = manden
        culture = assamese
        culture = hindustani
        culture = panjabi
        culture = marathi
        culture = telugu
        culture = frankish
        culture = rajput
        culture = basque
        culture = armenian
        culture = georgian
        culture = breton
        culture = ugricbaltic
        culture = lithuanian
        culture = kurdish
        culture = afghan
        culture = ethiopian
        culture = ashkenazi
        culture = sinhala
      
    rural cultures:
        culture = norse
        culture = old_saxon
        culture = pictish
        culture = finnish
        culture = mordvin
        culture = ilmenian
        culture = somali
        culture = irish
        culture = welsh
        culture = lappish
        culture = komi
        culture = khanty
        culture = samoyed
        culture = lettigallish
        culture = croatian
        culture = serbian
        culture = romanian
        culture = baloch
        culture = oriya
        culture = sindhi
      
    nomad cultures:
        culture = turkish
        culture = pecheneg
        culture = avar
        culture = cuman
        culture = karluk
        culture = hungarian
        culture = horse
        culture = khazar
        culture = mongol
        culture = khitan
        culture = alan
        culture = bolghar
        culture = kirghiz
        culture = uyghur
        culture = bedouin_arabic
        culture = maghreb_arabic
  
  
    prestige cultures:
        culture = frankish
        culture = italian
        culture = roman
        culture = greek
        culture = khazar
        culture = mongol
        culture = khitan
        culture = andalusian_arabic
        culture = persian
        culture = ethiopian
        culture = nahuatl
        culture = bengali
        culture = rajput
        culture = tamil
  
    maritime cultures:
        culture = norse
        culture = swedish
        culture = norwegian
        culture = danish
        culture = old_saxon
        culture = frisian
        culture = dutch
        culture = italian
        culture = basque
        culture = catalan
        culture = portuguese
        culture = greek
        culture = irish
        culture = breton
        culture = somali
        culture = bengali
        culture = gujurati
        culture = sinhala
        culture = tamil
        culture = telugu
        culture = kannada

Note that Urban, Common, Rural and Nomadic are mutually-exclusive to each other, but prestige and maritime can overlap with them. The prestige classification is only used to determine ruler assimilation chances IIRC, and doesn't have any other effects. Maritime cultures spread more easily by sea, although Norse behaves a bit differently. And there are really two sorts of Nomadic, the desert nomads and the steppe nomads.

 

[starwarsfan541]

This looks awesome, need to test it tommorrow

 

[Tufto]

Good to see this is finally here shall test it out later.

 

[Yvanoff]

I'm going to test this mod, looks good !

I could provide a french translation if need be, too.

 

[Fishman786]

Okay, after a few tests I seem to have found an issue. The Vanilla events don't seem to be switching off properly. I've been trying to fix this, so far the fix has basically just made the event happen instantly...

 

[Fishman786]

New beta version
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2gc103xurxsmfse/MulticulturalWorld0_6b.7z

Fixes the above issue I think, but another bug found which causes every culture to be treated as a prestige culture for the purposes of ruler assimilation. I've fixed that now as well but I'll upload the fix sometime later.

 

[Fishman786]

Good to see this is finally here shall test it out later.

BTW this isn't the Persia culture breakup mod I talked to you about. I decided not to do that because I want to keep things converter-friendly, and adding non-EUIV pre-Islamic cultures would mean making a separate mod for EUIV or having the converter destroy them.

 

[Tufto]

BTW this isn't the Persia culture breakup mod I talked to you about. I decided not to do that because I want to keep things converter-friendly, and adding non-EUIV pre-Islamic cultures would mean making a separate mod for EUIV or having the converter destroy them.

Oh, I know; I remember you mentioning this one in another thread.

That's a good point about the converter- a pity, but there's no way around it, I suppose.

 

[Fishman786]

Oh, I know; I remember you mentioning this one in another thread.

That's a good point about the converter- a pity, but there's no way around it, I suppose.

Yeah, I'm trying to keep all my mods a) converter-friendly and b) close to Vanilla's style. There are lots of mods that add new countries, religions, counties, cultures etc and I want to avoid doing that, the aim is to just do balance changes that fix some of the issues that a lot of people (including myself) have with the game.

That said, Persian culture is broken up in EUIV, and if I add melting pots to create the EUIV cultures there definitely will be more diversity over there. Before I do that though I'd like to get the core of the mod working properly.

 

[Fishman786]

I'm going to test this mod, looks good !

I could provide a french translation if need be, too.

Thanks!

A French translation would be good, certainly. There are some problems with the localisation not fitting in the text boxes atm so unless I can make them bigger I'll probably shorten a few of the event descriptions. If you want I'll send the design document for the event text to you.

 

[Fishman786]

New beta version:
https://www.mediafire.com/?o9hzejapmajto6a

 

[NightfieXIV]

interesting concept. I have a few considerations. I believe that the cultural change to a particular culture is not only dependent on the prestige. Acceptance of cultural peculiarities is not exclusively a conscious decision. How do you determine what so-called prestige cultures are? From an "ex post" view of the present? if so do you think that people saw it at that time as well?

 

[Yvanoff]

Thanks!

A French translation would be good, certainly. There are some problems with the localisation not fitting in the text boxes atm so unless I can make them bigger I'll probably shorten a few of the event descriptions. If you want I'll send the design document for the event text to you.

Well let's do that then

 

[Fishman786]

interessting concept. I have a few considerations. I do not think the cultural change to a particular culture is dependent on prestige. Acceptance of cultural peculiarities is not exclusively a conscious decision.

Firstly I'll clarify that 'prestige' here isn't referring to the in-game Prestige mechanic, ruler prestige score has nothing to do with it. Secondly I'll also clarify that cultural prestige has absolutely no effect on provincial culture spread, that's almost entirely determined by geographical factors. Cultural prestige only affects ruler conversion.

Basically, the idea of cultural prestige was inspired by the real-world fact that when people feel another culture is 'superior' to their own they can experience a kind of cultural cringe and end up adopting aspects of that other culture, and eventually assimilate.

Rulers want finery, they want legitimacy, they want the good things in life, and they want to cement their pride. If they're surrounded by a foreign culture that seems to offer more of those things than their own, they will feel inferior and will be tempted to assimilate more and more into that culture. For real-world examples, look at how wealthy Gallic nobles in Europe adopted Roman culture, or how Turkish conquerors adopted Persian and Indian culture.

In the mod, a ruler must have a wrong-culture capital for this process to occur. They can't just be ruling over foreigners, they need to actually be surrounded by them in everyday life.

Assimilation isn't just a conscious process, but in a game driven by events it's difficult to represent the unconscious decisions of a character. Ruler assimilation is a chance event rather than something to plan for, and the base MTTH is pretty long (250 years). The player has a choice whether to accept the assimilation or not (don't want to ruin people's games by forcing them to randomly change culture) but the AI will never reject. And the Rajas of India decision is still there for those who do want to make a more premeditated switch. Basically the ruler assimilation system is like a melting pot event that puts you into a local culture rather than creating a new one.

How do you determine what so-called prestige cultures are? From an "ex post" view of the present? if so do you think that people saw it at that time as well?

For the purposes of prestige, all the cultures are ranked into five groups:

• Prestige
• Urban
• Common
• Rural
• Nomadic

Rulers can only be assimilated into cultures that are ranked above their own, otherwise they won't feel that cultural cringe. The higher the local culture relative to the ruler culture, the more likely it is that the ruler will convert.

Which cultures are grouped into which categories is based on a number of different criteria. Prestige cultures tend to be associated with ancient empires and advanced civilisations, Urban cultures tend to be those which have emerged in areas with a lot of cities, rural cultures are those of societies with very few real cities (Permians, Irish, Picts) and Nomadic cultures are those of steppe and desert peoples. Common cultures are the largest group and generally the default.

Prestige cultures:

• French
• Italian
• Roman
• Greek
• Khazar
• Mongol
• Khitan
• Andalusian
• Persian
• Ethiopian
• Nahua
• Bengali
• Rajput
• Tamil

Roman, Greek, Persian and Ethiopian should be self-explanatory. French was a crucial pan-European language in the mid-to-late middle ages. Italy was where the Renaissance began. Andalusia was at the centre of one of the most sophisticated and advanced societies in Europe. Khazar and Mongol are prestigious steppe cultures (actual Nomadic government characters are not affected by assimilation though), and Khitan is just pretty cool anyway. The Indian prestige cultures are a bit more speculative, Rajput culture is obviously very important of course but I kind of wanted one for each corner of India for gameplay reasons. In Sunset Invasion the Aztecs are the most advanced empire in the world so obviously they get a prestige culture.

Urban cultures (excluding those that are also prestige cultures):

• Catalan
• Portuguese
• Levantine
• Egyptian
• Sogdian
• Tocharian
• Gujurati
• Kannada
• Dutch
• Bohemian
• Sephardi

Catalan and Portuguese are a bit dubious, possibly better off in Common. The Levant and Egypt were highly-urbanised areas and could probably count as prestige cultures as well, but I don't want too many prestige cultures in the same culture group. Sogd was a land of prosperous merchantile cities, as was the Tarim basin. All of India was pretty urbanised as well, but for balance reasons I've chosen Gujurat and Kannada. The Netherlands became pretty densely-populated, but arguably they could be a common culture as well. Bohemian is here because of Prague obviously. And Sephardi is Andalusian-Jewish.

Rural cultures (there are no rural prestige cultures):

• Norse
• Saxon
• Pictish
• Finnish
• Mordvin
• Ilmenian
• Somali
• Irish
• Welsh
• Lappish
• Komi
• Khanty
• Samoyed
• Lettigallish
• Croatian
• Serbian
• Vlach
• Baloch
• Oriya
• Sindhi

Early-game Germanics like the Norse and the Saxons are rural (they quickly leave due to melting pots). Tribal parts of the British Isles like Pictland, Wales and Ireland are also rural. No major cities in Lapland or proto-historic Russia/Finland either. Croatia and Serbia definitely did have cities but being in the rural culture set also affects migration speeds too and I wanted to give them a bit of a boost to represent the Slavic migrations that were just coming to an end in 769. Balochistan is extremely sparse even now. Sindh is sparse as well, and in the CKII period it was home to the Jats, peasant warriors with possible non-Indian ancestry who later moved north and east. Orissa is partly urban but it's also filled with major jungle areas, so I just stuck them in Rural.

Nomadic cultures (also not including prestige ones):

• Turkish
• Pecheneg
• Avar
• Cuman
• Karluk
• Hungarian
• Horse
• Alan
• Bolghar
• Kirghiz
• Uyghur
• Bedouin
• Maghrebi

Most of those should also be pretty self-explanatory. Hungarian might not quite fit later in the game, but even vanilla has trouble categorising the Magyars. Horse is, of course, a joke culture, but it needs to go somewhere. Maghrebi could fit into a few different sets, but for now it's with the Bedouins.

Note that the Urban, Common, Rural and Nomadic culture sets are used for provincial spread as well, but they have very different effects there and there's no tier system. For the purposes of prestige all cultures are equal, having a more prestigious culture has no gameplay benefit at all and as I said earlier you can always refuse to be assimilated. The only affect of the culture prestige hierarchy is making the AI more likely to change culture in certain circumstances. No culture is better than any other in this mod.

 

[starwarsfan541]

Are you open to other mods including this, if you are I'd love to modify it to add the cultures i added to my mod and use it in my mod. This just looks really awesome

 

[Fishman786]

Are you open to other mods including this, if you are I'd love to modify it to add the cultures i added to my mod and use it in my mod. This just looks really awesome

If you want to use this mod in one of yours, sure, just remember to credit. Although it is very much still a WIP, remember this week I've gone through three releases, two of which were basically broken.