National decisions stays or goes?

[semaphore]

Not really.

So we are back to "we don't really know".
You postulate that you need a majority of provinces, ie. with no regard to base tax. Did you test that out?
You don't know if cores on your own and other provinces play any part in it.
It doesn't seem that clear to me.

Is it just me or are you being a little too hostile?

I thought it was determined some time ago that dominant culture is the culture in the highest number of your controlled provinces, including your capital. However, you must not have too many cores on provinces with your primary culture; I believe it was something like 50% of your base tax coming from primary culture cores.

But this is such an inconsistent rule, I honestly won't be surprised at all if they changed it in a patch.

 

[jdrou]

My tests indicate that dominant_culture is simply the culture with the largest number of provinces owned by you. However, this seems to be one of those triggers which is not always updated every month; 'something' needs to happen to cause it to refresh. Apparently annexing and releasing a vassal works for this (similar to how HoI2's Mod34 has events annexing and releasing a country named 'Standard' periodically to force things to refresh). I don't think cores, tax, or population are involved.
I started as (2-province) Meckemburg in 1399 and used Darken's 'steal_province' 'cheat' spy mission to take three low-tax low-pop non-core provinces from Norway and the next month Norwegian became my dominant culture (I created a set of triggered modifiers to test with). Pommeranian still clearly had the most population and tax as well as having the capital (of course I couldn't see the culture shift decision unless I moved my capital to Norway which would require a core there). After selling two provinces back to Norway it took several months before the modifiers changed back if I didn't do anything myself to force a refresh.

 

[ParadogsGamer]

Is it just me or are you being a little too hostile?

I thought it was determined some time ago that dominant culture is the culture in the highest number of your controlled provinces, including your capital. However, you must not have too many cores on provinces with your primary culture; I believe it was something like 50% of your base tax coming from primary culture cores.

But this is such an inconsistent rule, I honestly won't be surprised at all if they changed it in a patch.

That's just you I guess. We are having a discussion.

Anyway, I have done some testing and it seems that the only parameter is the number of provinces you control. So if you start out as Austria with 8 provinces all having austrian provinces, all you need in order to get saxon as a dominant culture is controlling 9 provinces with saxon culture.
You still need a core on at least one of them in order to move the capital there and perform the cultural shift. But apparently, tax has nothing to do with it.

 

[ParadogsGamer]

My tests indicate that dominant_culture is simply the culture with the largest number of provinces owned by you. However, this seems to be one of those triggers which is not always updated every month; 'something' needs to happen to cause it to refresh. Apparently annexing and releasing a vassal works for this (similar to how HoI2's Mod34 has events annexing and releasing a country named 'Standard' periodically to force things to refresh). I don't think cores, tax, or population are involved.
I started as (2-province) Meckemburg in 1399 and used Darken's 'steal_province' 'cheat' spy mission to take three low-tax low-pop non-core provinces from Norway and the next month Norwegian became my dominant culture (I created a set of triggered modifiers to test with). Pommeranian still clearly had the most population and tax as well as having the capital (of course I couldn't see the culture shift decision unless I moved my capital to Norway which would require a core there). After selling two provinces back to Norway it took several months before the modifiers changed back if I didn't do anything myself to force a refresh.

I believe you are absolutely right. This might have changed though from previous versions but in IN3.1 that is how it works

 

[ParadogsGamer]

I don't postulate anything...

I used to think that the condition was:
"more than 50% of base tax value of core provinces"
but in my current game this appears not to be the case.

The number of provinces seems not play a critical role. In my current game I owned 3 flemish provinces (all except Brabant, cores on all three), a prussian province (Warmia, no core), a norvegian province (Rejkyavik, no core) and the four pommeranian provinces (cores on Lubeck and Meclemburg), plus I had a couple of cores on two dutch, non-owned provinces (Breda and Gelre). I was able to switch culture from Dutch (I sold the previously owned dutch provinces to a vassal - selling a province kills your core on it, too) to Pommeranian.

Right. That is because you had 4 pommeranian provinces which is more than the 3 flemish. It seems cores have nothing to do with it.

The non core provinces you own also appear to have a role, too. In a previous version of the game I owned a batch of non-core provinces which prevented a cultural switch.

What it IS clear is the current fashon: trial and error by selling provinces, as one poster in this thread suggested

EDIT: I used the word "majority" in my previous post in a wide sense, this was certainly unclear.

Yes, core or no core, it doens't make a difference

 

[ParadogsGamer]

How is it even possible to form Prussia from Austria without going into very deep gamy way ? Seem like a logical nightmare to me for would basicly have to go conquer quite a few territory of proper culture, get core on them, switch capital, switch religion to protestant, lose your Austrian possession, switch culture, conquer require territory and get core on them. God that sound like a freaking logistical nightmare.

Also add to that you will risk to be disliked by HRE province for that mad conquering so don't think you will be able to keep HRE crown without vassalising most voter.

To me a world conquer with that one province minor next to Incas sound easier. But still good luck in doing that.

It's not that difficult once you know the triggers
Get 9 saxon provinces. Get a core on one of them. Move your capital there. Accept cultural shift. Wait for the reformation, form Prussia.
- you don't need a core on every saxon province to do this. One is enough.
- you don't need to lose your austrian possessions
- yes, vassalizing HRE members is a key part of it too. But you are going to take those provinces as Germany anyway

 

[unmerged(128725)]

How is it even possible to form Prussia from Austria without going into very deep gamy way ? Seem like a logical nightmare to me for would basicly have to go conquer quite a few territory of proper culture, get core on them, switch capital, switch religion to protestant, lose your Austrian possession, switch culture, conquer require territory and get core on them. God that sound like a freaking logistical nightmare.

Also add to that you will risk to be disliked by HRE province for that mad conquering so don't think you will be able to keep HRE crown without vassalising most voter.

I believe it is doable, and worthy of the pain if you take the austrian national decisions before switching. The "fast reinforce" austrian decision pair splendidly with the "high discipline" prussian one, making your army a 24h mobile slaughterhouse. And I am not considering what the austrian diplomacy and inflation bonuses would do to prussian war-waging capacity...

You do not need to be protestant to form Prussia! The religious requirement only applies for Brandenburg. In fact, there are three "form Prussia" decisions, one available only to the Teutonic Order, one only to Brandenburg and one to every other nation with primary culture either saxon or pommeranian. For the latter, you just need to wait until the reformation happens, you do not have to convert.

The easiest way to form Prussia as Austria is to conquer all and only the saxon provinces (possibly not all of them are necessary if you resisted the urge to grab the two austrian gold provinces of Aquileia, but hey, why not?), and build workshops only on them, but not on your original austrian provinces (yet). This should be enough to make saxon your dominant culture after you move the capital to a core saxon province, without selling any of the original austrian provinces. This may take around 70 years. Then you quickly grab the prussian provinces before the TE reforms into Prussia, wait 50 years and can change.

One warning: Bohemia has two saxon provinces with cores on them (the two Lausitz). If you don't take them soon enough, they will likely be assimilated into czech. The same happens with the austrian gold provinces of Aquileia, they tend to assimilate into italian pretty fast.

The biggest nag is that it forces the expansion of Austria to slow down, at least in the beginning.
It is not really a bad thing, you can steer Austria into a trading nation in the mean time - which can really help in achieving early the "monthly income" required for the Fugger decision. Moreover, expanding your economy can offset the inflation threat you have because of your gold mines.

About the HRE, if you plan to conquer Germany you don't want to be emperor actually! It would kill your prestige. Of course, you can be emperor for a while, especially if you vassalize Brandenburg (after stripping it of three saxon provinces) and Saxony.

 

[unmerged(128725)]

Right. That is because you had 4 pommeranian provinces which is more than the 3 flemish. It seems cores have nothing to do with it.

I am not sure it is this easy, I was not able to switch with three dutch provinces in my hands. I had to cut them down further.

Furthermore, in an AAR of Azonalanthious he switched to saxon while onwning all of Scandinavia provinces, but this apparently required him to build workshops on all and only the saxon provinces, plus create a CoT in Potsdam, to raise saxon tax value.

 

[ParadogsGamer]

What version were you playing?
Do you have a link to that AAR? If that is true, then base tax might be a requirement too. The scandinavian lands are rather poor, and so taking all saxon provinces with a higher base tax could be the essential thing there.
But in my current Austria game, I have a COT in Wien making a huge profit and raising my austrian base tax to very high levels. The saxon base taxes are rather small in comparison.
Could there be more than one trigger where you just need to fufill one of them?

Cheers

 

[unmerged(128725)]

What version were you playing?
Do you have a link to that AAR? If that is true, then base tax might be a requirement too. The scandinavian lands are rather poor, and so taking all saxon provinces with a higher base tax could be the essential thing there.
But in my current Austria game, I have a COT in Wien making a huge profit and raising my austrian base tax to very high levels. The saxon base taxes are rather small in comparison.
Could there be more than one trigger where you just need to fufill one of them?

Cheers

I am playing 3.2 beta. The link is here. I was wondering about the possibility of the multiple trigger myself, or possibly a weaker trigger if you stay within a cultural group (which is what happens in your and my current games, but not in the above AAR).

 

[jdrou]

Furthermore, in an AAR of Azonalanthious he switched to saxon while onwning all of Scandinavia provinces, but this apparently required him to build workshops on all and only the saxon provinces, plus create a CoT in Potsdam, to raise saxon tax value.

The income probably did not matter; as I mentioned earlier, the trigger doesn't update immediately and I got Norwegian as a dominant culture when it had only 3 tax and my Pommeranian provinces had 13 base tax plus a CoT (in 3.2 beta).

 

[ParadogsGamer]

The income probably did not matter; as I mentioned earlier, the trigger doesn't update immediately and I got Norwegian as a dominant culture when it had only 3 tax and my Pommeranian provinces had 13 base tax plus a CoT (in 3.2 beta).

Interesting. Could it be that the reason why the player in the mentioned AAR could change to saxon was because of the updating issue? In this case we are talking about a bug and it's the bug that keeps confusing us.
But in the case of that AAR he switched to saxon from swedish which have a lot more provinces. So updating or not, it should never be possible should it?

We need more testing.

 

[jdrou]

Interesting. Could it be that the reason why the player in the mentioned AAR could change to saxon was because of the updating issue? In this case we are talking about a bug and it's the bug that keeps confusing us.

This is not the only trigger that acts like this; the person that made a leader mod noticed that the number of leaders triggers also don't update right away. It does look like either releasing a vassal or a save and reload does update this trigger.

But in the case of that AAR he switched to saxon from swedish which have a lot more provinces. So updating or not, it should never be possible should it?

We need more testing.

There are 12 Saxon provinces and only 10 Swedish at the start of the game.

BTW, here are the triggered modifiers I added for testing:

dominant_culture_capital = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = CAPITAL }
	leader_fire = 1
}
dominant_culture_norwegian = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = norwegian }
	leader_fire = 1
}
dominant_culture_saxon = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = saxon }
	leader_fire = 1
}
dominant_culture_danish = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = danish }
	leader_fire = 1
}
dominant_culture_pommeranian = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = pommeranian }
	leader_fire = 1
}
dominant_culture_swedish = {
	trigger = { dominant_culture = swedish }
	leader_fire = 1
}

(The effect doesn't really matter; could be anything.)