New culture system as justification to go back to a more historical culture map

[TheFlyingDutchManHD]

One thing i have always loved about Europa Universalis IV, and in extent, paradox games in general, is the amount of work put into the historical detail and accuracy of the games they make, especially given how hard it is to simulate some of the political situations that occurred in real life in these games.

The point of this thread is not to complain, argue or plead but to incite discussion about the recent culture changes that have been occurring not just last DLC, Rights of Man, but the culture mapmode changes before that.
Using Breton as an example, Breton is historically closer to Irish and Welsh in culture, however to fight the constant balancing war that occurs in every grand strategy game, Breton was removed from its original culture group (Celtic, i think it was called, pls don't be mad at me) and moved into the french culture group. However the new 'promoting' culture system changes the need to do this. I believe one of the problems with Breton in a seperate culture group as France was that France would culture convert it regularly, with the new system France starts with two possible promoted cultures, with the next being at dip tech 8, 1000 development (in a high developed area) or admin tech 5 (idea group), meaning France can make Breton an accepted culture quite early into the game.

Isn't it more rational to go back to the old culture mapmode (keeping the changed done to Russia, etc. of course) where cultures were more historical? At the moment culture groups feel like a tutorial for new players about where they should conquer first. Another thing that bugs me is change of many groups, such as the Turkish group, that used to be spread out across the map but is now grouped with regional cultures, Turkish with Arabic cultures (pissing many people off on Reddit), and yet the devs didn't do the same for American (mostly south) culture groups.

I love the devs and think they do good work, but the recent culture system changes, not just promoted cultures but also culture conversion of minority cultures, i think, provide a means to return to the more historical map in the past and would love to see this happen...

What are your views guys, are you for or against a revisit of the culture map, do you think it is fine as it is, do you think the culture system needs tweaking instead, do you hate me for writing such a long post (been on the forums many times but first time posting something)?

 

[grommile]

EU4's system of "every culture is in exactly one group, and looks on every culture outside that group in one of exactly two ways" is always going to produce arguments no matter how the cultures are partitioned.

 

[ZivDero]

Well, I have some things to say:
1) I'd really love for Paradox to bring the old cultures back, but
2) AI still converts cultures (I saw Hungar convert the Slovaks away even though they are the same culture group and well as come minor AI conversions)
3) No one removed the "same culture group" penalty softener and "You are an empire so all cultures of your group are now accepted" rule, so that would change gameplay significantly.

 

[Roki_09]

What cultures need is an overlap.
Lets say same culture group and similar culture.

Lets take everybodies favorite Balkan for example.


You can put Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria in same culture group, but similar cultures would not be same.

For Croatian you can put Austrian and Hungarian as similar cultures, even Venetian maybe.
For Serbian you can put Hungarian, Transylvanian, Albanian, Greek and Romanian.
For Bulgarian you can put Romanian, Transylvanian, Greek, maybe Albanian, and Turkish probably doesnt fit...


You can go as far as adding another thing that is like a super culture group, so Slavs would not get as big of a hit for taking other Slav land.
If Nitra takes Paris and Moscow it should make sense that Muscovites are less upset then Parisians.


Its just an idea. I didnt put too much thinking in this so dont go telling me how those cultures would not work as this guys wore white hats and those other guys wore blue hats, and they hated each other.

 

[TheFlyingDutchManHD]

EU4's system of "every culture is in exactly one group, and looks on every culture outside that group in one of exactly two ways" is always going to produce arguments no matter how the cultures are partitioned.

every change to every system in every game is going to cause arguments lol.

 

[TheFlyingDutchManHD]

Well, I have some things to say:
1) I'd really love for Paradox to bring the old cultures back, but
2) AI still converts cultures (I saw Hungar convert the Slovaks away even though they are the same culture group and well as come minor AI conversions)
3) No one removed the "same culture group" penalty softener and "You are an empire so all cultures of your group are now accepted" rule, so that would change gameplay significantly.

I personally have never seen a nation convert cultures of its own group but i honestly believe that it is possible considering the 'two promoted cultures' start with some groups having 4-5 cultures and some nations being large enough to span them at the 1444 start. I never said it was something the devs could just do a quick patch on, if they do go down this path it will require a lot of work and recoding.
Also ai should still be able to culture convert (muscovy), but maybe creating a mission that only appears within a specific set of parameters would be a good way to limit culture conversion... i don't know, it never hurts to put suggestions forward.

What cultures need is an overlap.
Lets say same culture group and similar culture.

Lets take everybodies favorite Balkan for example.


You can put Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria in same culture group, but similar cultures would not be same.

For Croatian you can put Austrian and Hungarian as similar cultures, even Venetian maybe.
For Serbian you can put Hungarian, Transylvanian, Albanian, Greek and Romanian.
For Bulgarian you can put Romanian, Transylvanian, Greek, maybe Albanian, and Turkish probably doesnt fit...


You can go as far as adding another thing that is like a super culture group, so Slavs would not get as big of a hit for taking other Slav land.
If Nitra takes Paris and Moscow it should make sense that Muscovites are less upset then Parisians.


Its just an idea. I didnt put too much thinking in this so dont go telling me how those cultures would not work as this guys wore white hats and those other guys wore blue hats, and they hated each other.

culture group overlap is a cool idea, maybe remove culture groups al together and turn cultures into nations without borders - each culture with friendly or unfriendly modifiers towards other cultures and your nation as a whole - but this might be straying too far into Vic2 areas which would completely remove the uniqueness of the culture system in the game.

 

[Atlantians]

culture group overlap is a cool idea, maybe remove culture groups al together and turn cultures into nations without borders - each culture with friendly or unfriendly modifiers towards other cultures and your nation as a whole - but this might be straying too far into Vic2 areas which would completely remove the uniqueness of the culture system in the game.

This is brilliant. And very realistic.

Culture groups should remain, but function within this system as a static opinion benefit, somewhat like now.

@Wiz!!! @Johan!!!

 

[1337Hospitaller]

I'd prefer more accurately classified culture groups in lieu of game balance. Stuff like "Ryazanian" and the Carpathian group irks me, and so does seeing a Germanic group that includes Dutch and Germans but not Scandinavians or English.

 

[Metroidkirby]

Using Breton as an example

No, this is not a good exemple, the "Breton culture" is based on the political duchy of Brittany, and covers two "cultures", the "breton" one which covers the west part (and the majority of the territory) and is like you said closer to the celtic culture group; and the "gallo" which covers the east part (and the majority of the population) and is closer to the french culture group.


Otherwise, I really like your ideas, but AI should learn to accept cultures, I have seen Liege culture-convert Looz to Wallon because they don't want to accept Flemish, this is pretty weird. And Bohemia is culture-converting all non-saxon-culture german land. And Castille do not accept more than the two cultures they accept when BI appears (I my last game, after inheriting Burgundy, they accept Dutch and Flemish, and even if they can accept more cultures, they don't bother to accept Wallon or Burgundian, and culture-convert-it to Flemish).

 

[grommile]

I'd prefer more accurately classified culture groups in lieu of game balance.

Unfortunately for your overdeveloped sense of pedantry, culture groups and the divisions within them exist for mechanical tuning reasons, and that fact isn't likely to change. Feel free to install a mod.

 

[Gratak]

One thing i have always loved about Europa Universalis IV, and in extent, paradox games in general, is the amount of work put into the historical detail and accuracy of the games they make, especially given how hard it is to simulate some of the political situations that occurred in real life in these games.

The point of this thread is not to complain, argue or plead but to incite discussion about the recent culture changes that have been occurring not just last DLC, Rights of Man, but the culture mapmode changes before that.
Using Breton as an example, Breton is historically closer to Irish and Welsh in culture, however to fight the constant balancing war that occurs in every grand strategy game, Breton was removed from its original culture group (Celtic, i think it was called, pls don't be mad at me) and moved into the french culture group. However the new 'promoting' culture system changes the need to do this. I believe one of the problems with Breton in a seperate culture group as France was that France would culture convert it regularly, with the new system France starts with two possible promoted cultures, with the next being at dip tech 8, 1000 development (in a high developed area) or admin tech 5 (idea group), meaning France can make Breton an accepted culture quite early into the game.

Isn't it more rational to go back to the old culture mapmode (keeping the changed done to Russia, etc. of course) where cultures were more historical? At the moment culture groups feel like a tutorial for new players about where they should conquer first. Another thing that bugs me is change of many groups, such as the Turkish group, that used to be spread out across the map but is now grouped with regional cultures, Turkish with Arabic cultures (pissing many people off on Reddit), and yet the devs didn't do the same for American (mostly south) culture groups.

I love the devs and think they do good work, but the recent culture system changes, not just promoted cultures but also culture conversion of minority cultures, i think, provide a means to return to the more historical map in the past and would love to see this happen...

What are your views guys, are you for or against a revisit of the culture map, do you think it is fine as it is, do you think the culture system needs tweaking instead, do you hate me for writing such a long post (been on the forums many times but first time posting something)?

Very good idea. I think they can even make France start with Britanny as accepted culture even if they do now own any of their provinces initially. Granada seems to already start with Berbers as accepted culture and they only own stuff in Spain (which is currently completely in the Iberian culture group).

Unfortunately for your overdeveloped sense of pedantry, culture groups and the divisions within them exist for mechanical tuning reasons, and that fact isn't likely to change. Feel free to install a mod.

Did you read the OP's post? He agreed that they did the way they currently are for gameplay reasons, but with the new mechanics one could change it to a more realistic approach while keeping the gameplay advantages.

 

[Kapitalisti]

I'd prefer more accurately classified culture groups in lieu of game balance. Stuff like "Ryazanian" and the Carpathian group irks me, and so does seeing a Germanic group that includes Dutch and Germans but not Scandinavians or English.

By what criteria would you "more accurately classify" those cultures?

 

[Aethis]

In a game I saw Austria converting all the Latin provinces (Venetian, Tuscan etc) to Austrian

 

[TheFlyingDutchManHD]

In a game I saw Austria converting all the Latin provinces (Venetian, Tuscan etc) to Austrian

I think there may still be some bad coding in the system that makes some of these weird things happen but Austria converting Italian culture is a lot more realistic than converting german cultures. And the fact that this game can still follow ahistorical events is fun and i don't want that to go away.

Unfortunately for your overdeveloped sense of pedantry, culture groups and the divisions within them exist for mechanical tuning reasons, and that fact isn't likely to change. Feel free to install a mod.

No system is ever going to be perfect, but improvements, recreating and maintenance can get us as close as possible. This is actually the developers job, until either the game stops making money, or they are ready to release a whole new game (eu5). Yes i can and have use/d mods (which may or may not be compatible or may or may not have been created for a single purpose, not for a large player base), and yes i understand they are there for mechanical reasons as mentioned is in my post. All i am saying is that they, the devs, and us, the users, all want the game to be the best it can possibly be, and the game at its core is a alternate history grand strategy game, meaning the people, the places, materials and processes all stay the same, but the course of time changes.

 

[Franz Limit]

I aggree, the new system supports more realistic culture groups again.

In a game I saw Austria converting all the Latin provinces (Venetian, Tuscan etc) to Austrian

If I adopt a lot of provinces as Austria myself I might consider converting some Latin provinces too. Italy has about 9 different cultures in roughly 50 provinces. If you play a game in which you want to accept every culture you own you have to convert some of the Italian lands. Especially since an ambitious Austria allready needs to accept Hungarian, Czech and Flemish too. (outside of the German culture group)

 

[Chimerae]

AI never accepts new cultures. Only the ones they have in game start. In my current game Lithuania PU'd Poland and integrated them. Yet they do no accept Polish culture, which is ridiculous.

 

[Gratak]

AI never accepts new cultures. Only the ones they have in game start. In my current game Lithuania PU'd Poland and integrated them. Yet they do no accept Polish culture, which is ridiculous.

Even more reason to give countries a few starting accepted cultures.

But yeah. They should fix this.

 

[mixtil]

I thought the culture of a province (like its religion) represented the culture (and religion) of the local magnates, nobles, etc., the people the player (as the monarch/ruler) would be interacting with. Spreading the dialect of the court (converting culture), supporting schools in the local dialect (promoted culture) makes sense for this time period, not 19thC. style ethnic erasure. I think in that sense, culture is working better now than it ever has.

 

[TheFlyingDutchManHD]

I thought the culture of a province (like its religion) represented the culture (and religion) of the local magnates, nobles, etc., the people the player (as the monarch/ruler) would be interacting with. Spreading the dialect of the court (converting culture), supporting schools in the local dialect (promoted culture) makes sense for this time period, not 19thC. style ethnic erasure. I think in that sense, culture is working better now than it ever has.

can you explain? I don't think that is what cultures are meant to represent, but you make a good point, the king would only have been in communication with noble people, however many monarchs and nobles of the time would learn multiple languages, for example latin, which every bloody poet and monk would write in and make ancient history essays extremely annoying to write 600 years later. There would have been, as you say, pollution and a sort of 'proto-globalisation' between peoples and ruling bodies over those peoples, for example the evolution of the modern english language, but the upper class english culture is still not french as much as spanish nobles are and the lower-class are definitely not french.

Culture definitely works well atm, but i am saying that because of the changes that have made it work as well as it does, do you (everyone) think that we can justifiably go back to the older culture groups without balancing being an issue anymore (only for empire rank nations) to better represent the cultural spread of the peoples at the time?

 

[mixtil]

Sure. I couldn't find it, but I'm basing it on an old thread where (I think) Johan said that's what culture and religion represent - the culture of the people who matter in the local area basically. You're right, ruling people would be multilingual - Joseph II of Austria would have time set aside where any subject could come and speak to hit, and they would converse in their native language; Philip II and Mary Tudor's spoke to each other in Latin and French. Among noble classes, certainly earlier in this period there was a comradeship - certainly compared with comradeship with peasant classes. Nationalism is a middle class invention after all. The Vic II pop system is fantastic because that is a game about nationalism. EUIV is a game about lots of things, but primarily the state. Nationalism doesn't feature in EU4 until right at the end.

I think chasing it back would be adverse. Slovak and Hungarian are in the same group because of the historical close links between the two ruling classes., as an example.