Province culture flips too quickly

[JonStryker]

@Divi
Firstly: I agree with what you said about the Welsh culture.

Secondly: I'm pretty sure there weren't all that many rulers in the middle ages that changed their culture to that of their primary title. Did William the Conqueror give up his Norman roots? Hell no! Maybe if they were kings or emperors (Like the Frankish kings). But not if they were dukes or counts.
What they did occasionally was to change to the culture of their overlord. Like all those lords in (the in-game kingdom of) Pommerania. Or every single Czech lord after 1620. After the Danish took over Norway they basically replaced all nobility (that was left) with Danes and pretty much (in game terms) turned all of Norway Danish.

In my opinion the foreign culture modifier is the problem. If this wasn't there foreign culture rulers would come in handy as they wouldn't have the permanent revolt risk. Maybe a permanent bonus to commerce would be helpful, too. The higher nobility back then usually spoke many languages. At some point in history the majority of the Russian nobility spoke French (!) as their mother tongue.

I know it wouldn't be easy to implement but I'd prefer a system where a person could speak/understand more than one language. He then would only gain negative modifiers with people he does not share a common language with. If a Czech guy learned German in his childhood he shouldn't have negative modifiers with Germans. But with Italians? Sure!

 

[Divi]

I mean switching over time; regions with a melting pot event would probably actually be annoying if the rulers switched (IMO; norman NPC AI should be among the cultures which are flagged to not do culture switches the vast majority of the time in the decisions file with some exceptions like France and even then that's debatable; the fact that normans are involved in two of the big melting pots is enough for me to feel vindicated on this opinion )

Rulers in Italy assimilated for the most part, the norse in Ireland and the isles assimilated (to the point where the old hiberno-norse kingdom of the isles is still to this day the main gaelic stronghold), I'm not sure whether german rulers in Bohemia or czechs in Germany went one way or the other, but the Wends did assimilate, and the house of Mecklemburg was descended from the old pagan slavic tribal kings of the place. Oddly, despite their perceptions as the heart of medieval civilization, it seems like few of the invaders in the middle east ever assimilated. The turks, slavs and caucasians adopted a lot of persian, greek and arabic cultural trappings, and Greece and the Caliphate did influence their court cultures to some degree, but you couldn't really say they actually assimilated. Kurd to Egyptian Arab might be debatable if only for the Ayyubids. Maghrebi to Berber should likely not happen (I'm not sure if they're different cultures in the game) while most arab subcultures should assimilate to Misri if they grab Egypt and to whatever the culture is in Baghdad (I think it's Levantine) if they grab Baghdad. Making the Taifas Maghrebi ruling over Andalusians might help make them less painful for the rest of Spain now that I think of it.

All that can likely be integrated by modifying the decisions if chances of doing the decision work like chances of picking A-B-C in events.

 

[Kimberly]

@Divi
Firstly: I agree with what you said about the Welsh culture.

Secondly: I'm pretty sure there weren't all that many rulers in the middle ages that changed their culture to that of their primary title. Did William the Conqueror give up his Norman roots? Hell no! Maybe if they were kings or emperors (Like the Frankish kings). But not if they were dukes or counts.
What they did occasionally was to change to the culture of their overlord. Like all those lords in (the in-game kingdom of) Pommerania. Or every single Czech lord after 1620. After the Danish took over Norway they basically replaced all nobility (that was left) with Danes and pretty much (in game terms) turned all of Norway Danish.

In my opinion the foreign culture modifier is the problem. If this wasn't there foreign culture rulers would come in handy as they wouldn't have the permanent revolt risk. Maybe a permanent bonus to commerce would be helpful, too. The higher nobility back then usually spoke many languages. At some point in history the majority of the Russian nobility spoke French (!) as their mother tongue.

I know it wouldn't be easy to implement but I'd prefer a system where a person could speak/understand more than one language. He then would only gain negative modifiers with people he does not share a common language with. If a Czech guy learned German in his childhood he shouldn't have negative modifiers with Germans. But with Italians? Sure!

I think your analysis is too language-centric. There is a big difference between speaking a language and being of the associated culture--take myself, for example. I speak Dutch, and learned to do so as a child, but I'm not culturally Dutch and actually have a big "foreign culture" relationship penalty with Dutch people. Simply speaking the same language does not mean other people won't consider you foreign.

 

[JonStryker]

I think your analysis is too language-centric. There is a big difference between speaking a language and being of the associated culture--take myself, for example. I speak Dutch, and learned to do so as a child, but I'm not culturally Dutch and actually have a big "foreign culture" relationship penalty with Dutch people. Simply speaking the same language does not mean other people won't consider you foreign.

Sure, same language and same culture are not exactly the same. Especially if the language in question is not the primary language. But primary language is very much linked to culture. Even if there are foreign roots. Oftentimes people migrate, learn the new country's language and sooner or later forget the language of their ancestors. And suddenly a country like America is filled with English speakers with an English/Anglo-Saxon culture.

My own paternal grandfather was a Czech. But as he never taught my father the language there's no Czech cultural influence left whatsoever

Btw: Are you saying that you hate everyone in the country you live in ?

 

[Kimberly]

Sure, same language and same culture are not exactly the same. Especially if the language in question is not the primary language. But primary language is very much linked to culture. Even if there are foreign roots. Oftentimes people migrate, learn the new country's language and sooner or later forget the language of their ancestors. And suddenly a country like America is filled with English speakers with an English/Anglo-Saxon culture.

My own paternal grandfather was a Czech. But as he never taught my father the language there's no Czech cultural influence left whatsoever

It's true that language and culture are linked. And it's hard to imagine being of a particular culture without speaking its language. But what I'm saying is, just because a person used to speak French, does not mean that a Frankish nobleman would not see them as foreigners and dislike them for it.

Btw: Are you saying that you hate everyone in the country you live in

Well, not everyone, but most. I'm moving next year.

 

[cybrxkhan]

The problem with culture is that it's a pretty vague concept in-game. It works if you don't think about it or just think of it as some vague, meaningless abstraction, but once you start thinking about it, you start noticing everything about it doens't make sense.

The problem with culture flips, currently, is that cultures that have no business becoming extinct somehow end up getting extinct - perhaps a relatively well-known case would be Italy somehow turning all German, simply because the darn Emperor is German.

 

[Divi]

The problem with culture is that it's a pretty vague concept in-game. It works if you don't think about it or just think of it as some vague, meaningless abstraction, but once you start thinking about it, you start noticing everything about it doens't make sense.

The problem with culture flips, currently, is that cultures that have no business becoming extinct somehow end up getting extinct - perhaps a relatively well-known case would be Italy somehow turning all German, simply because the darn Emperor is German.

I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to rewrite the culture spread stuff to accomodate for things. Historically the only part of Italy that assimilated was the very edge (Trentino, Istria to a lesser extent), otherwise, italian culture was a lot more prestigious in the empire, and neither side particularly assimilated each other (both italian and german culture spread in Burgundy, though).

In my opinion, culture spread should only be tied to your overlord if they have absolute crown authority, which I would personally disallow for empires and elective monarchies. Otherwise it should be the actual landlord. Melting pot situations excepted.

 

[pjnlsn]

Culture spread is one of the (few) things where CK1 worked better. Not only did you have overseas culture spread, you also had a more gradual pattern of culture shift which (if you wanted to force it) required you to empower the local burghers over the nobles and the peasants. CK2 it had this "social" component, which CK2 lacks.

AFAIK the DVIP mod for CK1 made it's own culture tweaks so I am not too sure how the base game handled it... what I remember was:

• culture moved only between adjacent provinces, across certain sea connections between "trade hub" cities (places like Constantinople, Venice, Brugge etc were hubs of culture change in the game)
• turning a province into a capital sped up culture-change
• building a palace in your capital would speed it up (in that province) even further
• mountain, hills, deserts, swamps were slow to change, flat lands quicker -> this caused native cultures to linger longer in backwards regions
• the richer a province was (in terms of city-style improvement) the more likely would it be to flip
• empowering the local burghers encouraged cultural change, empowering the peasants or nobles discouraged it
• there were no "let's bring our boys over" colonization events (CK2 has those, they're responsible for much of the ugly mess on culture maps because it lets cultures "leap")
• Random events would allow you to force cultural conversion along with religious conversion sometimes (at great costs in revolt risk and income)

I think CK2 could take a little from those mechanisms... I hate the "let's bring our boys over" event in particular. It's so cheesy, it makes cultures leap half way across the map and it's not even biased to happen to ducal or royal capitals (which would make sense as hubs for settlement)... Also the lack of culture spread via sea connection is very sad. In CK1 this was something that made culture spread very organic... along with the province wealth effect it made overseas cultures spread happen first into the rich trade hubs, and only then into the countryside.

Here's a map from this old CK1 thread about what affects culture conversion:

You can see that CK1 had a couple of overseas "superhighways" for culture change: Venice-Constantinople, Venice-Alexandria, Constantinople-Trapezunt... Lübeck-Stettin-Danzig-Riga... Bergenshus-Brugge-Essex-Dorset... Bergenshus-Hamburg-Bordeaux-Cadiz-Valencia... and so on.

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I agree, that sounds interesting, it's funny how it was in the first game but made cruder in the sequel. I haven't played CKII since like 1.05 but it now seems like culture flips really quickly to the lord's...no matter where it is...which is nice, but doesn't feel realistic