Rework of cultures in oncoming patches - too radical?

[Martin_Mortyry]

As we all know, Paradox team has decided to change the way cultures work with oncoming patches. In Common Sense, for example, breton culture moves from celtic to french culture group to avoid possible culture changes in Brittany in case of french conquest - yet, not everyone seems to like it. Although I understand this move, I have some - in my opinion - better solution for the problem.
It's obvious that two nations speaking similar language don't have to be very connected with eachother - for example Bohemia and Poland in EU4 timeline, where the first one was slowly getting closer to germanic culture than slavic. In the meantime, Poland and Lithuania created their own group of cultures which could be called "the Commonwealth Culture" consisting of polish, lithuanian, prussian, ruthenian, byelorussian and maybe even latvian cultures. Let's say that the mentioned culture was implemented in the game - but here we have another problem - in that case, if Germany was created in-game it wouldn't accept prussian culture as its own, neither would Russia accept Byelorussian or ruthenian cultures if it acquired provinces with that culture. What's the solution for this problem? I suggest spliting culture group into cultural and lingual groups. This way Ruthenia and Russia would be considered lingual union, uniting all the Eastern Slavs, whereas Commonwealth, as cultural union would still be able to accept Byelorussians as their own, even if they owned only 2 provinces of this culture and France could accept Breton(french culture, celtic language) if conquered.

 

[VladPrus]

That is great idea. Now culture in this game is too heavily abstraced (it is much better in CK2 - one culture changing into other or splitting during several requiements and culure conversion is out of player control) and its seriously need rework. For example in Mare Nostrum patch there are slovak, hungarian and romanian cultures grup together into "carpathian" culture group.

 

[firecage]

Mmm, I do like your idea Martin, but here's two other possible solutions.

1. Allow cultures to be part of more than one culture group. Honestly I am unsure if this is possible without a heavy rewrite of culture groups though. But I do feel that, say, Breton being part of both the French and the Celtic culture group would make sense.

2. This is more of a minor solution, not a real one. Add a Tolerated culture modifier, which is inbetween an unaccepted culture, and an accepted culture. Unlike accepted culture, any culture can be made into a tolerated one for a cost, but it has to be maintained.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

1. Allow cultures to be part of more than one culture group. Honestly I am unsure if this is possible without a heavy rewrite of culture groups though. But I do feel that, say, Breton being part of both the French and the Celtic culture group would make sense.

My idea is essentially that, but I think it would require much less recoding.

 

[AirikrStrife]

The culture system of EUIV is very flawed and the new change makes some stuff better and some stuff worse. This forum is riddled with suggestion threads asking for a more ocmplex culture system and I think this is something that Paradox needs to address. Especially there needs to be some overlapping culture system

Few examples of why new culture system doesn't work. While it's reasonable to have finish in a scandinavian/nordic culture group it's not reasonable that karelian should be considered a foreign culture by an independent Finland.

Turkish and Azerbaijani culture not accepting each other despite having almost the same language.

Hungarian because of it's cultural uniqueness is almost impossible to fit into any culture group without causing someone to get pissed off. It could have been put into a west slavic, germanic, south slavic and even turkic group just as well as ending up in the current carpathian group. Depending on which part of Hungarian history you want to recreate the logical pairing would shift.

I haven't seen in which group estonian is gonna end up in but that's another culture which after the removal of the finno-ugric group from the baltic area could reasonably end up in either scandinavian, baltic or russian group.

There are more such complicated situations and groups that makes both the old, and the new system, very problematic and unsatisfactory.

 

[TheGhostVII]

Czech/Bohemian culture is not closer to Germanic at all. If you honestly believe this, you've never met a Czech person, been to the Czech Republic, or seen anything to do with Czech culture. Their festivals, stories, folk tales, folk songs, and traditional food all resemble Slavic culture. The only major difference is that Czech architecture is closer to Western European architecture than, for example, Russian architecture. Oh, and the fact that they drink beer more than vodka.

 

[Martin_Mortyry]

@TheGhostVII Mate, I've been to Czech Republic thousands of times ever since I was a toddler. Hell, I live in a city that belonged to Czechs by the game start! I'm fully aware they're Slavic with Slavic culture, but you can't deny their Germanic ties, especially in that time period.

 

[TheGhostVII]

@TheGhostVII Mate, I've been to Czech Republic thousands of times ever since I was a toddler. Hell, I live in a city that belonged to Czechs by the game start! I'm fully aware they're Slavic with Slavic culture, but you can't deny their Germanic ties, especially in that time period.

The way you worded it made it sound like you were implying that Czechs are more Germanic than Slavic, which is what some people actually believe. But I do agree with you. I think a different way to do this might be to give bonuses to cultures from certain groups have bonuses to accepting other cultures. West Slavic cultures should be able to easily accept East Slavic, Baltic, the newly added Carpathian, and maybe Germanic culture. Not sure how it could be implemented, though.

 

[Dutchman251]

Well, the current rework does away with the classic concept of culture: It makes it a pragmatic 'conquer your neighbours first, and for later conquests be hit by some malus if you don't take humanism' tool, which vaguely follows historical cultural ties. Many other things are better.

 

[BrokenSky]

2. This is more of a minor solution, not a real one. Add a Tolerated culture modifier, which is inbetween an unaccepted culture, and an accepted culture. Unlike accepted culture, any culture can be made into a tolerated one for a cost, but it has to be maintained.

This. Maybe it could increase corruption or cost diplo-points to maintain?

 

[firecage]

This. Maybe it could increase corruption or cost diplo-points to maintain?

Mmm, corruption would be a good solution actually. Not diplo points though. Diplo points would make sense, but there's already so many things which can drain them.

 

[cub298]

I would have to agree that unaccepted culture should increase corruption because of them wanting freedom and messing with the government as much as they can. The malus would stay there until the culture is accepted and it relating to religion where the right religion decreases gained corruption to a max of 10 (where it says for it being your religion to reduce revolt), and is more exponential and a problem if wrong religion, (for if it is a heathen and heretic, with heathen being twich value of a heretic to gain more corruption). The only acceptance to this would be for Sunni countries with the religion because of the estate that they would assign to the province which would release this stress of this for being represented.

 

[sdms]

I was thinking a lot about how cultures work and I came with my own idea. But first I would give an example of modern Poland. So in Poland we've got obviously Polish culture, people speak Polish, learn Polish history etc. Yet people from the east speak a little different than people from west of Poland. Also there's a lot of regional culture groups with their own languages, traditions etc. In many cases these languages and traditions tend to fade. The reason they fade is usually influence of main (Polish) culture, because people have to learn Polish at schools, people migrate to other regions etc. On the other hand people of such fading culture groups tend to fight for survival of their traditions.

So what I'm thinking of is a system that would allow a province to have various cultures. Every culture would have global and local influence factor. Global influence is how strong a culture is globally and local influence would allow a culture to grow on province level. Just like at various points of history we can observe influences of Italian, French, British culture etc. - that would be global factor. Global influence factor would be stronger for bigger and more advanced nations. Local influence factor will depend on many factors like separatism etc. which means for example that it would be harder for a culture to grow stronger when people are more willing to rebel against current owner of province.

If a culture in conquered province becomes very weak people of that culture should be more willing to fight for their own existence, especially if there's no nation of that culture and/or no other province of that culture. Which of course should give unrest penalty and/or possibility for rebellion. If such rebellion is crushed it should give a possibility of extinction of that culture.

And for a global influence factor. It should be possible to influence neighboring provinces so much that people in them would feel more related to another country than their own. This could lead to several options. First of all - a rebellion, but not necessarily. There could be an event that will give a current owner several options like giving a province to another country, fighting a rebellion or trying to improve situation (for example by investing money). This system gives also various other possibilities. For example it would be harder (but not impossible) to influence culture in enemy country or in province which main culture is somewhat hostile (like Polish and German cultures or British and French cultures, that are somewhat hostile to each other, but yet influence each other). It also gives new possibilities for diplomatic/covert actions.

This whole idea also gives an opportunity for smooth changes in culture groups. Or maybe not culture groups but how different cultures see each other. So if there's a history of hostilities between two cultures such cultures will be more hostile to each other. On the other hand if there's long history of friendship then such cultures will become closer to each other. Close and friendly cultures could influence each other more easily and in general are willing to accept each other. On the other hand a hostile cultures tend to fight each other so that could influence such factors like unrest, separatism, rebellion risk.

So to sum up. Tech level + ideas compared to other nations influences GIF. GIF is also influenced by prestige, stability, government type/rank, country size/development (total). GIF influences LIF. LIF is also influenced by unrest, separatism, distance from borders (in case of spreading culture outside borders), relations between nations/cultures, development (province level). On province level culture with highest LIF grows more while cultures with lowest LIF shrinks most. LIF can be influenced by diplomatic and covert actions from player.

Pros:
1. Smooth system for a culture change.
2. Opportunity for many new events.
3. Opportunity for new ways of conquest.
4. Opportunity for new reasons for war.
5. New uses for diplomacy/spy networks.
... well there's probably more

Cons:
Well I think it could take a lot more of memory, computing power compared to current system.

Side note:
This could lead to a change in coring system.

 

[FleetingRain]

I'm still waiting for the fabled add_permanent_accepted_culture to be implemented. All these culture changes would probably work and look a lot better as triggered modifiers/events than the current setup.

 

[Timewalker102]

I personally think that the current culture mechanics are well done, but not the current culture groups. The game already has a good mechanic for handling cultures: it deals with cultural segregation, assimilation and integration pretty well.

1. Allow cultures to be part of more than one culture group. Honestly I am unsure if this is possible without a heavy rewrite of culture groups though. But I do feel that, say, Breton being part of both the French and the Celtic culture group would make sense.

This is really the best idea in the thread IMO. Many of the problems raised in the thread can be addressed: for example, Czech could be both in the Slavic and the Germanic group.

 

[Teutonizer]

Well, after 1.16 landed, it becomes clearly - we need rework of culture system as a whole.
There are many very good (and more importantly, argumented well) suggestions on how to rework it
Nevermind, we need, at least, some kind of workaround in the mean time
Despite we have the possibility to mod it, I guess it'll be better if PI do that
I guess, as a temporary solution (before culture system rework will be done), we can hit it with events (despite that being not ideal solution, I guess it'll still be better that what we have now)

 

[AndrejK]

How about each culture being :
1. parto f a culture group
2. having related culture.

eg.g. Croat is in South Slavicgroup (along with Serbian , Bulgarian etc.) Also Croat has Hungarian, Venetian and Austrian as related cultures (despite not being in same culture group).

 

[cub298]

How about each culture being :
1. parto f a culture group
2. having related culture.

eg.g. Croat is in South Slavicgroup (along with Serbian , Bulgarian etc.) Also Croat has Hungarian, Venetian and Austrian as related cultures (despite not being in same culture group).

I say that idea would work pretty well if it were in the game. It would make it so you don't need to accept the culture manually. Could be like events that could make a culture automatically accepted. It could also be a decision with to have your country chose culture conversion cost or culture acceptance, that I would say should fire every 50 years and expires in 20 or 30, with both of the modifiers being 5 percent modifier, with maybe some other option saying that the country doesn't need it gaining 50 points in each category.

If anyone thinks of more balanced numbers say something.