Should culture shifting be removed?

[maxirage]

Is there even any historical basis for the ability of countries to change their primary culture? Religious conversions happened all the time, but I can't recall any nations just deciding to change the identity of their core ethnicity. And it's not like the feature is used that often -- it's used exclusively for gamey tactics to abuse formable nations. Because culture shifting exists, Paradox has to create tons of arbitrary rules about which country is allowed to form another, which are impossible for anyone to keep track of. This feature made sense in a more sandbox-style experience where each country did not have much identity, like EU3, but I'm not sure why it's in EU4 outside of legacy support.

 

[gia257]

Is there even any historical basis for the ability of countries to change their primary culture? Religious conversions happened all the time, but I can't recall any nations just deciding to change the identity of their core ethnicity. And it's not like the feature is used that often -- it's used exclusively for gamey tactics to abuse formable nations. Because culture shifting exists, Paradox has to create tons of arbitrary rules about which country is allowed to form another, which are impossible for anyone to keep track of. This feature made sense in a more sandbox-style experience where each country did not have much identity, like EU3, but I'm not sure why it's in EU4 outside of legacy support.

ethnic cleansing, here it is just cute and pretty and only diplomatic (or perhaps the diplo is to keep the population from hearing about it)

 

[LeKaiser]

It happened historically. The obvious example is the Roman Empire shifting from a Latin to a Greek culture, particularly once its core was reduced to the heavily Greek Balkans and Anatolia. It happened to many Mongol states - the Ilkhanate absorbed much of the local Persian culture after settling, and indeed this pattern repeated continuously when invaders conquered Persia. Obviously there's some inherent problems in that EU4 renders culture as a discrete unit when in reality it was a more fluid or syncretic thing but that's the price of playing a strategy game that has to turn complex parts of society into an abstraction.

 

[C.N.]

Is there even any historical basis for the ability of countries to change their primary culture? Religious conversions happened all the time, but I can't recall any nations just deciding to change the identity of their core ethnicity. And it's not like the feature is used that often -- it's used exclusively for gamey tactics to abuse formable nations. Because culture shifting exists, Paradox has to create tons of arbitrary rules about which country is allowed to form another, which are impossible for anyone to keep track of. This feature made sense in a more sandbox-style experience where each country did not have much identity, like EU3, but I'm not sure why it's in EU4 outside of legacy support.

Well, culture shifting usually happened when a foreign upper-class merged with a conquered population, forming some kind of synthesis. Good examples of this are Normans becoming English, Visigoths becoming Spanish, Greeks becoming Ptolemaic Egyptians and Bolghars becoming Bulgarians. (Also, as said above, ERE)