Some Concerns and Ideas on Culture

[Count DVB]

Good evening everyone, I hope you are well! Hope everyone is keeping safe during these trying times. I came onto here to note my varying concerns on how some of the culture stuff is handled within the game. Some of this is on broader issues and others more specific ones, so I shall list them as I note along with some suggestions and ideas.

Carpathian Culture Group
I did not get this one. Like, is it a reflection of the cultural diversity and exchange there? I mean, if it is, I kinda get it, but it makes little sense. Slovak should be in the West Slavic culture group. Transylvania (the region) I get the cultural diversity though that doesn't really mean that it justifies it since they would still be Romanian more or less, right? It's a similar question I had toward why Khorasan culture is a thing (which I looked into and it appears to referring to the Persianized Khorasani Turks), so why have it? Of course, that leaves Hungarian and Romanian, which don't have much in common. So really, I think it would work getting rid of the Carpathian Culture group and making Transylvania a Romanian culture state though that does leave Hungarian and Romanian in a bit of an odd stance. This does segway into my next thing...

Culture Groups of One Culture
While only Korea is a true example of this, other nations sorta fit given how they lack a state unless you make one. Plus, this includes the above-mentioned Hungarian and Romanian cultures. I would like to propose a special mechanic of "adopting" a new culture group. Like if you're Korea, you could adopt the Japanese culture group, or with Romania, adopt the South Slavic culture group. Granted, I reckon the requirements would be owning and coring all the provinces with that culture before making the decision. I do see the benefit being in empire building since when you become an Empire-rank nation, you are also a culture union (say you are Korea and you adopt the Japanese culture group or even the Chinese culture group, that means if you become an empire, then you can get all of the cultures of that group as a cultural union.) Though speaking of cultural unions and culture numbers...

Buffing Number of Accepted Cultures
This is really notable for certain larger nations, but I note for alot of the larger historical nations, it becomes harder to get the accepted number of cultures, especially depending on the culture group so having more chances to have more accepted cultures would be useful. However, the main sticking point for this is Bharat/Hindustan. While they got some missions from Dharma, they both look kinda lackluster compared to the Mughals and their ability to abosrb an indefinite number of cultures and so it makes Bharat and Hindustan look smaller in comparison. I mean yes, vassals do help with that though given how the core requirements are all over the map, it does result in something messy. So giving Bharat/Hindustan a similar mechanic or at least buffing the number of acceptable cultures they have somehow would be pretty beneficial for them, especially if cultures will be added in the future and speaking of...


Missing Cultures
There are at least a few cultures we could add. Maori could become one, Tajik culture definitely and also possibly Assyrian and any of those could with a variety of fun ideas and just a bit if not a fair bit more so to what can be done.

Hope everyone has a nice day,

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

Missing Cultures
There are at least a few cultures we could add. Maori could become one, Tajik culture definitely and also possibly Assyrian and any of those could with a variety of fun ideas and just a bit if not a fair bit more so to what can be done.

Sorry, I never played neither Imperator nor Crusader Kings, so these cultures are "new" or something from another game? Just asking.

 

[AirikrStrife]

Carpathian Culture Group

One of the most frequent complaints here, and something which seems to be based almost exclusively on language and primordialist notions of ethnicity.

I asked my slovak friend his opinion on the carpathian group:

as you know the history of central Europe is a little bit of mess...
The truth is that our language belongs to the Western Slavic language group. Nowadays we identify ourselves as Western Slavs but given the years when the game is set, my personal opinion is that the mentioned groups are correct. We have always been very close to Czech republic and Czech people but closer cooperation started a bit later.
During the years you mentioned we belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary and Habsburg monarchy as well (very strong connection with Hungary and Romania).

I guess a few centuries of sharing a country has more meaning than linguistic ties, and that's why many of the very criticized groups do make sense, finnish in scandinavian, breton in french, welsh in british. People whine about the language but neglect the shared history and political structure which were the reality of people,

 

[nyetflix]

Tajik culture definitely

I'm not really sure this is needed. Even today, the major historic cities of Uzbekistan, Bukhara and Samarqand, are mainly populated by Persian-speaking people. Uzbek states like Khiva, Bukhara, Kokand all used Persian as a literary/official language, so bilingualism was widespread. There were no Tajik states during this period (as far as I know) and modern Tajikistan belonged to Bukhara then Kokand. I don't think there was ever any Tajik separatism and I don't know what tag we could add, because besides the difference of language, Uzbeks and Tajiks were pretty similar in culture. I don't know if there really was a difference in identity.

I think for me the most important cultures to add would be Ryukyuan, Ingrian, Libyan, Najdi and more French regional cultures. Outside of Eurasia, I think we also need at least Culli (Peru), Cuitlatec (Mexico), Fur (Chad/Sudan), Edo (Nigeria), and Teke (Congo). But there are a lot more that I would support, including Assyrian and Maori. I have ideas in most every part of the world, and there are quite a lot of cultural groupings that need revising imo.

As for the Carpathian group, I support a suggestion I saw not too long ago, to put Romanian and Transylvanian into the South Slavic group (renamed to Balkan) and Hungarian and Slovak with West Slavic (renamed to Central European).

In general, I would like to see in a few cases bonuses for certain cultures for neighboring cultural groups. For instance, Iraqi culture could be slightly easier to rule for Iranian nations than other Levantine cultures, given that they've always had strong ties to Iran. Afghan and Bihari culture could give bonuses to North Aryan culture states, Vietnamese for Chinese culture, Marathi and Sinhala for Dravidian culture, Catalan for French culture or Occitan/Gascon for Iberian, etc. Maybe it'd be a bit too much though.

 

[Count DVB]

One of the most frequent complaints here, and something which seems to be based almost exclusively on language and primordialist notions of ethnicity.

I asked my slovak friend his opinion on the carpathian group:

I guess a few centuries of sharing a country has more meaning than linguistic ties, and that's why many of the very criticized groups do make sense, finnish in scandinavian, breton in french, welsh in british. People whine about the language but neglect the shared history and political structure which were the reality of people,

I suppose that makes sense though it makes the whole thing a bit of a mess and it makes the idea of culture conversion then kinda weird and confusing, especially if some of the cultural groups were based on mixes of others like Transylvanian or Khorasanian

 

[Count DVB]

I'm not really sure this is needed. Even today, the major historic cities of Uzbekistan, Bukhara and Samarqand, are mainly populated by Persian-speaking people. Uzbek states like Khiva, Bukhara, Kokand all used Persian as a literary/official language, so bilingualism was widespread. There were no Tajik states during this period (as far as I know) and modern Tajikistan belonged to Bukhara then Kokand. I don't think there was ever any Tajik separatism and I don't know what tag we could add, because besides the difference of language, Uzbeks and Tajiks were pretty similar in culture. I don't know if there really was a difference in identity.

I think for me the most important cultures to add would be Ryukyuan, Ingrian, Libyan, Najdi and more French regional cultures. Outside of Eurasia, I think we also need at least Culli (Peru), Cuitlatec (Mexico), Fur (Chad/Sudan), Edo (Nigeria), and Teke (Congo). But there are a lot more that I would support, including Assyrian and Maori. I have ideas in most every part of the world, and there are quite a lot of cultural groupings that need revising imo.

As for the Carpathian group, I support a suggestion I saw not too long ago, to put Romanian and Transylvanian into the South Slavic group (renamed to Balkan) and Hungarian and Slovak with West Slavic (renamed to Central European).

In general, I would like to see in a few cases bonuses for certain cultures for neighboring cultural groups. For instance, Iraqi culture could be slightly easier to rule for Iranian nations than other Levantine cultures, given that they've always had strong ties to Iran. Afghan and Bihari culture could give bonuses to North Aryan culture states, Vietnamese for Chinese culture, Marathi and Sinhala for Dravidian culture, Catalan for French culture or Occitan/Gascon for Iberian, etc. Maybe it'd be a bit too much though.

Tajiks are an Iranian ethnic group and some do speak Persian if I believe. And there is probably enough of a difference for us to ave Tajikistan today. In fact, apparently a good chunk of Tajik folk consider Khorasan to be part of their national muthos. I have no idea how accurare this is, though it is still something to be considered. Apparently the Samanid Empire is considered a Tajik Empire there.

Amd of we are having even more culture groups, having a way to increase the amount of accepted culture groups should be added.

The Balkan and Central European seem to be interesting ideas though I wodner what the others would say for this.

 

[nyetflix]

Tajiks are an Iranian ethnic group and some do speak Persian if I believe. And there is probably enough of a difference for us to ave Tajikistan today. In fact, apparently a good chunk of Tajik folk consider Khorasan to be part of their national muthos. I have no idea how accurare this is, though it is still something to be considered. Apparently the Samanid Empire is considered a Tajik Empire there.

I think Uzbek and Turkmen should be considered Iranian cultures.

 

[Count DVB]

I think Uzbek and Turkmen should be considered Iranian cultures.

Why so? They appear to be closer to Turkic roots than Tajik is (don't think they even are Turkic.)

 

[nyetflix]

Why so? They appear to be closer to Turkic roots than Tajik is (don't think they even are Turkic.)

Language isn't the only thing that should matter here, and in fact is not. Azerbaijani is already represented as an Iranian culture for example, and Mongolian cultures are grouped together with Turkic languages despite them being unrelated linguistically. "Altaic" is supposed to represent steppe nomad cultures, but the southern half of Central Asia has been always within the Persian sphere of influence. They are sedentary city-dwellers. They were included in most Iranian empires in history.

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

Still think Welsh and Breton should be Celtic for more than just language, but I am a oppressed minority here.

 

[AirikrStrife]

Tajiks & turks of central asia lived largely in sybiosis, there were multitude of ethnically mixed rulers, courts and states. The timurid rulers were bilingual in persian and chagatai, the population in many places like samarkand and bukhara would also have a high degree of bilingualism and shared culture. When kipchaks migrated to transoxiana they were viewed as foreign by the settled turk speakers.

Tajik makes sense as a culture, i have suggested a turanian culture group pf uzbek, new uyghur, tajik, and some other cultures sharing a central asian turco-persian culture

 

[AirikrStrife]

Still think Welsh and Breton should be Celtic for more than just language, but I am a oppressed minority here.

Such as?

 

[AirikrStrife]

I suppose that makes sense though it makes the whole thing a bit of a mess and it makes the idea of culture conversion then kinda weird and confusing, especially if some of the cultural groups were based on mixes of others like Transylvanian or Khorasanian

Yeah there are issues, i don't say slovak is not west slavic, but it also fits in a carpathian group. Cultures are not essentialist, unchangeable or monolithic. There is though a strong bias for some culture groupings, it's always slavic, turkic and celtic that are mentioned, occasionaly albanian, finnish and basque.

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

Such as?

Culture, folklore, music, religion/superstition and love-hate relationship with more powerful neighbours?
The whole of the Breton ideas yell "I will not be reconstructed", for crying out loud.

 

[nyetflix]

Culture, folklore, music, religion/superstition and love-hate relationship with more powerful neighbours?
The whole of the Breton ideas yell "I will not be reconstructed", for crying out loud.

I would open to it, but I'm not totally sure one way or the other. Bretons continuously clashed by French Romance-speaking peoples throughout the middle ages, and it seems like there was a march system on the border, sort of similar to the border between Germanic and Slavic peoples. Also, Breton and Cornish/Welsh culture do have some links. Fishermen/merchants from each country would go back and forth and were able to communicate, especially in this time period. So there are arguments I think, although like I said I'm not sure.

 

[AirikrStrife]

Culture, folklore, music, religion/superstition and love-hate relationship with more powerful neighbours?
The whole of the Breton ideas yell "I will not be reconstructed", for crying out loud.

but there didn't exit any concept of celtic culture or identity in the 15th century, the language family wasn't properly established until 18th century. Swedes and germans are culturaly and linguistically closer to each other and meanwhile the remaining celtic populations became part of other stats and had no particular relationshipwith each other. Modern celtic identity is largely a modern construct

"During the 19th century, French nationalists gave a privileged significance to their descent from the Gauls. The struggles of Vercingetorix were portrayed as a forerunner of the 19th-century struggles in defence of French nationalism, including the wars of both Napoleons (Napoleon I of France and Napoleon III of France). Basic French history textbooks emphasised the ways in which Gauls ("Nos ancêtres les Gaulois...", 'our ancestors the Gauls') could be seen as an example of cultural assimilation.[12] In the late Middle Ages, some French writers believed (incorrectly) that their language was primarily Celtic, rather than Latin.[13] A similar use of Celticity for 19th-century nationalism was made in Switzerland, when the Swiss were seen to originate in the Celtic tribe of the Helvetii, a link still found in the official Latin name of Switzerland, Confœderatio Helvetica, the source of the nation code CH and the name used on postage stamps (Helvetia)."

"At the same time, there was also a tendency to play up alternative heritages in the British Isles at certain times. For example, in the Isle of Man, in the Victorian era, the Viking heritage was emphasised, and in Scotland, both Norse and Anglo-Saxon heritage was emphasised."

What cultural likeness would actually a 16th century welshmen have with a contemporary irishman?

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

but there didn't exit any concept of celtic culture or identity in the 15th century, the language family wasn't properly established until 18th century. Swedes and germans are culturaly and linguistically closer to each other and meanwhile the remaining celtic populations became part of other stats and had no particular relationshipwith each other. Modern celtic identity is largely a modern construct
(...)
What cultural likeness would actually a 16th century welshmen have with a contemporary irishman?

The fact that I can not speak Breton and can barely speak French is a issue, but I have seen mentions to it from the other cultures involved. A historian/folklorist I read once went on a long explanation on how the legends of the Sidhe were passed down in Ireland, compared to Scotland, compared to Wales, compared to Brittany, compared to Cumbria, and so on. From the English-Gael sources I have at least some idea of it in addition to my general notions of history (and why a fair number of Jewish scholars have a very bad opinion of Duke Charles d'Blois-Châttilon).
The fact I read most of those things fifteen years ago and can not remeber all the souces by heart (or a superficial search on DuckDuckGo) is what stops me from saying in certainty where it should or should not be, but I actually have been trying to look into it again since it is such a great controversy.

And yes, while nationalists and bards (or movies nowadays) are the most guilty or making a bloody mess of historical truths, they may not have been a easily recognisable and group, they shared more in common between themselves than with some other culture ethnicity. That does not change such as the fact Highlander is in the Celtic group, despite being mostly Pictish-Nordic (and believe, so many orange men nationalists want to beat me up for saying that) but has enough in common with the Irish (both in "Celtic" traces that survived and things gained/regained due to cultural exchange over the centuries. to justify them being grouped together, and was dissonant enough of Low Land Scottish to create a unofficial border in language, custom and later on religion between them, let alone the shock between Highlander and English-British cultures that ended with one of them nearly going extinct. Both in "Celtic" traces that survived and things gained/regained due to cultural exchange over the centuries.

Did it make sense?

 

[nyetflix]

That does not change such as the fact Highlander is in the Celtic group, despite being mostly Pictish-Nordic (and believe, so many orange men nationalists want to beat me up for saying that) but has enough in common with the Irish (both in "Celtic" traces that survived and things gained/regained due to cultural exchange over the centuries. to justify them being grouped together, and was dissonant enough of Low Land Scottish to create a unofficial border in language, custom and later on religion between them, let alone the shock between Highlander and English-British cultures that ended with one of them nearly going extinct. Both in "Celtic" traces that survived and things gained/regained due to cultural exchange over the centuries.

Well actually Scottish Highlands and Ireland are two pretty clearly linked cultures. Their languages form a dialect continuum even today (some dialects of Irish are closer to Scottish Gaelic than to certain other Irish dialects), plus all the similarities in music and dance and traditional clothing, etc. The Norse influence was present in both countries, just a lot stronger in northeast Scotland. The current cultural grouping between Irish and Highlander more than makes sense. The problem is establishing a strong connection to the Brythonic-speaking cultures, Welsh Cornish and Breton. I'm not sure it's there.

 

[MadDoctorScientist]

Well actually Scottish Highlands and Ireland are two pretty clearly linked cultures. Their languages form a dialect continuum even today (some dialects of Irish are closer to Scottish Gaelic than to certain other Irish dialects), plus all the similarities in music and dance and traditional clothing, etc. The Norse influence was present in both countries, just a lot stronger in northeast Scotland. The current cultural grouping between Irish and Highlander more than makes sense. The problem is establishing a strong connection to the Brythonic-speaking cultures, Welsh Cornish and Breton. I'm not sure it's there.

To quote myself:

"(...)but has enough in common with the Irish (both in "Celtic" traces that survived and things gained/regained due to cultural exchange over the centuries. to justify them being grouped together, (...)".

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

At the end of the day, EU IV screwed up cultures and no one can agree what should be where and if one should even be in the game, let's just hope EU V has pops or something else to help province representation and has clearer lines for how culture groups will be organized.

Now for some of the discussed cultures I'll throw in my personal opinions:

- I would move Slovak to West Slavic, there's just so much similarity between Czech and Slovak that I can't see them being separated despite the heavy Hungarian influence on Slovakia

- I see two ways of solving the Carpathian culture group problem, rather you keep Carpathian and remove Romanian culture, add Wallachian and Moldavian, giving you four cultures in the group, Transylvanian stays, representing the mostly Romanian area with large Hungarian and small Germanic influence on the area, alternatively you make Hungarian a culture group on its own, similar to Korea, and you make a Romanian culture group which includes the previous 3 Romanian cultures I mentioned of Wallachian, Moldavian and Transylvanian

- I would move Welsh and Cornish (since it's being added in the next update) to the Celtic group, England/Great Britain tends to be too stable for areas that didn't always get along with the English, and while it's true that the "national awakening" of the Celtic people didn't really happen until later, I do think moving them to Celtic usually outweighs the cons, regarding Breton, I would move it, however considering how French influenced the names are, it seems to be more Gallo based, but then the national ideas of Brittany paint it to be more Celtic, clearly Brittany has a identity crisis in EU IV, something hopefully fixed in the future, I would also rename Highlander to Gaelic, it fits Gaeldom better and it seems weird to have Highlander and Scottish, normally it's Scottish Scottish and Scottish Gaelic, or Lowland and Highland, not some weird version with both

- On the subject of Celtic areas, it would be nice to see Norn added to the game for Orkney and Shetland, I know it's not the most neccessary change but with Cornish being added it would be really nice to see, as well as Icelandic however I am not 100% if it makes sense at game start, but during the game it should pop up eventually, perhaps via event, I've always found it odd that if Denmark or whoever controls Iceland has issues and the rebels break free that it goes to Norway instead of Iceland becoming free