Suggestion: Multiple Culture Groupings

[pengoyo]

Pretext
So I've never really liked the culture group system in CK2 (it's not horrible, but it's not great either. It's functional). So while I'm extremely excited for how cultures themselves are being improved in CK3, I was a slight bit disappointed that they were keeping the same culture group system that they had in CK2. I was hoping they'd improve how they represented the relation between different cultures. Now the obvious way to improve it is just to add another layer, so you have groups of groups (similar to the religion group, religion, and faith tiers). And I'll admit that I was of fan of this in the past and would prefer it over the CK2 system. But I can see why the devs don't add it to the game as it doesn't really bring any interesting gameplay and doesn't do a good job of representing cultures that share features with one set of culture, but share other features with a different set of cultures. But I had a realization, based on how technologies in CK3 are restricted to culture belonging to regions, that the solution is practically already in the game.


Basic Proposal
There should be two sets of culture groups: culture families and regional culture groups. And each culture would belong to a culture family and a regional culture group, but two cultures that belong to the same culture family might not belong to the same regional culture group and vice versa. So the opinion of vassals would be based on whether your cultures share a culture family and/or a regional culture group (in addition to religion, traits, etc).

By the way, the regional culture group name should really be shorted, but for the clarity of this post I'm using it as is.


Culture Families
So the culture families would work very similar to the current culture groups. Each culture family would be a static list of cultures. But while the current culture groups are not fully based on language families, I would make the new culture families heavily based on language families (with some leeway) as the goal is to group cultures that have cultural similarities due to having a common origin.


Regional Culture Groups
The regional culture groups would be based on, as the name suggests, regions of the CK3 map. So any culture that is primarily found in a region would belong to that regional culture group. The idea being that cultures that might not be historically related, but inhabiting a common area, will intermingle and have similarities due to their proximity. Additionally, this system would be dynamic. So if a culture migrated into a region and became established, they could become part of the local culture group, representing their adoption of some of the local customs. This means which culture see each others as similar would be able to change as cultures move around or expand (but with culture families still allowing some cultures in the same region to de somewhat distinct). Note, I proposing using the same calculation that CK3 uses for regional tech system that allows widely dispersed cultures to belong to multiple regions (if sufficiently prevalent in multiple regions), but this could also be tweaked if needed.


Example: Iberia
So for example, looking at the CK2 cultures found in Iberia in 1066, you'd have Portuguese, Castilian, Basque, Catalan, and Andalusian. Currently in the game Portuguese, Castilian, Basque, and Catalan are one culture group and Andalusian belongs to a separate culture group. But this does a poor job of recognizing that Andalusian culture is suppose to represent the Arabic culture brought by the Muslims mixing with the local culture (in game Castilian and Andalusian view each other the same way that Castilian and Mongolian do. It also does a poor job of showing that Castilian and Portuguese are much more similar than Castilian and Basque. These same problems still exist in CK3

So let's say Iberia is a culture region (I'm imagining the culture regions would be based on the de jure empires, but this can be easily tweaked). That would mean that all these culture by inhabiting Iberia would be a part of the Iberian regional culture group. This would mean they would all be more accepting of each other than, say, Mongolian (unless the Mongols decided to settle down in Iberia). But they wouldn't be equally accepting of all the culture in Iberia, because there are culture families. So for instance Portuguese, Castilian, and Catalan might all belong to the Latin culture family (a grouping of the cultures descended from Latin). While Andalusian would belong to the Arabic culture family and Basque would be in it's own culture family. This means while Andalusian would be accepting of Castilian, they would also be accepting of other Arabic cultures (as they share a regional culture group with the former and a culture family with the later). Additionally, while Castilian would be accepting of Basque, Castilian would be even more accepting of Portuguese as they share both a culture family and a regional culture group.


Cultural Continuum
This also does a better job of representing continuums. For example, the culture from Portugal to France are on a continuum where each culture is similar to it's neighbour (so Portuguese is similar to Castilian, which is similar to Catalan, which is similar to Occitan, which is similar to French). But by the end enough gradual changes build up that French and Portuguese aren't as related as each step in the chain. This is difficult to represent in a computer game concisely and my proposal isn't perfect at representing this. But it would have French and Occitan as being close and Portuguese, Castilian, and Catalan as being close, which is what CK2 does. But this new cultural system would also recognize that Catalan and Occitan aren't completely foreign cultures like CK2 does, as both would belong to the same culture family. Additionally my this culture system also doesn't make Portuguese and French see each other as very closely related cultures, thus keeping the ends of the continuum somewhat distinct.


Example: Britain
So in 1066 in a British regional culture group you have (at least going by the CK2 culture map) Irish, Scottish and Welsh in the Celtic culture family and Anglo-Saxon in the Germanic culture family. Now interestingly while Norwegian culture is also present in Britain in 1066, it would not be part of the British regional culture group as it either wouldn't have enough provinces of it's culture in the region or the culture isn't mainly found in Britain. So while the Celts would see the Norwegians as truly foreign, the Anglo-Saxons would be somewhat accepting of the Norwegian culture as they would both belong to the Germanic culture family. That said, the Anglo-Saxons wouldn't be fully excepting of the Norwegian culture as they'd still view them as somewhat foreign. But if as the game played out, and the Norwegians settled more and more of Britain, eventually the cultures of Britain would become accustom to the Norwegian and not see them as foreign. As well, the Norwegian, by joining the British culture group, would also become accustom to the British cultures and not see them as foreign.


Additional Benefits
In addition to the more nuanced and dynamic cultural opinions mentioned above, with this new cultural system different regions would play differently. For example, France and Italy would both be regions where most of the cultures belong to the same culture family and so their would not be much cultural strife. Meanwhile, the culture diversity that existed in the Byzantine empire wouldn't all be swept under the Byzantine culture group rug. As the group could be split up into multiple culture families with the Byzantine regional culture group representing the Hellenization of these disparate cultures (also might pave the way for Greek to be divided into multiple cultures).

Also this system would inherently make more cultures unique as cultures are more likely to have a unique combination of region and culture family than they are if only in culture groups as in CK 2 and 3. So if picking a culture for strategic reasons, there is more to weigh.


More Possibilities
So the system could be made even more dynamic and responsive to players by allowing the opinions based on sharing a culture family versus a regional culture group to be affected by different technologies. This means the player could target which kinds of cultural relations they want to improve.

But not everything has to be opinion based. Besides both grouping also effecting technology spread and wiliness to vassalize (though probably to different degrees), this new system could also be tied into events with different regional culture groups having unique events. So if you manage to move Irish culture to India, your Irish culture would gain access to local events making it feel like the culture has actually evolved during all its travels.


Conclusion
Having culture families and regional culture groups would allow for a more nuanced and dynamic presentation of culture in CK3. While this system isn't perfect (and no video game system will be perfect) I believe that it will improve the culture experience of CK3 by allowing cultures to share similarities with different sets of cultures, allowing how cultures view each other to change over time, and giving a base that can be expanded upon through events to allow cultures to be much more dynamic and responsive to the world of CK3. Plus, adding this to the game isn't too much work as a lot of the framework is already there. Creating and modifying existing event would probably be the most work, but much of that can be done as CK3 is developed and more flavour is added over time.

edit: clarity

 

[pengoyo]

So to help illustrate how this might work I have prepared the following maps (credit to @vige for the county map I used to create these). This is not supposed to be the exact form I think the culture families or regional culture group's area should be, but more to give a big picture idea of how they might look.


Culture Groups
So to start I decided to try to create how the regional culture group areas might look (the area that if a culture is prominently found, it will be a part of that region's culture group). Note, I went for empires as my basis as the area for each regional culture group needs to be large enough to fit multiple cultures and the scale of empires seems to nicely meet this requirement. While I stuck to having the same number of regions as empires in CK3, the regions are more heavily based on geography. I tried to create areas that are geographically similar and connected, essentially an area that would facilitate a common culture emerging. I did debate combining the steppe into a singular region due to the culture of the steppe mixing a lot, but I thought this would be better handled by have nomads (when they introduce them) having reduced culture penalties with other nomads.

Note, this is just my attempt to to recreate what the regions in CK3 might look like, but as pointed out below there are problems with it. But as I believe this proposal should use the already existing CK3 regions (which have probably been better researched than mine), paradox can just ignore these regions. This map is only included because we don't know the CK3 regions and I wanted to give a sense of how the regional culture groups and culture families might differ and overlap.

Spoiler: Regional Culture Group Area Map

Culture Families
So for the culture families, I based these on linguistics families, specifically I started by putting all cultures in a group based on the linguistics groups that are a level down from language family. From there I modified these based on the fact that basing groups purely on a rigid linguistic criterion wouldn't work for all cultures. For instance there were some like the Sao and Sumpta, that there ethnicity is not well known so I placed them based on a combination of what I thought made the most sense and would help round out culture families. There where many linguistic groups I ended up combining. Some of these were because they were rather small (I combined all the Dravidian languages together for this reason) or because the linguistics sub-divides didn't fit well with groups that had only recently started diverging or mixed a lot (I combined all of Turkic people together for this reason). Lastly I separated the Ethiopian from the reset of the Semitic languages as the rest of them in CK3 are all Arab and so taking Ethiopian out allows for an Arabic group, which seemed appropriate given the time period.

Note I have attached both 867 and 1066 maps along with the picture I used to place the cultures (note that I wasn't able read all the culture names, if I couldn't I did my best to make an educated guess at which culture was there and thus which group it should belong to). Also I don't think these have to be the exact culture families, but unlike the regional map, I don't think we can use the CK3 culture groups as the devs have indicated that like in CK2 some of the culture groups are based on regions, which is already handled through the regional culture groups. So while I don't think the final culture families need to be these exact ones I present here, I think the culture families should be closer to these than they are to the CK2 culture groups.

Spoiler: 867 Culture Map and Culture Families

Culture Map 867

Culture Families 867

Spoiler: 1066 Culture Map and Culture Families

Culture Map 1066

Culture Families 1066

You'll notice that there are some very large culture families and some really small culture families. I believe this will work well with the regional culture groups, because large culture groups are effectively divided by these regional culture groups, where as small culture families can still find acceptance in their regional culture group. Also the difference in scale will help make different culture families play differently. The culture families are:

Spoiler: Potential Culture Families

Germanic
Celtic
Basque
Latin
Hellenic
Slavic
Baltic
Finnic
Ugric
Turkic
Tocharian
Mongolic
Chinese
Qiangic (alternatively Xifan, though this is less accurate)
Bodish
Burmese
Monic
Dravidian
Indic
Iranian
Caucasian
Armenian
Arabic
Berber
Mande
Volta
Chadic
Saharan
Nilo
Cushtic
Ethiopian
Omotic

Of these culture families there are some like Celtic or Germanic that there is a case for splitting. Germanic I don't think it needs to be split as the regional culture groups simulate the split. But for Celtic this is not the case so I would be fine with them being split. There are some culture families like Saharan/Nilo and Qiangic/Burmese that could be combined into larger families as they are all part of the same language family and are one the small side. I didn't do it for Nilo-Saharan as the language family is currently in dispute and for Qiangic/Burmese I couldn't find a good name. I also think there is ground for combining culture like Armenian and Georgian as they have existed in the same area since before antiquity. So you could argue at this point they have the same origin (which is ultimately what culture families is trying to capture). I did not combine them as I don't know enough about all the cultures in CK3 to do an even job of applying this principle.

Lastly, I fee like paradox doesn't like cultural isolates (I can sympathies with this, as viewing all other cultures as foreign isn't as interesting as some being accepted and some being foreign). There are 9 culture isolates in my proposal (Basque, Hellenic, Tocharian, Burmese, Monic, Caucasian, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Omotic), and I think culture isolates are more interesting in my proposal than the default CK2 culture group system, due to the regional culture groups giving cultural isolates an accepted versus foreign difference in their view of certain culture. But I will point out that many of these isolates could be given another culture in their culture family. This could be done by combining some culture families, but I think the best approach would by adding more culture to these culture families. Some like Chinese, Burmese, and Monic might happen if the map is expanded. But others like Hellenic, Ethiopian, Omotic, and Caucasian could be done by adding more cultures to the CK3 map. Note there are some culture like Basque, Tocharian, and possible Armenian that I think should remain isolates as that will be part of what makes the culture unique.


Example
So with these two sets of culture groups (the regional culture and culture families) the idea is that if you look at a particular culture on the map, let say French, you can see they are especially accepting of Norman and Occiatan as both are in the France region (the blue region of the region map) and are both in the Latin group (blue on the culture family maps). Then there is the rest of the Latin group who that are somewhat accepting of, but less than Norman and Occitan. There is also Breton which isn't a Latin culture, but which French is somewhat accepting of as they are both a part of the same region. And finally French see the rest of the cultures as foreign.


Other points
Now a couple thing to keep in mind is the this is not suppose to determine foreign relations (remember culture only affect within realm relations and province revolt risk). So even though French is somewhat accepting of Portuguese, this will only come into effect if there is a France and Iberia are unified.

The regional culture groups will help reduce conflict within a region, but will hamper expansion outside of a cultures starting region. This inadvertently will make blobbing past a certain point harder as an expanding empire will either need to spread their culture to more regions to become more accepted or need to themselves become more excepting of other cultures through technology. If an expanding empire doesn't, they can at most find somewhat accepting culture as they expand.

Note that since some cultures could belong to multiple regions this might make problems for the UI. I think the solution is to some a culture's family and regional culture group. But if the culture belongs to multiple regions, put "multiple" for the regional culture group, but the player can mouse over it to show a tool tip that list all the regional cultures that culture belongs to.

The opinion of culture in a region, doesn't need to be a hard switch (unlike the regional tech, which you can either research or not). Nut you could make it so as a culture approaches being a part of a regional culture group, other cultures of that regional culture group could gradually improve their opinion of the that culture proportional to how close it is to being a full member of the regional culture group. This would help make a culture that is expanding into a new area feel much more like a gradual process than just one day your culture is more integrated with it's neighbour.

Lastly, the regional culture groups could be used to help dynamically divide a culture (now for gameplay reasons this should only happen if a different regions cease to be part of the same realm). So let's say a French kingdom manages to spread it's culture to Iberia enough to become a part of the Iberian regional culture group. But later this kingdom fall a part and the French in Iberia become independent or part of a non French realm. If this last for enough time, than the French in Iberia could split and become a new culture, "Iberian French" allowing CK2 to dynamically represent the divergence of cultures. The regional name is added to the culture name to create a dynamic naming scheme. And there won't be the problem of ever longer names, as there can only be one regional name added to the culture name. So if Iberian French then later spreads to Italy, becomes accepted their, but the realm shatters and time passes; then an new Italian French culture would emerge as separate from Iberian French and regular French.


Conclusion
I don't think these have to be the exact region culture groups or culture families. This was to illustrate of what these regional culture groups or culture families might look like to help illustrate how different regions of the map might be affect by the mixture of regional culture groups and cultural families. Lastly, I've attached the sub-family linguistic groups that I originally divided the map into for those that are curious (this is not actually a part of the proposal).

Spoiler: Sub-Family Linguistic Map

867

1066

Edit: Changed Tibetan to Bodish

Edit: Clarity on the intention of this comment and Formatting

 

[deezee]

Unless I'm missing something, the current cultural fascination system COULD potentially capture a lot of what you're talking about here. A combination of region-specific cultural innovations and neighbor bonuses would cause cultures that co-exist in the same geographic region to develop in a similar cultural direction - exactly the point of the region culture group system that you describe here. And it is both simpler and more dynamic than requiring the game to generate new cultures based on where different cultures end up on the map.

 

[Reavici]

So to help illustrate how this might work I have prepared the following maps (credit to @vige for the county map I used to create these).

Culture Groups
So to start I decided to try to create how the regional culture group areas might look (the area that if a culture is prominently found, it will be a part of that region's culture group). Note, I went for empires as my basis as the area for each regional culture group needs to be large enough to fit multiple cultures and the scale of empires seems to nicely meet this requirement. While I stuck to having the same number of regions as empires in CK3, the regions are more heavily based on geography. I tried to create areas that are geographically similar and connected, essentially an area that would facilitate a common culture emerging. I did debate combining the steppe into a singular region due to the culture of the steppe mixing a lot, but I thought this would be better handled by have nomads (when they introduce them) having reduced culture penalties with other nomads.

Spoiler: Regional Culture Group Area Map

View attachment 581342

Culture Families
So for the culture families, I based these on linguistics families, specifically I started by putting all cultures in a group based on the linguistics groups that are a level down from language family. From there I modified these based on the fact that basing groups purely on a rigid linguistic criterion wouldn't work for all cultures. For instance there were some like the Sao and Sumpta, that there ethnicity is not well known so I placed them based on a combination of what I thought made the most sense and would help round out culture families. There where many linguistic groups I ended up combining. Some of these were because they were rather small (I combined all the Dravidian languages together for this reason) or because the linguistics sub-divides didn't fit well with groups that had only recently started diverging or mixed a lot (I combined all of Turkic people together for this reason). Lastly I separated the Ethiopian from the reset of the Semitic languages as the rest of them in CK3 are all Arab and so taking Ethiopian out allows for an Arabic group, which seemed appropriate given the time period.

Note I have attached both 867 and 1066 maps along with the picture I used to place the cultures (note that I wasn't able read all the culture names, if I couldn't I did my best to make an educated guess at which culture was there and thus which group it should belong to).

Spoiler: 867 Culture Map and Culture Families

Culture Map 867
View attachment 581343
Culture Families 867
View attachment 581345

Spoiler: 1066 Culture Map and Culture Families

Culture Map 1066
View attachment 581344
Culture Families 1066
View attachment 581346

You'll notice that there are some very large culture families and some really small culture families. I believe this will work well with the regional culture groups, because large culture groups are effectively divided by these regional culture groups, where as small culture families can still find acceptance in their regional culture group. Also the difference in scale will help make different culture families play differently. The culture groups are:

Germanic
Celtic
Basque
Latin
Hellenic
Slavic
Baltic
Finnic
Ugric
Turkic
Tocharian
Mongolic
Chinese
Qiangic (alternatively Xifan, though this is less accurate)
Bodish
Burmese
Monic
Dravidian
Indic
Iranian
Caucasian
Armenian
Arabic
Berber
Mande
Volta
Chadic
Saharan
Nilo
Cushtic
Ethiopian
Omotic

Of these culture families there are some like Celtic or Germanic that there is a case for splitting. Germanic I don't think it needs to be split as the regional culture groups simulate the split. But for Celtic this is not the case so I would be fine with them being split. There are some culture families like Saharan/Nilo and Qiangic/Burmese that could be combined into larger families as they are all part of the same language family and are one the small side. I didn't do it for Nilo-Saharan as the language family is currently in dispute and for Qiangic/Burmese I couldn't find a good name. I also think there is ground for combining culture like Armenian and Georgian as they have existed in the same area since before antiquity. So you could argue at this point they have the same origin (which is ultimately what culture families is trying to capture). I did not combine them as I don't know enough about all the cultures in CK3 to do an even job of applying this principle.

Lastly, I fee like paradox doesn't like cultural isolates (I can sympathies with this, as viewing all other cultures as foreign isn't as interesting as some being accepted and some being foreign). There are 9 culture isolates in my proposal (Basque, Hellenic, Tocharian, Burmese, Monic, Caucasian, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Omotic), and I think culture isolates are more interesting in my proposal than the default CK2 culture group system, due to the regional culture groups giving cultural isolates an accepted versus foreign difference in their view of certain culture. But I will point out that many of these isolates could be given another culture in their culture family. This could be done by combining some culture families, but I think the best approach would by adding more culture to these culture families. Some like Chinese, Burmese, and Monic might happen if the map is expanded. But others like Hellenic, Ethiopian, Omotic, and Caucasian could be done by adding more cultures to the CK3 map. Note there are some culture like Basque, Tocharian, and possible Armenian that I think should remain isolates as that will be part of what makes the culture unique.

Example
So with these two sets of culture groups (the regional culture and culture families) the idea is that if you look at a particular culture on the map, let say French, you can see they are especially accepting of Norman and Occiatan as both are in the France region (the blue region of the region map) and are both in the Latin group (blue on the culture family maps). Then there is the rest of the Latin group who that are somewhat accepting of, but less than Norman and Occitan. There is also Breton which isn't a Latin culture, but which French is somewhat accepting of as they are both a part of the same region. And finally French see the rest of the cultures as foreign.

Other points
Now a couple thing to keep in mind is the this is not suppose to determine foreign relations (remember culture only affect within realm relations and province revolt risk). So even though French is somewhat accepting of Portuguese, this will only come into effect if there is a France and Iberia are unified.

The regional culture groups will help reduce conflict within a region, but will hamper expansion outside of a cultures starting region. This inadvertently will make blobbing past a certain point harder as an expanding empire will either need to spread their culture to more regions to become more accepted or need to themselves become more excepting of other cultures through technology. If an expanding empire doesn't, they can at most find somewhat accepting culture as they expand.

Note that since some cultures could belong to multiple regions this might make problems for the UI. I think the solution is to some a culture's family and regional culture group. But if the culture belongs to multiple regions, put "multiple" for the regional culture group, but the player can mouse over it to show a tool tip that list all the regional cultures that culture belongs to.

The opinion of culture in a region, doesn't need to be a hard switch (unlike the regional tech, which you can either research or not). Nut you could make it so as a culture approaches being a part of a regional culture group, other cultures of that regional culture group could gradually improve their opinion of the that culture proportional to how close it is to being a full member of the regional culture group. This would help make a culture that is expanding into a new area feel much more like a gradual process than just one day your culture is more integrated with it's neighbour.

Lastly, the regional culture groups could be used to help dynamically divide a culture (now for gameplay reasons this should only happen if a different regions cease to be part of the same realm). So let's say a French kingdom manages to spread it's culture to Iberia enough to become a part of the Iberian regional culture group. But later this kingdom fall a part and the French in Iberia become independent or part of a non French realm. If this last for enough time, than the French in Iberia could split and become a new culture, "Iberian French" allowing CK2 to dynamically represent the divergence of cultures. The regional name is added to the culture name to create a dynamic naming scheme. And there won't be the problem of ever longer names, as there can only be one regional name added to the culture name. So if Iberian French then later spreads to Italy, becomes accepted their, but the realm shatters and time passes; then an new Italian French culture would emerge as separate from Iberian French and regular French.

Conclusion
I don't think these have to be the exact region culture groups or culture families. This was to illustrate of what these regional culture groups or culture families might look like to help illustrate how different regions of the map might be affect by the mixture of regional culture groups and cultural families. Lastly, I've attached the sub-family linguistic groups that I originally divided the map into for those that are curious (this is not actually a part of the proposal).

Spoiler: Sub-Family Linguistic Map

867
View attachment 581349
1066
View attachment 581350

Edit: Changed Tibetan to Bodish

I just realized that culture in Tbilisi in 867 is Armenian, why is that like that? Tbilisi was built in 5th century by Georgian king, later it was conquered by Persians and then by Arabs and never by Armenians. During Arab rule majority would be muslims/persians. First Armenian cathedral was built there in 15th century.

Timeline of Tbilisi - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[es333]

So to help illustrate how this might work I have prepared the following maps (credit to @vige for the county map I used to create these).

Culture Groups
So to start I decided to try to create how the regional culture group areas might look (the area that if a culture is prominently found, it will be a part of that region's culture group). Note, I went for empires as my basis as the area for each regional culture group needs to be large enough to fit multiple cultures and the scale of empires seems to nicely meet this requirement. While I stuck to having the same number of regions as empires in CK3, the regions are more heavily based on geography. I tried to create areas that are geographically similar and connected, essentially an area that would facilitate a common culture emerging. I did debate combining the steppe into a singular region due to the culture of the steppe mixing a lot, but I thought this would be better handled by have nomads (when they introduce them) having reduced culture penalties with other nomads.

Spoiler: Regional Culture Group Area Map

View attachment 581342

Why did you put Estonia into the Balto-Slavic region? It doesn't make any sense. Estonia was a part of the Nordic region before, during and after viking age. 20th century geopolitics has no place in Crusader Kings. There's a reason why Estonia is in the Scandinavian empire in CK2 and CK3 as the Scandinavian region will have access to longships and it would make zero sense for Estonians not to be in it as they were raiding the Scandinavian coastline already hundreds of years before the viking age started.

"regions are more heavily based on geography". There's a reason why Northern-, Western- and Central-Estonia had the same archaeological culture with Sweden, because the distance over the sea is really small. It is a complete fact proven by historians and archaeologists that most of Estonia was in the same cultural zone with Scandinavia while South-Eastern Estonia had its own culture because it was separated from the rest of Estonia with impassable bogs and thick forests. In 1000AD, a farmer in Iceland knew very well what Estonia is and where it is because it was viewed as a part of the "Norse world". The sea was the highway and the viking age proves that quite well. Talking about geographical proximity, Reval is closer to Uppsala than Copenhagen, Oslo or Uusimaa.

This post went into too much detail but you have to have some very strong and breakthrough discoveries to show from archaeology and history to lump CK-era Estonia into a geographical region that it had little to do with in that era.

 

[pengoyo]

Unless I'm missing something, the current cultural fascination system COULD potentially capture a lot of what you're talking about here. A combination of region-specific cultural innovations and neighbor bonuses would cause cultures that co-exist in the same geographic region to develop in a similar cultural direction - exactly the point of the region culture group system that you describe here. And it is both simpler and more dynamic than requiring the game to generate new cultures based on where different cultures end up on the map.

So that handles cultures mechanically functioning similar (through similar technology), but does not handle how cultures view each other or allow cultures to gain access to event other cultural features that aren't tied to technology.

And the devs have already said that opinion can't be tied to shared technology as such a system would lead to tribal being more and more disliked over time (and the bond between tribal cultures would be capped). So this was a way to tie the culture opinion to technology in a way that didn't create the problems mentioned (also I think it also allows for more distant cultural connections with still having the emphasis being on closely related cultures).

Spoiler: Quotes that Inspired this Thread

Is there any grouping of cultures above the cultural group? Something e.g. connecting all Slavs or all Germanic peoples or maybe even Europeans as opposed to the Levant? Is Czech as far away from Swabian as it is from the Tibetan Plateau cultures? Do innovations accepted by a culture have something to do with it, so e.g. if cultures share the same innovations they're considered closer to one another than if they don't?

I'm afraid culture groupings are the top-level in-game. Not that such bonds don't exist, but they're a bit too faint to be worth representing at our level of granularity. There are a few decisions for uniting various pan-culture group cultural blocks, but they're definitely not universally available.

Shared innovations do not currently affect inter-cultural relations. Again, cool in concept, but a bit too niche a relation to share (especially since, over time, the main effect would just be everyone absolutely and irrationally despising anyone determined to stay tribal).

Lastly, the culture groups seem to be similar to those in CK2, for instance Vlach has been confirmed to be in the South Slavic culture group. But this glosses over the distinctiveness of Vlach in the Balkans. But putting Vlach in another culture group using the current CK3 system would mean the Vlachs would be ahistorically be viewed just as foreign as the Mongols by their neighbours. So the the goal of this proposal was to build on a current system to allow for a more nuanced opinion of other cultures and open up some more possibilities for dynamic events.

So this proposal isn't so much about completely redoing CK3 culture system complete, but building on top of it to flesh it out more. The culture grouping (turned into culture families) is the part that would probably see the most rework. The rest of the work is really just adding to the current system.

Why did you put Estonia into the Balto-Slavic region? It doesn't make any sense. Estonia was a part of the Nordic region before, during and after viking age. 20th century geopolitics has no place in Crusader Kings. There's a reason why Estonia is in the Scandinavian empire in CK2 and CK3 as the Scandinavian region will have access to longships and it would make zero sense for Estonians not to be in it as they were raiding the Scandinavian coastline already hundreds of years before the viking age started.

"regions are more heavily based on geography". There's a reason why Northern-, Western- and Central-Estonia had the same archaeological culture with Sweden, because the distance over the sea is really small. It is a complete fact proven by historians and archaeologists that most of Estonia was in the same cultural zone with Scandinavia while South-Eastern Estonia had its own culture because it was separated from the rest of Estonia with impassable bogs and thick forests. In 1000AD, a farmer in Iceland knew very well what Estonia is and where it is because it was viewed as a part of the "Norse world". The sea was the highway and the viking age proves that quite well. Talking about geographical proximity, Reval is closer to Uppsala than Copenhagen, Oslo or Uusimaa.

This post went into too much detail but you have to have some very strong and breakthrough discoveries to show from archaeology and history to lump CK-era Estonia into a geographical region that it had little to do with in that era.

Honestly I don't have a good reason. I did not put as much time researching the regions as the regions used would most likely be based on the regions CK3 is already using for technology (so again this is not my proposal for what the regions should look like, but was more an indication for how cultural families and regional cultures might over lap in the big picture sense). So the details of the regional map (and to some extent the cultural families map) could definitely be tweaked and improved. I only created my own regional map as we don't know what CK3's map looks like. But I will edit the post to make this clearer.

But to answer your question, it was to give Estonian some cultural connection to the groups to the south that they also interacted (with their connection to Finland being handled through culture families), but this would probably have been better done by add some of the region to the south to a larger Scandinavian-Baltic region (or even ignoring this connection to their southern neighbours and focusing on the more important connection with Scandinavia for the reason you mentioned). Actually part way through creating the region map I got the feeling that maybe a better approach would have been to make fewer but larger regions than I did, but as I assumed the regions would be based on the CK3 regions, I didn't feel like starting from scratch for something that was ultimately not meant to be added to the game. Side note, but I also wondered if the regions might have been better served by making them less uniform in size.

So the point of the second post is just to give an example of how this system might look in practice, not to be the exact groupings I think the devs must use.

I just realized that culture in Tbilisi in 867 is Armenian, why is that like that? Tbilisi was built in 5th century by Georgian king, later it was conquered by Persians and then by Arabs and never by Armenians. During Arab rule majority would be muslims/persians. First Armenian cathedral was built there in 15th century.

Timeline of Tbilisi - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

These maps might not actually be the starting position as we don't know how much game time has passed before these picture were taken. These were just the closest approximations I could find.

Edit: Clarity

 

[es333]

Honestly I don't have a good reason. I did not put as much time researching the regions as the regions used would most likely be based on the regions CK3 is already using for technology (so again this is not my proposal for what the regions should look like, but was more an indication for how cultural families and regional cultures might over lap in the big picture sense). So the details of the regional map (and to some extent the cultural families map) could definitely be tweaked and improved. I only created my own regional map as we don't know what CK3's map looks like. But I will edit the post to make this clearer.

But to answer your question, it was to give Estonian some cultural connection to the groups to the south that they also interacted (with their connection to Finland being handled through culture families), but this would probably have been better done by add some of the region to the south to a larger Scandinavian-Baltic region (or even ignoring this connection to their southern neighbours and focusing on the more important connection with Scandinavia for the reason you mentioned). Actually part way through creating the region map I got the feeling that maybe a better approach would have been to make fewer but larger regions than I did, but as I assumed the regions would be based on the CK3 regions, I didn't feel like starting from scratch for something that was ultimately not meant to be added to the game. Side note, but I also wondered if the regions might have been better served by making them less uniform in size.

Estonians interacted more with Swedes than with Balts because of geographical reasons. Heck, the majority of Estonians had more connections with the Swedish coastline than with South-Eastern Estonians, not even mentioning the Balts who didn't even border the Estonians as another Finnic population (the Livonians) lived between the Estonians and the Balts. The CK 3 region for Estonia is fitting and it doesn't make sense to change it but your ideas are interesting nevertheless.

 

[Ivashanko]

Honestly, adding another cultural 'tier' to your list would make sense. The British wouldn't consider the Norwegian of the 11th century to be as foreign as they would the Mongols, and a Portuguese count wouldn't have nearly as much difficulty dealing with a French ruler as they would a Persian one. Much of that is modeled with religion, but it's more than just that.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

a Portuguese count wouldn't have nearly as much difficulty dealing with a French ruler

Fun fact.
The Kingdom of Portugal was literally established by a French ruler, and the royal dynasty of Portugal throughout 80% of the game's timeframe was a French dynasty.

In fact, it seems that the Portuguese were far more acceptant of having a French ruler than they were of having a Castilian ruler.
When the King of Castille inherited the Crown of Portugal in 1383 the majority of the Portuguese people, from all sorts of social classes, from the nobility to the clergy and the bourgeoisie, united to rebel against the Castilian king and to establish a Portuguese Monarch.
(Same would repeat again in 1640)

Portugal was also far more receptive towards dynastic ties with England than with Castile.

Sometimes, cultural/linguistic proximity doesn't correlate with "acceptance" sometimes it leads to rivalry and hatred instead.

 

[pengoyo]

Honestly, adding another cultural 'tier' to your list would make sense. The British wouldn't consider the Norwegian of the 11th century to be as foreign as the would the Mongols, and a Portuguese count wouldn't have nearly as much difficulty dealing with a French ruler as they would a Persian one. Much of that is modeled with religion, but it's more than just that.

The problem is a strict tiering of culture doesn't work well across the entirety of the CK2 map.

But this system does allow for a tiering of sorts. For instance the Latin culture family is essentially subdivided by the regional culture groups, where as the Byzantine regional culture group is essentially subdivided by the culture families. So this has many of the same benefits of a tiered culture group.

But where I think this is better is than a strict culture group tier is that this can handle the situations where one culture is related to two sets of cultures that aren't themselves related (e.g. the Andalusians who are culturally related to the rest of Iberia and the Arabs).

The other thing reason I think this is better than a strict tiering of culture groups is because this is more open to the possibities of alt-history allowing for dynamic game play.

That all said the Devs could add tiers to the culture families and/or regional culture groups (though I'd imagine two set of tiered groupings of culture would probably be considered to complicated for not enough gameplay value).

Fun fact.
The Kingdom of Portugal was literally established by a French ruler, and the royal dynasty of Portugal throughout 80% of the game's timeframe was a French dynasty.

In fact, it seems that the Portuguese were far more acceptant of having a French ruler than they were of having a Castilian ruler.
When the King of Castille inherited the Crown of Portugal in 1383 the majority of the Portuguese people, from all sorts of social classes, from the nobility to the clergy and the bourgeoisie, united to rebel against the Castilian king and to establish a Portuguese Monarch.
(Same would repeat again in 1640)

Portugal was also far more receptive towards dynastic ties with England than with Castile.

Sometimes, cultural/linguistic proximity doesn't correlate with "acceptance" sometimes it leads to rivalry and hatred instead.

Thanks for the info. Yeah this can't handle rivalries, but rivalries is a very complicated thing to model. They're more a product of perceived grievances than cultural similarities/differences.

But at the very least this would make the Portugues less like to revolt against a French lord than in CK2 (and most likely CK3).

 

[pengoyo]

Sorry for the delayed post, but I had another idea that I though tied in nicely with this proposal.

What if, when reforming or creating a new heresy, the cost for new doctrine or tenet was in part based on what religions are in the same regional group as your culture. So it'd be cost less piety for a new doctrine or tenet if there is another religion present in your culture's region with that doctrine or tenet (lower cost depending on how common the religion is). Also this should especially apply to the syncretism tenets where for instance to syncretize with Islam, it cost a lot less piety depending on how present Islam is refromers curture's regional group area. Essentially it easier to convince people to adopt new religious tenets and doctrines if they are already familiar with them due to exposure to other religions. And especial for syncetizing with another religion, it should be hard if not in contact with that religion, but becomes much more doable especially if there is a lot of contact.

 

[Alenarae118]

Oh wow, how have I only just discovered this suggestion, this would be amazing to increase the fluidity of Culture in CK3.

 

[Tryvenyal]

I agree that current reprecentation of cultures are limited! But I would like propose a different solution.

The game should consist of 2 types of cultures.

• Culturegroup subcultures. As is now
• "Melting pot" Cultures.

"We already have this!" you say. But no, we don't. A CK2 melting pot is only "unlocking" of a new Culturegroup subculture.

So what is a "melting Pot culture?

It´s technically a "marriage" of 2 cultures. It does not have 1 parent group but instead 2 parent cultures. Groups are in another layer.

Is this setup OP? No, it does not need to be. A MP culture is closely related to 2 cultures. But these cultures does not particularly love their offspring. I´m thinking of a a dirct negative or even hostile wiew from "parents".

But they do have alot of "Uncles and Aunties". They are not siblings - a MP culture can never have siblings. So they have less in common then children of a culture group. But a slight bonus maybe? Half the bonus of what a normal culture has to siblings? or less - 1 forth?

So.. Whats the deal? THey get traits from both parents, traits decided during "Melting pot events" or predefined, depedning on implementation

 

[pengoyo]

I agree that current reprecentation of cultures are limited! But I would like propose a different solution.

The game should consist of 2 types of cultures.

• Culturegroup subcultures. As is now
• "Melting pot" Cultures.

"We already have this!" you say. But no, we don't. A CK2 melting pot is only "unlocking" of a new Culturegroup subculture.

So what is a "melting Pot culture?

It´s technically a "marriage" of 2 cultures. It does not have 1 parent group but instead 2 parent cultures. Groups are in another layer.

Is this setup OP? No, it does not need to be. A MP culture is closely related to 2 cultures. But these cultures does not particularly love their offspring. I´m thinking of a a dirct negative or even hostile wiew from "parents".

But they do have alot of "Uncles and Aunties". They are not siblings - a MP culture can never have siblings. So they have less in common then children of a culture group. But a slight bonus maybe? Half the bonus of what a normal culture has to siblings? or less - 1 forth?

So.. Whats the deal? THey get traits from both parents, traits decided during "Melting pot events" or predefined, depedning on implementation

I had a thought along these lines originally, and I still like it in many ways. But the reason I didn't go with it is that it doesn't scale well. For instance the Norman's Would be a mix of Norse and French culture, but then Sicilian it turn is a mixture of Norman, Italian, Greek, and Arabic cultures (with Norman already being the mixture of two cultures). So you could have it be in 4-5 culture groups, but that's getting unwieldy fast. And while you can trim it down to something more manageable, it will still be the problem that the system relies on paradox to manually create the melting pot cultures, where as this proposal is dynamic and works with any culture you might spread to any part of the word.

That said these two systems are also not mutually exclusive, so melting pot cultures could be created that belong to 2 culture families simultaneously (though I'd change the negative opinion with the parent cultures, as that doesn't make sense to me, to having the same culture family opinions be divided by the number of culture families the culture is a part of. They have a more groups they share stuff in common with, but they share less in common with each member of those groups). And the deicated melting pot cultures would probably be better served by a custom treatment like yours would provide. But with this as the back drop, any culture can change even if they don't have specially scripted melting pot cultures.

 

[Tryvenyal]

I had a thought along these lines originally, and I still like it in many ways. But the reason I didn't go with it is that it doesn't scale well. For instance the Norman's Would be a mix of Norse and French culture, but then Sicilian it turn is a mixture of Norman, Italian, Greek, and Arabic cultures (with Norman already being the mixture of two cultures). So you could have it be in 4-5 culture groups, but that's getting unwieldy fast.

Yes, I thought of this but in my opinion, an MP culture has no siblings and no culture group. Meaning all these cultures are so distant that they might not actually count as related.

EDIT: Fixed missing the small but important word "not" above

though I'd change the negative opinion with the parent cultures, as that doesn't make sense to me

I don't know how Frenchmen viewed Normans nor how Normans viewed Englishmen or the other way around.. And I can easely accept these as the only two counted "cultural relatives" of an MP culture. But for me it makes sense for parent in this case to view their MP child as "Astray" and for the mp to view their parents as "Savages" or "Antiquities". This I think can motivate a mutual relation malus.

This however make an MP "friendless", no cultural bonds. Is this wrong? Probably not on day one. They are a merge of 2 culturegroups, very unlike any other cultures in either of the groups. In the long run, ofcourse there must be possibilities to develop cultural bonds. But its another issue, and not specifik for melting pots.

But with this as the back drop, any culture can change even if they don't have specially scripted melting pot cultures.

I would very much like to see fully custome melting pots but I realize this is very hard(I have no ideas how to get passed step 1: Name!) But I would like it much more loosely coupled. IE, broaden the options for historical melting pots, to go A-historical. IE, make English and Norman alot more common to happen, even if your game goes slightly ahistorical!

 

[Vivs]

I think your suggestions are pretty good and the model you've presented is fairly strong! However, I would add that its application needs a little tweaking:

1. Some fringe cases of regional culture groups and specific cultures (such as Estonian not being in the Scandinavian region, as others have already been pointed out);
2. Some culture groups need breaking up: it's one thing to try to assuage the opinion penalty between the French and the Portuguese, but it's quite another to do the same for a Norwegian king of Bavaria. I know linguistic families are fun and are a good basis for coming up with this sort of larger groupings, but we have to remember that this is culture, not language. A Croat probably wouldn't be more accepting of a Russian liege just because some of the words sound similar, right?;
3. Because of number 2, it would be interesting to have that second layer of cultural family grouping (yes, I know, I know). This would ensure that the aforementioned Croat would still pretty much dislike their Russian liege, but generally less so than they would a Tibetan liege, for instance.

Other than that, nice work!

 

[pengoyo]

Yes, I thought of this but in my opinion, an MP culture has no siblings and no culture group. Meaning all these cultures are so distant that they might actually count as related.

Sorry I don't think I understand what you mean here. Because they are more distant, they are more related?

I don't know how Frenchmen viewed Normans nor how Normans viewed Englishmen or the other way around.. And I can easely accept these as the only two counted "cultural relatives" of an MP culture. But for me it makes sense for parent in this case to view their MP child as "Astray" and for the mp to view their parents as "Savages" or "Antiquities". This I think can motivate a mutual relation malus.

This however make an MP "friendless", no cultural bonds. Is this wrong? Probably not on day one. They are a merge of 2 culturegroups, very unlike any other cultures in either of the groups. In the long run, ofcourse there must be possibilities to develop cultural bonds. But its another issue, and not specifik for melting pots.

I think both would view the other as astray. While the Normans had some unique customs and laws compared to the rest of France, I've never seen anything saying they view the rest of France as "savage" or "antiquities". I've even seen the Normans refer to themselves as French. As for the Norman view of the Norse, I don't really know, so maybe there might be something there. But if there is animosity, I'd guess it's more rooted in religion rather than culture.

I would very much like to see fully custome melting pots but I realize this is very hard(I have no ideas how to get passed step 1: Name!) But I would like it much more loosely coupled. IE, broaden the options for historical melting pots, to go A-historical. IE, make English and Norman alot more common to happen, even if your game goes slightly ahistorical!

If it could be done dynamically that would be great and I'd be all for it. But I don't have much hope for that happening anytime soon.

1. Some fringe cases of regional culture groups and specific cultures (such as Estonian not being in the Scandinavian region, as others have already been pointed out);

Yeah, the regional map definitely needs some fixing up. Personally, I'm waiting to see what regional techs are available before trying to tackle it again (also a more detailed/readable CK3 maps would help). But if someone want to give it a go I'd be happy to feature it.

2. Some culture groups need breaking up: it's one thing to try to assuage the opinion penalty between the French and the Portuguese, but it's quite another to do the same for a Norwegian king of Bavaria. I know linguistic families are fun and are a good basis for coming up with this sort of larger groupings, but we have to remember that this is culture, not language. A Croat probably wouldn't be more accepting of a Russian liege just because some of the words sound similar, right?;

I wouldn't be against some of the cultural families breaking up. I essential put the largest I thought you could do the cultural families.

On the language family issue. The reason for using language families wasn't that that a Croat would be more accepting of a Russian due to similar sounding words (though there is some evidence that subjected people do adopt an overlords language and cultural identity more readily if the two languages involved are more closely related). The idea is that similar cultural practices would be passed along with these languages. So the languages are used to help figure out which cultures have shared practices due to descending from a common culture. So for instance the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse shared many cultural practices and if it wasn't for religious difference their interaction might have gone differently (which is why I still think religion should still play a larger role than culture).

3. Because of number 2, it would be interesting to have that second layer of cultural family grouping (yes, I know, I know). This would ensure that the aforementioned Croat would still pretty much dislike their Russian liege, but generally less so than they would a Tibetan liege, for instance.

So that's the job would be done by regional culture groups in the case of the Slavic culture family. So a Croat would most preferred to be rule by another Croat (obviously). After that they would prefer a Bosnian, Bulgarian, Serbian, or Slovien (assuming they are all the same religion) as these share a culture family and regional culture group with the Croats. Then they would prefer a Hungarian or Vlach overlord as they share a regional culture group (see note below on this ordering). Then would be the Russian and other Slavics who share a culture family, but not a regional culture group. And lastly any culture which they share no connection with the Croats (e.g. Tibetan). So the Russian are only being view as better than the Tibetans, but there are a lot of cultures a Croat would prefer before a Russian overlord. In order for the Croats to really accept the Russians the Russians would need to spread their culture sufficiently enough to the Balkans to become a part of that regional culture group (and there by having adopted some of the local customs).

Note this is assuming regional culture group has a larger positive effect than cultural family, which I think could makes sense, though alterantviely I could see them have equal affect (or different effects, maybe opinion is more affected by regional culture, but revolt risk is more affected by culture families). Either way while I lean towards the regional culture group having a larger effect, I think both should have a similar level of effect (i.e. regional culture groups, at most, only have a slightly larger affect than cultural families). Note that even if switched (so the culture family has the larger effect) the Russian would still be below the Balkan Slavic cultures.


I will say the cultures I really wish there was two levels of culture families for is the Celtic cultures. I'd love a Goidelic and Brythonic sub-division as the regional culture groups can't do the Celts justice. The other options might just be to split them, as I don't know if the Welsh would be any more accepting of Scottish overlordship than English. But ultimately I'm not sure if it's worth having sub-cultural family groups, just for one culture family.


The other thing related to this is whether being in the same culture family and regional groups should be simply adding the two benefits together or maybe adding the two benefits together and then adding a bonus (say 10 or 50%). This would help make closely related culture stand out from the rest a bit more. But it probably isn't needed because if both culture families and regional culture groups give roughly the same bonus, then culture that share both would be view each other twice as well as a culture they only shared one with (before even adding a bonus).

I think your suggestions are pretty good and the model you've presented is fairly strong! However, I would add that its application needs a little tweaking:

[...]

Other than that, nice work!

Thanks for the Feedback. There definitely still are details that need to be worked out.

 

[Vivs]

On the language family issue. The reason for using language families wasn't that that a Croat would be more accepting of a Russian due to similar sounding words (though there is some evidence that subjected people do adopt an overlords language and cultural identity more readily if the two languages involved are more closely related). The idea is that similar cultural practices would be passed along with these languages.

This is where we disagree, I guess. I'm no expert, but I don't think a Croatian count would be more accepting of a ruler from the frigid steppes of Russia than one from, say, their Venetian neighbours. Remember, vassal opinions are more about acceptance than vague notions of cultural correspondence or shared ancestry (if they even had such notions, that is). Otherwise, you create situations such as Bavarian dukes liking a Norwegian king better than, say, a Northern Italian one, for no other reason than "their languages are closer" (since, culturally speaking, Norwegians and Bavarians probably didn't share much more than that).

So that's the job would be done by regional culture groups in the case of the Slavic culture family.

Well, yes, if you don't break the culture families, then the regional groups would certainly help, but you would still have the issues I pointed out above. For instance, let's take the Norman invasion of England: using the current model, we would be able to properly simulate the trouble William had with pacifying his new vassals. Afterall, he'd be wrong in every way you cut it: he's not from the same culture family (Normans are not in the Germanic family) and his culture is not in the target regional group (Normans are not British), so in this instance the model works really well.

Okay, but what if William was actually called Wilhelm and was a Swabian gentleman? Then, under the current model, he would actually have less trouble than his real-life counterpart, because even though he'd get the same regional group malus (Swabians are not British), he would get a lesser culture family malus (Swabians are Germanic).

Now, I don't know about you, but that doesn't sit right with me. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing that seems to indicate that the Anglo-Saxon earls would be more forgiving of a Swabian king than a Norman one, and the same applies to Bavarian dukes under Norwegian kings (as opposed to Northern Italians), and to Croatian counts under Russian lieges (as opposed to Venetians). That's why I suggested breaking up the cultural families.

 

[the glory of plain]

a simple and functional solution would be giving each culture certain traits
and that will determine how each culture view each other
similar to what religion system will be in ck3
but this is unlikely to happen now

 

[Tryvenyal]

Sorry I don't think I understand what you mean here. Because they are more distant, they are more related?

Starting with this misstake by me - I'm missing a "not". I think siblings of parents are distant enough to _NOT_ count as related in game. Editing my post.