The CK2-EU4 Converter Improvement Project

[keytium]

Mechanically that is possible, but wouldn't people get mad that we're changing the name of their country? I would say that the accuracy of the revolter tags that only might exist is less important than the accuracy of the countries that are converted.

 

[Labrynian Rebel]

I suppose it's a bigger change than Hispania to Spain (Although people on the forum do tend to complain about that one as well)

Well in that case I'd rather have Opstalboom than Great Frisia. Although I'd have a trigger(s) to use East Frisia instead when it makes sense so we don't use Opstalboom if we don't have to since most people don't seem to like it. Personally I like the historical quirkiness of the Opstalboom League.

 

[AvroLancaster]

...so we don't use Opstalboom if we don't have to since most people don't seem to like it. Personally I like the historical quirkiness of the Opstalboom League.

I'm the one who first threw it out there, and I don't particularly like it. It's kind of like having NATO as a TAG, yes it's political entity, but it's not a country. In the case of Opstalboom it was a legal union of municipalities that were Frisian and resistant to Feudalism.

All that being said, it's quirkiness makes me love it. It might be a call of the void sort of thing, but I want to see it in the game as much as I don't.

If that makes any sense to anyone?

 

[Enlil]

I'm the one who first threw it out there, and I don't particularly like it. It's kind of like having NATO as a TAG, yes it's political entity, but it's not a country. In the case of Opstalboom it was a legal union of municipalities that were Frisian and resistant to Feudalism.

All that being said, it's quirkiness makes me love it. It might be a call of the void sort of thing, but I want to see it in the game as much as I don't.

If that makes any sense to anyone?

I understand, it's like the same joy I get when I see a mercenary company take land.

 

[Straigthtsilver]

I have a few questions pertaining both to this mod and the converter in general.

First off, how does one define the new converter religions (Zoroastrian, converted heresies, etc.) to use the missionary models in EUIV? I'm sure there is a way, seeing as the converted games function as a mod, but I have yet to track it down as I've been tinkering with other aspects. It's hardly game-breaking, but it is bothersome seeing cranes spreading the faith(s) across the map instead of wildly-gesticulating clergymen

Secondly, has there been any new work done in this mod to define how cultures are converted over into EUIV?

As it stands right now, very little has changed in the vanilla converter from the original launch besides some half-assed compatibility changes to make sure nothing goes to 'noculture.'

Afghan and Baloch still convert over to 'custom' cultures in the converter files instead of just becoming the EUIV Afghan and Baloch, and they're not even localized to boot! The various Arab cultures, despite sharing the same names for 2/3 (Mashriqi is non-existent), likewise convert to 'custom' cultures instead of their EUIV equivalents while being the same culture group as the Central Asian Turkic peoples!

Then you get into the really absurd decisions, like having Visigothic go into the Germanic culture group despite being Iberian in CK2 while Lombard goes from Germanic in CK2 to Latin in EUIV! Alan remains in the Byzantine group, despite its Caucasian brethren the Georgians and Armenians being placed in the new Caucasian group. West Slavic Pommeranian still goes into the EUIV Germanic group equivalent.

 

[Labrynian Rebel]

I understand, it's like the same joy I get when I see a mercenary company take land.

That's the same feeling, it's so wrong but you can't help but love it when the Company of the Hat is competing with East Francia for control of Germany :wub:

 

[Silas1775]

Not to seem demanding, but what's the status/next step for the Converter Project?

Keep up the good work, you guys make CK2-EUIV an infinitely better experience.

 

[Labrynian Rebel]

Not to seem demanding, but what's the status/next step for the Converter Project?

Keep up the good work, you guys make CK2-EUIV an infinitely better experience.

The most recent CK II and EU IV DLCs put a wrench in the works, so... yeah there are tons of things planned that are on hold.

 

[Silas1775]

The most recent CK II and EU IV DLCs put a wrench in the works, so... yeah there are tons of things planned that are on hold.

Understandable with plans of additions, but to be more specific: Is there a large amount of work to be done to bring the present converter in line with Charlamange-Art of War?

 

[Cuthuthulu]

Understandable with plans of additions, but to be more specific: Is there a large amount of work to be done to bring the present converter in line with Charlamange-Art of War?

Yes there's a bunch of work involved. However my PC is currently broken so I can't really work on it at the moment. It seems everytime I want to sit down and finish this something happens. :glare:

 

[rageair]

Yes there's a bunch of work involved. However my PC is currently broken so I can't really work on it at the moment. It seems everytime I want to sit down and finish this something happens. :glare:

I've not been able to do anything either (though because of work and other modding), but I'll have time now around christmas! In case you manage to get your comp fixed soon we can sit down and finish this off properly.

 

[AvroLancaster]

I understand there are greater priorities right now, but I think it might be a great time to address/implement a steppe split.

As I've posted on this topic before, a lot of this will be recycled, but here's a reasonable approach:

So, let's start with a bit of background:

The steppe is not a place where ethnic or linguistic lines are drawn with great clarity, especially when you move along the axis of time, so no matter what is done, nothing will be 100% accurate.

To make things worse, a lot of the labels that are applied to these groups are imperfect, I'll use Tajik as a case in point. It was a pejorative exonym applied by British and Russian ethnographers that became an endonym without pejorative connotation only in the last 60 years.

So, the two largest ethnno-linguistic groups in the area, Uzbek and Khazak, both have similar origins. Uzbek were the steppe nomads who existed before the Turkic and Mongol invasions mixed in with Turkic and Mongol elite classes. This mixture produced a primarily Turkic identity and language that was distinct from the others on the steppe, but fell into the same branch of Turkic that includes Karluk.

Khazak evolved from a word for "outsider" and is a cognate of Cossak. The Khazaks have less clear origins, but likely were related to Kipchak Turks and their subjects that avoided or escaped Mongol rule.

Tartar is merely the Russian word for the people of the steppe, especially mongols.

Now, keeping in mind that no system is perfect, and that the steppe is especially hard to deal with, here's what I recommend.

Also keep in mind that I'll be ignoring Ugric cultures like Komi or Khanty which have been discussed elsewhere.

First, abandon the idea that Mongol culture can exist in an EU4 conversion. The Ilkhanate is dead by the time the year conversion occurs, and the Golden Horde uses the (Tartar) culture of Mishar. The small Mongolian cultured overlordships did not and could not produce a cultural continuity with Mongolia. Instead, it produced a many distinct descendant groups.

Second, Bolghars should just 1:1 convert to Qazanly. The Kazan Khanate is the primary nation for the Qazanly Tartars in EU4, and the Kazan Tartars (as well as a couple other small groups not represented in EU4) historically were the descendants of the Volga Bulgarians that the Bolghar represent.

So, basically the whole system is based on the German split. We would identify cultural centres for the various EU4 cultures, and also which CK2 cultures need to be erased from the EU4 map. The event would run to spread the new cultures to adjacent erasable regions.

Again, for clarity, erasable culture means any culture that we want to convert to a proper EU4 culture.

Any culture that has a state of its own culture is not erasable. If there is a tag converted over with the Alan culture for example, Alan culture is not erasable.

So, the CK2 cultures that are 'erasable' would be:

Alans - they don't appear in EU4, and their inclusion in CK2 is a little puzzling. The Alans definitely settled in the area of the North Caucasus, but other states existed in the area at the time. The duchy of 'Derbent,' which more or less perfectly coincides with the region that the historical Sarir Kingdom occupied was not Alan as it is depicted in game, but was instead (Caucasian) Avar. The Alans of the rest of 'Alania' lost their identity and were subsumed into conquering hordes. The modern day descendants of the Alans are the North Ossetians, who speak Ossetian, and despite their, mainly political, claims of continuity, are certainly not pure Alans.

Mordvin - They don't appear in EU4, and only exist in smallish communities along a few rivers in Russia, or as fully assimilated Russians. Historically they were overrun by both the hordes (some subgroups still speak Tartar languages today) and then later the Russians. If they don't have their own state at the end of CK2 I'm confident that we can assume they're following this historical track of being subsumed into larger groups. The one-culture-one-province system of these games means we basically have to assume this.

Pecheneg - They are a pet culture of mine, and I've spent a long time reading up on them. Unfortunately they don't appear in EU4 and by 1100 had been scattered irreparably.

Cuman - They have far too much land in CK2, and what's represented by Cumans in CK2 is actually a confederation of Kipchak Turks and Cumans. They ended up turning Christian in large numbers, became crushed by the Mongols and assimilated into the populations of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Those who remained became mixed with the Tartars and Khazaks and also assimilated. If ever there was a poster child for erasable in this system, it would be the Cumans.

Khazars - They aren't in EU4 and by the late 900's-mid 1000's, they were utterly dispersed and assimilated.

Karluk - These guys should be ruled by the Khara-Khans or the Khitan in CK2, and although they were distinct until the 1900's ethnogrophers divided them amongst the Uzbek and the Uyghers. I don't think Karluk as a distinct identity survived that grouping, but I could be wrong. Anyway, they make great candidates to be erasable since they were indeed erased and artificially subsumed into cultures present in EU4.

Mongol - see above.

Now, that we have the cultures we want to erase, let's identify the cultures we want to create:

All of the following exist in EU4 in the Eurasian steppe area covered by CK2, but have no way of existing in EU4 through conversion:
Altaic
Khazak
Uzbek

Tartar
Astrakhani
Bashkir
Crimean
Mishar
Nogaybak
Qasim
Qazanly
Siberian

Caucasian
Circassian
Dagestani

So, now for the pretty imperfect part that I hope does the job.

Again, first, all erasable cultures that have state representation are not to be considered erasable.

Second, Bashkortostan should flip on the province level to Bashkir if it is erasable. We shouldn't have a Bashkir state at the end of this.

Nogay should flip to Nogaybak if erasable.

Tyumen should flip to Siberian if erasable.

Next, any/all erasable cultures ruled by Mongols outside of Europe flip to Uzbek on a province level. If a Mongol state has its capital planted on an Uzbek province after this step, it flips to Uzbek.

Next, run a check to see if any adjacent provinces to Bashkortostan are still erasable. Flip them if they are, do this once.
Do the same for Nogay right after (or before if preferred). If a country is of Mongol culture and has it's capital in a Nogaybak region, flip it to Nogaybak culture.
Do what you just did for Nogaybak to Siberian.

Then, any erasable cultures in Asia that haven't flipped to Uzbek flip to Khazak. If a state's capital is planted on a Khazak province at this point, flip it to Khazak too.

Next, it's time to start identifying centres for the remaining splits/mergers.

I think the first of these should be wherever the capital of the Golden Horde is, if it's erasable flip it to Mishar.

Then, Astrakhan, if erasable should flip to Astrakhani.
Follow suit with the following:
Crimea to Crimean
Kasimov to Qasim
Circassia to Circassian
Khundzia to Dagestani

Now, run the same kind of spread that you do with the German cultures to the above cultures and you should have something more or less representative of the steppe you imported from CK2 as defined by EU4 cultures. Once the spread is run, you'll definitely have to reassign national cultures and accepted cultures.

I imagine that there will probably be a lot of 'orphan' provinces considering how messed up the steppes are. I recommend choosing regional fallback cultures (like throwing all erasables in the vicinity of the Black Sea/Ukraine into Crimean, etc. after the rest of the flips have occurred just to clean it up).

Programming it would probably be easier if you ran a check first that identified all of the erasable cultures with state representation and turned the rest into a single 'noculture' culture or something, and then ran the checks from there. A downside of this is that you would definitely need the fallbacks.

 

[Mathrafalovich]

At first glance, I like that idea, one thing is, that perhaps Cuman (when indie Cumans exist) should split into Cuman and Kipchak. (Maybe east-west split?)

 

[AvroLancaster]

At first glance, I like that idea, one thing is, that perhaps Cuman (when indie Cumans exist) should split into Cuman and Kipchak. (Maybe east-west split?)

Kipchak isn't a culture in EU4, and I'm not sure what the utility of just creating a new culture would be.

 

[KaiserNoncehelmIII]

My game wasn't saved to the cloud. It's in ironman and i cant change it to saving to the cloud. Is it still convertable?

 

[Cuthuthulu]

My game wasn't saved to the cloud. It's in ironman and i cant change it to saving to the cloud. Is it still convertable?

Once we get the next version out it should be ironman compatible. I don't have any sort of date on when it will be updated.

 

[keytium]

I understand there are greater priorities right now, but I think it might be a great time to address/implement a steppe split.

There is no great priority than the mighty culture split! I say completely non-biasedly about my section of the mod. Honestly though I think the steppe cultures are causing problems that are annoying everyone here and are absolutely something that needs tackling so please don't think we aren't taking them seriously.

So, basically the whole system is based on the German split. We would identify cultural centres for the various EU4 cultures, and also which CK2 cultures need to be erased from the EU4 map. The event would run to spread the new cultures to adjacent erasable regions.

I love the idea, but there are a few mechanical things I'd like to discuss before we commit to this.

First of all we need to think carefully about erasable cultures ruled by foreign cultures. I'm using foreign here to mean culture not part of the steppes in the one true timeline. For example what if the Alans are completely subsumed by the Byzantine Empire and never once ruled by the Turks or Mongols, Circassian culture spawns there, fine, but how could we rationalise it spreading north into the Mongol lands? This isn't something that I have a perfect solution to, but I do a have a few ideas to help mitigate this kind of thing.

Firstly I think that just clumping together all provinces into one erasable culture and then building blobs into it while easier to code has the possibility to ignore some useful information about the cultural divides that emerge in CK2. Perhaps rather than having the cultural centres form with just a single province a more organic way would be (to continue to use Circassian as our example) for Circassian to spawn in every province with the same culture as the province of Circassa that is owned by the same culture as the owner of Circassia. So if the Alan province of Circassia was owned by a TAG with Greek culture then all Greek owned Alan provinces would become Circassian. This would create much larger Cultural centres so that the blobbing would be more for filling the gaps rather than for filling the majority of the space.

Another thing is that unlike the German culture where there normally a single religion the many Ck2 cultures of the Steppes often have different religions. Mongol on it's own will likely have Sunni, Tengri and Nestorian branches. Blobbing should in someway be impeded by province religion. If all the Mishar provinces so far have been Sunni then the Nestorian province next door shouldn't become Mishar. It would be easy enough to rewrite the blobbing code to only allow transfer between same religion (or religion group) provinces. I think this would make much more organic culture borders, it would however lead to more instances of orphaned provinces which might require back-up cultures.

The back-up cultures themselves might cause some wonky looking results. I can already imagine three unconnected Crimean provinces spawning around the shores of the black sea all owned by different nations and all different religions. I'm not sure I have a solution, but it is something that I want to think about some more.

In Eu4 the cultures follow national boundaries much more one might expect. If we're intent on preserving the vanilla spirit perhaps our first round of blobbing might also be restricted to only converting provinces in the same country. Of course we need to allow the cultures to blob outside their spawn countries, but we could start that in the second round of blobbing. This would also help stop us from accidentally mingling cultures which have never been ruled by the same nations.

Next issue is Russification. It was historically a big deal and depending on CK2s outcome it may be even more of a thing. Where it effects us though is we need to decide if Mordvin is to be erased and a Mordvin province is owned by a Russian country should we let Nogaybak or Siberian blob out and take it or should we turn it Russian? At least with Mordvin it seem uncontroversial to suggest we should make it Russian, but what about if it were a Khazar or Mongol province? How far do we want to go?

Those things out of the way, I think this is potentially the best solution we've had for the steppes problem so far and I'm pretty excited to see how it will turn out... next year. It's Christmas eve and I really should be spending time with my family not thinking about the cultural impact of the Mongol hordes. Anyway I might be a little scarce till around the 2nd or 3rd of January because of holiday stuff.

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

[Irbisgreif]

Hey, don't work yourselves to death. Your fans (I'm sure there are many just like me) are waiting patiently for the next release. I'm excited to see some of the ideas that will be implemented, that's for sure!

Okay, that said, I was curious about something mechanical that is done. As I understand it, the work of this mod is done in EUIV by events and therefore can't access CK2 history data. I find this... unfortunate. Is there some way to manually (subpar IMO, but doable) or automatically and externally (best option, if possible) feed across information to improve the outcomes (without, of course, re-writing the converter and drawing the ire of Paradox)?

I ask this because I've noticed in the past that previous ruler-names of Kingdoms/Empires come across poorly with regards to future ruler-name selection and Regnal Numbers. I can see why copying over every ruler would be unneeded, but including enough that Charles IV Capet of England, son of Louis III Capet of England, doesn't leave the throne to Henry VII Capet of England (or Alexios I Capet, as happened in one of my games) would be nice. It'd also be nice to see whatever pontifical names were popular in CK2 remain so in EUIV - Regnal numbers correct, of course. Finally, seeing cultural and historical particulars remain relevant (so that if the Xings family is important in the CK2 history of my kingdom, the family Xings show up as advisors, generals, etc.) would be the icing on a 'more information brought over' cake.

That said, I'm certain (and perfectly fine) with such pretty aesthetics being a low priority at the moment. Y'all are doing a great job and I look forward to enjoying the next release!

 

[Ninking]

I love this mod and would gladly help updating it to the most recent game versions! Is there anything in particular I could aid with?

 

[AvroLancaster]

First of all we need to think carefully about erasable cultures ruled by foreign cultures. I'm using foreign here to mean culture not part of the steppes in the one true timeline. For example what if the Alans are completely subsumed by the Byzantine Empire and never once ruled by the Turks or Mongols, Circassian culture spawns there, fine, but how could we rationalise it spreading north into the Mongol lands? This isn't something that I have a perfect solution to, but I do a have a few ideas to help mitigate this kind of thing.

I completely understand where you're coming from, but I think it's okay for the steppe to be a little more relaxed when it comes to this sort of cultural situation, because of the tribal/nomadic nature of the steppe.

One of the problems that we just have to accept is that state structures that are necessary and important in CK2 are ahistorical in this region in this time, and EU4 is not much better. Nogai is a tribal federation with "Nogaybak" culture in Eu4. It's a TAG centred on representing the loose tribal alliances of the region that it covers. It cannot exist from a CK2 converted game.

Historically The Nogai horde was a confederation of 18 different Turkish tribes that existed concurrently with the Golden Horde, and from the early 1400's they became more and more self-ruling and by the 1470s the Nogais became militarily hostile with their former overlords. By 1500 they were totally independent of the Golden Horde and began filling the power vacuum created by the Golden Horde's waning strength. At some point independently from the Nogai leadership, a second Nogai horde known as the "lesser horde" is founded by nomads who moved into Dagestan. From here on, it becomes unclear where the boundaries between the Oirats, Nogais and Khazaks begin and end. In the early 1600's the Nogais go through some bad succession crises, and Russians become involved in their politics, even appointing a Nogai bey. In the coming decades the Nogais become absorbed into both the Russian state and surrounding tribes.

The above simply can't happen in EU4. Who belongs to which polity is a sacred thing in the Western conception of the world. The medieval Steppe was not a place of states, but a place of tribes. People's first loyalties and self-determination were to their tribes. The tribes then had complex and fluid relationships with each other in the form of federations and confederations, tributary states and hordes. EU4 requires geographical definitions of boundaries, tribes do not.

What's my point?

We'll always have problems, especially with cultures, and especially with tribes.

In EU4 Nogai is the National representation of the "Nogaybak" culture. Kazan is the National representation of the "Qazanly" culture. These states have historical namesakes, sure, but the Kazan Tartar Khanate was not a state, but rather a tribal entity. The Nogai and the Nogai Horde are in the same situation, as are "Uzbek" and the rest of the steppe. In EU4 these tribes are represented with great detail and with as much accuracy as the game engine allows, but there are severe limitations since tribes are not states.

In CK2, the title-based system does the same thing. Add into this the fact that almost no cultural labels on the steppe represented by CK2 are even relevant by 1444 and we have a situation where there is no in-game-history or real-world-historical basis to the steppe states, no game-history basis to the steppe cultural divisions, and no possibility of a cultural or geopolitical layout of the steppe that truly matches a historical sensibility, and you have the situation we're left with.

What we're left with is the task of ironing out the seams between two incompatible game systems that are both unable to accurately represent the real-world situation that they're trying to model. In this regard I think it's completely reasonable to just fallback on the goal of maintaining the "spirit of vanilla."

In vanilla we have cultures that appear on both sides of national borders. 1452 was the first time the people of the steppe were ruled over by non-tribal overlords. CK2 allows, or even encourages, powerful non-tribal states to pick up territories ruled by the steppe peoples, even though historically this would be worthless barely populated undeveloped grazing land used by nomadic pastorialists. Byzantium in CK2 has every rational in-game reason to spill the blood of 100,000 Greek soldiers over meaningless ungovernable Alanian territory, and so your example of Byzantium ruling over the Alans is an important one, but also one with no historical precedent whatsoever.

I say we treat the erasable cultures as foederati when ruled over by non-tribal foreigners. The Alans faded into obscurity becoming one of the founding 'stock' populations of Ossetia during the CK2 timeframe. I say we just treat them as such if they are not ruled by Alans by the time of conversion, foederated Byzantine Cirassians and Dagestani. Part of the Byzantine state - I guess - but no longer Alan. It will help maintain the spirit of vanilla if nothing else.

Firstly I think that just clumping together all provinces into one erasable culture and then building blobs into it while easier to code has the possibility to ignore some useful information about the cultural divides that emerge in CK2. Perhaps rather than having the cultural centres form with just a single province a more organic way would be (to continue to use Circassian as our example) for Circassian to spawn in every province with the same culture as the province of Circassa that is owned by the same culture as the owner of Circassia. So if the Alan province of Circassia was owned by a TAG with Greek culture then all Greek owned Alan provinces would become Circassian. This would create much larger Cultural centres so that the blobbing would be more for filling the gaps rather than for filling the majority of the space.

Personally I love it and have no problem with it. The reason I suggested using those provinces was that many of the cultures listed use them as their namesake. Your system is better in my opinion.

Another thing is that unlike the German culture where there normally a single religion the many Ck2 cultures of the Steppes often have different religions. Mongol on it's own will likely have Sunni, Tengri and Nestorian branches. Blobbing should in someway be impeded by province religion. If all the Mishar provinces so far have been Sunni then the Nestorian province next door shouldn't become Mishar. It would be easy enough to rewrite the blobbing code to only allow transfer between same religion (or religion group) provinces. I think this would make much more organic culture borders, it would however lead to more instances of orphaned provinces which might require back-up cultures.

I completely disagree. The steppe was never a place of religious uniformity. EU4 represents whole regions as Sunni simply because the ruling elite were Sunni, as well as for gameplay reasons. Do you know when the Siberian Khanate converted to Islam? It was at some point after 1563. Before that the Sibir were a mix of Christians, various denominations of Islam, and primarily a mix of both Tengriists and Ancestor Worshippers. In-game the Siber are four provinces, one Shamanist province and three Sunni ones. To me the greatest most interesting aspect of the steppe conversion is having states of multiple cultures and religions, since we're denied that in vanilla, and since the steppes of the middle ages were not divided amongst religious lines until the Russians began moving East.

The back-up cultures themselves might cause some wonky looking results. I can already imagine three unconnected Crimean provinces spawning around the shores of the black sea all owned by different nations and all different religions. I'm not sure I have a solution, but it is something that I want to think about some more.

As I've outlined above, I don't see this as a problem, rather as an asset.

In Eu4 the cultures follow national boundaries much more one might expect. If we're intent on preserving the vanilla spirit perhaps our first round of blobbing might also be restricted to only converting provinces in the same country. Of course we need to allow the cultures to blob outside their spawn countries, but we could start that in the second round of blobbing. This would also help stop us from accidentally mingling cultures which have never been ruled by the same nations.

This sounds completely reasonable to me for gameplay reasons.

Next issue is Russification. It was historically a big deal and depending on CK2s outcome it may be even more of a thing. Where it effects us though is we need to decide if Mordvin is to be erased and a Mordvin province is owned by a Russian country should we let Nogaybak or Siberian blob out and take it or should we turn it Russian? At least with Mordvin it seem uncontroversial to suggest we should make it Russian, but what about if it were a Khazar or Mongol province? How far do we want to go?

The only Russification that happened in the CK2 time period was towards the Mordvins, and it was incomplete by the time of EU4. Considering how culture conversion occurs at light speed in CK2, especially against non-coreligionists, I think CK2's mechanics can adequately represent any Russification that might occur.

Those things out of the way, I think this is potentially the best solution we've had for the steppes problem so far and I'm pretty excited to see how it will turn out... next year. It's Christmas eve and I really should be spending time with my family not thinking about the cultural impact of the Mongol hordes. Anyway I might be a little scarce till around the 2nd or 3rd of January because of holiday stuff.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Now, if you'll indulge me I'd like to go off the deep end a little bit.

I was thinking a lot about the orphans/fallback cultures of the culture splits, especially with regards to the steppes, and I think we have an opportunity here to solve/improve a persistent problem.

Just so we're on the same page, by orphan/fallback I mean that one county in Spain that flips to German in CK2. In Eu4 all of the nice Germans who stayed put in Germany become Rhinelanders, Saxons and Hannoverians and whatnot, but those bastards in Spain stay German. This leads to the rather awful, and not infrequent problem of an HRE at the end of CK2 with many exclaves, where the Germans of England, Brittany, Sicily, Tunisia and Spain remain true noble Germans, but the Germans of Flanders are dirty Flemish, the Germans of Saxony are revolting Saxons, and the Hessian Germans are undoubtedly horrible, ugly Hessians. Disgusting.

Anyway, my proposal is one that I've mentioned in passing before, but I think has become far more relevant with the Steppes, and that is: creating whimsical regional fallback cultures.

So, for our steppes, we could have a Mongol state in the Baltic with no physical contact to the Mongol-now-Mishrar lands to the East. If we're not careful it remains Mongol. I say that when the cultural conversion engine is done running (thereby giving priority to vanilla cultures and making the appearance of whimsical cultures very rare) we convert the Baltic Mongols to a Tartar culture group culture called 'Baltiin,' the Mongolian word for Baltic.

The same would go for the other cultures we split - Italian, German, and French.

This would mean that we'd have whimsical cultures to erase the last vestiges of pre-EU4 general cultures that we don't want to exist, because nobody likes to see Umbrian and Italian in the same game. So, by my estimation, we'd need whimsicals for Steppe cultures (one for all of them should be fine), Italian, German, and French.

Disclaimer: These would all be last-resorts. The culture splits should choose any other cultures that it reasonably can before resorting to a whimsical. The only reason I say whimsicals should be used at all is that having a dialect/regional culture and the cultural umbrella that subsumes it (example, Rhinelander and German) appear in the same game is horrible. The implication is that Rhinelander is not German, when in fact it is.

Here are my suggestions for the whimsicals:
Steppe Cultures:
Russian Region - Just give them the vanilla culture Qasimi, since the Qasim Khanate/Qasimi culture represent Tartars subordinate to the Russian state, and is a generally unloved/neglected culture as is.
The Baltics, Lithuanian Region, and Wielkopolska - Baltiin (see above)
Belarus, Ruthenian Region, Malopolska, Hungarian Region - Ungar (the Mongolian name for Hungary)
Scandinavian Region - Shvyed (The Mongolian word for Sweden)
The Balkans, Anatolia - Gryek (The Mongolian name for Greece)
Persian Region - Pyers (The Mongolian name for Persia)
The Rest of the Middle East - Arabyn (The Mongolian name for the Arab people)
The Rest of Europe - Khristed (The Mongolian word for Christian is "Khristed itgegch")
Africa - Jalut (The Mongols were prevented from conquering Africa by their defeat in the battle of Ain-Jalut, this name pays homage to that, and suggests an alternate history where Ain Jalut went to Hulagu)
India - Enetkhegiin (The Mongolian word for Indian)
Anywhere else - Ayalagchiig (The Mongolian word for wanderer)

Germans
Mainly divided by CK2 Empires
Germania/HRE/Wendish Empire can just go to the appropriate German regional cultures that already exist in Vanilla
Carpathia - I think it's safe to just use Austrian
Francia - Französisch (The German word for French)
Britannia - Engländer (The German word for English)
Hispania - Spanisch (The German word for Spanish)
Italia/Sicily - Italiener (The German word for Italian)
Byzantine Empire - Griechisch (The German word for Greek)
Continent of Africa - Afrikaner (The German word for African)
Arabia - Araber (The German word for Arabian)
Persia - Perser (The German word for Persian)
Scandinavia - Nordländer (The German word for the people of Scandinavia)
India - Inder (The German word for Indian)
Anywhere else - Reisenden (The German word for traveller)

French
Mainly divided by CK2 Empires
Germania/HRE - Allemand (The French word for German)
Hispania - Ibérique (The French word for Iberian)
Britannia - Britannique (The French word for British)
Italia/Sicily - Romain (The French word for Roman)
Byzantine Empire - Grecque (The French word for Greek [the people])
Continent of Africa - Africain (The French word for African)
Arabia - Arabe (The French word for Arabian)
Persia - Perse (The French word for Persian)
Scandinavia - Nordique (The French word for Norse)
India - Indien (The French word for Indian)
Anywhere else - Voyageur (The French word for traveller, also was used to describe some of the early French settlers of Canada who travelled by canoe)

Italian
Mainly divided by CK2 Empires
Francia - Francese (The Italian word for French)
Germania/HRE - Tedesco (The Italian word for German)
Hispania - Iberico (The Italian word for Iberian)
Britannia - Inglese (The Italian word for English)
Byzantine Empire - Greco (The Italian word for Greek)
Carpathia - Carpazi (The Italian word for Carpathian)
Continent of Africa - Africano (The Italian word for African)
Arabia - Arabico (The Italian word for Arabian)
Persia - Persiano (The Italian word for Persian)
Scandinavia - Norvegese (The Italian word for Norse)
India - Indiano (The Italian word for Indian)
Anywhere else - Vagabondo (The Italian word for wanderer)