OK I agree and understand that their wasn't religious unity within certain cultures, but you have to think about scale here. The vanilla Sibir have four provinces, four provinces that are likely in ck2 terms the same culture provinces and ruled by the same culture of overlord and so those four provinces would be part of the 'cultural centre' spawned for Sibir before it even has a chance to blob. Once a culture is expanding beyond it's spawn provinces and its spawn nation it has the potential to spread like wildfire and paint an indiscriminate blob on the steppes. Mindless blobbing that is based solely on proximity is something I would like to avoid, I'd like to have it reflect the divides in CK2 as much as possibly, even if that isn't necessarily as historical as possible or as “in the spirit of vanilla” as possible we do have a third design virtue that we're pursuing, that is to make the converted game as relevant to the ck2 game as possible.
So here is a suggestion for how to run a blobbing mechanic. We first spawn the cultural centres, then we blob to adjacent provinces owned by the same nation, then we blob to any adjacent province of the same religion and then blob unrestrained. This allows for province religion to have an important role in the prioritisation of who blobs where without imposing a hard limit.
I think you've found the optimal answer to that problem.
Perhaps, but there is such a high likelihood that some Mordivin or Severian or Volhynian provinces are going to be captured and culture flipped by the Hordes before they are converted to Russian just become there are normally nice weak states with those cultures around for the steppe tribes to gobble. Then there is the problem that historically in the thirteenth century many provinces that are Russian/Ruthenian culture in eu4 and ck2 were held by the Mongol horde. If you are to play from one of the latest game dates, then even if the historical collapse of the Mongol empire happens and the Russian states reclaim their land it is likely that pockets of the land will have flipped to Mongol culture. All in all I've just seen this are being dotted with Mongol culture too many times to have faith that the Russians will be able to handle it like they did historically. So I think that the Russian culture needs some kind of advantage. Perhaps rather than all erasable culture provinces owned by Russian nations turning Russian we could limit it to all erasable culture provinces in the Russia region? That way in the case of a fully formed E_Russia it won't be unstoppably unified, but in the case of scattered Rurikid princes as historically happened, Russian stand a much better chance of becoming important on the world stage.
I hadn't fully considered the effects of what I bolded above in your quote. You've convinced me, and I think limiting it to the Russian region is a good idea.
But consider the following addition:
Qasimi culture exists in vanilla as a one province Tartar culture under the rule of Muscovy. How about your run the 'Rusification protocol' once, and then if there are any erasable cultures left under Russian rule that do not border a Russian cultured province, you flip those to Qasimi and continue the Rusification?
Ok I agree we have a problem with the Orphan culture provinces which is likely to get worse with the steppes being involves and I love that everyone is excited about the possiblity of these backup whimsical cultures fixing the orphan provinces problem. The things we just can't add this many. Remember that for everyone of these we need an extra revolter TAG and every TAG is a kick in the balls for low power PCs. Not to mention that every tag needs a flag made for it, it needs ruler, army and boat names and I need to try and think of reasonable historic ideas. Trying to workout and put together the flags and the other stuff for the new TAGs we're already adding this update is the biggest obstacle to actually getting this mod compatible right now.
That said I am not against the idea. Perhaps if we were to cut down the number of cultures though? Instead of having 11 German Orphan cultures most of which will never be seen, have one for those in Scandinavia (too far north) one for in France and Spain (too far west) Let Prussian and Austrian cover too far east, use Langobard for any provinces in Italy (too far south) and then have one wondering culture for Germans a really long way from home. That way we have to create only 3 new cultures. I'm open to suggestions as to how people would name the backup Italian, German, French and Steppe cultures based on that kind of system where you have a back up for each compass direction and then one 'wanderer' culture. Again as always I need to talk to the other devs before I can confirm the inclusion of any of this kind of thing.
So what I suggested was 10 new Altaic/Tartar cultures, 11 new German cultures, 11 new French cultures, and 12 new Italian cultures, meaning 44 new cultures.
Yikes I kind of got carried away.
I've done some reductions, and taken into account what you suggested and came up with these rough maps of what the splits would look like, I don't think I can reduce them further without making awkward unions, but I invite you to try:
So, for the German one I basically just took what you said, but added Englisch since The Isles seemed distinct enough a place.
This would add only 4 new cultures:
Nordländisch
Franzosen
Englisch
Reisend
Italian I've identified 6. Lombard is the only reused culture. Since Italian only has three cultures in its native group, it's hard to reduce it further. I considered Sicilian for Africa, but it just feels
wrong. I also considered using Vagante for Africa, but since Italians are likely to appear in the Balkans we'd likely have every game with African-Italians also have Italians in the Balkans. Any avoidance we can achieve of having a situation where all of these people are thrown into the same pot I think is positive.
The 6 I've identified would be:
Inglese
Francese
Iberico
Carpazi
Africano
Vagante
The extrageographic steppe. There's so many unknowns for me here. Khorasani are in vanilla EU4, and are a Turkic people of Iran, so I suggested making them available through the steppe culture split for Persia. Azerbaijan I think we have stuff for already? Unrelated question: does Persian split into Mazandarani in the area of Mazandaran already? The Russian region looked bound to have special rules/be included in the regular steppe split. I expect this one to be the most controversial.
The 6 new cultures I identified were:
Enetkhegiin
Arabyn - Maybe redraw the borders for this one?
Baltiin
Ungar
Khristed
Jalut
French... sucks. Because of the ubiquity of non-Western European French cultured states, namely Jerusalem and The Latin Empire, coupled with the French culture's tendency to spread to foreign thrones we probably need a bunch of French cultural zones. I've identified 7 new cultures and I don't think we can safely reduce the number of whimsical cultures. Because of the Latin Empire and Jerusalem I think Outremer and Rhomain should remain separate, and because of their likelihood of existing I think neither should be Voyageur.
Anyway, here are the 7 I have left:
Insulaire
Ibérique
Allemand
Italien
Rhomain
Outremer
Voyageur
As for states and flags, I might be able to help out. I'm busy with the Mario Mod, but I can take some time out to throw some assets your way.
For example, here's my idea of the flag of a French state in the British Isles:
EDIT: I just realised I broke the cardinal rule of flag design by mixing metals, but oh well.
