The Old Culture System

[BlazeKnight_]

I reverted back to the oldest patch available on steam, and saw many, many, egregious things. But one thing that was interesting was this:

Culture acceptance was based off of % of development. You accept a culture when it is 20% of your development, and lose it when it falls below 10%.

This system, while not perfect (or even that good), sounds MUCH better than the horrible, static/binary system we have now. The fact that u can't just click to change primary culture, and also have to actually think (at least mildly) about things like devving what culture. And also brother culture vs outside culture actually means something.

Why is this system not still in the game? If this was expanded on, it would be much better than the Cookie clicker risk-esque system we have now where you just click on a button for culture acceptance and forget about it.

Such a system (assuming you can't change primary culture) would also solve a lot of the horrendous issues with flipping tags: both how ahistorical it is, and the ability to "play modern EU4" (that's my new term for stacking modifiers).

 

[Word_Smith]

I agree. EU4 used to be a very different game. Modern EU4 has largely become of a game of mad libs when it comes to to cultures.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

Huh, this would also incentivise tall over blobs, as too much of india under your belt makes Scotland start revolting

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Huh, this would also incentivise tall over blobs, as too much of india under your belt makes Scotland start revolting

If you look into games actually played in that era, you probably wouldn't make this conclusion.

 

[st360]

This system, while not perfect (or even that good), sounds MUCH better than the horrible, static/binary system we have now. The fact that u can't just click to change primary culture, and also have to actually think (at least mildly) about things like devving what culture. And also brother culture vs outside culture actually means something.

Why is this system not still in the game? If this was expanded on, it would be much better than the Cookie clicker risk-esque system we have now where you just click on a button for culture acceptance and forget about it.

Such a system (assuming you can't change primary culture) would also solve a lot of the horrendous issues with flipping tags: both how ahistorical it is, and the ability to "play modern EU4" (that's my new term for stacking modifiers).

Seems to me like the system was easier. Instead of having to manage cultures, you would just automatically always have the same % of culture accepted. You're accusing the current system of being "just 1 click" but you are asking for a 0 click 0 thought system.

As for culture flipping to change into preposterous tags, that is pretty much a broken part of the game, but it stays because people "find it fun". Not fun enough to play non ironman and use a cheat for it, instead it has to ruin the balance for everyone. But apparently the argument with broken exploits in this game is "if you don't like it you dont have to use it, why take away other peoples fun OMG!"

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Keep in mind that if you go far enough back in EU 4's past, vassals did not cost DIP to annex and simply breaking land connection between cap + other continents halved coring cost (for still full cores). These mechanics made culture shifting different from today, but often still quite trivial if done relatively early on.

As for culture flipping to change into preposterous tags, that is pretty much a broken part of the game, but it stays because people "find it fun". Not fun enough to play non ironman and use a cheat for it, instead it has to ruin the balance for everyone.

Since you mention "preposterous", consider the fact that the same provinces with the same primary + promoted culture with the same development/autonomy and same government/ruler quality can have massively different bonuses based on TAG alone, as if the TAG's name alone has a mystical property of conferring powers that otherwise would not exist in that population.

Jenne forming Andalusia or Mughals or something has nothing on that sorcery. Yet somehow, it's an "exploit" to play around those rules, lol.

 

[Nostalgium]

It sounds fun, but it was actually pretty horrible. If you formed the Commonwealth, for example, you'd never be able to keep Lithuanian as an accepted culture - if you even got it as one in the first place - despite the fact that they ostensibly make up one half (legally speaking) of that nation. Likewise, it restricted any kind of pick-and-mix or player agency for RP reasons, which while not a serious gameplay concern, can be a serious immersion concern. It didn't incentivise tall play in the way you may think, as Cultural Unions still existed - only they were tied to tags, and not to the Empire rank, so tough luck if you played Burgundy, conquered all of France, but France kept existing as an OPM in Indonesia. You'd never get the culture tag, and all of France would have extra revolt risk forever.

I'm not a huge fan of the current culture system either, but it's a significant improvement over the old one once you get past the early/midgame.

 

[PhoenixG]

Ah the famous old system where you can lose your main culture, because you conquer too much. I still have a screenshot playing as Korea that stopped accepting Korean, cuz I ate too much chinese clay.

Besides that the current system is more flexible to what the player wants. The only nitpick I've with is that you can switch your main culture too easy.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

It sounds fun, but it was actually pretty horrible. If you formed the Commonwealth, for example, you'd never be able to keep Lithuanian as an accepted culture - if you even got it as one in the first place - despite the fact that they ostensibly make up one half (legally speaking) of that nation. Likewise, it restricted any kind of pick-and-mix or player agency for RP reasons, which while not a serious gameplay concern, can be a serious immersion concern. It didn't incentivise tall play in the way you may think, as Cultural Unions still existed - only they were tied to tags, and not to the Empire rank, so tough luck if you played Burgundy, conquered all of France, but France kept existing as an OPM in Indonesia. You'd never get the culture tag, and all of France would have extra revolt risk forever.

I'm not a huge fan of the current culture system either, but it's a significant improvement over the old one once you get past the early/midgame.

I'm not arguing that the old system alone is good, it's actually pretty bad. But the fact that there is even a semblance of thought is remarkable compared to the current click and benefit. If the old system was improved upon I could see it being much better.

 

[Darsara]

I'm not arguing that the old system alone is good, it's actually pretty bad. But the fact that there is even a semblance of thought is remarkable compared to the current click and benefit. If the old system was improved upon I could see it being much better.

There really wasn't a system of thought, beyond which parts you'd culture convert 1st. Either a culture was big enough, or it wasn't. And it could lead to oddities like an Empire deciding that a mortal enemy culture that they've been at war with for centuries suddenly becoming a protected minority because they've taken too much land. Like Austria being forced to accept Turkish because they acquired too much Turkish land until they converted it; even potentially deciding that Hungarians no longer get privileges in their favour.

In addition to previously mentioned issues with roll-play (such as keeping a culture around just because you wanted to keep it), it led to issues like larger empires never being able to accept a minority unless (maybe) they got it early, because you'd NEVER get it above 20%. Just a bunch of 8ish% cultures you could only eliminate or tank the penalties on. Admittedly all the worse since you couldn't deliberately increase development back then. OR decide to convert a country to an accepted culture, just your primary.

 

[Manwe_Sulimo]

But why is there NO thought to it in the new system, even there you need to decide which culture you accept and take into account further conquests, and so on (at least for saving the 100 diplo points for switching later), the slots are pretty limited.
Like st360 said, the old system had even less thought to it as you couldn't do anything about it.

Also it was possible to game it under certain conditions by stacking the modifiers that reduced those tresholds. IIRC it was possible to reduce them even to 0 so you would accept all cultures, or at least to a very low level.

 

[jonjowett]

Yeah, the old system was fun in some ways, and it produced one of my favourite runs of all time: a truly tolerant PLC, where every culture was accepted automatically.

IIRC, this was only theoretically possible for PLC, Ottos and Lan Xang (because you needed a large bonus in your national ideas). Further, you needed the plutocratic-humanist policy(*), which meant you needed to become a republic. This was before the current government reform system, so flipping to republic was nontrivial (I think you could only do it by scripted events or maybe rebels?). Also, republics were kinda trash back then, so the fact that the PLC's royal struggle disaster could flip you to republic then back to monarchy a few years later was very nice.

I even dug out a couple of old screenshots:



Good times.

But I don't think you should judge a game system by the wildest possible exploits - instead, you should judge it by the normal gameplay experience. And, on those terms, I think the current culture system is better.

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(*) The full notes from the screenshot are: "All cultures accepted - in ironman! (Poland; Humanism; Hum + Dip policy; Hum + Plut policy; Enlightened Despotism; Silk)". The date on the screenshot is 29 April 2015, in case anyone wants to identify the patch number.

 

[Nostalgium]

I even dug out a couple of old screenshots:

View attachment 819589View attachment 819590

Good times.

Oh wow. Russian as a monolithic culture! I had forgotten about that!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh wow. Russian as a monolithic culture! I had forgotten about that!

Once upon a time, there was a "Turko-Semetic culture" (lol), and literally everything in Sub-Saharan Africa was also one culture group, which if you consider how split cultures are there in reality even today was a wild setup.

But man, everything from Anatolia to Morocco to all of Arabian peninsula being one culture group takes the cake. Especially because Ottomans had triple (!!!) manpower recovery speed when fighting heathens boosting soldiers joining up from all that "same-group" land.