Turkish Culture Really Needs A Redo (Or: This thread again)

[talilu]

I think such a split would be feasible. Keep in mind, the names Pontic and Cilician are just REGIONAL! This way, regardless of the people's religion inhabiting the regions of Pontus/Karadeniz or Cilicia, we will be able to show the continuity of the culture of the region even if the spoken languages changes. I tried (and failed) to shade the regions where I was unsure of.

I also decided to take Albanian and Armenian in the group, because of the many dissimilarities of the Armenians to North Caucasian tribes (religion, language, inhabited regions, way of life, governance) and the similarities of Armenian, Greek and Eastern Turkish cultures. I decided to take Albanian in because of the disapproval of many to see Albanian in the Slavic Group. I would like to hear ideas!

 

[Rabid]

I'm all for splitting Turkish into several new cultures and putting them all into the Byzantine culture group. Then add decisions / events / whatever to give the OE free accepted cultures for Syrian and Egyptian when they conquer those regions. Yes it's not a perfect fix but it's by far the best compromise IMO.

Re: Azeri I lean towards keeping it as a Persian culture for several reasons, the only argument for it to be included with Turkish that I really think is convincing is language, and there's more to culture groups than mutual linguistic intelligability IMO (otherwise I wouldn't be asking for Greek and Turkish to share culture group!)

 

[ChloePech]

We could do the accurate thing and have events switch the greek cultures and turkish to the same group at some point (that'll piss off actual greeks and turks, though). But assuming its tradition-based more than anything, Greek and Turkish really did become one group after a while.

 

[Haydar]

I think such a split would be feasible. Keep in mind, the names Pontic and Cilician are just REGIONAL! This way, regardless of the people's religion inhabiting the regions of Pontus/Karadeniz or Cilicia, we will be able to show the continuity of the culture of the region even if the spoken languages changes. I tried (and failed) to shade the regions where I was unsure of.

I also decided to take Albanian and Armenian in the group, because of the many dissimilarities of the Armenians to North Caucasian tribes (religion, language, inhabited regions, way of life, governance) and the similarities of Armenian, Greek and Eastern Turkish cultures. I decided to take Albanian in because of the disapproval of many to see Albanian in the Slavic Group. I would like to hear ideas!

That seems a better fit for "gameplay reasons" and the logic behind that, which was grouping cultures in geographical proximity. Byzantine culture group has a better case than Levantine in that argument. However I would split the Turkish culture into two in that setting, along below lines:

I would like to tag @DDRJake and @Trin Tragula to know if the developers are even considering a change on this matter.

 

[Twoflower]

We should be careful not to use the term "historically correct", since that will inevitably trigger a tirade on how "gameplay trumps history" these days (for the record: personally I'm strongly of the opinion that the fact that it looks awful is enough reason to remove Turkish from the Levantine group. So, what "gameplay" argume can be made? I'll try:
-the Levantine group is extraordinarily widespread and wealthy. I unfortunately cannot confirm this right now, but I think it covers far more development than any other group (German might come close or even have more, but that would justify weakening German - e.g. by splitting off a "Batavian" group which includes Dutch, Flemish, possibly Walloon and possibly a new Frisian culture - rather than keeping both groups as they are)
- the Ottomans have a fast track to Empire rank, there is no pressing need to make their "free" cultural union that strong
- if we want to use cultural union to prevent certain culture from being converted into extinction by the Ottomans, it might make more sense to give that protection to Albanian or Armenien.

 

[wingren013]

Turks should just be in the same culture group as Greek. Thats basically what they were for the majority of EU4s timeframe. Turkish culture being distinct from greek was an invention of the 20th century

 

[awd]

Turks should just be in the same culture group as Greek. Thats basically what they were for the majority of EU4s timeframe. Turkish culture being distinct from greek was an invention of the 20th century

Do you have a source for this? or other historical resources to back up your claim?

 

[Twoflower]

Turks should just be in the same culture group as Greek. Thats basically what they were for the majority of EU4s timeframe. Turkish culture being distinct from greek was an invention of the 20th century

That would surely be interesting news to the Greeks who fought and died for their freedom in the 1820s, let alone the victims of constant persecution and several horrid massacres throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Si tacuisses...

 

[talilu]

That would surely be interesting news to the Greeks who fought and died for their freedom in the 1820s, let alone the victims of constant persecution and several horrid massacres throughout the 19th and early 20th century. Si tacuisses...

You are doing the only one thing we should avoid, bringing nationalism in this thread. Stop posting in this manner or you will ruin this thread.

 

[Rikissa]

-the Levantine group is extraordinarily widespread and wealthy. I unfortunately cannot confirm this right now, but I think it covers far more development than any other group (German might come close or even have more, but that would justify weakening German - e.g. by splitting off a "Batavian" group which includes Dutch, Flemish, possibly Walloon and possibly a new Frisian culture - rather than keeping both groups as they are)

Would it really? Most Germanic development is locked down by the HRE until the very late game. It's not a gameplay problem, otherwise you'd see player-controlled France or England switch to Germanic culture which is something which almost never happens.

Likewise, Ming locks down the Chinese culture group. If that dev was just up for grabs, I would switch to a Chinese culture in 9 out of 10 games in Asia.

You could even make a similar argument for Turkish, you have to kill the Ottomans early to gain any advantage out of it. In most games you simply don't touch Anatolia until past 1700.

 

[Grand Historian]

To touch on the whole 'merge Turkish with Greek argument', I can't say I'm overly fond of that solution for a number of reasons, but I'll simply state one of the biggest problems I have with it: Turkish cultures would start off the game viewing themselves as belonging to Byzantium owing to the Byzzies starting off as an Empire.

 

[Kalderus]

Ironically enough, adding Turkish to the Byzantine culture group would actually be a huge buff for Byzantium, since in the hands of a player (or a mythically rare+miraculously lucky AI), there would be no culture penalty from reconquered Anatolian+Asia Minor provinces, due to it already being an empire.

 

[Grand Historian]

Ironically enough, adding Turkish to the Byzantine culture group would actually be a huge buff for Byzantium, since in the hands of a player (or a mythically rare+miraculously lucky AI), there would be no culture penalty from reconquered Anatolian+Asia Minor provinces, due to it already being an empire.

Yes, but it's a right of passage for every Byzantophile to Make Anatolia Greek Again! (Besides, I don't think such an overt Byz buff will ever get past DDR's radar.)

 

[Kalderus]

Yes, but it's a right of passage for every Byzantophile to Make Anatolia Greek Again! (Besides, I don't think such an overt Byz buff will ever get past DDR's radar.)

Of course the other reason for a Byzantine player, or any other nation player to culture convert away Anatolia is to permanently eliminate the Ottoman cores (cast them into Mount Doom/ melt the T-800 etc., if you will) due to the Ottomans being the primary nation of Turkish culture. So long as those provinces remain Turkish, another player in MP, or an extremely clever AI could demand their release, or they could simply be resurrected by Ottoman nationalist rebels.

 

[Haydar]

Yes, but it's a right of passage for every Byzantophile to Make Anatolia Greek Again! (Besides, I don't think such an overt Byz buff will ever get past DDR's radar.)

If you take talilu's work as blueprint and then split the Turkish culture into two, naming them "Aegean" and "Yoruk", this would no longer be a Turco-Greek issue.

We can argue all Mehmed did by conquering Constantinople was claiming the Byzantine throne, thus getting claims on all previous Byzantine cores. The dude was after Rome. It was Selim in XVI. Century who turned his eyes to the east beyond Anatolia.

 

[Twoflower]

You are doing the only one thing we should avoid, bringing nationalism in this thread. Stop posting in this manner or you will ruin this thread.

Pointing out that a comment is highly insensitive and ignorant is hardly nationalism... (And I'm neither Greek nor Orthodox, for that matter)

 

[TheWalttu]

Ottomans being Levantine is only to make them blob in Middle East. It is a practical solution but still it seems somewhat wrongish in my eyes.
If anything, Turks were Persified, not Arabized.

Consider however how unique Turkish culture(s) is I'd say that they deserve an own culture group. If I recall correctly, when Turkish was moved from Oghuzi to Levantine, Paradox had redone the whole cultural acceptance mechanic, but they forgot / had no time to code the AI to promote cultures ( which resulted in some crazy culture conversion rates, remember? ) and the Turko-Levantine was a makeshift repair to stop the Turks from converting arabics like armenians. Not to even mention it as a huge Otto buff...

If culture-groups no longer mean common cultural background, but railroading for expansion, I'll gather an army and march to Stockholm, burn it to the ground, sow the land with salt, burn the salted ground and dig it up and send it to the Moon and then nuke the Moon. ( Just a figure of speach, don't tell the Swedes, it's supposed to be a surprise.)

 

[fksahin]

What about a new cultural mechanism for Muslims in the game that sect of religion is matter, not culture!

This is how it was in the past as İslam refusing nationalism. That's why many Muslim states accepted Ottoman rule without a single battle..

And also that's why Azerbaijani Safavid Persia and Turkish Ottomans had numerous battles. Ottomans were seeing Shia Islam a real thread than Christianity. They gave religious freedom to Christians but not to Shias.

And I wonder why developers insistently don't answer about Turkish culture issue that had many topics in the forum!

 

[Krajzen]

I want to add that, other than all legit "realism" complaints, separating Turkish culture from Levantine/Arabs would also have a gameplay benefit of nerfing Ottomans by making them slightly more unstable and harder to manage.

IRL there were several Arab rebellions against Ottoman Empire, especially in Egypt. In eu4? Nah, it's the only great power in game which almost never collapses.

Btw, Turkish culture ATM is probably among eu4 cultures with the biggest amount of development AD 1444.

 

[Grand Historian]

If you take talilu's work as blueprint and then split the Turkish culture into two, naming them "Aegean" and "Yoruk", this would no longer be a Turco-Greek issue.

I can't say I'm very fond of the idea of merging Greeks and Turks into a single culture based on their proximity to the Asian Minor coastline either. Besides, a better name for Asian Minor Turks would be Anadolu or Rumeli.