Unreleasable Naples. Why?

[PedroVargas]

Something happened to Naples in my run and I don't know what. Naples at game start has Napolitanic culture and normally when you take a primary culture land you can release a (non existing) Naples. I checked by console integrating them as Aragon - and all is fine, it can be re-released, so it's not a bug from game start.

However in my current run I cannot release them. Neither fully in the peace deal nor by taking a province and releasing them.

Mind you: Their cores still exist, the country doesn't exist. And I didn't take a Sicilian province of theirs, I took a Neapolitanic one.

I even speculated that perhaps they changed their primary culture to Sicilian and after integration lost their primary culture cores and only kept the Neapolitanic ones - but that also cannot be it because for a test I took Calabria (Sicilian) as well which still had a Neapolitanic core and it was still unreleasable.

Any theories?

Screenshots from my game and I attached a save game.

 

[GRWalker]

Perhaps Aragon enforced aragonese culture on them before integrating them? The AI was very gung-ho about that a few patches ago.

 

[PedroVargas]

That's probably it. Since it's a mechanic I pretty much never use, I completely forgot about that option.

 

[Equilibrius]

That's probably not very logical or intuitive, changing the leadership culture makes the entire nation's identity disappear after annexation? If the country disappears it should revert to the original culture so the cores are permanent and it can be re-released.

 

[hashinshin]

That's odd actually. There's NOT ONE OTHER naples culture country in the game?

 

[PedroVargas]

Not that I know of. No Sicily, no Maltese Knights, no Naples. Actually Naples was untouched for the entire game until Aragon integrated them. It still doesn't fully make sense to me but the "enforce culture" thing might be the only logical explanation there is (as weird as the mechanic would be).

One interesting fact is that the tool tip says that Naples will lose the core in 1562. Normally prime culture will never be lost or after 150 years. But 150 years haven't passed since game start so 1562 only makes sense if their culture at annexation point indeed wasn't Neapolitan anymore but Aragonese which belongs to a different culture group. It even says the nation will "lose it in 50 years".

It is now 1601 in the game and Naples has lost all its cores.

 

[Trytols]

Not that I know of. No Sicily, no Maltese Knights, no Naples. Actually Naples was untouched for the entire game until Aragon integrated them. It still doesn't fully make sense to me but the "enforce culture" thing might be the only logical explanation there is (as weird as the mechanic would be).

One interesting fact is that the tool tip says that Naples will lose the core in 1562. Normally prime culture will never be lost or after 150 years. But 150 years haven't passed since game start so 1562 only makes sense if their culture at annexation point indeed wasn't Neapolitan anymore but Aragonese which belongs to a different culture group. It even says the nation will "lose it in 50 years".

It is now 1601 in the game and Naples has lost all its cores.

This "Culture \ Tag Releasable Country" is a timeless problem in EU series.

It's since EUIII I'm asking that the culture matching control must be avoided when you release vassals else you have strange problems like the one you post.

 

[NormandyWept]

With them being unreleasable and with the core being able to expire, it does look like Naples exists somewhere else on the map. Do they appear in the list when you hit 'f' and type Naples? (This is also consistent with the peace negotiation screen you show, which doesn't have them under release nation, but might show them under the return cores tab?)

 

[Felisto]

You can release Naples with "return province". I just tried it with your save. No idea why you can't release them as a vassal though.

 

[NormandyWept]

You can release Naples with "return province". I just tried it with your save. No idea why you can't release them as a vassal though.

I'm still finishing a game on the previous patch so can't check, but this is also consistent with Naples already existing before you press Return Province. They might have an obscure province somewhere, maybe a small island?

 

[Felisto]

Okay, I just checked the save again and GRWalker was definitely right. Aragon enforced culture on them and that is the problem here.

The released Naples (with "return province") has Aragonese as primary culture. Naples can't be released as a vassal because there are no Neapolitan cores with Aragonese culture. Converting one of those provinces to Aragonese allows to release all of Naples as a vassal.