Why is Slovak not part of the West Slavic culture group?

[XselenS]

Slovaks are not similar to Hungarians culturally they are Western Slavs like the Czechs and Poles. There are many other cultures in the wrong groups too. Slovaks, Romanians, Albanians, Finns, Estonians. I understand the game has an empire feature which unifies a culture for the player HOWEVER the game should still represent the difficulty of playing a nation culturally isolated (like Hungary). How on Earth would the Hungarians be able to get Slovaks to self identify as a Carpathian sub-culture under Hungarian rule willfully when there is no such thing? The same goes for the Swedes and the Finns. There is a reason that countries enacted policies of resettlement and assimilation. The game should reflect this and therefore group cultures properly. Yes it would suck for to play Romania because the unifying culture group would be a Latin based one. But it would also make it harder for nations to assimilate Romanian provinces too. Like real life.

 

[Triplebassist]

The short answer is that Hungary was pretty weak from a cultural perspective when they were isolated culturally, so the devs created the Carpathian group. This (along with Finns in the Scandinavian group, Basques in the Iberian group, and others) was primarily a change for gameplay purposes.

The longer answer is that culture is a weird thing to represent. Cultural differences certainly existed and were noted in the timeframe, but it's also true that nationalism and national self-identification weren't developed concepts until after the timeframe. Slovakia was for a long time the main power base of Hungary after the Ottoman invasions, and the Slovaks never made serious attempts at creating a Slovak state during this time. So it's important to represent that Slovaks didn't have any real issues with Hungarian rule and would likely have been integral part of a Hungarian Balkan Empire, to the point where the developers felt putting them in the same culture group made sense. Culture groups represent neither language nor ethnicity; they are instead gameplay abstractions used to encourage AI behavior and represent areas of more and less frequent separatism.

I'd like some kind of overhaul for EUV, but it would require a near-reworking of the concept

 

[Chazb5046]

The short answer is that Hungary was pretty weak from a cultural perspective when they were isolated culturally

And why is this a bad thing? Is not ‘muh realistic”

Breton being in the French group is insulting and welsh being in the English is utterly ridiculous. There were welsh separatist still blowing up English people into the second half of the 20th century. If In game wants to make welsh an accepted culture group, it can, let it use one of its slots. Ditto France

 

[KaiserWilhelmI]

And why is this a bad thing? Is not ‘muh realistic”

Breton being in the French group is insulting and welsh being in the English is utterly ridiculous. There were welsh separatist still blowing up English people into the second half of the 20th century. If In game wants to make welsh an accepted culture group, it can, let it use one of its slots. Ditto France

The answer is that if you put Welsh into its own culture group, The Ai will simply culture convert the Welsh into extinction and then there would be threads complaining about English Wales and Hungarian Slovakia.

 

[Piotrzeci]

It's one of the "gameplay over accuracy" situations, but I still think it should be changed. In my opinion moving it would make more gameplay sense.

The three nations that would realistically be affected by this change are Hungary, Poland and Bohemia. There are also Moldavia and Wallachia, but they are unlikely to take this territory without player intervention. And Austria doesn't care either way.
If Slovak was West Slavic and started as an accepted culture in Hungary it wouldn't harm Hungary much, just takes one of their accepted culture slots and doesn't even cost DIP to accept it, but Poland and Bohemia would benefit more. I mean it's the region that Poland borders the Hungary with and they take it quite often. Bohemia on the other hand sees it as a region equally foreign to Hungarians and just goes for Pest ignoring similar linguistic community.

I think it's one of the times Paradox made a decision based on gameplay, but didn't revisit it with the addition of Starting accepted cultures. It's a neater solution that probably makes more historical sense.

 

[Battlex]

And why is this a bad thing? Is not ‘muh realistic”

Breton being in the French group is insulting and welsh being in the English is utterly ridiculous. There were welsh separatist still blowing up English people into the second half of the 20th century. If In game wants to make welsh an accepted culture group, it can, let it use one of its slots. Ditto France

'nationalism becomes common after the 19th century' isn't the zinger you think it is

Slovaks are not similar to Hungarians culturally they are Western Slavs like the Czechs and Poles. There are many other cultures in the wrong groups too. Slovaks, Romanians, Albanians, Finns, Estonians. I understand the game has an empire feature which unifies a culture for the player HOWEVER the game should still represent the difficulty of playing a nation culturally isolated (like Hungary). How on Earth would the Hungarians be able to get Slovaks to self identify as a Carpathian sub-culture under Hungarian rule willfully when there is no such thing? The same goes for the Swedes and the Finns. There is a reason that countries enacted policies of resettlement and assimilation. The game should reflect this and therefore group cultures properly. Yes it would suck for to play Romania because the unifying culture group would be a Latin based one. But it would also make it harder for nations to assimilate Romanian provinces too. Like real life.

Having it this way means Hungary doesn't break up early on when it shouldn't, same reason why there aren't Greek orthodox spots in Anatolia

 

[TeutonicTortoise]

Its just a balancing thing. Turkish used to be the same culture group as Uzbek and other central Asian cultures but was moved to 1 combined with Arabs and Egyptians.

Obviously certain groups are ethnically linked but culturally neighbours tend to trade culture so French and Breton isn't the worst and although you can just think of Breton as celtic since they're much closer linked to France then say Ireland. Basque is a unique one where really it should be completely independent as a ethnic culture but really they were seen as Spanish princes same as Castile, Aragon and Leon with these group sharing plenty of traditions.

Culture wasnt as clear cut and devisive as it is these days since kingdoms had foreign kings, people were mostly mixed and the modern nation-state didn't really exist.

 

[Blk82]

The culture groups do not represent necessarily represent languages. Rather, they represent groups of ethnicities (or sub-ethnicities) that were ruled by the same country without much conflict during the relevant time period. That is why Cornish and Welsh are in the British group with English, and why Finnish is Nordic while Estonian is Balkan.

In the case of Slovakia, that region had a Hungarian aristocracy during that time period, and EU4 does not have a POP system.

 

[Battlex]

Its just a balancing thing. Turkish used to be the same culture group as Uzbek and other central Asian cultures but was moved to 1 combined with Arabs and Egyptians.

Obviously certain groups are ethnically linked but culturally neighbours tend to trade culture so French and Breton isn't the worst and although you can just think of Breton as celtic since they're much closer linked to France then say Ireland. Basque is a unique one where really it should be completely independent as a ethnic culture but really they were seen as Spanish princes same as Castile, Aragon and Leon with these group sharing plenty of traditions.

Culture wasnt as clear cut and devisive as it is these days since kingdoms had foreign kings, people were mostly mixed and the modern nation-state didn't really exist.

Perhaps Navarra's ruler culture being Castilian and primary culture being basque could get it closer to reality. Or primary culture castilian at game start that can become basque via event in order to get the basque in glory event. Also agreed on cultures not being ethnicities, altough persianate culture within the Ottoman Court might lean it to levantine and Iranian groups to be merged although this would be op

 

[Blk82]

Historically, Basque country was fairly autonomous up until the 19th century. While Basque is a language isolate, it also has culturally links to the rest of Iberia. In other words, a Basque person would regard a Castilian king as less "foreign" than an English one. It would be silly to assert that Basque culture did not exist, but it would also be silly to deny its cultural links with the rest of Iberia.

 

[Deliberus]

Same reason why Turkish is not part of the turk group. It results in weird expansion paths for the AI...

 

[Piotrzeci]

Same reason why Turkish is not part of the turk group. It results in weird expansion paths for the AI...

Weird how? Turkish is the culture of Ottomans, a highly expansionist empire that historically conquered regions of Levant. Including them in the Levantine group certainly helps with nudging them into this kind of expansion.
However I don't see any connection the argument would have to Slovak culture. There is no Nitran empire that needs to expand into Hungarian region and Hungarian expansion wouldn't be affected by it. It would only mean Bohemia or Poland would be more willing to annex this region and that doesn't really sound weird to me. In case of Bohemia conquering regions of Hungary it would probably nudge them into taking this land rather than Hungary proper.

 

[Deliberus]

Weird how? Turkish is the culture of Ottomans, a highly expansionist empire that historically conquered regions of Levant. Including them in the Levantine group certainly helps with nudging them into this kind of expansion.
However I don't see any connection the argument would have to Slovak culture. There is no Nitran empire that needs to expand into Hungarian region and Hungarian expansion wouldn't be affected by it. It would only mean Bohemia or Poland would be more willing to annex this region and that doesn't really sound weird to me. In case of Bohemia conquering regions of Hungary it would probably nudge them into taking this land rather than Hungary proper.

All I can say is to play the older versions of the game to see the problem. Though I also believe that paradox is seemingly keeping it this way for now so that they can simply introduce new cultures or change existing ones in new DLCs.

 

[Battlex]

Weird how? Turkish is the culture of Ottomans, a highly expansionist empire that historically conquered regions of Levant. Including them in the Levantine group certainly helps with nudging them into this kind of expansion.
However I don't see any connection the argument would have to Slovak culture. There is no Nitran empire that needs to expand into Hungarian region and Hungarian expansion wouldn't be affected by it. It would only mean Bohemia or Poland would be more willing to annex this region and that doesn't really sound weird to me. In case of Bohemia conquering regions of Hungary it would probably nudge them into taking this land rather than Hungary proper.

He's saying having them in central Asian tatar would make them expand weirdly, that levantine helps them expand historically
Poland and Bohemia conquer the border regions too much atm rather than go for the PUs

 

[Chazb5046]

The culture groups do not represent necessarily represent languages. Rather, they represent groups of ethnicities (or sub-ethnicities) that were ruled by the same country without much conflict during the relevant time period. That is why Cornish and Welsh are in the British group with English, and why Finnish is Nordic while Estonian is Balkan.

In the case of Slovakia, that region had a Hungarian aristocracy during that time period, and EU4 does not have a POP system.

Then What’s the point of having an accepted culture mechanic?

 

[balmung60]

Its just a balancing thing. Turkish used to be the same culture group as Uzbek and other central Asian cultures but was moved to 1 combined with Arabs and Egyptians.

Obviously certain groups are ethnically linked but culturally neighbours tend to trade culture so French and Breton isn't the worst and although you can just think of Breton as celtic since they're much closer linked to France then say Ireland. Basque is a unique one where really it should be completely independent as a ethnic culture but really they were seen as Spanish princes same as Castile, Aragon and Leon with these group sharing plenty of traditions.

Culture wasnt as clear cut and devisive as it is these days since kingdoms had foreign kings, people were mostly mixed and the modern nation-state didn't really exist.

It was actually originally in the "Turko-Semitic" group, which was basically the same as the current Levantine group. It was for a while moved to a Turkic group on a language = culture basis and then moved back for gameplay reasons.

 

[Vladisvlach]

Honestly, all of the "But moving Slovak to West Slavic will make Hungary weaker" arguments could be easily solved by giving Hungary +1 accepted culture slots and have them accept Slovak (maybe have them keep that accepted slot as long as they keep accepting Slovak, idk, I've never seen the ai revoke the acceptance of cultures) . Yes I do agree Hungary is pretty weak, well, Carpathia in general is pretty weak, but that's another topic for another day.

 

[Battlex]

Then What’s the point of having an accepted culture mechanic?

Because you only have so many slots. Would the Welsh or the Irish care more about English rule? The Irish. So they get a seperate culture group

 

[AirikrStrife]

because language is not the same as culture, that's why finns are culturally closer to swedes than finns,
anatolian turks are closer to middle eastern muslims than central asian turks.

Culture is a complex notion and basing it on language is a 19th century invention, more or less, and does away with the complex reality of culture and identity.

There are valid reasons to have slovak in both carpathian and claiming that the game is 'wrong' is simplistic

 

[Harpagon]

Both Carpathian and the West Slavic group is lackluster compared to any of the neighboring culture group so I would merge the 2 into 1 group. It would makes sense game wise as Poland, Hungary and Bohemia gets PU or are encouraged to conquer the other 2 in their mission tree. Would be good to make Bohemia and Hungary both formable tag just like Poland. In this case Nitra/Transylvania/hungarian cultured country can form Hungary while Glogow/Opole/Czech cultured country can form Bohemia.