Hello folks, today I will be speaking of what changes are to be made to the concept of culture.
What is a culture
One of the main concepts in the game, which has given us a picture about the ethnic identity of the people living in the provinces, is the concept of culture. This is a relatively abstract category, and so far little if anything has been said about the definition of what "culture" is meant to represent. While this may be left ambiguous, a definition of what requirements any individual culture must meet to be able to be able to qualify as such:
- It must be a majority or at least plurality in at least one province.
- The people of a culture speak a common language, or at least mutually intelligible dialects.
- They are percieved as distinct from neighbouring related cultures not only by themselves but also outsiders.
- In most cases, the area is geographically contiguous, or connected by sea.
- Each culture has a tag associated with it as a primary nation
Now when we get the sense of what is a culture and what qualifies it, we can move on to...
Cultural Groups and Linguistic Groups
The grouping of cultures into culture groups has been a very controversial issue in EU4. While some groups were made based upon linguistic proximities, others were made purely considering geographic or geopolitical factors, in order to guide the nations to expand in the desired directions. Hot-heated debates have risen on which culture group some cultures, like Breton, are to be placed, and so it was decided that each culture is to be grouped into exactly one culture group and exactly one linguistic group.
Linguistic groups are pretty straight-forward. A linguistic group groups all cultures that share the languaage of a common ancestor. In many cases, it is a third-level taxon (that is not the primary language family, but usually one of its major branches, with a compass direction, something like "North Germanic", " Southern Romance" and so forth. In other parts of the map, the linguistic groups are much broader and encompass the entire primary language families, such as "Kartvelian", "Hmong-Mien" or "Quechuan".
A map of the linguistic groups in Northeast Asia, showing the Tungusic linguistic group in pink, the Northeast Turkic in green, the Yukaghir in turquoise, the Ainu in blue and the Kamchadal in brown.
In some cases, especially when grouping up isolates, what needs to be done is just to contend oneself with at least a speculated connection. In the above picture, we can see that Nivkh is recognized as part of the Kamchadal group, although this relationship is still highly speculative.
However, as all of us know, linguistic proximity does not always translate into cultural proximity. In many cases, people really do have more in common with their neighbours who speak an unintelligible tongue than with people who live hundreds of miles away and yet speak common language. Centuries of contact have indeed brought the people together. The category of "Cultural groups" is here to demonstrate just that. As an example, "Quechua" and "Aymara" are grouped into the "Andean" culture group, despite having languages totally unrelated to each other. Another example is the grouping of "Mingrelian", "Georgian", "Armenian" and "Aghbanian" into the wider "Caucasian" group
When delimitating, cultural groups may be very well synonymous to the empires from CK3. Thus the British Isles will have their own culture group, similarly to Tamazgha, where it will group several South Romance peoples as well as various Berber cultures.
However, cultural groups are a dynamic thing. One can change their cultural affiliation, on the precondition that they own at least 75% of the development of said culture (directly or undirectly), and are in direct interaction with a culture of a different culture group, either:
- having at least quarter of your development being of the desired culture group
- being allied with the primary nation of culture belonging to that culture group
Changing a culture group can only be done in relation to a neighbouring culture group, either via land or by sea
Larger groupings: Linguistic Clusters and Civilizations
We will not end here, however. Language groups are grouped even further into the Linguistic Clusters. These will group closely related Linguistic groups, for example, the Germanic cluster is made of the North Germanic, West Germanic and East Germanic groups. The Semitic cluster is composed of the "Aramaic", "Arabic", "South Semitic" and "Ethiopic" groups
.
Closely related cultural groups will be grouped into civilizations or cultural spheres.
The penalties for taxation and manpower are shown in the table below, depicting what it takes to rule provinces with different levels of proximity.
| Culture | Culture same | Culture group same | Civilization same | Civ diff |
| Culture same | 0 | x | x | x |
| Linguistic group same | x | -10% | -20% | -30% |
| Linguistic cluster same | x | -15% | -25% | -35% |
| language unrelated | x | -20% | -30% | -40% |
Examples for the same culture group and linguistic group are very commonplace, dunno like Tuscans ruling over Roma or Bavarians ruling over Swabians. A column to the right, we have what happens when ruling over a culture within the same civilization but within a different culture group (like the Welsh ruling over Bretons). A -30% penalty would be given to Croats ruling over Serbs. While linguistically similar, they belong to different civilizations.
An example where you would receive a -15% penalty are perhaps Sardinians ruling over Tuscany; -25% would be a penalty welt by any Danish ruling over Bavarians; whilst an overpowered Bavarian may suffer -35% whilst trying to rule the Crimean Goths.
Whilst seeking to rule over Karelia, the Novgorodians suffer -20% penalty in their Karelian provinces; a -30% penalty could be experience for example by Norwegains attempting to rule over Italy; and once you conquer provinces at the other end of the world, you still suffer a -40% penalty for tax and manpower
What this means for me as a player?
There are several ways how you as king or ruler of a nation can influence culture. Already mentioned above is your ability to change the cultural group a culture belongs to. This can greatly help, if you plan your conquests elsewhere, and seek to form a cultural union over there.
Wait, what is a cultural union? Well, once forming an empire, you may choose either to become a "cultural union" or a "linguistic union". As a cultural union, you get to integrate all cultures of a given cultural group. Moreover, you get the decision to " Establish a lingua franca".
This is available since diplo tech 4 "Marketplace", and once you own over 50% of the power in a trade node, you can design a lingua franca in the trade node. This designated lingua franca must be the culture of at least one of the important centres of trade in the region, or the primary culture of you nation. Once designated as a lingua franca, the culture will gradually spread among the provinces in the trade node, with preference to the following modifiers.
Target province is of different culture than lingua franca.
Target province has culture not belonging to linguistic group that has enacted the decision "Standardize the X Language"
Neighbouring province has lingua franca
Selected province with marketplace (if possible)
Select province with higher trade value
As a linguistic union, you also get a decision to "Standardize the X Language". This decision lets you choose your preferred dialect to become the standardized language: this culture will then gradually spread to all provinces in your country being of same religion, beginning with the provinces neighbouring those of the standard dialect and gradually spread outwards, converting one province at a time and favouring the ones with higher development .
Note that this decision is only able after reaching admin tech 12 "Early Modern Administraition"(1557) or having embraced "Printing Press".
So this is it for culture today.
Note: This may be difficult for modders to actually implement, but perhaps it can be modded.
