CK3 Dev Diary #65 - One Culture Is Not Enough​

Hello everyone!

Last week we had a rundown of what a culture looks like in the upcoming overhaul. This time around, let’s have a closer look at how you go about creating your own culture! There are two different ways of doing so, forming a hybrid culture and diverging your culture. Both are slightly different in their approach and in what they allow you to do with your new culture.

Now, while the cultural overhaul is a free feature that will accompany the Royal Court expansion, the ability to create a hybrid or divergent culture will require you to own the DLC.

Before we start, culture creation is quite dependent on the new cultural overhaul, so if you have yet to read last week's DD, I suggest you give it a read for context. Also, keep in mind that everything shown in screenshots is still a work in progress!

Form a Hybrid Culture
Forming a hybrid culture is a way for you to meld the aspects of your current culture with that of another, in any way you so choose.

There are a few restrictions you’ll have to keep in mind before you are able to form a hybrid. First, the culture you want to form a hybrid with has to be present within your realm. No weird hybridization with cultures on the other side of the world please. Secondly, you’ll need a certain amount of cultural acceptance. You cannot go in and conquer an area to only create a new culture immediately, but the required amount can vary depending on your current traditions. And finally, you cannot hybridize with a culture of the same heritage as you. The reasoning here is that the two cultures have to be different enough to warrant them being combined into a single culture, rather than just assimilating one in favour of the other.

Once you are able to form a hybrid culture, you’ll need to come up with a good name for it. We pick a default name that is a combination of the two cultures you are attempting to hybridize, such as “Andaluso-French”, or “Greco-Persian”. For added immersion and flavour, however, we have a set of names that can appear depending on which cultures you hybridize, or where you are creating your new culture. For example, hybridizing a culture of a Frankish heritage with one of a central germanic heritage in the area in and surrounding Lotharingia, you can have a culture named Rhinelander. You are, of course, free to name your new culture whatever you want as well!

Starting with the pillars. You can freely pick between the two cultures' pillars, mixing ethos, heritage, language, and martial custom as you’d like. For example, you could pick the heritage from culture A, but language from culture B. One caveat is that you have to pick at least one pillar from each culture. It isn’t much of a hybrid otherwise, is it?

[Image of pillar selection when forming a hybrid culture]​

The same principle applies to traditions. You can pick and choose which traditions you want to keep, from either culture, as long as you don’t go above the slot limit. You can even choose to only pick a few traditions, leaving slots empty and give room for future traditions that you may want to adopt later. Some traditions are unique to certain cultures, regions, or heritages however, so this is the only chance you might have to acquire traditions that normally would be out of your reach.

[Image of tradition selection when forming a hybrid culture]​

Aesthetics work in the same way. You are free to pick and choose all of the subcomponents from either culture. For some of the categories, you are even able to choose a “hybrid” option, using the preset from both cultures! The hybrid option exists for names, fashion, and CoAs. Are you hybridizing a culture from East Africa with an Indian culture? Perhaps you’d like to go for the Indian unit, hybrid naming, Indian architecture, African fashion, and finally hybrid CoAs. Actual combination is entirely up to you!

[Image of Military Equipment, Naming Practices, and Architecture when forming a hybrid culture]

[Image of Fashion and Coats of Arms when forming a hybrid culture]​

The new hybrid culture will automatically acquire any innovation that either parent culture has discovered already, giving you the possibility to gain access to innovations that your previous culture has yet to discover.

Before we move on, there’s a prestige cost to forming a hybrid culture. Normally, creation isn’t very expensive, and relies more on having enough cultural acceptance for it to be valid. A high acceptance will reduce the cost though, making it fairly cheap if you have managed to greatly increase acceptance.

The initial size of a hybrid culture on the map also depends on the acceptance you’ve built up between the two cultures. If you decide to hybridize at the lowest required acceptance level, the hybrid will start out rather small. Rulers of hybrid cultures have a much easier time using the ‘Promote Culture’ council task in counties belonging to either of its parent cultures for a set amount of years after it has been formed.

Diverge Your Culture
A divergent culture is essentially a culture that deviates from their original culture, allowing you the opportunity to shape it as you see fit.

Similar to forming a hybrid, you get to choose a name for your new culture. The default name here on the other hand, depends on your primary title. Diverging a culture as the king of Anatolia can give you an Anatolian culture, or Austrian if you are the duke of Austria. This makes sure that divergent cultures always have a sensible name to them. At least most of the time. I did see a Wormsian culture in a recent observer game, from the county of Worms. As with hybridization, you are free to name it however you want if you don’t want to use the default name.

As for the pillars, options are slightly different. You can pick and choose any ethos. Language won’t have any additional options for you most of the time. Martial custom can be changed as long as you fulfill the conditions for them, which would include things such as having a corresponding succession law. Aesthetics will also rarely have additional options, except in some historical cases. Diverging from Norse in Sweden, for example, will give you access to Swedish Aesthetics.

You have to change at least one pillar in order to diverge your culture. Most of the time you won’t have a lot of valid alternatives for the additional pillars, so your only option will be to change your ethos.

[Image of pillars when diverging from an existing culture]​

Traditions can be replaced with something new, as long as you are able to afford the tradition cost. Unlike hybridization, you will have plenty of options, and can replace a tradition with any other tradition that your culture fulfills the requirements of.

[Image of traditions when creating a divergent culture]​

Diverging also costs prestige. Here the cost scales on how much of your own culture you control. Attempting to diverge Greek as Byzantium will be fairly expensive. Meanwhile, attempting to diverge a small part of your culture, such as a small Andalusian emir on the Iberian peninsula will be significantly cheaper.

Dynamic Culture Emergence
The above options describe how you as a player will be able to create new cultures, that doesn't mean that cultures won’t also appear dynamically. Over the course of a campaign, cultures may diverge depending on their situation.

For dynamic Divergent cultures we decided that we wanted them to feel immersive and logical whenever they showed up. There are many factors that go into this, such as the culture size, if the culture is ‘united’ under strong rulers, etc. Divergent cultures will appear either in border regions where a culture meets another (or several others), or in island regions. Divergences also do not appear in the capital lands of the Culture Head, in order to safeguard what is most likely the ‘heartland’ of the culture.
For example, one of the cultures that usually Diverge a few times (1066) is the Bedouin culture. It’s large, spread out, and some of its lands are under rulers that are not Bedouin themselves. On the other hand we have Greek; a large culture, but with practically all counties of its culture united under one ruler - they tend to not diverge unless territories go independent.

Hybridization, on the other hand, is something powerful rulers strive towards! If a ruler finds themselves ruling a large swathe of land of a foreign culture while at the same time having no motivation to assimilate, they’ll try and increase Cultural Acceptance until they’re eligible for Hybridization. They tend to want to hybridize with large cultures in their realm, the prime example being the Oghuz Seljuks wanting to Hybridize with Persian above all other cultures they have in their realm. Some AI rulers do not pursue hybridization though, such as large Elective realms (HRE) where cultures take turns being the top ruler, or realms such as the Papacy.

By default, the AI will not create hybrids-of-hybrids (unless historical hybrids, such as Maghrebi or English), as the naming schemes can quickly go out of hand. Though if you’d like the AI to do this, there’s a game rule you can enable...

There’s also a small chance that hybrids appear in realms of not so powerful rulers, this allows interesting hybrids such as Hiberno-Norse to appear even from tiny realms. This happens through an event that can also occur for the player. These events will most often happen for Cultures that have certain traditions that allow them to more easily create Hybrids with other cultures.

Naturally there’s a host of Game Rules that allow you to customize your experience. Do you want no Divergent or Hybrid cultures to appear at all? Set their frequencies to none. Do you want the AI to create hybrids of hybrids of hybrids of hybrids? Set the Hybrid Culture Restrictions to Very Relaxed!

[Image of the new culture Game Rules]​

To round things off, let’s take a look at a few examples of what the AI did during an observer game. First up, from the 867 start, and 200 years in. You’ll see quite a few new cultures here:

• Ango-Norse, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 918.
• Cumbro-Norse, Hybrid Culture, formed in 948.
• Norse-Gael, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 1029.
• You can also see that English has largely replaced Anglo-Saxon as the dominant culture in England.

[Image of AI created cultures on the British islands]​

Started in 867, and 100 years into the game:

• Kufan, Bedouin Divergence, emerged in 933.
• Badarayani, Mashriqi Divergence, emerged in 956.
• Kurdo-Mashriqi, Hybrid Culture, emerged in 911.
• Nihawandi, Persian Divergence, emerged in 907.
• Shirvani, Persian Divergence, emerged in 946.

[Image of AI created cultures in and around Persia]​

In another game, started in 1066, a Swedish noblewoman was made queen in the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, following a successful crusade. After a few generations, the local cultures merged into what would become Mashriqi-Swedish! Ushering the kingdom into a new era of prosperity.

[Image of the Kingdom of Jerusalem becoming Mashriqi-Swedish]

[Image of the culture window of Mashriqi-Swedish]​

As mentioned earlier, we have a number of historical names for cultures that can appear in specific circumstances. If you have any cultural names that would make sense for a divergent or hybrid culture, let me know! Who knows? Perhaps your suggestion ends up in the game!

That's it for this time!

 

[wolfFRdu64]

i agree, but it is controversial because they are a part of spane

 

[Talking Bout]

This part is innacurate. The south of Scotland was always of mixed Saxon and Gaelic heritage. Edinburgh is literally a Saxon name. There has been so much culture bleed that it's ridiculous to suggest that Anglophones only came over with Malcolm Canmore's adoption of a more Anglicised culture. Angle Kings had been marrying Gaels for centuries, to the extent that it caused a literal schism in Northumbria when Oswiu and his ilk tried to promote the form of Christianity popular on Iona (where he and his brother were raised in exile).

Canmore brought over Normans, sure. But that's because they were good at building castles and got shit done. A lot of the nobility were already Anglicised, particularly in the south. That's probably why there were brutal civil wars between Moray and the Dunkelds.

Anyway, I digress. I will reiterate again: make an Anglo-Norman culture you cowards!!!!

Given that we're looking at a game where the 800s are current events and not 1200 years ago, no, it's not correct to say the south was always of mixed Saxon and Gaelic heritage. Din Eidyn the Cumbric settlement was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, who changed the name to Edinburgh. In Scottish Gaelic the name of the place is Dùn Èideann. Anyway this isn't the period or culture which was under discussion.

I find it interesting that you'd ask for an Anglo-Norman culture. Historically that is called English.
But if you mean a possibility of alt-history where the hybrid culture is even more French than Germanic, or not the same culture as a possible later start-date's "default English" setup, I would be curious about that too. The system seems very interesting in terms of gameplay, but like the initial religion setup, I have to wonder how it's going to do at representing plausible cultural developments.
Or nuanced portrayals of cultural coexistence and mingling - the temptation to "ship" cultures might be a bit too strong and result in too many wacky hybrids.

 

[The Shacks]

Anglo-Norman and English arent the same. Anglo-Norman French isent Norman nor is it English. Its the language of the middle-classes/gentry/petty nobles and the bridge between Anglo-saxon/Norman and the eventual English. To attack it from one single angle. Too tired to fully explain it in its evolving cultural/socio-economic sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Normans - Wikipedia for when your lazy and tired.

 

[kemmy23]

It's relevant because it's an aspect of history which this history-based game claims to represent to a certain degree of accuracy.
I have already pointed out as a caveat that it is a topic of modern political relevance, both in a general sense from the continuing fallout and cultural divides in Scotland, Britain, and Ireland, and in a specifically modern sense due to the Scottish independence movement.
Let's read your signature for an example. That's a lot of buzzwords which are politically charged in a Scottish context which would make me look hostile, uncharitable, and foolish if I were to call you them, but I am not calling you any of those things.

I'm not even complaining about politics or biased slants on whether some part of history was for the better or not, but about historical accuracy. An anglo-biased perspective might say the anglicisation of scotland was a good thing, or a thing they like, whereas a gaelic-biased perspective might say the loss of scotland's culture was a bad thing or a thing they regret.
If, however, someone was to present a counterfactual representation of Scottish history as many Anglo-Caledonian-British-Protestant-conservative-bigots might be inclined to do so, and say that the English dialect which existed in Scotland is not only native to Scotland (preexisting Middle English entirely), but the only language which deserves the descriptor of belonging to Scotland, I as an appreciator of history would not like that, before any questions of Scottish politics came into it, and would expect those who have no interest in the politics to reject that presentation of history as well.

So if you'd like to defend the current representation of Scotland in CK3, or elaborate on your own analysis, please feel free. I have no intention of starting or engaging with a modern political argument with anyone of any persuasion. Because the subject matter is politically charged (hundreds of years later?), I want to be precise about how I react to all of this, because I would not like a historically inaccurate representation to go uncorrected just because challenging it would appear like a modern politics flamewar.

Then I'll attempt to make myself a bit clearer. I will not deny a need for accuracy in this game, but what I do not agree with is your reading of history.

What you see as a question of historical accuracy, I see as a politicised reading of history; I don't agree with the conclusions you've come to about Scottish history and therefore question the changes you've recommended.

But again, this not really the thread to have that discussion...

 

[Lambert Simnel]

Given that we're looking at a game where the 800s are current events and not 1200 years ago, no, it's not correct to say the south was always of mixed Saxon and Gaelic heritage. Din Eidyn the Cumbric settlement was conquered by the Anglo-Saxons, who changed the name to Edinburgh. In Scottish Gaelic the name of the place is Dùn Èideann. Anyway this isn't the period or culture which was under discussion.

I find it interesting that you'd ask for an Anglo-Norman culture. Historically that is called English.
But if you mean a possibility of alt-history where the hybrid culture is even more French than Germanic, or not the same culture as a possible later start-date's "default English" setup, I would be curious about that too. The system seems very interesting in terms of gameplay, but like the initial religion setup, I have to wonder how it's going to do at representing plausible cultural developments.
Or nuanced portrayals of cultural coexistence and mingling - the temptation to "ship" cultures might be a bit too strong and result in too many wacky hybrids.

After John loses Normandy the French-speaking nobility in England diverge from the Normans in Normandy so it makes sense to have anew Anglo-Norman culture as the Frankish-group culture of Edward I et al while English is the culture of the lower orders

 

[MinecraftMinun]

I was thinking this too! I'd love it if there were a large amount of custom hybrid cultures for cultures that were likely to hybridise. That way there'd be as little of [culture]-[culture] as possible.

To throw my 2 cents in. I'd really really prefer that Outermer remain the default name for any frankish hybrid culture in the region.

Personally I'd even like to see 'outermer' localised into several other relevant languages as the title for Hybrid 'christian' cultures that reach the holy land area.

English could be something like "Othersea" "Outersea" "Farsea" or some term relating to "the outer/distant seas". It's just so much more interesting than Anglo-Mashriqi. Alternatively some kind of 'Jerusalemite'/'Salemite' would also be preferable.

I predict if you don't come up with an interesting term for the region most games will inevitably have a 'crusader_culture-mashriqi' hybrid in the holy land... which just isn't pretty considering all the other great hybrid culturenames we have.

 

[kemmy23]

Azeri - Persian diverting in the dutchies of Azerbaijan or Shirvan
Azerbaijan - Orghuz diverting in the dutchies of Azerbaijan or Shirvan or possibly hybridizing with an Iranian culture in the dutchies of Azerbaijan or Shirvan

As far as I'm aware, Azeri = Azerbaijan; they're not two separate languages/ethnic groups. An Azeri is just a synonym for someone from Azerbaijan / from the Azerbaijani ethnic group.

 

[MinecraftMinun]

That way there'd be as little of [culture]-[culture] as possible.

That is to say, ideally less than half of the cultures that naturally come about from the AI hybridising should be [culture]-[culture]

 

[treb]

I've got a few names for culture mixes
Brythonic+anglo-saxon/english = Loegrian - derived from the welsh "lloegyr" a name for England.
Brythonic+galicean/visigothic/suebian = Britonian - from Britonia a small area of Galicia

 

[MinecraftMinun]

As far as I'm aware, Azeri = Azerbaijan; they're not two separate languages/ethnic groups. An Azeri is just a synonym for someone from Azerbaijan / from the Azerbaijani ethnic group.

I'm aware. I gave different names just so there wouldn't end up being two cultures called the same thing. E.g. if an Iranic culture formed Azeri, then later an Orghuz did the same thing, there'd be two cultures called Azeri, which is obviously problematic.

 

[DerRitter]

I'm aware. I gave different names just so there wouldn't end up being two cultures called the same thing. E.g. if an Iranic culture formed Azeri, then later an Orghuz did the same thing.

Well irl it could be said roughly both things happened. Old Azeri was the originally Iranian culture that formed in Azerbaijan then it got Turkified by the Oghuz (a hybridization) and turned into (modern) Azeri starting from the XI century. So (modern) Azeri should really be the special hybridization of Turkic on any Iranian culture on Azerbaijan, either Old Azeri or Persian. Since "Old Azeri" might not sound too apealling as a creatable, Adhari, an alternate spelling of Iranian Azeri, could do for the Persian-divergent "Old Azeri"'s name ingame.

 

[klopkr]

Ethnicities of the World

worldmap.harvard.edu

The local culture names may be somewhat intentionally generic but these massive culture maps might give some good examples of regional names that would make sense for certain local cultures.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2259484519
Almost all the added cultures in this mod should be used to generate regional culture names in game. A number should be in the game fully.

I'm really no expert on hybrid or small cultures but here's some I found:

Hybrids:

• Siddi: African and Indian mixed people.
• Sri Lankan Kaffir: African-Tamil people. Their name is very similar and has roots in a word that is a slur in south africa though.
• Swahili: Major Bantu-Arabic mix just off the map.
• Zanj: African, mostly Bantu people arab lands, specifically Iraq. Actually had a rebellion a few years after the 867 bookmark in Iraq.
• Kouloughlis: Slightly anachronistic term referring to Turks mixed with north african cultures.
• Romansh: Latin speakers in switzerland.
• Parsis: Persian Zoroastrians in India.
• Maltese: Should be a pre-hybridized culture of latin and arabic.
• Rohingya: Burmese Muslim culture.
• Bene Isreal: Jewish Indian mix.
• X_African_culture-Afrikaner: Early dutch subsaharan colonization.
• Mughals: Afghan-Mongols
• Galatian: Celto-Greek Hybrid

Small Cultures:

• Arpitan
• Guanches
• Walloon
• Corsicans
• Flemish
• Isreali: If you make any new jewish culture in the kingdom of Israel

Sidenote to everyone: A lot of small cultures and mixed cultures are named after exonyms and a number actually come from from terms that would generally be considered slurs or divisive today. Some embrace terms that are considered or sound like slurs in other contexts. I don't have a good answer for such situations. Obviously we should all tread carefully and respectfully.

 

[Jia Xu]

The new hybrid culture will automatically acquire any innovation that either parent culture has discovered already, giving you the possibility to gain access to innovations that your previous culture has yet to discover.

This is almost certainly going to be busted as soon as it is introduced to the game. What I'm seeing here is that I can stay tribal and then use custom cultures to grab dozens of techs from feudals.

 

[BrokenSky]

The AI can indeed cause some havoc if you want it to. Which is one of the reasons for us wanting to have the AI a bit restricted as the default game rule. If you want to use the relaxed option, you can let the AI go nuts, but dont' say I didn't warn you...

View attachment 733789

Would it be possible to have hybrid cultures default to 'local' names, similar to Anatolian/Austrian/Wormsian examples given in the dev-diary? While hyphenated names can make it clear what the parents of a culture are, they are kind of an abstraction - even existing hyphenated cultures like Anglosaxon are really just a group term for (e.g.) Mercians, Saxons, Angles etc. and the peoples in these groups were (as far as I'm aware) rarely identified as such except as part of a collective identity of several groups.

 

[MinecraftMinun]

Well irl it could be said roughly both things happened. Old Azeri was the originally Iranian culture that formed in Azerbaijan then it got Turkified by the Oghuz (a hybridization) and turned into (modern) Azeri starting from the XI century. So (modern) Azeri should really be the special hybridization of Turkic on any Iranian culture on Azerbaijan, either Old Azeri or Persian. Since "Old Azeri" might not sound too apealling as a creatable, Adhari, an alternate spelling of Iranian Azeri, could do for the Persian-divergent "Old Azeri"'s name ingame.

This is basically what I wanted.

 

[neutrondecay]

Firstly, I want to say how much I like this development. This is excellent news, and I really like it.

So in some fantasy universes you may have races that are incapable of breeding with each other. For the example let's take Khajiit and Imperials from TES.

Is it possible to "lock" a Pillar of a culture-in that instance, Ethnicity-to avoid results that would be adverse? So when hybridizing a Khajiit Ethnicity can never change its Ethnicity Pillar and likewise, an Imperial culture(with human features) can never change its Ethnicity to Khajiit.

So essentially the only way to get said Ethnicity would be to have a culture start with it or diverge from a previous culture with that Ethnicity?

I marked this comment 'disagree', but that's perhaps an unfair reflection of my views here.

On the one hand, for settings without diverse fantasy species, I'm fairly strongly against players being able to choose whether or not their hybrid culture contains mixed-race people. If you promote cultural mixing, you promote cultural mixing.

On the other hand, I totally get what you mean about incompatible fantasy races. As a dev on the Faerun mod for CK2, I've been partly responsible for the gargantuan results table governing which of our species can crossbreed with which others.

But on the gripping hand, maybe we need more granular control of this. In Faerun, there are dwarf-human hybrid cultures like Inugaakalikurit (arctic dwarf) in which dwarves (previously shield dwarves, I think) took on some but not all of the cultural trappings of a human culture, the Ulutiuns. The arctic dwarves are still dwarves, and haven't intermarried with the Ulutiuns despite many centuries of living alongside each other. But there are also the D'tarigs, who are believed to be (and treated in our mod as actually being) the half-dwarf descendants of shield dwarves from Tethyamar and humans (probably Bedine or some other post-Netherese culture).

I suppose the ideal would be a set of levers for the modders to control - what species is this culture? What other species can that species reproduce with? - and then another set for the players (or AI) to control - is this culture formed only of the species that make(s) up your current culture, or are you also intermarrying with the other species present? That way, if the two cultures only feature one species, or they both have the same existing mixture of species, you won't get to pull that lever - your Imperials and Nords, Shield Dwarves and Gold Dwarves, or whatever, will intermarry to some extent automatically. And if the two cultures have only incompatible species - Humans and Khajits, Halflings and Treants - then you just don't get the option to intermarry; your new culture may adopt elements of the other culture, but your species will carry on just being itself.

I've made a thread about this before. The historical inaccuracy doesn't originate as a problem from the Royal Court DLC, but from incorrect history that whoever was working on Scotland for CK3 based their work on. My first post ITT is not about the history but about royal court and the picture in this dev diary seeming to show changes in Royal Court that might make the problem need different fixes than the launch version would have.

CK3's Scottish Culture Inaccuracy

I appreciate an attempt to give more attention to the region but the way it's implemented creates problems that didn't exist in CK2 and does not represent the historical reality of medieval Scotland. The branch of the English linguistic tree...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

In English, there are two terms for cultures in Scotland which cause confusion: "Scottish" and "Scots". The confusion is deliberate, because for political reasons for several hundred years and into the present (heightened recently by the 2014 referendum), Anglophones have attempted to present it that there is only one culture which belongs to Scotland (or to whom Scotland belongs), which speaks (nowadays, spoke) a variety of English called in both kinds of English, "Scots". (Scots being an archaic adjective short for "Scots English" or "Scots Language", similar to the grammar of the phrase "English language" or "Scottish/Scots Gaelic").

Spoiler: Summary of history of Anglicisation of Scotland

"Scotland" is an exonym which comes from the ethnonym "Scot". The people who were called Scots spoke Gaelic, and established in the 6th century the kingdom which they called Alba and Latin-derived exonyms called "Scotia".
Formerly Ireland was sometimes called Scotia, which shows that the people called Scots were an ethnic group, and the ethnic group spoke Gaelic. But because in what is now called Scotland, the people had their own identity separate from those in Ireland, the people there began to be called Scots when the Irish were not called Scots anymore.
So by medieval times, "Scot" was both a name referring to people of the ethno-linguistic group and from the territory (ruled by that ethnic group).

After the 1100s when an Anglophone king was installed, and colonies of English settlers brought into Scotland, the culture of the south, cities, and most of the powerful/southern nobility was Anglicised over the centuries, to the point that by the start of EU4 the majority of the cultural and political power was Anglophone, with the native Gaelic culture of Scotland being increasingly marginalised.
Wars with England led Anglophones in Scotland to identify with the place rather than their linguistic/ethnic culture, and the needs of a centralising state (particularly in EU4 tier protestant times) encouraged the Anglophones to present their culture both as significantly different from England's and the only truly "Scottish" culture.
Hence the naming of their dialect of English "Scots" and the conscious refusal to attach the descriptor of "Scottish" to the language originally spoken by Scots.

Scottish (ie: Gaelic) culture and political power was broken in the late 17th and mid-18th century by the Jacobite wars, where the majority of Anglophone "Scots" speakers (increasingly speaking standard English) supported transferring government to England to form the UK, and prevent Scotland from having its own government under the dynasty (of Anglo-Norman origin) which had ruled it since 1371. The demographics of the Scottish-speaking areas was broken by the ethnic cleansing of the highland clearances of the 19th century. Parts of Canada with Scottish immigration continue(d) into modern times to have Gaelic speaking communities, such as Nova Scotia.

It's confusing by design as a political manipulation of language, but it's also confusing because it's Gaelic and Latin placenames and ethnonyms getting translated into English, and then a non-standard archaic dialectical form of English adjective being inserted into the mix. For concepts which have changed their meanings in English over the centuries, and which are politically charged in doing so.

TLDR: "Scottish" is the standard adjective, "Scots" is an antiquated dialectical adjective, as is "Scotch". Just like "English" as a noun clearly refers to "English language", so too could all of the adjectives for something from Scotland or relating to "Scots", the plural of "Scot" (person from Scotland or of the historical ethno-linguistic group).
If Paradox wanted neutrality in the language they are using, they could call Gaelic of Scotland "Scottish", and English of later medieval Scotland "Scots". Or alternatively, "Scottish Gaelic" and "Scots English". (Not that a change in language fully solves the historical inaccuracy in the current historical representation, since in this timeframe Scots English was not spoken, and not for a longer time still did it gain traction as a distinct sub-culture of English).

You have a very particular, and partial, view of Scottish history here, and loudly promoting it will not make it true.

I absolutely agree that in early start dates (eg 867) Scotland should be predominantly Gaelic-speaking, and what we now regard as Scottish culture should not yet exist. Arguably the same might be true in 1066, although that's right around the inflection point for court culture, as your correctly note the impact of Malcolm Canmore.

But the Scots language is not just a dialect of English; Scottish English is one thing, and Scots is another. They're related, of course - but English-speakers frequently labour under the misapprehension that their language does not exist on a continuum with any of its neighbours. And acknowledging the reality of Scots should not detract from the importance to Scotland, past and present, of Gaelic. It's not a zero-sum game; modern Scotland is a rich hybrid of different cultural elements, and the prominence among them of both Scots and Gaelic is important.

This isn't just an academic quibble; I've got books on my shelves here in Scots, including translations of popular children's books. A friend of mine speaks both Gaelic and Scots in addition to English (and several other languages).

 

[Karlington]

@Servancour,

I'm having a bit of trouble reconciling the two statements you made below:

The same principle applies to traditions. You can pick and choose which traditions you want to keep, from either culture, as long as you don’t go above the slot limit. You can even choose to only pick a few traditions, leaving slots empty and give room for future traditions that you may want to adopt later. Some traditions are unique to certain cultures, regions, or heritages however, so this is the only chance you might have to acquire traditions that normally would be out of your reach.

Ah yes. The infamous deep forests of the Levant.
Joking aside, it's one of the things we'll have to fix, clearly! We do have triggers, but they don't always seem to work at the moment...

The first sounds as if we should be able to pick traditions that "normally would be out of your reach," as you put it. The second sounds as if such picks will not be possible.

Am I missing something here? Would you be able to clarify?

 

[Subject15]

suggestion for Central Asia you can have Hazaras as a hybrid culture when either the Mongol invasion or Karluq invasion of Khorasan happens and then Hazaras are formed as a hybrid culture of Tajik/Persian and Karluk/Mongol.

Also, can modders expand the language mechanic for example add more languages that are unique to specific ethnic groups?

 

[Karlington]

This is almost certainly going to be busted as soon as it is introduced to the game. What I'm seeing here is that I can stay tribal and then use custom cultures to grab dozens of techs from feudals.

This is a great point!

My suggestion would be to make it so that tribals don't gain any benefits from any post-Tribal era innovations that their culture might have. I'm not sure how much work it would take Paradox to make that happen, though.

 

[pengoyo]

I do hope the Norman and English events/decisions are slowed down a little with this patch. When doing a Norse>Norman>English run in CKIII its frustrating that your able to just flip to Norman almost instantly, sure you can delay but when its presented you kinda feel like you should do it as soon as possible. The same goes for English. The Norman aristocracy was speaking Norman French and alien to the peasents for a long long long time. Arguablly in SOME respects till near the end of this period. However heavy Anglo-Norman hybridization was very common fairly quickly all over England and Normandy amongst the upper and lower classes, the peasentry ofcourse were stubbornly slow to change. But anglo-norman barons and gentry were actively encouraged by the De Normandies and Plantaganets as a policy to keep them loyal and engaged on both sides of the channel.

Hopefully the Norman and English decisions now requires some level of cultural acceptance (like how they mentioned for the regular hybridization). While it still wouldn't be perfect, it should help make it at least not instantaneous.