Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #56 - Cultures and Religions

[lachek]

Clarification on the cultural mapmode: this map displays the dominant culture among those who consider that state their Homeland, and does not represent cultural control, international understanding, "natural borders", or anything like that. States can be considered Homelands by multiple cultures simultaneously and this map will shift over time as the game progresses.

 

[lachek]

Clarification to the clarification on the cultural mapmode: it's a Homelands mapmode, which is in this context more relevant gameplay information than "which culture has a plurality here". In the cases where a state is a Homeland for multiple cultures we break ties by population and display the minority cultures in the tooltip.

 

[Alexhesse]

Thanks for the DD, it was short but useful.
One question: can a culture have more than one Heritage? E.g. you might say that the Lebanese, standing as they do between East and West, should have both European and Arabic Heritages. Or the Manchu might have both Chinese and Steppe Nomad Heritages.

Thanks for pointing out the grammar issues We're constantly making changes and fixing small stuff like that. To your question though: A culture can have more than one heritage, yes. It's just not very common. For instance Sephardim have both European and Middle-Eastern heritages.

understood that taboos are 'sticky' but is there a mechanism through modding to change them?

IE: could someone write an event that changes a culture's (or cultures') taboos?

Currently it's not possible to change taboos mid-game even through events (as opposed to doing it before the game by editing the religion definition), mainly because it's not something we do in any of our events. It should be fairly simple to add it at some point for mods though if the interest is there even if we don't use it in the main game.

Will atheism be represented in-game?

For mechanical reasons of discrimination/taboo/etc I understand the need to categorize all pops by a specific religion--it doesn't function the same as other religions (can one inherit atheism?) but might be pertinent re: communist/anarchist mechanics.

Atheism is not currently represented in the game, no. It's an interesting idea we might get back to in the future. For now, the closest we have are secular laws and ideologies which attempt to separate state and church.

Will this system by dynamic (i.e. will it allow for some cultures to disappear and for new ones to appear, or for cultures to hybridize over time)?

Given the time frame of the game it doesn't really make as much sense for that kind of mechanic as it does in say CK3, so no, cultures are generally static with the exception of obsessions which can emerge over time.

 

[Alexhesse]

So what are those Traits? They seem a bit irregular (one is Yamato, other is Himalayan, we have seen couple of different others). Could you show more examples? I wonder if there are any cultural traits that would make for example Albanians tolerated in Ottoman Empire.

Traits can be all kinds of things. Some are about languages like lusophone or anglophone, others are about more specific geographical conditions like Himalayan as you mentioned and others represent groups of cultures with shared characteristics such as a Jewish group or Polynesian group.

For Albanian it will depend on what laws the Ottoman Empire is using, Albanian doesn't share any trait with Turkish, so they would only be accepted under the Multiculturalism law.

Do different religions give different bonuses for devouts? Is it still a thing? Or only thing that differentiates religions are taboos?

Religions do not give different "bonuses" or so. Their differences are the taboos and how different religions are discriminated against under different laws.

Nice. I suppose that Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician share a trait so that under National Supremacy all would have voting rights in Spain as it was the case historically.

They do! They all have the Iberian trait. On top of that Spanish has hispanophone and Galician has lusophone.

There's a livestream of Victoria 3 next week!? Can you tell us where and when we can see it?

Indeed! On the 30th at 16:00 CEST we will have our first stream of the game

Kinda hoped for some information on how Devout IG varies by religions. Do they have different bonuses, different preferences for laws, etc. Outside discrimination mechanic and taboos, we've not heard much about religions in the game.

The modifiers an IG gives based on if they approve of your government or not are not dependant on which religion they represent. What can change is what ideologies they have, but that is done more on a case by case basis depending on local specifics. As an example the Buddhist Monks IG will have a specific ideology set to them which the Catholic church does not have.

Can the religion tied to a culture change during the course of the game?

The religion tied to a culture does not change, no. Do note this does not mean you can't have pops with a religion different from it though. So even though you can have culturally French pops of all different religions, it will always be tied to Catholicism.

Could we mod a military good to be an obsession?

You can set a military good as an obsession through the culture definitions, yes. It just won't do anything as obsessions are about pop consumption and pops don't consume military goods. So it would just be a visual thing.

Why is bosnia all serbian? What about the Bosniaks and croats ?

It is not! The map shows the majority population in the state, and for Bosnia the Serbs are quite numerous even though the have barely any political strength in the Ottoman empire compared to the Bosniaks.

So taboos can't be added or removed by, say, Prohibition?

They can't. The prohibition and the opium ban are handled in a different way through modifiers to production and trade routes rather than affecting what the pops actually want to consume.

Why is Tasmania not a separate colony in 1836?

It is! Called Van Dieman's Land,

A question for modding. We have seen that there is a term of religion in culture defination. How does it work? can there be two more religions? Such as Japannse culture believe Mahayana and Shinto at the same time.

Each culture can only have one religion it is tied to. Apart from that pops can be of any religion of course.

Yet again New Zealand has been left off the world map.
It's fine, I see how it is Paradox...

Hey, gotta cross off "get on /r/MapsWithoutNZ" from my bucket list.

Doesnt look like anything is being answered the dev diary, but one thing I would love to know:

Can cultures have cultural traits added to them as the game progresses? Would be cool especially for longer games where you might go beyond 1936 that if France subjugates a culture for long enough that they would eventually start speaking French and adopt the Francophone trait.

At the very least I would bet a modder could figure it out.

Sorry for the delay with the answers! Have been quite busy, so only got to it now. Cultures can't have traits added to them throughout the game, no. Largely this is due to the time frame of the game being fairly short in the grand scheme of things, so it wouldn't make as much sense to have cultures change drastically like that. It could be something we could look into adding for modders in the future if there is an interest though.

 

[Alexhesse]

What about Muslim German pops then? Will they still have no taboo against wine?

Correct. They'll only have taboos from the religion tied to their culture.

That is strange, Albanians were viewed quite favourably in Ottoman administrations. A lot of Ottoman's viziers were Albanians. Heck, even Muhammad Ali himself was Albanian. There should be shared trait(s) between Albanians and Turks so that Albanian is accepted in Ottoman Empire...

That is a fair point. Do you have a suggestion for some kind of "trait" they could share that would make sense?

So what about North Caucasian culture? North Caucasian peoples are both Orthodox and Muslim. What religion they should been tied to? As I suggested before, maybe it's better to separate North Caucasian into Muslim Dagestani and Nakhs and Orthodox Adyge cultures? The current setup in North Caucasus just make no sense.

North Caucasian is currently tied to Sunni. Again, this does not mean North Caucasian pops can't have other religions though.

Do cultures impact the technology spread? I'd imagine that two countries having majority of population speaking the same language or sharing some cultural understandings would communicate more and lead to better ideas spread.

Tech spread is not affected by cultures, no.

New Zealand, just like Neverland and Acre (not that one, the other one) are fictitious places and everyone knows it.

Hey, Acre is a real place! I once saw a car claiming to be from Rio Branco - AC. Felt like a dream!