Culture and Language should be treated as separate layers in future PDX games

[Grand Historian]

Coming from a background of observing many, many arguments in EU4 over what culture should go where and which culture group should exist and so forth, and knowing that such discussions will inevitably plague a potential Vicky III (soon tm) and any EUV, I would like to offer a solution that I believe will be elegant: and that would be a two-tiered cultural system.

These tiers would be separate but overlapping; Culture and Language. In my time observing the many debates about cultural groups across the EU4 board, it became apparent to me that, for as many arguments as there were about a predefined idea of culture, there were people who equated culture solely with language and people who equated it solely with custom, tradition and local history arguing with each other.

This divide became particularly apparent in especially distinctive cultures like Breton: few would argue that Breton is a Celtic language, and similarly few would argue that Brittany has more historical connection to northern France than the Scottish Highlands: a system that splits culture into language and culture could model something like this nicely; to reuse the above example, with Breton being a part of a French culture group but a Celtic language group.

Penalties for cultural differences could be similarly spread amongst these: so France wouldn’t get the cultural penalty for Breton not belonging to the French culture group, but it would receive a (larger) penalty for belonging to a different language group. It would also allow for cultural drift or linguistic drift in groups to be modeled a little more organically: take Corsican. Assuming the start of our theoretical Vicky III would be 1836, it would be both in the Italian cultural and language group, but by 1870 it would be in the French cultural group and the Italian language group, via either prescripted event or a drift mechanic. This can furthermore be beneficial for modeling colonial cultures: the many Anglo cultures of North America could belong to their own group, but still share the same language group as Great Britain, meaning that a British administered New England wouldn’t be treated the same as a British administered Quebec. Finally, as a particularly Vicky feature (though I hope it won’t be contained to it) it can help to better model assimilation: immigrant groups or the like pick up the language sooner than they would the culture.

The end result of this suggestion, I hope, is a system that would allow for a more dynamic representation of culture while being intuitive and elegant.

 

[Metroidkirby]

The main problem with the "breton culture" in EUIV is that more than half of the breton population don't spoke the breton language but the gallo... which is not a brythonic language. Splitting language and culture for each culture won't solve this situation.

I think a solution could be to drop "culture groups" and just increase the number of accepted cultures.

 

[Fallofthepurple]

I think a solution could be to drop "culture groups" and just increase the number of accepted cultures.

As an immediate change for EUIV specifically this wouldnt be so bad.

My personal dream however for future titles (where appropriate) would be a more hybrid, fluid approach to culture/language/w.e that takes a more web like approach that would allow cultures to still be a part of a culture group but also be closer to other cultures due to historical or gameplay reasons (Think Muslim Schools in EUIV dynamically changing relationship). It could also come with the added benefit of more interaction and the ability for cultures to get closer or more distant based on gameplay mechanics, events etc. instead of the difference just being "Spend 100 Mana for Accepted Culture" - which is still better than nothing, im looking at you Imperator.

Here is a (GROSSLY OVERSIMPLIFIED) example that would fix the current Turko-Arabic (or whatever the current iteration of it is called, i've lost count) abomination in EUIV while not upsetting AI balance all too heavily. To illustrate my pitch:

Also works for Andalusian, Breton, Hungarian, Albanian situations etc.

My idea essentially has the same goals as OPs great pitch but tries to work within the current framework of EUIV i.e without the culture-language split.

My hope is also that a system like this would open the doors for dynamic melting pots although good luck on getting all the combinations done properly.

 

[Me_]

I am under the impression that the suggestion is meant to be more broad than EU4, but I would agree than dropping the culture groups in EU4 could be a good idea. Yes, it would mean that the AI would need to be given new clues on how to plan expansion, but beyond that I see mostly advantages.

 

[Grand Historian]

I am under the impression that the suggestion is meant to be more broad than EU4, but I would agree than dropping the culture groups in EU4 could be a good idea. Yes, it would mean that the AI would need to be given new clues on how to plan expansion, but beyond that I see mostly advantages.

Yes, I specifically brought up Vicky on multiple occasions as well as putting "future PDX games" in the title to establish this as being broader than EU4 - if this was simply for EU4, I would have posted this in the EU4 forums.

 

[Terricola69]

But are diferents... I mean in Victoria not all countries with spanish or english language are spanish or english in culture.

Europe are diferent I know, but represent 100% acurate this babel of cultures and languages... Is not easy.

 

[pheonicia]

As someone who was raised in one language, forgot a second, and now almost exclusively uses a third, I don't think language is important enough to be represented on the grand strategy scale.

 

[Thrake]

I think culture and culture groups are more than enough as far as distinction goes to simulate that some people go along well and others don't.

 

[VineFynn]

The real problem is that you can't add a culture to more than one group.

 

[Grand Historian]

The real problem is that you can't add a culture to more than one group.

Which is what I am proposing to fix.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Culture develops inside borders, so I suggest that specific cultures are dropped altogether and replaced with simple: ours or foreign. Which would slide over time as long as province is a core.

 

[VineFynn]

Culture develops inside borders, so I suggest that specific cultures are dropped altogether and replaced with simple: ours or foreign. Which would slide over time as long as province is a core.

That would actually end up being a lot more complicated than the current arrangement because of the computational complexity involved.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

That would actually end up being a lot more complicated than the current arrangement because of the computational complexity involved.

Can you elaborate?

 

[VineFynn]

Can you elaborate?

Whenever you conquer a place, some amount of what was foreign becomes not foreign. If that place is reconquered, the game needs to know how much of the "foreign" needs to become "not foreign". It can't do that without tracking the specific value for every province for every tag.

 

[Wenceslaus II.]

Whenever you conquer a place, some amount of what was foreign becomes not foreign. If that place is reconquered, the game needs to know how much of the "foreign" needs to become "not foreign". It can't do that without tracking the specific value for every province for every tag.

That's a good point. Haven't though of that.
Guess we'll have to stick to mana, then.

 

[IndigoRage]

As someone who was raised in one language, forgot a second, and now almost exclusively uses a third, I don't think language is important enough to be represented on the grand strategy scale.

As they're currently used in some Paradox titles they're practically interchangeable, and big issues relating to language were absolutely concerns at the time of, say, late EU4 or all of Vicky. Don't forget repression of minority languages was an important factor of 1800s nationalism and enforcing unity and group identity. In that context though, Vicky already has cultural assimilation, so I don't know how well this language/culture split would mesh with the game mechanics.

 

[Ololorium]

I'm not sure that language needs to be added. If it's in the game, why not also add, for example, ethnicity as a third tier in the cultural system? It would be interesting, but Paradox games are not intended to be accurate simulators, and cultural mechanic must be fun and not having too much impact on performance, so

Spoiler: how complex should it be?

In a perfect grand strategy game I would love to see cultures represented on some kind of 2d graph with cultural distances between them. So, the culture groups would be determined as clusters on this graph. Ideally, some dynamism should be added, so cultures can merge together or drift apart and new cultures (for example, colonial) can appear depending on circumstances. But I'm not sure if such complex system is necessary for level of abstraction Paradox games have.

Better to simply use more levels (like it's done for the geographic map, province-state-area-continent), like Dutch-German-Western European-European, with gradually increasing penalties, and have colonial cultures appear by events, instead of "same culture - same group - complete aliens" levels that most of the Paradox games have now. It would to some extent solve the problem with Breton culture, not as French as Provencal, but not as different from it as Chinese: if we have Breton/Bretonnic/Western European/European culture levels, Breton would be as removed from French as Alsatian or Catalonian, which is reasonable. And when Bretagne colonises, new cultures from the Bretonnic group would appear in the colonies.

 

[Grand Historian]

I'm not sure that language needs to be added. If it's in the game, why not also add, for example, ethnicity as a third tier in the cultural system? It would be interesting, but Paradox games are not intended to be accurate simulators, and cultural mechanic must be fun and not having too much impact on performance, so

Again, I'm not proposing individual languages, but language groups; a second level of cultural groups, effectively

 

[Ololorium]

Again, I'm not proposing individual languages, but language groups; a second level of cultural groups, effectively

Languages which are orthogonal to culture can be useful in a game set in the modern period or in the future with individual POPs, and where a Pop which "knows" some language moves to a place where other language is spoken, it suffers penalties until it "learns" this other language. But in games like EU4 it doesn't make much sense: in that time period the majority language of a province wasn't of much significance, because peasants and craftsmen were effective regardless of which language they spoke, and educated people already spoke several languages. Also, during the EU4 timeframe big languages like German or Italian weren't a thing, they existed as a continuum of dialects which were mutually unintelligible to various degrees. A Bavarian couldn't understand a Frisian, so why shouldn't Frisians get a language penalty if ruled from Bavaria? After all, in real life intelligibility is what matters, not academic classification of languages.

 

[Grand Historian]

A Bavarian couldn't understand a Frisian, so why shouldn't Frisians get a language penalty if ruled from Bavaria?

If you read the OP you would see that I do suggest that.