About integrated culture

[dakapes]

Hi ,

it is widely accepted that of the most important inventions/buildings are the ones that accelarate the assimilation process. It is stated by many players with maybe different play styles but the outcome is the same : In order to have a successfull game you need as soon as possible to have as many people of your culture as possible.

I recall before the culture update at IR that there was a debate if the heavy assimilation way of playing was the "right" one ... people asked for diversity and Paradox came up with the mechanism of integrated cultures.

After playing hundrends of hours and even now noticing that the most important thing is to have people of your culture I was wondering if the implementation of integrating cultures was a success. Does the gave provides a decent way of having mixed cultures in your empire ? Was the problem addressed properly ? I am not sure.
Having seen very good players completely ignoring this process , I am a bit sceptical on this issue. Only a couple of times I heavily used this feauture but my conclusion is negative. For sure it is stil l by far better to put all your efforts to convert everyone to your culture. Build everywhere theaters , stack bonuses in cities , adopt laws that help you this way. I mean ,the dev themselves said that grand theaters + grand temples are THE most important buildings in the game.

Trying to be open minded here , I would not expect that the decision would be close - of course assimilating will (must) always be better than integrating. But I would expect that there would be circumstances that that a player would pick integration . I have not encountered such a case yet. Since they are mutually exclusive strategies , I cannot find a way to make them cooperate in a game.

I was wondering If I miss something very critical in my thinking process or other players are on the same page with me here.

 

[Todie]

Hi! Good topic, good question!

Generally, I think it’s way too early to really speak on what is best practise for efficient play towards one end or another, in 2.0.

Having seen very good players completely ignoring this process , I am a bit sceptical on this issue.

I don't know who you’re referring to, but I think a lot of players that stream or record playthrough-footage so so with a playstyle that is very forward-leaning, aggressive and simplifying... many are experienced, without having slowed down enough to consider the inner workings / tradeoffs of something like integration compared to assimilation. There are as many ways to play the game as there are players...

I would not expect that the decision would be close - of course assimilating will (must) always be better than integrating. But I would expect that there would be circumstances that that a player would pick integration .

There are!

The benefits of “never-integrating” are shrunk in 2.0 compared to 1.5 , since the research efficiency cap is now at 125 down from 300

The benefits are up since only integrated pops provide levies.

... and integration (=citizen rights) need not be given forever, nor does integration necessarily halt assimilation - it can speed up religious conversion and assimilation of Non-integrated cultures.


... im sure there are balance tweaks to make in many areas, but a lot of the time, the way played make distinctions in their interaction with game mechanics is not that rational, at least until they’ve had time and reason to try stuff and reflect etc...

 

[vitek69]

Hey, this is really interesting! I’m in the middle of an Elis playthrough, and I actually though integration was more useful than assimilation. There were times (especially early game) where my culture (Aetolian) was much smaller than other cultures I conquered - I though it was much faster to integrate the new cultures - and gain access to more levies - than to wait ages for the individual pops to assimilate.
I’m a veteran of EU4 and CK2 but new to Imperator, so maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way? What’s the disadvantage of integration?

 

[Todie]

What’s the disadvantage of integration?

Each new culture decreases the happiness of all integrated cultures.

Also, research efficiency is calculated through the ratio of research points to integrated culture pops - not all pops.

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

Hi ,

it is widely accepted that of the most important inventions/buildings are the ones that accelarate the assimilation process. It is stated by many players with maybe different play styles but the outcome is the same : In order to have a successfull game you need as soon as possible to have as many people of your culture as possible.

I recall before the culture update at IR that there was a debate if the heavy assimilation way of playing was the "right" one ... people asked for diversity and Paradox came up with the mechanism of integrated cultures.

After playing hundrends of hours and even now noticing that the most important thing is to have people of your culture I was wondering if the implementation of integrating cultures was a success. Does the gave provides a decent way of having mixed cultures in your empire ? Was the problem addressed properly ? I am not sure.
Having seen very good players completely ignoring this process , I am a bit sceptical on this issue. Only a couple of times I heavily used this feauture but my conclusion is negative. For sure it is stil l by far better to put all your efforts to convert everyone to your culture. Build everywhere theaters , stack bonuses in cities , adopt laws that help you this way. I mean ,the dev themselves said that grand theaters + grand temples are THE most important buildings in the game.

Trying to be open minded here , I would not expect that the decision would be close - of course assimilating will (must) always be better than integrating. But I would expect that there would be circumstances that that a player would pick integration . I have not encountered such a case yet. Since they are mutually exclusive strategies , I cannot find a way to make them cooperate in a game.

I was wondering If I miss something very critical in my thinking process or other players are on the same page with me here.

It's not exclusive either way. I integrate cultures with the intent of assimilating them later. There's nothing stopping you from later revoking the rights of a culture and assimilating them after they were an integrate culture for the last 50 years. What I do is integrate the cultures that are as larger or larger than my primary culture until I've reached the point where the malus for having too many integrated culture equals the integrated culture bonus i get from my nation rank. Then I work on assimilating all the small cultures in my realm, and once that's fairly good, I revoke the right of my smallest integrated culture and try to assimilate them. If I conquer more land and find a much bigger culture than any of my integrated culture, I integrate that and once it's integrated I revoke the rights to my small integrated culture, and try to assimilate it.

 

[Samitte]

I was wondering if the implementation of integrating cultures was a success.

No, I think in not going very far it kind of failed. By not allowing pops to convert to integrating cultures, nor integrated cultures to assimilate, it models no historical system at all and instead becomes and entirely gamey mechanic. In its design it basically does everything wrong, and the systems that depend on it kinda miss the point as well because of it.

Does the gave provides a decent way of having mixed cultures in your empire ? Was the problem addressed properly ?

Integration should be the assimilation and conversion mechanic, and without it they should barely function (unless they heavily change the way culture and religion work). Mixed culture empires should be the basis, with a top-down (*not* bottom-up) system of assimilation. If we model the existing system on the game's primary antagonist - Rome, there would be no Social War, because all the Italics had been demoted to Freemen and Tribesmen and mostly assimilated.

 

[dakapes]

@Todie
Good point you made the research efficiency , it is an actually small buff towards integration.
About raising levies , from my first hours on 2.0 I am not sure they are that important - still I heavily rely in mercs. But maybe i do not play in an optimal way

What I do not get is your comment here , I need to do some research to see what do you mean on the spead-up part.

" ... and integration (=citizen rights) need not be given forever, nor does integration necessarily halt assimilation - it can speed up religious conversion and assimilation of Non-integrated cultures. "


My main concern here is that while integrated, you can not convert a culture. So every invention.building,law etc that helps assimilation , literally becomes obsolete in the same time period for the integrated culture. So you have lets say 80 years of a whole culture "frozen" in terms of assimilation. The debate here is if you choose X years to integrate a culture this investment is better than leaving the culture to non integrated status, and have in the same time some percentage assimilating into your way ? What is better and how to measure this ?

@Samitte , I agree on your last point.

@Stars_and_Bars your strategy seems very logical. My question here is similar to what I said to @Todie . How can you value that in the same time period you have more benefits from "temporary" integrating Versus letting this culture alone to take the slow assimilation path ( which is actually buffed now with Grand Theaters and Temples).

 

[Stars_and_Bars]

@Stars_and_Bars your strategy seems very logical. My question here is similar to what I said to @Todie . How can you value that in the same time period you have more benefits from "temporary" integrating Versus letting this culture alone to take the slow assimilation path ( which is actually buffed now with Grand Theaters and Temples).

Ah, well you see, the primary issue is war. If you don't have enough levies to win a war, that's all she wrote. Also when you fight a war, you should be getting slaves into your territory and most of those slaves will likely not be one of your integrated cultures, so they will assimilate to and grow your primary culture.

Obviously the issue with slaves is that they don't provide levies, but the curious thing about the start date in game is that it actually marks the highwater mark for levies for a decent amount of time. The pop ratio of most settlements in the game starts out of equilibrium, with fewer slaves than the ratio requires. This is true for basically all countries, even tribes. This means that when most of the settlements reach equilibrium in 30-50 years from game-start, their levies will be much smaller than they were in 450. By not integrating a culture early (which would take only a year or so) you are robbing yourself of that early levy boost and crippling your early game expansion.

Don't get me wrong, assimilation is still really powerful and you should use it a lot, but a pure assimilation strategy is going to pay off way too late to matter and might even be slower than mixing it with phases of integrating and revoking.

 

[Reman]

Reposting my tips from another thread:

Integration vs assimilation isn't a fire-and-forget choice that you make once for a given culture and then forget about. Rather, it should be an ongoing consideration you make for each major conquest, then revisit as the situation changes.

Integration is a very good short term option that is rather cheap (it only costs 10-15 stab and 5 PI per culture), and gives you the following:

• Immediate access to tons of free soldiers. Instead of having a bunch of rebellious pops that will point their pitchforks at you, you can throw them at the nearest enemy to take out two birds with one stone.
• The new pops immediately become net economic contributors to your empire rather than parasites.
• You can convert their religion faster.

You should be integrating any new major cultures that are close to your frontlines. Any with >250 pops early on, or >500 pops after the first 50 years are good candidates.

That said, you shouldn't keep them integrated forever. All cultures you integrate should eventually be dumped after the frontline moves, religious conversion is completed, better cultures are integrated in their place, etc. Every integration reduces primary pop happiness by 4%, which ripples out to character loyalty, and from there moves to provinces loyalty, pop output, and more. You should only have 2-3 integrated cultures at any time. 5 is pushing it. Anything more, and you're shooting yourself in the foot.

As a nation like Rome, you should definitely integrate the Etruscans. It's a strong tempo play that basically doubles your levies overnight, letting you bully anyone who isn't a great power. Eventually though, they should be unintegrated and assimilated to make way for other cultures like Macedonian or Punic.

 

[dakapes]

Thank you very much for expaining this kind of strategy

 

[Kliwarrior]

There are two point of view abut this argument, one historical , and one in game terms.

Historically, integration (that is conceding civil rights) was the key of the assimilation, and not the opposite.
In fact before the Social War the italic pops (excluded by the structure of the republic) considered themself Marsi or Samnite or Peligni etc. After the citizenship they though themselves as Romans.

Now in game terms we have
- integrated does not assimilate (wrong)
- integrated provides levies (good)
- integrate a pop give a malus to previous integrated pop (good but not enough, it's too easy to grand citizenship to everybody)
- non integrated pops assimilate (assimilation could be possible, but with a very strong malus)
- non integrated pops does not provides levies ( wrong, they should contribute at least light infantry , light cavalry and archers )

So in my opinion integration should be a very demanding decision, and the trade off should be to have a faster integration (and the need to raise heavy infantry/heavy cavalry ) vs. a very consistent malus during the process itself and for each culture subsequently added .

 

[Flame13223]

Currently playing Hibernia and I went full assimilation and I don't really have a reason to integrate anyone atm.

What I do plan on doing is integrating some North Africans to gain access to horse based military traditions because I am currently going all out on cavalry with my legion. So that I think is a pretty good incentive, but otherwise I don't think there's much of a need to do it.

 

[Baldamundo]

No, I think in not going very far it kind of failed. By not allowing pops to convert to integrating cultures, nor integrated cultures to assimilate, it models no historical system at all and instead becomes and entirely gamey mechanic. In its design it basically does everything wrong, and the systems that depend on it kinda miss the point as well because of it.



Integration should be the assimilation and conversion mechanic, and without it they should barely function (unless they heavily change the way culture and religion work). Mixed culture empires should be the basis, with a top-down (*not* bottom-up) system of assimilation. If we model the existing system on the game's primary antagonist - Rome, there would be no Social War, because all the Italics had been demoted to Freemen and Tribesmen and mostly assimilated.

There are two point of view abut this argument, one historical , and one in game terms.

Historically, integration (that is conceding civil rights) was the key of the assimilation, and not the opposite.
In fact before the Social War the italic pops (excluded by the structure of the republic) considered themself Marsi or Samnite or Peligni etc. After the citizenship they though themselves as Romans.

Now in game terms we have
- integrated does not assimilate (wrong)
- integrated provides levies (good)
- integrate a pop give a malus to previous integrated pop (good but not enough, it's too easy to grand citizenship to everybody)
- non integrated pops assimilate (assimilation could be possible, but with a very strong malus)
- non integrated pops does not provides levies ( wrong, they should contribute at least light infantry , light cavalry and archers )

So in my opinion integration should be a very demanding decision, and the trade off should be to have a faster integration (and the need to raise heavy infantry/heavy cavalry ) vs. a very consistent malus during the process itself and for each culture subsequently added .

Tend to agree with a lot of points here re the depth and historicity of the system. Definitely think it could do with some improvements along those lines.

However, something I don't think has been mentioned yet in this thread - the new patch makes an enormous difference to integration/assimilation strategy depending on the levy composition of the relevant cultures.

If you're playing as e.g. the Seleukids, your primary culture is Macedonian, which has levies with decent numbers of both heavy infantry and heavy cavalry. While you've got a lot of pops of other cultures with much weaker levies. So while there are big short term benefits from integrating a few big cultures early on, in the long term, an assimilation strategy with the Seleukids is insanely strong. You end up with enormous numbers of Macedonian pops, giving you enormous levies with large numbers of heavy infantry and heavy cavalry.

Meanwhile, there are other cultures whose levy composition is pretty rubbish by comparison - e.g. a lot of the Celtic/Iberian/Illyrian/etc cultures mainly have archers and light infantry - in which case you might actually be weakening yourself by assimilating Macedonians/Romans/etc instead of integrating them.

 

[Todie]

Meanwhile, there are other cultures whose levy composition is pretty rubbish by comparison - e.g. a lot of the Celtic/Iberian/Illyrian/etc cultures mainly have archers and light infantry - in which case you might actually be weakening yourself by assimilating Macedonians/Romans/etc instead of integrating them.

late-game you'd be able to flip this consideration on its head though, as you can use a region that is particularly thick on raw levy-size irrespective of levy quality, for the explicit purpose of raising a legion there.

 

[Synen]

I have noticed that after 70 years or so my primary culture is starting to overtake my integrated cultures as the dominant culture in some territories that have integrated culture pops because of migration.

 

[Emp_Palpatine]

Slight necro-posting here and noobish question, but : "how do you unintegrate a culture?"

 

[Herennius]

Slight necro-posting here and noobish question, but : "how do you unintegrate a culture?"

I have never actually done/tried it, but technically reducing their civic rights from Noble/Citizen (=as those maximum pop levels define the integrated status) to Freemen or anything below should do.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Yes, but beware of the temporary penalties on happiness:

Culture - Imperator Wiki

imperator.paradoxwikis.com

 

[Emp_Palpatine]

Oh, I missed this in the wiki... Thanks guys!

That's actually quite a small culture, these Bonii senators forced me to integrate them (I couldn't spare their support at the time). Now that they are irrelevant, I would like them to board the great romanisation train.