It feels to me like it's the creation of a national identity where everyone in the culture group SHOULD be accepted. The idea of the United Kingdom for instance, isn't simply that it's the nation for the English, that's England, but a union of kingdoms across the British Isles (as of today the full title is 'the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland'). Likewise- it makes sense that everyone in the Chinese group should be accepted as part of the Chinese Empire, or the Persian group under the Persian Empire.My problem with cultural unions is that they feel like sort of a nothing mechanic. Like I reach a certain point and then suddenly accept everyone and then that's my culture group dealt with for the rest of the game. When in reality I think culture, especially local non-primary cultures, should become more important over the course of the game, as we shift away from medieval views of culture and towards more modern views.
In some ways it feels to me like a mechanic that exists solely because the limits on accepted cultures don't work well with a few countries (e.g. France), so then this was designed as a workaround.
While civic nationalism is a recent concept, the idea that these Empires stood for more than just the primary culture group is something that dates back to the middle ages just fine.
I don't get what your version of this sort of mechanic should be, I'd like if you'd elucidate on that more.
Well I haven't played a France campaign for a while, but you have your various French cultures that you have to mind while at kingdom rank. And you have to weigh the 'semi-accepted' status (for cultures in the same group that are non-accepted, you still get more tax and manpower than from non-accepted foriegn cultures) and potentially accepting them (for a diplo mana cost), or using your limited slots on say Dutch culture, or Rhinish culture if you expand into the Lowlands or the Ruhr. Or Basque culture since the French some Basque provinces.I have played it, but not in a while. But it's been a very long time since I played someone like France who has a lot of local cultures to deal with, so I have mostly ignored the mechanic in more recent games (because you don't really interact with it, it just happens at a certain point). This discussion is restoring my memory of it a bit, but that memory is still pretty much all associated with France (because most nations, at least that I've played, don't have so many local cultures that it becomes a thing you need to target).
But upon getting an empire rank (most likely through expanding through colonialism given the large neighbors) your slots are freed up since you now accept all French cultures. And now you can use those open slots on other cultures you've expanded into, gaining more resources and lowering the revolt risk.
Now I think this is a decent setup for weighing the value of your same-group-culture provinces and foreign culture provinces, and gives a path where a more tolerant humanist approach is subtly incentivized- you COULD culture convert everyone, but with a bit of patience you'll be able to accept them in time. It's not a perfect system, but I don't find it encouraging any ahistorical behavior for players while offering more rewards for expansionism than say Imperator Rome's culture system does.
I disagree on that last part- while it's being pushed in the 1830's, race hadn't quite become a central mode of thought yet. It should be noted the US had a substantive free black population, and it wouldn't be until later that free blacks would be automatically re-enslaved in southern states. What a lot of people misunderstand is the US actually got worse on race-relations after the Revolution, as southern states began to fear their large black population following the Haitian Revolution.Cultures that are tied to race are simply difficult to handle without having race in the game. Victoria has struggled with the same issue, despite it being much more central to that time period. It'd also be weird to have African-American assimilate to American. It'd also be weird African-American become accepted under a cultural union just through reaching Empire tier, because it's the early 1800s and race relations were what they were.
You talk about alternate history, a large British Empire automatically accepting African-American culture feels to me a perfectly fine alt-history scenario, since I don't think the racist treatment of African-Americans and segregation was the only historical path that could have happened. A very likely one, certainly, but I think there's plenty of scenarios where in the timeframe that they could be accepted.
If it's designed to be the endgoal for most campaigns you run, I call that the definition of widespread.Unify Culture Group is a generic mechanic and generic mechanics usually have some specific historical case that results in a weird interaction. But it's not unique to that mechanic and I don't think the problem is so widespread it's a major issue.
Define a 'national culture' then.As do the cultures that result from the unification. Which is why it only applies to cultures that share both a culture group and a language. I said "national culture" and not "national identity" for a reason.
I use imperator as an example, because EUV seems to be following the same design philosophy, such as the inclusion of Pops. Now I don't think that everything in Imperator Rome was wrong-minded, but I think this was.Imperator has a very problematic cultural acceptance system and I don't really see a point in discussing it deeply here. But I disagree that the fundamental problem with it is a lack of cultural unions, adding that would help smooth over some of the symptoms but the fundamental problems are deeper.
I also say that it's the worst part of that game because it means that conquest isn't really rewarded with the ability to grow your army. I think it was an attempt to try to balance larger nations against smaller ones, where smaller nations in theory could use more of their population, but I think this completely failed, and just made conquest WAY less fun than any other game. I don't like Crusader Kings for different reasons, but it doesn't have this same problem- even if culture is pretty much irrelevant in that game.
Anyway- I think what I think is circling around a lot of what you think- or rather, the arguments I'm trying to make aren't landing because you and I are trying to address very different things. I think you make a point about the rise of a National Identity, I just think that 'Unify Culture' doesn't even approach this, so I'd like you to discuss the sort of historical processes YOU think should be emulated here.
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