Religion and culture feels disconnected, on a map basis

[Muezzahan]

I have only played eu4 and ck3 out of all paradox strategy games, and this is something i noticed since my first playthrough and, for some reason, nobody seems to talk about it.

Historically, religion/faith has always been part of culture. Hell, all of the "unreformed" faiths aren't even religions, but purely cultural traditions. They are unique to their respective cultures (tengri -> turks & mongols) (turumists -> siberians)(romuva -> baltics)(slavism[?]-> slavs)(asatru-> norse)
And yet, they feel disconnected from their resprective culture. Like, after few decades pass from the start, counties with turkic cultures adopt turumism because their khanty overlords converted them. This feels, in my opinion, immersion breaking

Another case is with "reformed" faith. While some of them stem from their respective culture (hinduism -> indians)(zoroastrianism -> iranics)(hellenism -> greeks), lots of them instead affect the cultures that believed in them (christianity-> made nomadic magyars part of greco-roman civilization)(islam-> made nomadic oghuzs and karluks part of islamo-persian civilization)(budhism-> made nomadic uyghurs and khitans part of chinese/east asian civilization)

There are also cases of a big religion being perverted by local cultures (celtic christianity-> Catholicism but influenced by irish traditions)(mozarabism-> christianity fit into traditions of arabized iberians)

And yet, hou can convert counties with non-arabic speaking cultures easily into mozarabism. Or you can convert counties with greek cultures to hinduism with no limitations at all.

Why am i complaining ? Because ai does all of these actions and it breaks my immersion. I wish there was a mod that tackles this but i couldn't find anything. So, i decided to make a discussion about the lack of connection between culture-faith. What would you suggest to overcome these complaints ?

 

[Slime99]

Maybe make it harder to convert a county to another unreformed faith if the county is of the majority culture faith?

 

[Muezzahan]

Maybe make it harder to convert a county to another unreformed faith if the county is of the majority culture faith?

I don't want to see ashari syriacs after 50 years.

 

[Slime99]

I don't want to see ashari syriacs after 50 years.

Maybe they should buff Strong Believers.

 

[Muezzahan]

Maybe they should buff Strong Believers.

İ want mechanical depth to the interaction of culture and religion/faith.

 

[TheSeraphim]

İ want mechanical depth to the interaction of culture and religion/faith.

 

[klopkr]

I think the weirdness is a bit over stated.
What I would like to see is the ability for certain religions to be a basis for new cultures forming and for cultures to have an option for 'preferred' religions which would be harder for those cultures to convert out of and easier for them to convert into.

So for example Arabs might have a preference for Islam because of their cultural historical contexts. Converting the Arabian peninsula away from Islamic religions would thus be somewhat harder.

 

[Tom The Viking YT]

I think the weirdness is a bit over stated.
What I would like to see is the ability for certain religions to be a basis for new cultures forming and for cultures to have an option for 'preferred' religions which would be harder for those cultures to convert out of and easier for them to convert into.

So for example Arabs might have a preference for Islam because of their cultural historical contexts. Converting the Arabian peninsula away from Islamic religions would thus be somewhat harder.

This in my opinion would be a great solution to the issue which OP have, but unfortunately we don't have a mod which could theoretically fix that. Another thing/solution could be changing the game settings, making it harder/taking longer to convert.

 

[Muezzahan]

This in my opinion would be a great solution to the issue which OP have, but unfortunately we don't have a mod which could theoretically fix that. Another thing/solution could be changing the game settings, making it harder/taking longer to convert.

Like seriously, i searched all over internet and saw no one making talking about it. Do people really not care ? Is it only me ?

 

[TL_]

I thought about your statements for a while, and I'm not sure I agree with them. I think you are starting at the endpoint (looking at, say, religions that spread widely and saying "oh, these are spreading religions compared to non-spreading cultural practices") rather looking at the starting point. Imagine you existed at some previous point in history. Suppose we were in the year 330. You might argue that Catholicism is just a product of Roman culture and state policy with the Council of Nicaea. There's no reason to believe this Roman ritual will spread to places like France or England. Or 1530: Lutheranism is inseparable from the High German-Low German struggle for cultural influence and political power within the Holy Roman Empire, are we really going to believe that it could spread to Sweden?? And Anglicanism (a rebellion against Catholic authority) and Puritanism (a rebellion against the English King's authority) are both definitely movements tied up in specific state politics - they're not going to spread to other places, surely? Presbyterianism is uniquely Scots culture in nature, the idea that it could become the dominant religion in a Cherokee tribe is ludicrous! And we all know that Buddhism is uniquely influenced by Vedic Brahmanism - it doesn't make any sense to have it somewhere so far afield as Japan.

Yes, it's true, Mozarabics and Conversos represent religious minority communities in Iberia that did not spread. But Christianity itself was once a persecuted religious minority in Rome. Had the dice of history fallen differently, who is to say that Mozarabic belief wouldn't have been carried over to Spanish colonies like the Puritans of England?

 

[Muezzahan]

I think the weirdness is a bit over stated.
What I would like to see is the ability for certain religions to be a basis for new cultures forming and for cultures to have an option for 'preferred' religions which would be harder for those cultures to convert out of and easier for them to convert into.

So for example Arabs might have a preference for Islam because of their cultural historical contexts. Converting the Arabian peninsula away from Islamic religions would thus be somewhat harder.

Idea: Add "faith cap", similar to the "diplomatic relations cap" in project ceasar. The "faith cap" is a limit that determined how many different faith can a culture believe without assimilating into a different culture. smaller cultures should have smaller caps and similar faith should take up less space in the "faith cap". For example:

Main faith: is the majority faith of the culture at the start of the game. Use up 2 Points.(actually in game, cultures with the same majority faith gain %15 cultural acceptance.)
Faiths that belong to the same religion: Orthodoxy, catholic, nestorian, bogomilism.. all belong to christianity. Use up 1 point.
Faiths that belong to the same religious family.: Judaism, christianity and islam belong to the abrahamic. Jainism, buddhism and hinduism belong to the eastern group. Use up 2 points.
Faith that don't share anything: They take up 3 points.

Now, lets decde arbitary "fatih cap" for few cultures.
Syriac: Is a small culture. So, its faith cap is 2. (which would allow only the main faith, nestorianism)
Mashriqi: Is a big culture. Its faith cap is 5. (Main faith ashari(2) + druze(1) + orthodox(2) + apostolic(2) + azariqa(1) + ismaili(1) = 9 points - an excess of 4.. what gives ? i will explain later)
Armenian: Small but not as small as nestorian. So its faith cap is 3. (In game some armenian counties are orthodox instead of apostoic. So this cap can tolerate the orthodoxs within armenian counties.)

What happens when the culture has excess amount of points ? They either integrate or assimilate. "Integration" is when counties with the most strangefaith relative to the main faith starts to swap to main faith. over time, mashriqi counties with orthodox and apostolic faiths will turn ashari tehmselves.
"Assimilation" is when culture of the county with the most strange faith related to culture assimilate into the culture that has the "strange faith" as its majority.
Armenian counties with ashari faith will asimilate into kurdish.


Of course, all of these are written in a few minutes so there are a lot of flaws in this argument i am sure, so feedback is important.

 

[Muezzahan]

I thought about your statements for a while, and I'm not sure I agree with them. I think you are starting at the endpoint (looking at, say, religions that spread widely and saying "oh, these are spreading religions compared to non-spreading cultural practices") rather looking at the starting point. Imagine you existed at some previous point in history. Suppose we were in the year 330. You might argue that Catholicism is just a product of Roman culture and state policy with the Council of Nicaea. There's no reason to believe this Roman ritual will spread to places like France or England. Or 1530: Lutheranism is inseparable from the High German-Low German struggle for cultural influence and political power within the Holy Roman Empire, are we really going to believe that it could spread to Sweden?? And Anglicanism (a rebellion against Catholic authority) and Puritanism (a rebellion against the English King's authority) are both definitely movements tied up in specific state politics - they're not going to spread to other places, surely? Presbyterianism is uniquely Scots culture in nature, the idea that it could become the dominant religion in a Cherokee tribe is ludicrous! And we all know that Buddhism is uniquely influenced by Vedic Brahmanism - it doesn't make any sense to have it somewhere so far afield as Japan.

Yes, it's true, Mozarabics and Conversos represent religious minority communities in Iberia that did not spread. But Christianity itself was once a persecuted religious minority in Rome. Had the dice of history fallen differently, who is to say that Mozarabic belief wouldn't have been carried over to Spanish colonies like the Puritans of England?

The gimmick is that Christianity is not "native" to the roman culture. Roman's unique culture is.. greko-roman paganism or "hellenism" in game. And i can't imagine hellenistic germans.

Hey, i got an idea while writing this:
Make some faiths tied to cultures, these faiths can't spread into different cultures. (tengri-turko/mongol and zoroastrianism-iranic)
Now, the opposite, make some cultures tied to faiths. these cultures don't want to convert to different faiths and if they do, they get assimilated(for example, while nestorianism is not unique to the syriac as there are nestorian uyghurs and onguds, it is undeniable that it is something that differantiates nestorians from their neighbors. convertion of syriac counties from nestorian to ashari would result cultural assimilation into mashriqi.)

 

[TL_]

Roman's unique culture is.. greko-roman paganism or "hellenism" in game. And i can't imagine hellenistic germans.

I just wonder... why not? Roman Paganism was practiced in the lands that Rome did conquer like Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania. Tacitus, in his writings, compares many of the German Pagan pantheon to the Roman pantheon (98 AD), and prominent tribal leaders among the Germans like Arminius (Hermann) did in fact travel and study in Rome (~8BC to 8AD). It seems to me the reason you can't imagine Germans worshipping Roman Gods is just because they didn't annex all of those forests before the 4th century. Moreover, it doesn't solve the puzzle of why Christianity, clearly an evolution out of a local Middle Eastern Jewish faith, could spread into such a foreign culture (Greco-Roman).

Now, I don't want to dismiss what you're saying completely. I think you might be onto something with the idea that a differing faith can make it easier to develop a distinct cultural identity (like Nestorians). Perhaps the cost for cultural divergence should be lowered if you do NOT share a faith (or at least faith group) with your head of culture. This way, for example, Persians might create cultural divides between Zoroastrian and Islamic factions.

 

[Muezzahan]

I just wonder... why not? Roman Paganism was practiced in the lands that Rome did conquer like Gaul, Britannia, and Hispania. Tacitus, in his writings, compares many of the German Pagan pantheon to the Roman pantheon (98 AD), and prominent tribal leaders among the Germans like Arminius (Hermann) did in fact travel and study in Rome (~8BC to 8AD). It seems to me the reason you can't imagine Germans worshipping Roman Gods is just because they didn't annex all of those forests before the 4th century. Moreover, it doesn't solve the puzzle of why Christianity, clearly an evolution out of a local Middle Eastern Jewish faith, could spread into such a foreign culture (Greco-Roman).

Now, I don't want to dismiss what you're saying completely. I think you might be onto something with the idea that a differing faith can make it easier to develop a distinct cultural identity (like Nestorians). Perhaps the cost for cultural divergence should be lowered if you do NOT share a faith (or at least faith group) with your head of culture. This way, for example, Persians might create cultural divides between Zoroastrian and Islamic factions.

Did the barabric tribes such as britons and germans as masses(sorry my knowledge on roman history is near 0) outright adopted roman paganism though ? and for the ones that did convert, became part of the greco-roman civilization. That is actually what i meant. Barbarians becoming part of a civilization through the religion. Because, unlike in ck3 nd eu4 where religion and culture are completely independed from each other, they were actually connected.
I mean, i am not against individual conversions of people, such as a viking raider converting to islam after raiding north africa. I am more concerned about the dynamics between faith and culture on a map basis. The faith that is part of the culture, instead of something unrelated to it.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

There are also cases of a big religion being perverted by local cultures (celtic christianity-> Catholicism but influenced by irish traditions)(mozarabism-> christianity fit into traditions of arabized iberians)

This is a bit of a take. I'm not sure that calling two of the noted (and at the time accepted) Rites within Catholicism "perverting" it is a good look.

The differences were relatively minor, and the broader Catholic umbrella had a lot of regional variations.

(christianity-> made nomadic magyars part of greco-roman civilization)

Not really. The Magyars (and later Hungarians) didn't really become "Greco-Roman". That's a hell of a stretch.

And there are already traits for cultures and religions which are highly interwoven, reflecting the difficulty to change one, but not the other.

Main faith: is the majority faith of the culture at the start of the game. Use up 2 Points.(actually in game, cultures with the same majority faith gain %15 cultural acceptance.)
Faiths that belong to the same religion: Orthodoxy, catholic, nestorian, bogomilism.. all belong to christianity. Use up 1 point.
Faiths that belong to the same religious family.: Judaism, christianity and islam belong to the abrahamic. Jainism, buddhism and hinduism belong to the eastern group. Use up 2 points.
Faith that don't share anything: They take up 3 points.

So make it really hard for, say, Scandinavia to convert to Christianity, or for Russia to convert away from Slavic paganism to Orthodoxy?
Or for conversions along the intersection between Orthodoxy and Islam, or Islam and the Indian faiths?

"Assimilation" is when culture of the county with the most strange faith related to culture assimilate into the culture that has the "strange faith" as its majority.
Armenian counties with ashari faith will asimilate into kurdish.

So assuming Catholicism is the "strange faith" (say in Jerusalem), which culture that has it as a majority does the province change towards?
English? French? Scots? Italian? Galician?

What happens when the culture has excess amount of points ? They either integrate or assimilate. "Integration" is when counties with the most strangefaith relative to the main faith starts to swap to main faith. over time, mashriqi counties with orthodox and apostolic faiths will turn ashari tehmselves.

Is this even with a ruler of the "strange" faith in place over an area, and without any rulers of the "local" faith (which is arbitrarially assigned from what I can see) in charge?
Why should Orthodox mashriqi counties with Orthodox rulers change to ashari just because "historically" they used to be ashari?

Make some faiths tied to cultures, these faiths can't spread into different cultures. (tengri-turko/mongol and zoroastrianism-iranic)

Bad for game play. I can't spread my chosen faith if I'm playing one of those.
If I create a new culture (maybe a hybrid, maybe a split in the main culture), I can't spread the religion to my new culture because it's not tied to it.

Did the barabric tribes such as britons and germans as masses(sorry my knowledge on roman history is near 0) outright adopted roman paganism though ? and for the ones that did convert, became part of the greco-roman civilization. That is actually what i meant. Barbarians becoming part of a civilization through the religion. Because, unlike in ck3 nd eu4 where religion and culture are completely independed from each other, they were actually connected.

"Barbaric" isn't a term used in modern discourse because it's perjorative.
But yes, to a certain extent roman paganism blended with Briton culture and beliefs, with several of the gods being compared and treated as variants of the same deity.
Romano-British culture and religion though wasn't them becoming greco-roman (hence the culture being romano-british, rather than erased and replaced with the greco-roman ideal). And *technically* the two weren't entirely linked. The Romano-Britons didn't exactly become Hellenic faithful, instead having something closer to a syncretic faith (until the whole Christianity thing happened, at which point various rites and variations were created in different places by various preachers, sometimes making accomodations to the local culture, sometimes being more or less heretical depending on how in contact with mainstream branches of Christianity they were, ad which schools of thought they implemented.
Even some of the Germanic gods were aligned with Roman ones - albeit in a somewhat faulty way - and roman religion was remarkably loose about allowing local interpretattions of gods provided the core roman pantheon was acknowledged.

But you are making a mistake in that you're dismissing the britons and germans as not being part of a civilisation, when they were. It just wasn't the same sort as the roman model. They had kingships, towns, land ownership, and so on often with intricate systems of patronage and political power structures, and Rome also *formally* had tribes in its governance, although they'd become more poltical districts or blocs by the time of the Empire.

 

[klopkr]

Yeah I think you have some naive views on religions.

Yes there was a lot of religion and cultural overlap. Many people that switched religions to one dominated by another culture would start to implement some of that culture in their own. Just like the adoption of Arabic script and many arabic words by Iranians. But they still retained their culture.

The game doesn't represent these peoples as 'arabo-iranians'.

Similarly yes pagans did convert to the religions of their conquerors and often, especially noticeably in the ancient world when the areas with written histories were still pagan.
Are the gauls and cartheginians who took on hellenic gods no longer gauls or cartheginians? Well they're sometimes refered to as romano-gauls for example and then eventually just romans. But that is more of a statement of on the broadening of the idea of a cultural roman during the long reign of the empire than a full conversion of all the gauls into essentially the same as the latins of Italy.

I think some religions do have clear cultural affinities. Some religions are deeply based on culture. But I don't think it's so much the other way around and I don't think a gamey system like 'number of religions a given culture can support at a certain size' makes sense. Rather some religions would have some cultures of particular affinity and those cultures would gain bonuses to conversion into and away from those religions. But they wouldn't be barred from converting to others. More of a "hey I'm arabic and islam is a religion originating from Arabs, I am culturally more closely connected to it" or "I'm greek so hellenism and orthodxy have deep roots in my culture but manicheaism is still a possiblity". Not "well I'm iranian so I can only really believe in zoroastrianism or islam even though I now rule Gujarat".

 

[Slime99]

It's interesting how faith hostility has no effect on faith conversion speed. I think there should be one. Communal identity also doesn't give a resistance against promoting culture.
Perhaps it should be easier to convert a county to the majority faith of that culture, and it could be harder to convert a county to a faith that doesn't share the religion with a majority faith of the culture or any close by cultures. That way converting Greeks to Hinduism will be harder because the whole concept will be strange to them, but if say the Bulgarians become majority Hindu somehow then conversion would not be that difficult.
I think it should be harder to promote a culture with a majority faith with high hostility to the county faith.

Then there's the pipe dream that faith hostility would depend on tenet and doctrine differences and be more akin to cultural acceptance, but alas I think that is not quite feasible. Maybe for character opinion one day.

 

[FondMemberofSociety]

Suppose we were in the year 330. You might argue that Catholicism is just a product of Roman culture and state policy with the Council of Nicaea. There's no reason to believe this Roman ritual will spread to places like France or England.

France and England have Roman culture in the year 330, and Christian communities before that. While "Catholicism" as we know it didn't exist that far back, obviously, it isn't a stretch of imagination to think the Roman Imperial Church would smoothly step into France and England.

And we all know that Buddhism is uniquely influenced by Vedic Brahmanism - it doesn't make any sense to have it somewhere so far afield as Japan.

Chinese Buddhism: Well, come to think of it, the original Indian version of Buddhism never reached Japan.

Idea: Add "faith cap", similar to the "diplomatic relations cap" in project ceasar. The "faith cap" is a limit that determined how many different faith can a culture believe without assimilating into a different culture. smaller cultures should have smaller caps and similar faith should take up less space in the "faith cap". For example:

I'd really just prefer a pops system, but if we're insisting on not doing pops, then this concept I find interesting.
Also I hope Pdox adds an "Interesting" reaction to this forum, but since it doesn't exist yet, take a "Helpful".

The gimmick is that Christianity is not "native" to the roman culture. Roman's unique culture is.. greko-roman paganism or "hellenism" in game. And i can't imagine hellenistic germans.

I think Professor Kaldellis and Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos would disagree, but still, I too cannot imagine Hellenistic Germans.

Make some faiths tied to cultures, these faiths can't spread into different cultures. (tengri-turko/mongol and zoroastrianism-iranic)

Jewish-Jewish, but with exceptions for in-laws?

 

[GhostDanny]

Would German cultures take more in becoming Asatru, instead of Catholic?

 

[treb]

I have only played eu4 and ck3 out of all paradox strategy games, and this is something i noticed since my first playthrough and, for some reason, nobody seems to talk about it.

Historically, religion/faith has always been part of culture. Hell, all of the "unreformed" faiths aren't even religions, but purely cultural traditions. They are unique to their respective cultures (tengri -> turks & mongols) (turumists -> siberians)(romuva -> baltics)(slavism[?]-> slavs)(asatru-> norse)
And yet, they feel disconnected from their resprective culture. Like, after few decades pass from the start, counties with turkic cultures adopt turumism because their khanty overlords converted them. This feels, in my opinion, immersion breaking

Another case is with "reformed" faith. While some of them stem from their respective culture (hinduism -> indians)(zoroastrianism -> iranics)(hellenism -> greeks), lots of them instead affect the cultures that believed in them (christianity-> made nomadic magyars part of greco-roman civilization)(islam-> made nomadic oghuzs and karluks part of islamo-persian civilization)(budhism-> made nomadic uyghurs and khitans part of chinese/east asian civilization)

There are also cases of a big religion being perverted by local cultures (celtic christianity-> Catholicism but influenced by irish traditions)(mozarabism-> christianity fit into traditions of arabized iberians)

And yet, hou can convert counties with non-arabic speaking cultures easily into mozarabism. Or you can convert counties with greek cultures to hinduism with no limitations at all.

Why am i complaining ? Because ai does all of these actions and it breaks my immersion. I wish there was a mod that tackles this but i couldn't find anything. So, i decided to make a discussion about the lack of connection between culture-faith. What would you suggest to overcome these complaints ?

I think you misunderstand what culture and religion are in this game, culture is the material aspects of a group and its general outlook and perspective on things not related to the spiritual. For example the Norse are warlike and belligerent as a culture regardless of weather they are Pagan, Christian, Muslim, or whatever else. whereas religion represents the spiritual beliefs and tenets of an individual and a realm.

In the latter cases its better to think of Insularism and Mozarabism are more like independent branches of Christianity vis a vis Catholics and Orthodox. What CK3 entirely ignores is in 867 Catholicism and Orthodoxy don't actually exist at this point.* They are a single united christian faith commonly called Nicene Creed**(after the ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 that basically set the rules for the "church of the roman empire")

Britain formally ceased to be part of the empire in 410, and was more or less cut off entirely from the mainstream Christan world at that point as the Britons were locked in an existential fight for survival with the Saxons that they were losing. This led to a 250 year bout of complete isolation from mainstream Christianity. It evolved seperatly and idiosyncratically during this time before parts of the insular church gradually adopted the Latin rite and absorbed into western Christianity, indecently a lot of catholic monastic practices were actually adopted into wider catholic usage from Insular practices.

Mozarabism is somewhat similar in that it was basically a branch of Latin rite Christianity separated from from the rest of the Latin rite by conquest of a foreign religion that tolerated them and was absorbed into the Latin rite over time.

Its also important to note both still formally saw the bishop of Rome(Pope) as the formal head of their churches even if they were in practice for most of their existence autocephalous. They absorbed back in so easily because they never formally broke ties with the rest of mainstream Christianity they just ended up in circumstances that separated them from it and developed distinctly because of it. In the case of Insularism there isn't even evidence it was a united entity in so much that it was a group of separate churches that had common beliefs that were shared between them in isolation. This is actually shown in game by the Saxons, Picts and Welsh being Catholic as their churches had already adopted the latin rite and customs.



*There was a informal split in rites and general thoughts about the church by 867, the Latin and Greek rites. What would go on to become Orthodoxy and Catholicism. In this model its better to think of Insularism as a third divergent rite separate of both and Mozarabism as a divergent Latin rite

**To keep it as brief as I can, the Emperor was "technically" the nominal head of the church in that the patriarchs were "vassals" of the Emperor(Ceaseropapism) and the five highest patriarchs in the empire(the Pentarchy) Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria were all of equal rank but the patriarch of Constantinople was the "first amongst equals". He was the nominal leader with the final say on matters within the church.(Note the Emperors did not seem to have acted like the Caliphs as the spiritual leader they were just formally ranked higher on the totem pole than the church leaders who in theory answered to the emperor but in practice besides paying some level of tax, the church generally was more or less left to do its own thing *coughignoringtheiconocasmscough*). This is a gross oversimplification and generalization of things but pre-schism Roman Christianity is a whole other rabbit-hole entirely.

Edit: Got the councils mixed up.