What do you think about perks for specific cultures (like National Ideas)?

[Krajzen]

Title. It always seemed strange to me how all cultures in ck2 play exactly the same provided they have the same religion (besides different retinues). I would love if cultures, cultural groups or even de iure kingdoms/empires were tied to some historically sensible fun set od bonuses, "skill trees" or unique mechanics. Italy - medieval renaissance and trade, Ireland - Irish monasticism, Rus - Volga trade routes and druzhina, Bulgaria - literary schools, Persia - science bonus, Tamils - naval trade... Etc etc.

I think it would add a lot of flavour and incentive to play unusual cultures.

If you think National Ideas from eu4 are too restricting and linear, well here this could be just one big bonus, or one unique mechanic per culture group, or skill trees with mutually exclusive alternatives - really anything to make Persian Muslim empire different from Andalusian Muslim empire, or Catholic Hungary from Catholic England.

What do you think?

 

[Denkt]

Maybe you should be able to create an own Culture like you can create religions but having perk trees for Cultures is something Im not sure about, CK2 still have unique buildings and some abilities for certain Cultures which can be expanded upon.

 

[Surimi]

I think a major issue in CK2 is that some cultures are just objectively better than others due to unique abilities (looking at you, OP norse).

I personally think more of these differences should be tied to government, laws and the like, with culture being more of a level playing field. While every culture having unique advantages would also be neat, it still leads to a situation where people are choosing cultures based on what gives the most in-game benefit, rather than what is flavourful or even what fits the situation.

 

[sreckom92]

Cultures should evolve dynamically.
For example, as a leader of the most powerful realm of your culture, you keep waging war against your neighbors. After a certain amount of time, your culture gets a "Aggressive" modifier, which provides certain positive or negative things.
Also, if you only wage defensive wars, your culture gains "Defensive" modifier.
There could also exist an influence of neighbors. If you are at prolonged peace with a culture that is known for many merchants, you slowly embrace features that are unique for trade.
Style of clothing could be changed due to influence from neighbors or overlords of other culture.

Point of this would be to evolve cultures depending on the behavior of realms with these cultures, and actual geographical position.

 

[Krajzen]

I think a major issue in CK2 is that some cultures are just objectively better than others due to unique abilities (looking at you, OP norse).

The reason Norse is better than other cultures is specificaly because almost all other cultures have no bonuses. This is na argument for my cause, not against it. Norse wouldn't be OP (or that OP) if other cultures had unique abilities too.

I personally think more of these differences should be tied to government, laws and the like, with culture being more of a level playing field.

I know you mean gameplay interactivity but from historical perspective it is exactly opposite lol, medieval cultures were determining, influencing and shaping governments and laws, and they were not without influence on religion too (best examples are Celtic Christianity and enormous impact of Persian civilization on Islam). I know government customization should take leading role but it's insane how Ireland and Persia play identically od they somehow get the same religion and government form.

While culture having unique advantages would also be neat, it still leads to a situation where people are choosing cultures based on what gives the most in-game benefit, rather than what is flavourful or even what fits the situation.

1) Cultural bonuses add flavour
2) It makes perfect sense to seek great philosophers in medieval Persia instead of medieval Pontic Steppe so I don't see the problem
3) This is mostly not an issue in eu4 (I meant, I've almost never seen people complaining about it

 

[the glory of plain]

national idea in eu4 was not a very good design
things should be more local or regional turn to global modifier

 

[Krajzen]

Cultures should evolve dynamically. (...)
Point of this would be to evolve cultures depending on the behavior of realms with these cultures, and actual geographical position.

I'd be actually fine with dynamic cultures, provided there still would be some set of starting characteristics/abilities/ tendencies for each cultural group, so it would be significantly easier to span great philosophers* as Persians rather than Mongols. But yeah, evolving cultures is very interesting idea.

*- I'm just daydreaming about unlikely mechanics, okay?

 

[Seon]

Only if it’s dynamic.

 

[Krajzen]

national idea in eu4 was not a very good design

Weird, seeing how fanbase was heavily pushing Paradox to add more and more NI sets to more and more countries until the entire world for covered, and every time new set was announced people were excited.

 

[Denkt]

Weird, seeing how fanbase was heavily pushing Paradox to add more and more NI sets to more and more countries until the entire world for covered, and every time new set was announced people were excited.

People don't want countries to have generic ideas but at same time there are people that are against how national ideas work in EUIV.

It would feel a bit strange if you could level up your Culture, merge, reform and split your Culture would be nice to have such if you conquer Another Culture area you could create a mix between your and the other Culture which would become a new Culture with attributes from both parent Cultures.

 

[Wade Aznable]

I'm a bit ambivalent on the matter.
Sure it would add flavour and the gameplay would benefit, but as long as it's done "well" - read, "realistic".
If it's a different bonus for every culture with the result of having 'em all more or less equivalent in power and advancement I'm against it.
If it's made as much historically as possible, to reflect that some cultures are more advanced and others are behind (which is a great truth, then and now as well, even if it's not "admissable" to say it without being labeled as politically un-correct, to say the least), I'm for it.

 

[Atalvyr]

The cultural factors already in CK2 are some of the most fun, flavorful things in the game. Having different retinues (if they are not just worse versions of the generic ones), different buildings (if balanced) or succession laws (tanistry, absolute cognatic) is great flavor.

What is not so great about CK2 cultures is that some cultures get flat out bonuses like always being able to raid or penalties like being in a small cultural group and thus being forever hated by every other culture (Hungarian).

I get why people are not too enthusiastic about the EU4 national ideas - that would be very hard to balance. In EU4 they "solved" it by making formable tags have generally superior ideas, so you nearly always have some interesting regional tag to form with good ideas.

 

[Silversweeeper]

I don't really think that making cultures very different based on what happened historically is a great idea, considering that CK2 history can turn out different enough that something historical stops making sense. For example, if you end up with a landlocked Berber empire in Russia and no Berbers elsewhere after a couple of centuries, the "seafaring = yes" flag no longer really makes sense, while if various Hungarian realms end up controlling lots of coastlines and islands the Hungarian culture not being seafaring after a certain point is rather odd.

I'd rather see something like each character getting to unlock a number of features from a list of possible features with either a cost reduction (if you can stack as many features as you can afford) based on history or some culture-specific package offers (if there are limited slots) based on history (e.g. North Germanic, Norman. and Berber characters being able to pick something that combines both seafaring and raiding in one slot, while other cultures have to spend two slots on that), similar to HF's reformations (but on a character basis rather than a global basis) or EU4's Protestant Church aspects, with some AI weighting to make cultures a bit more likely to stick with historical picks when they make sense (e.g. a coastal Norse realm will probably pick raiding and seafaring (but might drop one or both from time to time), and there's a small chance of a random Occitan ruler deciding that he wants to raid coasts) and some noticeable drawbacks for more powerful picks (e.g. non-raiders dislike raiders on principle, or raiders might suffer revolts (or get negative province modifiers) because some raiders decided that robbing people at home was easier).

 

[Rubidium]

Culture wasn't super important for the CK era, and cultural differences are sort of an awkward spot, conceptually. Religion was more important (both historically and in-game).

Note that they are introducing the ability to create dynasty-specific traits (I think one of the articles gave as an example, increased inheritance of congenital traits, and I'm sure that if Divine Blood isn't an option, it will be one of the first mods).