Is it better to have a multi-ethnic empire, or force everyone to your culture?

[Rex is back, baby!]

Is there any mechanical reason?
Is it negligible and purely for cosmetic/rp reasons?

I made the HRE, and already I have 5+ languages, and many different cultures throughout my realm. I already have stressed my priest converting the realms to Catholicism. Is my Steward going to have to get off Development duty?

Besides my ruler's home duchies, my empire really is Neapolitan.

[Razorblade]

Mono-ethnic empires are the best, numerically speaking. Dukes and Kings of your culture will use their Stewards to increase cultural acceptance of the native cultures of their lands, which will build and maintain that acceptance better than the bonus from having different-culture vassals (ironically).

Your culture will also naturally tend to have better optimized Tenets and Innovations, given you're a player and not a brain-dead AI, which will lead to your vassals, and therefore you, having better economies.

If acceptance is near 100%, it won't matter a ton if you have a few different-culture vassals, but there's generally no practical reason to, for example, hand out titles to nobles of the local culture instead of ones of your own.

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Razorblade:

Mono-ethnic empires are the best, numerically speaking. Dukes and Kings of your culture will use their Stewards to increase cultural acceptance of the native cultures of their lands, which will build and maintain that acceptance better than the bonus from having different-culture vassals (ironically).

Your culture will also naturally tend to have better optimized Tenets and Innovations, given you're a player and not a brain-dead AI, which will lead to your vassals, and therefore you, having better economies.

If acceptance is near 100%, it won't matter a ton if you have a few different-culture vassals, but there's generally no practical reason to, for example, hand out titles to nobles of the local culture instead of ones of your own.

There is one possible negative aspect.

If everyone is of the same culture, that means they are less likely to naturally hate each other too, which sounds fine until you get a bad heir, or a young defenseless heir, and now that your vassals really like each other that also means they are much more likely to join each other's plots.

I often prefer to have my vassals hating each other and warring all the time, holding each other's claims and trying to retake lands for generations, I even go out of my way to break poor duchies into 5 parts and giving each one to a different powerful vassal's vassal, just make them all hate each other.

This ends up with very peaceful realms, for the emperor, and constant internal wars that don't really matter to you.

[Emperor2000]

Originally posted by New Computer coming Late Feb 202:

Is there any mechanical reason?
Is it negligible and purely for cosmetic/rp reasons?

I made the HRE, and already I have 5+ languages, and many different cultures throughout my realm. I already have stressed my priest converting the realms to Catholicism. Is my Steward going to have to get off Development duty?

Besides my ruler's home duchies, my empire really is Neapolitan.

Tech is connected with culture, Realms with only a single Culture are better, because of this.

You can only build things, when the local culture has researched it, even when your culture has already researched it.
(The Devs should change this).

[Rex is back, baby!]

Thanks for the responses.
Perhaps, over the next 100 or so years (I feel I've reached the natural borders of my empire), I can create the perfect hybrid culture that represents everyone within my empire's realm!

[Kimlin]

I keep my personal domain one culture and do not expand it outside of my domain. Your innovation is determined by the average of the dev in all of the counties of that culture. It’s far easier to get 5 counties to an average of 50 dev than it is to get 20 counties to an average of 50 dev.

Outside of my personal domain I care very little what culture they are. Whatever keeps the locals happy I guess.

[Emperor2000]

Originally posted by Kimlin:

I keep my personal domain one culture and do not expand it outside of my domain. Your innovation is determined by the average of the dev in all of the counties of that culture. It’s far easier to get 5 counties to an average of 50 dev than it is to get 20 counties to an average of 50 dev.

Outside of my personal domain I care very little what culture they are. Whatever keeps the locals happy I guess.

But then your Vassals will convert to the local culture and get increased score to join an Independence or Populist Faction.

[Kimlin]

Originally posted by Emperor2000:

Originally posted by Kimlin:

I keep my personal domain one culture and do not expand it outside of my domain. Your innovation is determined by the average of the dev in all of the counties of that culture. It’s far easier to get 5 counties to an average of 50 dev than it is to get 20 counties to an average of 50 dev.

Outside of my personal domain I care very little what culture they are. Whatever keeps the locals happy I guess.

But then your Vassals will convert to the local culture and get increased score to join an Independence or Populist Faction.

I want more challenges anyway. Factions aren’t a threat even with stability as low as it can be.

[CrUsHeR]

TBH most of the replies above sound like people don't play the game?

It's actually quite simple. Say you have an empire, where the minimum realm size is 120 (counties). Perhaps 20 of the counties are already of your own culture, so make it 100 counties not of your culture.

With an average of 4 years to convert one county, your stewards would spend 400 years doing only that.

And everytime your steward is not increasing development or collecting taxes, you're doing something wrong.

In fact you also gain nothing from changing your subjects' culture. Who cares if some vassal 1000km away can build a T2 building, if he doesn't spend his gold on buildings anyways?

Assuming you are not abusing hybrid cultures to collect innovations, then the average development of your culture's counties determines the innovation speed. So converting anything with a lower development slows down the innovation rate (besides by doing that you are not increasing your own development for more taxes and such)

[dwarfpcfan]

Honestly given that I always focus on stewardship and learning to pump up devellopment and both focuses gives bonuses when dealing with other cultures and religion or to vassal opinion whether a vassal is my culture or not makes little difference to me.

instead those 2 allow me to have a huge domain limit and ensure all my counties are always maxed out in devellopment and income, and that pays huge dividends in the long run.