To change culture or not....

[Larco]

TLDR - how does culture work, and is it a bad idea to be one culture when your provinces are another?

In detail.... Currently playing as the Normans in Sicily. I've got Sicily, southern italy, spoleto, tuscany, sardinia and corsica. Plus most of the kingdom of africa. My domain is Sicily + the duchy of Salerno.

Sicilian culture now covers all of sicily and southern italy - pretty much all my home domain - but I'm still norman, Robert of normandy's still the culture head and I'm assuming no ones guiding / boosting Sicilian culture.

Frankly, norman culture looks a bit stronger overall - slightly more taxes and slightly tougher troops - and it seems to be ahead of sicilian on innovations marginally. Plus I can't really be bother to spend decades converting Italy to norman provinces.

But... am I going to get screwed here because my provinces development is dependent on a culture which there's no head of? Really not sure how this works. Is sicilian culture destined to develop really slowly while the AI picks random crap innovations? it's currently researching Qanats. Whatever the hell they are. Rather than something useful like battlements - I still can't build level 2 castles.

Wondering if I should just bite the bullet and convert my provinces to norman, or more likely, just convert myself into a sicilian. Am I'm going to see my provinces get more and more stymied by a backward culture if I leave it as it is, Ie me norman, provinces sicilian?

Sorry if this is an unclear question - slightly struggling to get my head around how it all works. Indeed how does it work? - I seem to be using the traditions from my personal culture , but the build option from the province culture's innovations?

[halcyan2]

Have you thought about diverging or hybridizing culture? That way you get the best of both worlds (keeping innovations and picking the traditions/pillars you want), as well as being able to be the culture head of the new culture.

[ste]

I would only bother converting the counties you personally hold to match your culture. Just to help opinion

The way culture works which I dont agree with is your best off not having lots of counties all over the map with your culture, youre best off with just a few select ones

[halcyan2]

In CK2, it was often best to paint the map with your religion and culture.

In CK3, it is advantageous to spread your religion and culture to improve Popular Opinion and reduce unrest. However with culture, having high Cultural Acceptance can mitigate this to a large degree.

The main advantage in CK3 to spreading your culture is:

1. Unlocks access to regional innovations if you have sufficient counties of your culture in different geographical locations

2. The innovations available to a culture become a massive bottleneck for improving your holdings (and improving your realm). A human controlled culture is more likely to be advanced (or prioritize key innovations) than a lackadaisical AI controlled culture. Converting the counties that I personally hold ensures they can upgrade to higher level buildings. Waiting for other cultures to gradually get innovations so I can upgrade a castle or military/economic buildings is very slow. And while the counties you hold are most important, counties your house/dynasty members hold and others in your realm can have secondary importance.

The main disadvantage in CK3 to spreading your culture is:

1. Based on how technological progress is calculated (average development of counties of your culture), it is better to have a few counties of your culture with high development. Rather than lots of counties with low to medium development. Even if you start with just high development counties, if you convert low development counties, that will decrease your average.

2. The time it takes to reforming your culture (change/add new traditions) is based on the number of counties of your culture. So it can take a long time to reform if you have converted many counties.

3. Each time you convert culture or spread religion, you get a opinion penalty with Minority Vassals. It can take a decade to wear off, but the penalty stacks with each conversion.

4. For the past many versions, it is basically up to the human player to convert the culture of counties. Several updates ago, they added a lot of highly restrictive conditions for the AI to do so. Except for a few scenarios (converting parent culture or certain historical cases), the AI very very rarely converts a county's culture. They are far more likely to promote culture instead or just adopt the local culture. Thus if you plan to aggressively convert county culture, then that's going to be your Steward's full time job and you are giving up the chance to do other Stewardship tasks (like increase county development).

[VoiD]

I'm not sure of how the mechanic works, the one time I decided to pay attention to culture creating my own I was under the swedish king, and it converted a bunch of counties around my capital to the new culture, including other vassal's, so I couldn't do the 1 county thing.

But yeah, spreading your culture is a really bad idea in CK3, if you care about culture, all of your research is tied to average development, and the AI doesn't play the game, so it doesn't develop anything.

If you really want to research stuff, you're better off having your own, tiny culture, in your well developed capital counties, once you're done/way ahead of time you could convert your vassal's heirs to your culture so they may start adopting it on their counties. But it's highly random.

That or you can create a new hybrid culture with the most popular culture within your realm and hope it spreads quickly.

[Larco]

Thanks all. The hybrid culture stuff looks interesting but, as far as i can tell, I think it needs royal court or something - dlc. Palermo is indeed my capital. I took the plunge and decided to convert to Sicilian. It makes my cavalry a little weaker and loses me 10% vassal tax but I guess it's not a lot to pay. I figure its better to take the hit now than face a "massive bottleneck" on dev later. Gulp.

On the plus side, sicilian has the republican legacy sounds like it could - potentially - be worth playing into. If I can figure out what it means and how it works! Says it applies to "all sicilian characters" but the lord mayor I made in sadinia seems to be paying me 10% extra anyway. Grabbing Genoa and Pisa; see if i can make them a cash cow. And find someone I can get the "appoint as republican overseer" command to work on... Then leverage that with "swords for hire."

Looking forward, I'm getting the feeling the culture system is a little odd. It sounds like (tell me if Im wrong) I need to NOT spread my culture. Or maybe cherry pick extremely high dev cities and / or ones in particular regions. Slightly counterintuivie but hey

thanks all

[Niliu]

Originally posted by Larco:

TLDR - how does culture work, and is it a bad idea to be one culture when your provinces are another?

In detail.... Currently playing as the Normans in Sicily. I've got Sicily, southern italy, spoleto, tuscany, sardinia and corsica. Plus most of the kingdom of africa. My domain is Sicily + the duchy of Salerno.

Sicilian culture now covers all of sicily and southern italy - pretty much all my home domain - but I'm still norman, Robert of normandy's still the culture head and I'm assuming no ones guiding / boosting Sicilian culture.

Frankly, norman culture looks a bit stronger overall - slightly more taxes and slightly tougher troops - and it seems to be ahead of sicilian on innovations marginally. Plus I can't really be bother to spend decades converting Italy to norman provinces.

But... am I going to get screwed here because my provinces development is dependent on a culture which there's no head of? Really not sure how this works. Is sicilian culture destined to develop really slowly while the AI picks random crap innovations? it's currently researching Qanats. Whatever the hell they are. Rather than something useful like battlements - I still can't build level 2 castles.

Wondering if I should just bite the bullet and convert my provinces to norman, or more likely, just convert myself into a sicilian. Am I'm going to see my provinces get more and more stymied by a backward culture if I leave it as it is, Ie me norman, provinces sicilian?

Sorry if this is an unclear question - slightly struggling to get my head around how it all works. Indeed how does it work? - I seem to be using the traditions from my personal culture , but the build option from the province culture's innovations?

From what I understand, development level is important to Culture innovations. Convert regions with high development, but leave the rest. Having a presence in certain cultures also allows you to unlock innovations from that region.

Convert the religion of your vassals and regions though