Tinto Talks #36: Culture

[Marquoz]

The link to today's dev diary is here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-36-6th-of-november.1713610/

Much of the culture discussion will sound familiar to EU4 players. There are some interesting changes, however, like this one:

You can swap your primary culture with an accepted culture if it fulfils the requirements, such as if it becomes the dominant culture in your country or if it is the culture of your ruler. There is also a game rule for it to be of the same Culture Group.

The "same culture group" requirement sounds like it will put an end to some tag-switching shenanigans, which I personally think have gone much too far because they're so unrealistic. However, later on they do say that some cultures will belong to more than one Culture Group, so we'll see how this works out.

Paradox is also introducing a Language system that will have effects much like those of culture. Market languages (for trade) and liturgical languages (for religion) will also play a role.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

IIRC, "game rule" means that there will be an option during initial game setup - a switch for you to either forbid or not forbid cross-Culture Group shifting before the campaign begins, much like the choice for what name Byz will use. I'm unsure whether Project Caesar's achievements are going to end up being as hardlocked behind Ironman and specific starting settings as say EU4's are, but it's entirely possible that this "rule" will in practice not have that much impact unless the player chooses to allow it.

[Preacher]

lets just make the fun parts of eu4 impossible for "realism" so we can stare at our borders slightly change over 100 years.

[Totally Innocent Chatbot]

"stare at our borders slightly change over 100 years" implies that there would be little to no internal management for the player to busy themselves with in the meantime. That's largely the case for EU4, but so far Project Caesar has been communicating that it will have far more of an internal focus with its building and trade systems, probably along with other stuff such as the art-related mechanics that will be discussed next week. It will not be a simple "war and preparing for war" game like EU4 or HoI4 are. Some may like that, some won't. It's not like EU4 will get removed from Steam any time soon.

[Malvastor]

I like what I think they're attempting with the culture groups. I've always thought culture should be treated more like a continuum; it makes zero sense that, say, Malagasy are exactly as foreign to Austrians as Czechs are, per EU4's base rules.

The structure laid out here doesn't perfectly resolve that but it feels like a step in the right direction.