Integrating Cultures

[Humphries2594]

When acquiring new cultures through conquest is it worth integrating them?

Should i integrate every culture to citizenship or will it have more draw backs to benefits?

All advice is welcome.

[Warhunter]

for me personally i never integrate any cultures. sure i dont get the bonus happiness for integrating them.
but by not doing so i dont drop my research efficiency, i keep my ability to slow assimilate them to my culture, fills up most of my slave/freemen slots so my integrated culture can pushed towards citizens and nobles so they control most of the power

sure the unrest can be slightly annoying? but if you have money building a few theaters in cities would help assimilate enough of them to counter unrest and even then harsh treatment and local autonomy governor policies will keep them under control

only thing i can see it being possibly useful is for different culture groups following another religion to give you a buffer while you swap their religion before dropping them back down so they can be assimilated

[Humphries2594]

Originally posted by Warhunter:

for me personally i never integrate any cultures. sure i dont get the bonus happiness for integrating them.
but by not doing so i dont drop my research efficiency, i keep my ability to slow assimilate them to my culture, fills up most of my slave/freemen slots so my integrated culture can pushed towards citizens and nobles so they control most of the power

sure the unrest can be slightly annoying? but if you have money building a few theaters in cities would help assimilate enough of them to counter unrest and even then harsh treatment and local autonomy governor policies will keep them under control

only thing i can see it being possibly useful is for different culture groups following another religion to give you a buffer while you swap their religion before dropping them back down so they can be assimilated

Thanks this is what i was looking for. Makes sense.

[xXxHussarxXx]

For most cultures I do not integrate them unless I want them to stay as they are by choice. Most of the time I give them more rights, ease the citizenship process, and allow intermarriage to help them either assimilate or at least be happy for a while. If you go down the old way of conquering and assimilating you're gonna have a bad time. If you try to conquer too much without making these cultures happy its gonna be a nightmare of revolts. The only other option is to conquer slowly Even if you don't want to integrate them you need to give them rights to make them happier.

[Malkavian]

Originally posted by Warhunter:

for me personally i never integrate any cultures. sure i dont get the bonus happiness for integrating them.
but by not doing so i dont drop my research efficiency, i keep my ability to slow assimilate them to my culture, fills up most of my slave/freemen slots so my integrated culture can pushed towards citizens and nobles so they control most of the power

sure the unrest can be slightly annoying? but if you have money building a few theaters in cities would help assimilate enough of them to counter unrest and even then harsh treatment and local autonomy governor policies will keep them under control

only thing i can see it being possibly useful is for different culture groups following another religion to give you a buffer while you swap their religion before dropping them back down so they can be assimilated

Hmm, you probably never play with multicultural countries, do you? Like Egypt, Seleukids, Bactria and Maurya?

[Warhunter]

havent exactly gone far with them as i dislike playing as the massive countries. egypt is probably the only one that i can somewhat enjoy playing as and even then i have alot of micromanging to do to sort that country out to my liking

that being said they are probably the only ones i have to take a few extra steps to slowly assimilate them to prevent mass riots. or it might not even be worth trying to assimilate those starting cultures unless you have way too many different ones

it depends on how large your starting integrated cultures are or how small your main culture is. like if your integrated cultures (not main) are 30% or more of your population at the start its better to leave them be until you solidify your empire with your main culture or have the necessary infrastructure to keep it intact especially if your primary culture isnt large itself

also using the decisions to raise the individual culture's happiness is very useful for those large countries. gives you a bigger buffer in happiness while you do other stuff
sure you take a penalty to output efficiency but the happiness makes up more than enough for the minor decrease

through what i said before works fine for any country that doesnt start with a large number of integrated cultures which for most countries tend to be mostly their main culture.