Hellenismos – Diadochi Cultural Overhaul

Replaces Macedonian cultureblob spam with regional syncretic cultures for the Diadochoi.

NOT IRONMAN COMPATIBLE (like most mods, really…Imperator is very stingy with its checksum)

No more Big Blue Blob from Pella to Pataliputra!

A little mod that gives each of the Eastern Diadochoi a decision that allows them to choose between continuing their reliance on Macedonian military colonists (keeping Macedonian culture, but drastically lowering assimilation rates) or syncretizing with local cultures (adopt a new syncretic culture that Hellenizes the locals more easily, at the cost of some military performance).

—v1.01—

• Added an additional same-culture group happiness penalty to represent additional cultural distance from other Hellenes that a Persianate/etc. syncretic culture would have.

• New Syncretic Cultures – Graeco-Egyptian, Graeco-Persian, Indo-Greek, and Graeco-Bactrian are now available to represent the Hellenization of local cultures in a more lore-friendly manner than the blanket Macedonian assimilation from vanilla.
• New Cultural Decisions – As the Diadochoi, embrace your martial Macedonian roots or foster the birth of a new Hellenistic heritage that blends local customs with Greek ideals of philosophy and statesmanship.
• A Truly Indo-Greek Kingdom – The Indo-Greek Kingdom decision now also culture-shifts to Indo-Greek in addition to the wrong-culture group bonus from the previous syncretic culture decisions.
• Balkan Cultural Changes – While linguistic classification of the Thracian, Dacian, and Illyrian languages are far from definite, it is fairly uncontroversial to claim that they are closer to one another than to Greek. Graeco-Illyrian has been renamed to merely "Illyrian", and Thracian and the Illyrian cultures have been moved to the Dacian cultural group. Thracian has also been differentiated into ‘Thracian’ and ‘Helleno-Thracian’, to differentiate Greek colonies and polities like Thrace and Byzantion from native Thracian polities like Odrysia.

While I’m nothing short of thrilled by the shift towards POP automation that emerged during the Cicero 1.2 path, one of the most unsatisfactory things I’ve found is the sheer speed and breadth by which the various Diadochoi (Ptolemies, Seleukids, Antigonids, and Parthia + Bactria) assimilate their lands into Macedonian culture. While this ostensibly represents the profound impact that Hellenizing influences and culture have had on their constituent areas, representing a Hellenized East Iranian-speaker in Sogdia as functionally identical to a Paeonian tribesman to a cosmopolite in Pella felt rather immersion-breaking. The fact that most of Egypt and Persia could have their native populations and customs completely displaced within the span of maybe a century with very little input also didn’t help affairs.

Other attempts to address this issue tended to focus on dramatically reducing the assimilation rates of the Diadochoi, which works, to an extent. The various Persian, Bactrian, and Egyptian cultures are preserved over the course of the game, but in so doing this deprives the Diadochoi of the powerful benefits that assimilation provides, particularly as it relates to national stability and provincial loyalty. The lack of Macedonian settlers may be a historically friendly situation, but Imperator’s inflexible "primary culture only" model (which lacks the ability to promote or accept cultures like in EU4) mean that there exist no long-term feasible replacements for assimilation that the Diadochoi could engage in.

To compromise, this mod offers new decisions (available at game start for all oriental Diadochoi save the Ptolemies) that allows the relevant nations to decide whether or not they want to embrace their military settler culture and safeguard the primacy of Macedonian settlers in their country, which dramatically reduces assimilation (in exchange, this focus on supporting the descendants of the veterans of the Great Campaign is compensated by military benefits) or to adopt a syncretic version of the local culture that is more amenable to Hellenization (represented by normal assimilation rates and improved conversion rates) at the cost of poorer military performance from dilution of the traditional Macedonian army structure.

Egypt’s version of this dichotomy is available via the vanilla "Cult of Serapis" event, which in turn gives them 3 distinct options: embrace the Serapis Cult and foster the birth of a Graeco-Egyptian (proto-Coptic) culture, retain a Macedonian military elite lording over a restive Egyptian population, or fully assimilating into Egyptian culture for a massive immediate boost to internal stability and economic performance at the cost of forever alienating the Macedonian elite.

Some additional, minor cultural tweaks have also been made to compensate for the expansion of the Hellenistic culture group from the addition of the new cultures.

• Additional syncretic cultures to represent Hellenizing elements across the Mediterranean; these are mostly well modeled by cultures like Italiote and Massalian, some unique Gallo-Greek or Helleno-Iberian cultures that incorporate some local names would be nice for RP purposes.
• Add Hellenizing options for Eastern nations to adopt Greco-Persian and similar syncretic cultures to represent the rapid adoption of Hellenistic styles and customs among elites in nations like Heraclea, Pontus, Judea, and Cappadocia. Gameplay-wise, adopting cultures in the Hellenistic group facilitates conquest in Greek-dominated regions. Perhaps AI willingness to do this could be markedly lower than the Diadochoi? Will need balancing.
• Balance modifier effects. I’m not sure how much the military buff is worth the almost complete loss of assimilation. Some additional balancing may be required to make picking ‘Macedonian Supremacy’ a valid gameplay choice.
• Syncretic cultures for different culture groups. While largely hypothetical or out of the temporal scope of Imperator, syncretic cultures like Gallo-Roman or Puno-Iberian might be interesting gameplay-wise.
• Custom gfx. AFAIK graphical culture is assigned at the culture group level, and thus cannot be defined on a culture-by-culture basis. If at any point this changes or I am mistaken, I would like syncretic cultures to meld physical features of their base cultures with Hellenistic hairstyles and clothing.