MEIOU and Taxes – True Culture Groups submod
Development team:
Me (Europe and Anatolia)
Ardvarkforce (project "East")
Current version – 2.3 compatible with M&T 2.02.04 (patch 4)
I had this Idea for a long time. I always wondered about the current culture groups in the mod, and I thought a slight correction could add to immersion, while not destroying the mod.
Ardvarkforce agreed to join the effort again – the future looks promising.
We’ll focus on the India and middle east for the time.
In patches 2.02 to 2.03 the Devs integrated majority of the mod into base M&T:
Slovaks in West Slavic Group.
Finns in the Finnic group.
Swedes in the Dano-Norwegian group.
Bulgarians in the Balkan Slavic group.
Albanians in an isolated group (I wanted introduce it in the new update, seems fair, since Basques are isolated, though on a different level)
That takes away the bulk of my submod.
In a way, it’s a victory for the "cause".
Though Gigau still swears we’ll see his dead body before the "Turko-Byzantine" (vomiting sounds) group would be split. Dirty infidel.
So now the main question is – What direction will the submod take now, since about 80% of it is base mod. As much as the mod looks like more of "Couple culture changes" rather then "True culture groups", show must go on.
The submod has just significantly shrunk in size, but it’s not all bad. Even if my original purpose to convince the Dev’s to make these changes isn’t completely fulfilled, partly it is.
And on the other hand, I guess now there will be more time for "Project East" and other things. Though I’m not sure I’ll have any time at all after upcoming update, at lest for some time.
I’m not done with this yet.
Currently, the submod introduces following changes in the current base mod:
Dano-NorwegianNorth Germanic group renamed as Scandinavian (I think it just sounds better)
Crimean group renamed as Crimean Tatar (same)
Finnic group merges Lappish group – sapmi culture (same as 1.0):
Turko-Byzantine group is replaced by:
Anatolian Turkic group:
Turkish
Yorouk
Hellenic group:
Greek
Pontic
Cappadocian
Walloon culture is moved to Langue d’Oil group
Szasz culture is moved to High Germanic group
Georgian culture is moved to isolated Kartvelian group
Seemingly how many changes from previous version of submod were integrated into base mod, it’s quite stable. At least for the most part.
To answer most obvious questions:
Ottoman Empire eats up Balkans with no problems.
Sweden doesn’t eat up all of the Scandinavia instantly, well, not all the time.
Hungary doesn’t instantly fall apart without the Slovaks and Szasz in the Magyar group.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t break anything. Just gives different opportunities.
To do shortlist:
Romanian dialects in the larger Latin group
I guess it’s supposed to be fixed by the new mechanic – new Macro culture Groups. It would make, for example, North and South Germans not be as alien to each other as they are to Chinese. I guess same goes for Romanians. We’ll see how it works out.
Project "East":
Filastini and Suri cultures
Samaritan/Aramean cultures
The "Eastern" question seems to be quite complex, and needs more clarity and research before implementation, but overall, it seems to be the main focus now, that a large chunk of 1.0 is now base mod.
The Dutch Question:
For the long time, I was asked to think about the Low Frankish group and their relationship with the Germans. I mean seriosly – dutchdeutch. You don’t have to be a genius to see a pattern here, and I honestly do believe that in the 1356, the division between dutch and german groups were arbitrary at best, if you really consider "culture groups" we have as a reflection of historical reality, however distorted by game mechanics. To put it into perspective – devs decided to call Scandinavian culture group – "North Germanic". North. Germanic. I mean it’s technically correct, since scandinavian languages belong to north germanic line and all. But the dutch, who were considerably closer to germans at the time, are "Low Frankish", again, technically not entirely incorrect, but rather arbitrary when you really get down to it.
The problem yet again lies in "Super groups", that should unite several culture groups, so not to make south and north germans culturally as alien to each other as they are to chinese for example. I’d say that if larger "German" group would include the dutch, i’d be satisfied with current division, since it would also cover highlow german division that has, at this point raised some brows too. The conundrum however lies with the problem, that as far as I’m aware – we can have only 1 layer of "larger" groups, meaning – we would mach rather need EuropeanAsian type split, rather then between lesser culture regions.
It’s up for a debate, so if you got any ideas – please share.
Proper cultures in certain provinces:
I have some serious reservations about some provinces right now, for example:
South Epirus looks too albanian to me.
Basarabia and Carligatura regions semm to tatar, especially the province of Carligatura itself.
Koroska should probably be austrian at this point.
I’m going to need more research on it + the changes I’d like to consider may involve some existing events, so I’ll use caution.
Credits:
Pyrrus – created the first version
Sirbab – early support
FireKahuna – first repackaged the submod into a proper .mod/folder format.
Gigau – He was great support and I thank him from my heart. You’re awesome, dude.
b]kwizzle[/b] – Thanks for pointing out that culture union problem, but it seems it was fixed by devs, splitting the union into hellenic and "west oghuz" unions, before I got to it. Thanks anyway.
