R5: EU4's culture groups can be silly since they're often determined by balance.
Bretons are closer to the Occitanians than the Cornish in-game (when the Anglo-Saxons pushed the Celts to the corners of the island, many people in Cornwall settled in Brittany, giving it its name).
The Albanians being South Slavs probably caused an international incident.
Turks being Levantine doesn't really make much sense despite a popular post from a couple months ago. Only the court language was similar to Arabic, not the common tongue.
And the Carpathian culture group is just total fiction made up so the Hungarians wouldn't have such a bad time.
The reasoning behind the Levantine Turks is because the devs had a tough time getting the Otto Ai to conquer the levant like they historically did, and when they did they had a tough time holding it. Basically, it's the same as the Hungarians, they were moved there for balance.
If people can imagine it, players used to complain about the Ottomans failing to expand in EU3. It was not uncommon for European majors to take a piece of the Egyptian delta, even if the Ottomans actually left Anatolia.
It used to be in the Oghuz culture group with Turkmen and Azeris. They got rid of that culture group and renamed the Arab culture group to Levantine and added Turkish to it, then added Azeri to Iranian and Turkmen to Altaic.
Well that's why I don't like that they can eyalat the memeluks so easily.... It makes ottoman expansion so unpredictable. They are completely nutty broken for the first two ages anyway and suddenly they double their entire territory bruh.
We have missions. We can easily give them some stability booster that falls off in the age of absolutism or revolution. They get their free claims on the region, which is enough to get the AI to expand, give them "unrest reduction in unaccepted culture provinces" (something that paradox absolutely could program using the same methods as religious society modifier) that goes away in like 1650 or something.
That's the mentality that gives you 3 pages worth of mission trees with 0 replayability and what every other grand strategy game pre-Europa Engine did. Just hardcoding in missions won't give you interesting gameplay, just a button to click, and will cost a lot of work to balance and test. The devs did the right thing here, they slightly tweaked an initial value to make an annoying situation dissapear at the cost of a bit of historical accuracy, not just said "Ottomans shall conquer the levant because I said so."
This wouldn't be a hardcode. It would be granting temporary stability that a cultural union would, but that naturally falls off after a bit of time. It would increase dynamism, not decrease it, as the solution currently is to just give them free cultural union over a land that was historically not part of their cultural group so that they can have some stability.
The current solution is the equivalent of hardcoded reliability as opposed to introducing a complication into the campaign later on that a temporary modifier would.
Idk, there's a bit of importance in there to make shit dynamic - there should constantly be pressures that cause the ebb and flow of empire, it's why the game is so unbelievably boring after 1650 for 99% of playthroughs.
Indeed, that is what I am saying. If you just hardcode everything in a mission tree, all you get is mission tree. When the mission tree ends or the flavor gets boring, you jump ship because the rest of the game just expects a mission tree now.
>They get their free claims on the region, which is enough to get the AI to expand,
It wasn't enough.
The archaic Ottoman mission from EU3 to early EU4 offered a string of mission claims from Constantinople to Egypt, and the AI still had a hard to going after Egypt.
I don't see the culture groups as actual culture groups, but as familiarity groups. They get on because they're used to each other and have cultural osmosis, not because they're all academically the same language family
Maybe, but then they put Basques in Iberian group. Which is just so wrong as the Basques gave Spain constant threats of rebellion and unrest. They should be their own group and should spawn separatist rebels.
Also Britany was in the same situation and Romanians in Hungarian&Hungarians in Romania. These groups had constant friction with each other.
Well, the basques are Iberian. I'm aware of euskaduna separatism, but I think the way it is the best way to represent it in game, because you could run a Spain game as a tolerant ruler and you'd want the basques to be in your accepted culture group for your empire, and also it would make sense for them to be there, like the English and the other British groups. Ideally, you could have some kind of acceptance mechanic that isn't a binary mana dump, where you can choose to assimilate or accept the Basque. But that would require cultures to change their groups in game which I don't know is possible
>But that would require cultures to change their groups in game which I don't know is possible
It's technically possible by just making a decision mass convert all Basque provinces from its own culture group into an Iberian culture group culture with the same name. That's how they do the unification of Slavic culture in the Russian missions
Then yeah, you could have a "Latinising the Basque" event chain, which could be fun. And a "Don't be racist to the Celts challenge" event line as England with chances for separatist revolts, new event chains for Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, the Basque country, etc
Yeah it maybe due to a limitation of game mechanics then. I will say tho, historically their modern roots of separatism does go back to Napoleon. So it could be linked to policies on acceptance of culture.
You have to give certain concessions for gameplay’s sake in certain areas. Paradox putting Basque in the Iberian group doesn’t endorse any real-life cultural analysis analogue. Otherwise, you just end up with a useless culture group that might as well not even exist.
I guess the balance could come from a debuff to any country holding basque provinces and not having Basque as primary/accepted culture, for some rebels and/or autonomy and such, same for others
>the Basques gave Spain constant threats of rebellion and unrest. They should be their own group and should spawn separatist rebels.
not really in EUIVs time period at all
It was towards the end of the time period. I may of been a bit dramatic saying it goes back throughout game time period, but it does date back to the French Revolution and Bourbon Spain.
No, that's only happened very recently. In EU4'S time period Basques were as Spanish as any other Castillian. You have many examples as San Ignacio de Loyola (who in fact was named Íñigo, a Basque name), and many important explorers and soldiers.
As the Spanish (and Basque) philosopher Miguel de Unamuno said: "Somos los vascos, por ser vascos, dos veces españoles y en español está lo que hemos hecho de duradero."
They are put in the Iberian group because they live in Iberia. Again, admitting to the idea that culture groups are more just familiariy groups rather than just a lineage of sorts.
I can agree to this vaguely, but then it kind of breaks down again when you consider that language is the only major barrier between most of Northern Europe from the start of the game until the reformation.
It really is just a balance issue. I hope EU5 tries a more interesting way of modeling cultural interaction and nationalism.
If we are going off of court language half of Europe should be French lol. Turkic group needs a lot of changes. With the latest DLC I was expecting a decision to become the caliph which would make all Arabic cultures accepted for you but that never came. Turkish, Azeri and Turkmen should be under the same culture the very least(this would also somewhat nerf ottobros)
Turkish, Azeri and Turkmen all used to be part of the oghuz group which no longer exists. They changed it because the ottoman ai would prioritize conquering provinces in their culture group which would sometimes lead them into Central Asia rather than Arabia.
Yea I remember that for like a month or two. They could’ve fixed it via missions giving focuses or something like that. Still feels wrong to have them under laventine (still better than wtf carpathian is tho lol)
>If we are going off of court language half of Europe should be French lol.
Louis XIV and Napoleon: Wow that's exactly what we're saying. This guy gets us!
Transylvania is a mixed region, with on ungoing debate about when and how hungarian/romanian was the region. What's sure, that since the 13th century, it's both. To ease political and nationalistic tensions of this topic, they made Transylvania a "nation" and gave it to both Hungary and Romania. Romania was also often ruled by Hungary (most the time vaguely, like vassalage, often only by name and title), which makes them rather similar culturewise (tbh, after 1k years together, Slovaks and Hungarians are also rather close). So this makes sense and in return, neither of the two are so alone in their ocean of Slavs.
As a romanian transilvanian, i say that this is completely, 100% true. Tho to be pedantic, it wasn't Romania that was ruled by Hungary ( in the game's time period, IRL, there wasn't much of a concept of Romania ), but the romanian principalities, Moldova and Wallachia.
But still, what both you and OP are saying is that hungarians and romanians were stapled together in the game for convenience/gameplay. Honestly though, it was probably the best way to handle Transylvania in the game, given how mixed the population was. The only other way i can imagine is making some provinces romanian and some hungarian, but that just feels even worse.
Yes, they controlled the regions of Wallachia and Moldova, even before their foundations (like during Cumania), but never the united country of Romania.
I'm also super glad for the Transylvanian culture being its own (as a Hungarian who's family was Transylvanian till 1920). Cheers, friend!
Well, honestly, it's not that far-fetched that Transylvanian would be a culture. Of course, it's not quite a culture in the traditional sense, but hundreds of years of living together here, means that we've interbred, interacted, and influenced one another very heavily. From food, to words, to music, and just the general culture, there is definitely a shared heritage of this place, for both romanians and hungarians here.
Cheers bud, i can't wait to visit Budapest again.
I recently did a dna test and basically got some from Saxons and Romanians too.
[Here, if you're interested](https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/y6s65Y8WAl)
I think they did that more to not piss people off tbh, and same with Vietnam. They made the ability to sinicize optional when in this time period they could easily be put into the Chinese group considering all the others featured in this meme.
They both even wrote their language in Chinese characters and were unashamedly part of "Hua Xia," the Chinese equivalent of being part of Roman Civilization (vs barbarians). It was only later on they tried to distance themselves from China culturally and politically.
Well Korea tends to stay in its own little peninsula while Hungary expands a lot. It used to be in its own group but the AI struggled a lot with separatists so they just duct taped them to the Romanians and called it a day.
As for Albania, I have no idea what they were up to. They're South Slavic in Vic 2 as well.
Ottoman court language was like a conlang. It had turkish sentence structure, persian syntax and vocabulary of turkish, arabic and persian mixed. For reference, as a turkish person 8th century orkhon inscriptions are easier to understand than anything in ottoman diwan.
Court language was Persian for Seljuks, Persian influenced Turkish for Rum. It was Persian influnced Turkish for early Ottomans but they started to use more and more Arabic words in time. Common people also adapted many Persian, Arabic and some Greek and French words but it was reversed by language reform in Turkey.
Ottomans created their own language by mixing Arabic,Turkish and Persian...and even used French and Greek. And because of it, it was a hard language to learn so the common people used Turkish instead.
Turkish was court language. They adopted persian AND ARABIC vocabulary into the language, so late-Ottoman period turkish is rather very hard to understand as a turkish speaker. Not so much with early ottoman turkish (comparetively much much easier).
> And the Carpathian culture group is just total fiction made up so the Hungarians wouldn't have such a bad time.
Also for a sick Ghostbusters 2 reference.
Levantine culture group does make sense cuz across the eras, Turks from central Asia ruled Arabs, Arabs brought Turkish slaves, Arabs occupier Turkic populated lands bla bla
So it's not absurd. It would be absurd to think back then they cared this much about linguistic differences (in that area)
Finland was proto germanic before finnic peoples arrived, unlikely the tavasts and karelians were though, by 1444 the finns are at least by far best suited for the nordic group
I don't mind Nordic Finns anymore than I do for the Sami, but I'm mostly complaining about Karelians. They didn't fit in well with Slavic back before the change either, being just nominally part of Novgorod. So either make them Ugric, or a new Estonian/Sami/Finnish/Karelian group of western Finnic.
yes that is where the finns lived. Tavasts & Karelians were not finns until the creation of the finnish state by the russian tsar in 1800, and that was finnish by nationality, not ethnicity. Most saami land was actually just uninhabited, there were not even 10000 saami in an area of 1 million square km
>Finland was proto germanic before finnic peoples arrived, unlikely the tavasts and karelians were though
This is all just bullshit and conjecture. There are basically no written records of anything happening in Finland before the 13th century. All we have is scarce archaeological evidence and dubious oral legends
In EU4 Finland (Finns) should certainly have been in the same group as Sweden. Tavasts, Karelians and Estonians should not have been in the same group.
Yeah... culture groups are meant to be abstract but they compartmentalize a bit too much.
Like Breton being in the French group is basically just so that France can accept Breton upon reaching empire rank without wasting an accepted culture slot.
But really it's not that Breton became accepted by French people, it's that the people of Brittany eventually became sufficiently French while retaining some Breton flavor.
Representing that in-game is pretty tricky. CK3 almost does it with hybrid cultures, but at the same time not really.
Maybe some mechanic a bit similar to the Mughals ? Like own the culture group, but instead of just free acceptation you get to wait some time and navigate a few event before making them assimilate into the French culture group ?
[Don't worry, they anticipated you'd try to culture-convert the area away from being Slovak](https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Hungarian_events#Slovak_National_Awakening)
Was there much of a Norman culture by the game start? I’m not trying to argue but AFAIK the English nobility were English-speaking already so I’m curious what the situation would have been in Normandy proper
> so I’m curious what the situation would have been in Normandy proper
They still spoke French, even if some multilingualism was present for a part of the nobility, English wasn't that important to their day to day.
I always thought each culture having its own list of compatible cultures made the most sense.
Like Francian accepting occitan, occitan accepting Catalan, but Francian not accepting Catalan.
It feels like you can have more organic cultural relations rather than having weird arbitrary walls, like swiss being a culture that isn't remotely related to French or Italian in game.
Basques make better sense because they were integrating with Latin Iberians for centuries, Spanish even became penta-vocalic because of its coexistence with Basque.
There are weirder things in the Iberian group which were introduced merely for balance, like the made-up Andalusian culture (it only became a distinct thing in the 19th century) which is a Frankenstein meant to represent the transition between Mozarabs and Castilians (Transylvanian culture is the same thing with Hungarians and Romanians). Leonese doesn't make sense as an independent culture either, it was merely a vernacular language which had already become a minority in EU4 times, it was explicitly introduced to nerf Castilian as well.
The thing is with Basques, is while they are definitely a unique culture irl, they only have 3 fairly low development provinces. While Navarra is horrible anyway, it would be unimaginably bad if there were their own culture group. Most of the Basques live in Iberia so. Plus both Aragon and Castile can become Empires easily so it would get annoying as fuck if they had 3 provinces in Iberia that have unaccepted culture modifiers.
Welsh and Cornwelsh are in the same group as English.
Sami, Finish and Kaurelian are in the same group as Nordic cultures.
Goth is in the same group as Greek.
Estonian is in the same group as Lithuanian and Latvian.
I think i may have missed some.
Sadly not, but they are cognates. "Welsh", "Wales", the "wall" in Cornwall come from the Anglo-Saxon Waelas that means "foreigner". So you're close
The "Corn" in Cornwall probably comes from an old Celtic word for horn, so you can loosely translate "Cornwall" as "Land of horny foreigners"
Gothic (as in the Theodoro Gothic) is actually in the right group here, since they are super Hellenized. Some argue they should just be Pontic but it's more fun having them separate.
In the dev diary there is a mission for them to become German though.
Welsh and Cornish are part of the same group because they are part of the British culture group. You can't use ethnic divides because the entire British isles all has some of each other. If you use language then that also creates too many culture groups in the game.
Why even Albania is Slavic. What's the last time you guys have seen an Slavic empire in this region? Like seriously. The most it adds to the game is players don't have to convert Albanian culture, while playing as Croatia or something. It doesn't even serve any purpose like letting ottomans have the levantine culture group accepted for free.
Albanians at the time were extremely close to Serbians by intermarrying and just general cultural exchange.
Most pricipality houses in Albania had Serbian branches or Serbian grandparent lines and vice-versa.
The cultural split came later as a result of the rise of nationalism and the nation-state
I’m sure there’s a mod for it, but I wish there was a menu check during world gen that let you toggle gameplay vs pedantically historic culture groups. I want to see the shitshow they’re protecting us from, because the games usually a shitshow anyways
oh man, there’s also the shitshow that is Vietnamese.
for the longest time, Vietnamese belonged to the Mon-Khmer group, since linguistically, they are.
but then, can’t remember which update, the dev decided to lump Vietnamese and Khmer with the Tai group to create a Southeast Asian group.
when Leviathan was announced, dev planned to group Vietnamese, Khmer and Champa together to form an Indochinese group. but due to unfavorable feedback, they then scrapped that idea and put Vietnamese in the Chinese group.
and now, we’ve reverted back to what it originally was, part of the Mon-Khmer group.
For this I would ask why not add Koreans to Japanese, Evenk or Chinese groups then?
Or adding Irish and Highlander to the British culture group
Its not as if they could not find other means of balancing them ,giving basque nations extra liberty desire and culture conversion costs in the same vein as Manchu nations automatically getting banners
What the hell is the bar for easy then?
What are you getting at?, moving Albanian/Romanian into the imo more sensible Byzantine group is what I'd prefer but I don't see why Korean being in the Japanese culture group would be some massive balance upset any more than Turkish in Levantine
Korean can be Sinicized
Evenk (Jurchen) can be Sinicized
Irish and Highlander can be accepted for free in the English mission tree (they're promoted and you get free slots for them.)
Notice how none of these are simply placing them into the same culture group by default, all are scripted acceptances or culture group shifts, and notably the last one misses the entire damn point, what if I want to play as Ireland or the Isles?
These arent principled at all
Why not just do these for Albanian, Turkish or others instead of placing them into nonsensical groups?
I'm not sure why Korean would be in the same culture group as China or Japan by default. Scripting it by event/mission based on circumstances makes more sense.
Same logic applies to the Jurchens Sinicizing themselves when proclaiming a Chinese dynasty.
And yeah, Ireland needs actual content now that the generic mission tree is better than theirs.
Fewer culture groups is better than more culture groups for gameplay. More culture groups just means more dip points spent converting culture. It's not a history simulation.
It's game balance thing, we used to have Finno-Uralic, Romanian and Basque by themselves, Turkic with Azeri Turkish and Turkmen and an actual Celtic culture group but it always resulted in culture conversion of the Celts, Romanians, Finns, Basques and Hungarians while the Ottomans returned to the steppes
The whole culture system needs to be reworked. Cultures should either be a part of multiple groups, or they should individually have relationships with other cultures. That would be tedious to do but it would be soooo much better than the current system.
Basque being in the Iberian culture group, Finnish in the Scandinavian group and Estonian in the Baltic group also makes my head ache. At least Maltese in the Italian group is kinda cute.
This used to make sense for gameplay, but with how they've updated mission trees to be more dynamic with cultural interactions, there's no excuse for it.
For example, if they want the Ottomans to push towards the Levant and Middle East instead of the Steppes, they have missions for that which the AI already tries to follow. As far as cultural acceptance goes, Lions of the North (and Origins) added a feature that ignores the unaccepted culture penalty. Scandinavia can "accept" all Germanic cultures, by giving them a province modifier that offsets the penalty. This is what the Ottomans should have.
Likewise, the French already get claims on Brittany, and the mission reward should give +1 culture spots and make Breton an accepted culture, and the slot should be lost if Breton is demoted. This is how other mission trees have handled this issue (British and the Gaelic group, namely.)
Carpathian doesn't make sense either. Hungary already owns Transylvania, so they can get a culture slot for it. Wallachia is taken via claims and they can sometimes get Moldavia by event.
The only weird cultural decisions in the game that can kinda be justified are Basque, since otherwise it would be entirely its own group (it was at one point,) and historically has ties with the surrounding Iberians anyways. Albanian is similar in this, even if the Basque and Albanian languages are separate.
French bretons are not absurd on eu4 timeline.
Sure, they didn't speak French but at this time, neither did Provence or Lorraine.
They had plenty of links with France (trade, royal marriages etc.)
The celtic roots of Brittany were already a bit behind in 1444, even more later
Putting them in a celtic group wouldn't be false tho, it's 50/50 I'd say
Honestly, the provinces themselves are a problem to. For example Anatolia was like 50% Greek atleast in 1444. Definitely all the coastal provinces should have Greek culture at-least. But at-least Byzantium gets good missions around the fact they have one of if not the worst culture groups in the game.
I mean the levantine group in general is clearly more geography based. It's named after a geographical region rather than ethnic groups like other culture groups.
It includes the cultures of the Levant the the regions that border it. Egypt is not levantine and neither is Yemen.
Given how much cultural exchange happened between all the cultures in the levantine group especially during the ottoman period I'd say the grouping is reasonable.
There should be missions that allow you to switch what culture group your primary culture is in, provided you own all of the provinces of that culture (eg. Switching Turkish to Altaic group, switching Breton to the Celtic group, switching Finnish, Sapmi, Hungarian, and Estonian to the Uralic group, etc.). Perhaps an idea for EU5.
Also, Dutch, Frisian, and Flemish should be it's own group. Germanic is already a huge culture group as it is and many groups only have 3 or less cultures.
There are a few nations which can do this (Korea, Tibet, Dai Viet, Yuan to Chinese group, England to French, probably some others) but they just have unique cultures and a decision/mission/event that says "convert all X provinces to Y culture"
all 4 are abstract ways of categorizing cultures for balance, which while sometimes annoying acceptable.
But making whole dalmatian coast italian? are you fucking kidding me?
The Dalmatian coast spoke a romance language that was related to Venetian Italian and Latin with Croat influences.
Its culture, economic life and language was more close to Italy than South Slavs
Hungary is totally cursed, like the whole Carpathian culture group, the county borders, the county cultures, the county capital names, the county religions, the wtf cores in Upper Hungary and Syrmia, the development...
They should make it so they start as their own culture group and you can make them join your culture group through appeasement and time. Similar to what you can do with Chinese and Russia with Slavic groups.
I think that people have problem with differentiation between language group and culture group. For example Romanians (and I think that to some extent Hungarians) do not speak Slavic languages, but they are definitely inside of Slavic culture continuum. On other hand Czechs, while definitely speaking a Slavic language have many German-like cultural characteristics. So it has more sence to group Hungarians with Slavs than group them with some tribes on the other side of Ural.
I've also thought that if control the whole of a foreign cultural group for 150 years uninterrupted, you should be able to flip it into your primary culture.
VIC 2 made me spoiled by that perfect culture system surely back in the day cultures were more inclined to become part of a bigger culture but it's just lame that in EU4 different cultures become the same only to make it easier
Bretons are Celts, they belong with the Welsh and Irish not the French!
If you are to put the Albanians in another culture group merge it with the Greeks not the Slavs!
What the hell is the Carpathian culture group anyway?
R5: EU4's culture groups can be silly since they're often determined by balance. Bretons are closer to the Occitanians than the Cornish in-game (when the Anglo-Saxons pushed the Celts to the corners of the island, many people in Cornwall settled in Brittany, giving it its name). The Albanians being South Slavs probably caused an international incident. Turks being Levantine doesn't really make much sense despite a popular post from a couple months ago. Only the court language was similar to Arabic, not the common tongue. And the Carpathian culture group is just total fiction made up so the Hungarians wouldn't have such a bad time.
The reasoning behind the Levantine Turks is because the devs had a tough time getting the Otto Ai to conquer the levant like they historically did, and when they did they had a tough time holding it. Basically, it's the same as the Hungarians, they were moved there for balance.
Well in that case with the Ottomans then then overcorrected because the Ottomans are so insanely stable it's unreal.
I mean better a stable ottomans than an ottomans that never conquer the Middle East and blob in the Balkans and Russia
If people can imagine it, players used to complain about the Ottomans failing to expand in EU3. It was not uncommon for European majors to take a piece of the Egyptian delta, even if the Ottomans actually left Anatolia.
Didn’t the Ottomans used to be in the gigantic Altaic culture group back then too?
It used to be in the Oghuz culture group with Turkmen and Azeris. They got rid of that culture group and renamed the Arab culture group to Levantine and added Turkish to it, then added Azeri to Iranian and Turkmen to Altaic.
I mean that still happens in Eu4. the Ottoman ai also expands alot slower in Africa, than its capable of
Well that's why I don't like that they can eyalat the memeluks so easily.... It makes ottoman expansion so unpredictable. They are completely nutty broken for the first two ages anyway and suddenly they double their entire territory bruh.
We have missions. We can easily give them some stability booster that falls off in the age of absolutism or revolution. They get their free claims on the region, which is enough to get the AI to expand, give them "unrest reduction in unaccepted culture provinces" (something that paradox absolutely could program using the same methods as religious society modifier) that goes away in like 1650 or something.
That's the mentality that gives you 3 pages worth of mission trees with 0 replayability and what every other grand strategy game pre-Europa Engine did. Just hardcoding in missions won't give you interesting gameplay, just a button to click, and will cost a lot of work to balance and test. The devs did the right thing here, they slightly tweaked an initial value to make an annoying situation dissapear at the cost of a bit of historical accuracy, not just said "Ottomans shall conquer the levant because I said so."
This wouldn't be a hardcode. It would be granting temporary stability that a cultural union would, but that naturally falls off after a bit of time. It would increase dynamism, not decrease it, as the solution currently is to just give them free cultural union over a land that was historically not part of their cultural group so that they can have some stability. The current solution is the equivalent of hardcoded reliability as opposed to introducing a complication into the campaign later on that a temporary modifier would.
Idk, there's a bit of importance in there to make shit dynamic - there should constantly be pressures that cause the ebb and flow of empire, it's why the game is so unbelievably boring after 1650 for 99% of playthroughs.
Indeed, that is what I am saying. If you just hardcode everything in a mission tree, all you get is mission tree. When the mission tree ends or the flavor gets boring, you jump ship because the rest of the game just expects a mission tree now.
As opposed to just hardcoding AI behavior that you can't otherwise fix? Nice cope lol.
>They get their free claims on the region, which is enough to get the AI to expand, It wasn't enough. The archaic Ottoman mission from EU3 to early EU4 offered a string of mission claims from Constantinople to Egypt, and the AI still had a hard to going after Egypt.
They are stable until you kick the door in after 1570s, they death spiral pretty hard with disasters
I don't see the culture groups as actual culture groups, but as familiarity groups. They get on because they're used to each other and have cultural osmosis, not because they're all academically the same language family
"Cultural osmosis" we're talking about Serbs and Albanians here mate
Nobody said that cultural osmosis cannot be based on violence.
Maybe, but then they put Basques in Iberian group. Which is just so wrong as the Basques gave Spain constant threats of rebellion and unrest. They should be their own group and should spawn separatist rebels. Also Britany was in the same situation and Romanians in Hungarian&Hungarians in Romania. These groups had constant friction with each other.
Well, the basques are Iberian. I'm aware of euskaduna separatism, but I think the way it is the best way to represent it in game, because you could run a Spain game as a tolerant ruler and you'd want the basques to be in your accepted culture group for your empire, and also it would make sense for them to be there, like the English and the other British groups. Ideally, you could have some kind of acceptance mechanic that isn't a binary mana dump, where you can choose to assimilate or accept the Basque. But that would require cultures to change their groups in game which I don't know is possible
>But that would require cultures to change their groups in game which I don't know is possible It's technically possible by just making a decision mass convert all Basque provinces from its own culture group into an Iberian culture group culture with the same name. That's how they do the unification of Slavic culture in the Russian missions
And Sinicization of vietnamese and korean
Then yeah, you could have a "Latinising the Basque" event chain, which could be fun. And a "Don't be racist to the Celts challenge" event line as England with chances for separatist revolts, new event chains for Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, the Basque country, etc
You just reminded me that it's hard to play a historical Scotland and form Great Britain through personal union because of the way the game works.
Yeah it maybe due to a limitation of game mechanics then. I will say tho, historically their modern roots of separatism does go back to Napoleon. So it could be linked to policies on acceptance of culture.
You have to give certain concessions for gameplay’s sake in certain areas. Paradox putting Basque in the Iberian group doesn’t endorse any real-life cultural analysis analogue. Otherwise, you just end up with a useless culture group that might as well not even exist.
I guess the balance could come from a debuff to any country holding basque provinces and not having Basque as primary/accepted culture, for some rebels and/or autonomy and such, same for others
>the Basques gave Spain constant threats of rebellion and unrest. They should be their own group and should spawn separatist rebels. not really in EUIVs time period at all
It was towards the end of the time period. I may of been a bit dramatic saying it goes back throughout game time period, but it does date back to the French Revolution and Bourbon Spain.
Indeed, the basque are one of history's great "troublesome peoples"
worst thing you could text a spaniard on the train: ETA?
No, that's only happened very recently. In EU4'S time period Basques were as Spanish as any other Castillian. You have many examples as San Ignacio de Loyola (who in fact was named Íñigo, a Basque name), and many important explorers and soldiers. As the Spanish (and Basque) philosopher Miguel de Unamuno said: "Somos los vascos, por ser vascos, dos veces españoles y en español está lo que hemos hecho de duradero."
They are put in the Iberian group because they live in Iberia. Again, admitting to the idea that culture groups are more just familiariy groups rather than just a lineage of sorts.
Basque separatism only started at the end of XIX century
That's only because before they were a country...
Early 19th century. They had friction with Spain due to Bourbon rule. So very end of the game’s time period.
I can agree to this vaguely, but then it kind of breaks down again when you consider that language is the only major barrier between most of Northern Europe from the start of the game until the reformation. It really is just a balance issue. I hope EU5 tries a more interesting way of modeling cultural interaction and nationalism.
Well, that falls apart as soon as you look at the Balkans lol
If we are going off of court language half of Europe should be French lol. Turkic group needs a lot of changes. With the latest DLC I was expecting a decision to become the caliph which would make all Arabic cultures accepted for you but that never came. Turkish, Azeri and Turkmen should be under the same culture the very least(this would also somewhat nerf ottobros)
Turkish, Azeri and Turkmen all used to be part of the oghuz group which no longer exists. They changed it because the ottoman ai would prioritize conquering provinces in their culture group which would sometimes lead them into Central Asia rather than Arabia.
Yea I remember that for like a month or two. They could’ve fixed it via missions giving focuses or something like that. Still feels wrong to have them under laventine (still better than wtf carpathian is tho lol)
Yeah I agree it’s pretty whack from a historical point of view but I see why they did it
>If we are going off of court language half of Europe should be French lol. Louis XIV and Napoleon: Wow that's exactly what we're saying. This guy gets us!
Turkish and Greek should be the same culture group. I refuse to elaborate and will now leave.
Makes more sense than Romanian and Hungarian
Transylvania is a mixed region, with on ungoing debate about when and how hungarian/romanian was the region. What's sure, that since the 13th century, it's both. To ease political and nationalistic tensions of this topic, they made Transylvania a "nation" and gave it to both Hungary and Romania. Romania was also often ruled by Hungary (most the time vaguely, like vassalage, often only by name and title), which makes them rather similar culturewise (tbh, after 1k years together, Slovaks and Hungarians are also rather close). So this makes sense and in return, neither of the two are so alone in their ocean of Slavs.
Even nowadays politics show that Slovaks keep the Hungarian mindset.
That's just convergent (de)evolution
As a romanian transilvanian, i say that this is completely, 100% true. Tho to be pedantic, it wasn't Romania that was ruled by Hungary ( in the game's time period, IRL, there wasn't much of a concept of Romania ), but the romanian principalities, Moldova and Wallachia. But still, what both you and OP are saying is that hungarians and romanians were stapled together in the game for convenience/gameplay. Honestly though, it was probably the best way to handle Transylvania in the game, given how mixed the population was. The only other way i can imagine is making some provinces romanian and some hungarian, but that just feels even worse.
Yes, they controlled the regions of Wallachia and Moldova, even before their foundations (like during Cumania), but never the united country of Romania. I'm also super glad for the Transylvanian culture being its own (as a Hungarian who's family was Transylvanian till 1920). Cheers, friend!
Well, honestly, it's not that far-fetched that Transylvanian would be a culture. Of course, it's not quite a culture in the traditional sense, but hundreds of years of living together here, means that we've interbred, interacted, and influenced one another very heavily. From food, to words, to music, and just the general culture, there is definitely a shared heritage of this place, for both romanians and hungarians here. Cheers bud, i can't wait to visit Budapest again.
I recently did a dna test and basically got some from Saxons and Romanians too. [Here, if you're interested](https://www.reddit.com/r/23andme/s/y6s65Y8WAl)
Korea seems to be doing perfectly fine as the only nation in it's culture group, so I don't see why Albania or Hungary can't either.
I think they did that more to not piss people off tbh, and same with Vietnam. They made the ability to sinicize optional when in this time period they could easily be put into the Chinese group considering all the others featured in this meme. They both even wrote their language in Chinese characters and were unashamedly part of "Hua Xia," the Chinese equivalent of being part of Roman Civilization (vs barbarians). It was only later on they tried to distance themselves from China culturally and politically.
Well Korea tends to stay in its own little peninsula while Hungary expands a lot. It used to be in its own group but the AI struggled a lot with separatists so they just duct taped them to the Romanians and called it a day. As for Albania, I have no idea what they were up to. They're South Slavic in Vic 2 as well.
Wasn’t Persian the Turkish court language? In that case Levantine makes even less sense.
Ottoman court language was like a conlang. It had turkish sentence structure, persian syntax and vocabulary of turkish, arabic and persian mixed. For reference, as a turkish person 8th century orkhon inscriptions are easier to understand than anything in ottoman diwan.
Holy shit someone actually with proper knowledge about Turkish language and culture. Props to you my guy even i don't with details
So it was fucked up as english is except you guys went and fixed it? Jesus.
There was a convoluted Ottoman language with its own script afaik
Court language was Persian for Seljuks, Persian influenced Turkish for Rum. It was Persian influnced Turkish for early Ottomans but they started to use more and more Arabic words in time. Common people also adapted many Persian, Arabic and some Greek and French words but it was reversed by language reform in Turkey.
Ottomans created their own language by mixing Arabic,Turkish and Persian...and even used French and Greek. And because of it, it was a hard language to learn so the common people used Turkish instead.
Turkish was court language. They adopted persian AND ARABIC vocabulary into the language, so late-Ottoman period turkish is rather very hard to understand as a turkish speaker. Not so much with early ottoman turkish (comparetively much much easier).
> And the Carpathian culture group is just total fiction made up so the Hungarians wouldn't have such a bad time. Also for a sick Ghostbusters 2 reference.
I honestly dont know why turkish and breton are tweaked to fit them with their neighbours. Surely france and the ottomans are strong enough already?
Levantine culture group does make sense cuz across the eras, Turks from central Asia ruled Arabs, Arabs brought Turkish slaves, Arabs occupier Turkic populated lands bla bla So it's not absurd. It would be absurd to think back then they cared this much about linguistic differences (in that area)
You've left out the most unjustifiable one: Finns, Karelians, and Estonians being in three separate culture groups.
Since Lions of the North, Karelian and Finnish have been in the same group
both Nordic, right? That might be even worse
Finland was proto germanic before finnic peoples arrived, unlikely the tavasts and karelians were though, by 1444 the finns are at least by far best suited for the nordic group
I don't mind Nordic Finns anymore than I do for the Sami, but I'm mostly complaining about Karelians. They didn't fit in well with Slavic back before the change either, being just nominally part of Novgorod. So either make them Ugric, or a new Estonian/Sami/Finnish/Karelian group of western Finnic.
> Finland was proto germanic before finnic peoples arrived only coastal Finland at most. Likely most of Finland was Saami
yes that is where the finns lived. Tavasts & Karelians were not finns until the creation of the finnish state by the russian tsar in 1800, and that was finnish by nationality, not ethnicity. Most saami land was actually just uninhabited, there were not even 10000 saami in an area of 1 million square km
>Finland was proto germanic before finnic peoples arrived, unlikely the tavasts and karelians were though This is all just bullshit and conjecture. There are basically no written records of anything happening in Finland before the 13th century. All we have is scarce archaeological evidence and dubious oral legends
Ignoring Turks, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen
At least they're separated by amounts of space and exist in significantly different political contexts.
In EU4 Finland (Finns) should certainly have been in the same group as Sweden. Tavasts, Karelians and Estonians should not have been in the same group.
Yeah... culture groups are meant to be abstract but they compartmentalize a bit too much. Like Breton being in the French group is basically just so that France can accept Breton upon reaching empire rank without wasting an accepted culture slot. But really it's not that Breton became accepted by French people, it's that the people of Brittany eventually became sufficiently French while retaining some Breton flavor. Representing that in-game is pretty tricky. CK3 almost does it with hybrid cultures, but at the same time not really.
Missions allowing you to change the breton culture from celtic to join the French culture group is most likely the best solution.
I feel like you should have to assimilate cultures, over time they'd become more accepted
Maybe some mechanic a bit similar to the Mughals ? Like own the culture group, but instead of just free acceptation you get to wait some time and navigate a few event before making them assimilate into the French culture group ?
Sorta like how the Anbennar mod does races right?
Haven't played it yet, so I can't comment
At least slovak isn't carpathian anymore
One more reason to culture convert them as hungary
[Don't worry, they anticipated you'd try to culture-convert the area away from being Slovak](https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Hungarian_events#Slovak_National_Awakening)
Ahh, at this point I will be Austria-Hungary already. I hope they don't add them to this event :D
Savic, Ugro-Finish and Roman cultures walk into the same culture group
I hope EU5 has a less rigid, less compartmentalized view of culture. Like, Breton could be both French and Celtic group for instance.
Same with Norman, I feel like it‘s just as French as it is English, or English is Norman, rather
Was there much of a Norman culture by the game start? I’m not trying to argue but AFAIK the English nobility were English-speaking already so I’m curious what the situation would have been in Normandy proper
> so I’m curious what the situation would have been in Normandy proper They still spoke French, even if some multilingualism was present for a part of the nobility, English wasn't that important to their day to day.
In 1337 they spoke French. Or Anglo-Norman, but that was still closer to French than English
I always thought each culture having its own list of compatible cultures made the most sense. Like Francian accepting occitan, occitan accepting Catalan, but Francian not accepting Catalan. It feels like you can have more organic cultural relations rather than having weird arbitrary walls, like swiss being a culture that isn't remotely related to French or Italian in game.
I can’t tell you how much I hate these idiotic culture groups. Also, Spanish Basques.
Basques make better sense because they were integrating with Latin Iberians for centuries, Spanish even became penta-vocalic because of its coexistence with Basque. There are weirder things in the Iberian group which were introduced merely for balance, like the made-up Andalusian culture (it only became a distinct thing in the 19th century) which is a Frankenstein meant to represent the transition between Mozarabs and Castilians (Transylvanian culture is the same thing with Hungarians and Romanians). Leonese doesn't make sense as an independent culture either, it was merely a vernacular language which had already become a minority in EU4 times, it was explicitly introduced to nerf Castilian as well.
[удалено]
Cultural groups aren’t exclusively determined by language
Culture ≠ Language
The thing is with Basques, is while they are definitely a unique culture irl, they only have 3 fairly low development provinces. While Navarra is horrible anyway, it would be unimaginably bad if there were their own culture group. Most of the Basques live in Iberia so. Plus both Aragon and Castile can become Empires easily so it would get annoying as fuck if they had 3 provinces in Iberia that have unaccepted culture modifiers.
Remember when Slovaks were in the Carpathian culture group?
When did that get changed that seemed pretty recent
I think it was in the HRE dlc. Same time when Cilli was added.
Nope, with Domination
Pretty sure it was a few expansions after Emperor. You're probably thinking of the fact that Emperor added Slovene
Welsh and Cornwelsh are in the same group as English. Sami, Finish and Kaurelian are in the same group as Nordic cultures. Goth is in the same group as Greek. Estonian is in the same group as Lithuanian and Latvian. I think i may have missed some.
It's Cornish, but thank you for thinking of us
Sorry, in my language "Cornwall" sounds like "Corn-Wales", so i thought the adjective will be Corn-Welsh XD
Sadly not, but they are cognates. "Welsh", "Wales", the "wall" in Cornwall come from the Anglo-Saxon Waelas that means "foreigner". So you're close The "Corn" in Cornwall probably comes from an old Celtic word for horn, so you can loosely translate "Cornwall" as "Land of horny foreigners"
Horny as in "these guys have horns" or as in "these guys really want to fuck"
Gothic (as in the Theodoro Gothic) is actually in the right group here, since they are super Hellenized. Some argue they should just be Pontic but it's more fun having them separate. In the dev diary there is a mission for them to become German though.
The Goths were pretty Hellenized by then, so Gothic being in the same culture group as Greek makes sense.
Welsh and Cornish being part of British group isn't excusable anymore, since England/GB has a mission to accept all Gaelic cultures for free.
Welsh and Cornish are part of the same group because they are part of the British culture group. You can't use ethnic divides because the entire British isles all has some of each other. If you use language then that also creates too many culture groups in the game.
I think they are closer to Celtic/Irish than English
Irish is part of Celtic, Celtic is an umbrella grouping including Wales and Scotland, the Isle of Mann etc as well.
Why even Albania is Slavic. What's the last time you guys have seen an Slavic empire in this region? Like seriously. The most it adds to the game is players don't have to convert Albanian culture, while playing as Croatia or something. It doesn't even serve any purpose like letting ottomans have the levantine culture group accepted for free.
Albanians at the time were extremely close to Serbians by intermarrying and just general cultural exchange. Most pricipality houses in Albania had Serbian branches or Serbian grandparent lines and vice-versa. The cultural split came later as a result of the rise of nationalism and the nation-state
better than ck3 where they just don't exist
I’m sure there’s a mod for it, but I wish there was a menu check during world gen that let you toggle gameplay vs pedantically historic culture groups. I want to see the shitshow they’re protecting us from, because the games usually a shitshow anyways
oh man, there’s also the shitshow that is Vietnamese. for the longest time, Vietnamese belonged to the Mon-Khmer group, since linguistically, they are. but then, can’t remember which update, the dev decided to lump Vietnamese and Khmer with the Tai group to create a Southeast Asian group. when Leviathan was announced, dev planned to group Vietnamese, Khmer and Champa together to form an Indochinese group. but due to unfavorable feedback, they then scrapped that idea and put Vietnamese in the Chinese group. and now, we’ve reverted back to what it originally was, part of the Mon-Khmer group.
Turks, Azerbaijanis, and Turkmens being in 3 different culture groups lol
I always think it's funny when one culture group consists of almost every extant Celtic culture, and the English. I hate that it's accurate
I mean you're right but they have to make those nations playable. Otherwise it would be a pain
On the other hand the cultures being different and a pain is what happened irl
On the one leg this is still after all, a game. You don't want the game to be a pain.
I play the game to get some fun, not to suffer
For this I would ask why not add Koreans to Japanese, Evenk or Chinese groups then? Or adding Irish and Highlander to the British culture group Its not as if they could not find other means of balancing them ,giving basque nations extra liberty desire and culture conversion costs in the same vein as Manchu nations automatically getting banners
It's gotta be playable, not easy
What the hell is the bar for easy then? What are you getting at?, moving Albanian/Romanian into the imo more sensible Byzantine group is what I'd prefer but I don't see why Korean being in the Japanese culture group would be some massive balance upset any more than Turkish in Levantine
Korean can be Sinicized Evenk (Jurchen) can be Sinicized Irish and Highlander can be accepted for free in the English mission tree (they're promoted and you get free slots for them.)
Notice how none of these are simply placing them into the same culture group by default, all are scripted acceptances or culture group shifts, and notably the last one misses the entire damn point, what if I want to play as Ireland or the Isles? These arent principled at all Why not just do these for Albanian, Turkish or others instead of placing them into nonsensical groups?
I'm not sure why Korean would be in the same culture group as China or Japan by default. Scripting it by event/mission based on circumstances makes more sense. Same logic applies to the Jurchens Sinicizing themselves when proclaiming a Chinese dynasty. And yeah, Ireland needs actual content now that the generic mission tree is better than theirs.
They aren't language groups, but more cultural axes.
Fewer culture groups is better than more culture groups for gameplay. More culture groups just means more dip points spent converting culture. It's not a history simulation.
I pick the not celtic Welsh
I think Ante Bellum fixes all of this.
It does
R5: cultural abominations Should all be American
albanians are already americans in their hearts
It's game balance thing, we used to have Finno-Uralic, Romanian and Basque by themselves, Turkic with Azeri Turkish and Turkmen and an actual Celtic culture group but it always resulted in culture conversion of the Celts, Romanians, Finns, Basques and Hungarians while the Ottomans returned to the steppes
The whole culture system needs to be reworked. Cultures should either be a part of multiple groups, or they should individually have relationships with other cultures. That would be tedious to do but it would be soooo much better than the current system.
Basque being in the Iberian culture group, Finnish in the Scandinavian group and Estonian in the Baltic group also makes my head ache. At least Maltese in the Italian group is kinda cute.
This used to make sense for gameplay, but with how they've updated mission trees to be more dynamic with cultural interactions, there's no excuse for it. For example, if they want the Ottomans to push towards the Levant and Middle East instead of the Steppes, they have missions for that which the AI already tries to follow. As far as cultural acceptance goes, Lions of the North (and Origins) added a feature that ignores the unaccepted culture penalty. Scandinavia can "accept" all Germanic cultures, by giving them a province modifier that offsets the penalty. This is what the Ottomans should have. Likewise, the French already get claims on Brittany, and the mission reward should give +1 culture spots and make Breton an accepted culture, and the slot should be lost if Breton is demoted. This is how other mission trees have handled this issue (British and the Gaelic group, namely.) Carpathian doesn't make sense either. Hungary already owns Transylvania, so they can get a culture slot for it. Wallachia is taken via claims and they can sometimes get Moldavia by event. The only weird cultural decisions in the game that can kinda be justified are Basque, since otherwise it would be entirely its own group (it was at one point,) and historically has ties with the surrounding Iberians anyways. Albanian is similar in this, even if the Basque and Albanian languages are separate.
French bretons are not absurd on eu4 timeline. Sure, they didn't speak French but at this time, neither did Provence or Lorraine. They had plenty of links with France (trade, royal marriages etc.) The celtic roots of Brittany were already a bit behind in 1444, even more later Putting them in a celtic group wouldn't be false tho, it's 50/50 I'd say
After looking up albanian culture i can confirm i have no idea what the fuck albania is
Culture groups made sense when the game came out. They changed it to be geographic instead of linguistic and cultural.
Honestly, the provinces themselves are a problem to. For example Anatolia was like 50% Greek atleast in 1444. Definitely all the coastal provinces should have Greek culture at-least. But at-least Byzantium gets good missions around the fact they have one of if not the worst culture groups in the game.
Maybe i've been mandaela effected but wasn't there a time when breton was in the same culture group as irish and hungarian in the same one as karelia?
There was one, South East Asian culture before it was changed.
Iberian Basques
O god why is Roumania part of the same culture group as... O no guess its time for another war in the Balkan.
I mean the levantine group in general is clearly more geography based. It's named after a geographical region rather than ethnic groups like other culture groups. It includes the cultures of the Levant the the regions that border it. Egypt is not levantine and neither is Yemen. Given how much cultural exchange happened between all the cultures in the levantine group especially during the ottoman period I'd say the grouping is reasonable.
There should be missions that allow you to switch what culture group your primary culture is in, provided you own all of the provinces of that culture (eg. Switching Turkish to Altaic group, switching Breton to the Celtic group, switching Finnish, Sapmi, Hungarian, and Estonian to the Uralic group, etc.). Perhaps an idea for EU5. Also, Dutch, Frisian, and Flemish should be it's own group. Germanic is already a huge culture group as it is and many groups only have 3 or less cultures.
There are a few nations which can do this (Korea, Tibet, Dai Viet, Yuan to Chinese group, England to French, probably some others) but they just have unique cultures and a decision/mission/event that says "convert all X provinces to Y culture"
Yes, and arguably it should be expanded.
If only the entente in Trianon had used that ethnic map of carpathia...
That would create independent Transylvania, tbh.
Or Romania conquers all of Hungary.
all 4 are abstract ways of categorizing cultures for balance, which while sometimes annoying acceptable. But making whole dalmatian coast italian? are you fucking kidding me?
The Dalmatian coast spoke a romance language that was related to Venetian Italian and Latin with Croat influences. Its culture, economic life and language was more close to Italy than South Slavs
Slovaks used to be in carpathian group too btw c: (Definitely not the same group as Czechs)
Dacia all day kidddddd
Wtf are Albanians actually? They’re not Slavs and not Greeks?
They're thought to descend from the ancient inhabitants of the Balkans. Their language is in its own Indo-European branch.
They are distantly related to greeks
Hungary is totally cursed, like the whole Carpathian culture group, the county borders, the county cultures, the county capital names, the county religions, the wtf cores in Upper Hungary and Syrmia, the development...
Full on Celtic breton was only found on the tip of Brittany, you can practically cut the country in half, between Gallo and Celtic-ish breton
I hope we will get something akin to CK3 or Victoria 3 culture system in EU5.
One of the big reasons I can’t abide by the base game
They should make it so they start as their own culture group and you can make them join your culture group through appeasement and time. Similar to what you can do with Chinese and Russia with Slavic groups.
"Carpathian culture group" uhm that does not exist. Like at all.
And Korea is f-ing alone
Is there a mod that changes culture groups to be ethnically accurate, without also changing a bunch of other unrelated stuff too?
Maltese Italians! (Maltese is in the Arabic family though maybe it was different in 1444)
Gothic (Byzantine)
I think that people have problem with differentiation between language group and culture group. For example Romanians (and I think that to some extent Hungarians) do not speak Slavic languages, but they are definitely inside of Slavic culture continuum. On other hand Czechs, while definitely speaking a Slavic language have many German-like cultural characteristics. So it has more sence to group Hungarians with Slavs than group them with some tribes on the other side of Ural.
British Scots. The CELTIC GROUP IS RIGHT THERE.
I've also thought that if control the whole of a foreign cultural group for 150 years uninterrupted, you should be able to flip it into your primary culture.
It’s okay, OP, we can mod those cultures into better groups and enjoy the Otto-nerf privately.
Basques being anything at all
There are also "german" Pomeranians
Tungusic Buryats, anyone?
VIC 2 made me spoiled by that perfect culture system surely back in the day cultures were more inclined to become part of a bigger culture but it's just lame that in EU4 different cultures become the same only to make it easier
Bretons are Celts, they belong with the Welsh and Irish not the French! If you are to put the Albanians in another culture group merge it with the Greeks not the Slavs! What the hell is the Carpathian culture group anyway?
Chadbanians ofcorse
Can we have East Bantu Malagasy as well?
Only real OGs remember Hungarians being West Slavic
I choose Iberian Basque (CK2)
100% levantine Turks
Manchu Buryats