There should be a 3rd Pop identity category: National Identity, fixing vassal spam/assimilation

[warped pasture]

Instead of all your vassals culture converting for you, add a third identity to pops. National Identity or whatever would determine what lands are core and which ones are not. Assimilate, which has stood out as very strong and ahistoric, would assimilate their nationality, coring the areas, as all the pops are agreed to live in the same country. Culture would still exist, capacity system still being used but not as important. Culture would then not be directly manipulated by cabinet actions, so it would naturally shift based on shared/different nationalities and occupied territory, thus taking centuries to change just like in real life, usually...

[warped pasture]

This world also solve the total evaporation of small cultures that did persevere. There are no more Jewish pops in Poland by the time they get the reform that requires them.

This won't solve the development power of vassals

[high gust]

could be used to solve africa, if they just make some ethnic groups immune and not others

[high gust]

maybe make it less of a separate third identity category and more like percentage based assimilation into the nation/culture. that way it would be presumably less difficult to calculate/waste less cpu time

so instead of a catholic swede or a russian orthodox novgorodian you would have 100% swedified Russians or 67% novgorodiefied Swedes

[quaint solar]

I like the idea. But then what would be the point of culture ? What bonuses/maluses would they bring ?

[warped pasture]

The point of culture is to generate pop dis/satisfaction, intra empire civil strife.

but honestly, more broadly, there could just be a general enfranchisement system to determine cores, not culture. idk

[high gust]

Im thinking maybe separate ethnicity/religion/assimilation? kinda like vicky 3 tried to do with broader ethnic groups/races?

Congolese africans shouldnt become french within a decade of colonization thanks to the work of a couple cabinet members of that colonial nation

But they could become Francophone/assimilated into the French culture

Hell, u can even make it a percentage based indicator per province

Instead of 3 separate variables just make it a broad percentage indicator (the congolese people in this province are 67% Frankiefied)

then u can anchor special mechanics like malaria resistance on their actual ETHNICITY for example to stop the stupid blobbing into subsaharan africa every euro nation is doing right now by simply making malaria kill 95% of non african pops that pop up there (no pun intended)

[quaint solar]

But the separatists would be tied to National Identity right? I guess the current culture minigame would lose a bit of its interest because you won't need it to core anything. How would you core something then? With time? I think the current system right now is a bit weird : I can keep land integrated for centuries if I don't do anything but territories I just conquered can be considered cores in just a few years/months if I just accept their culture.

[quaint solar]

I like the idea of being assimilated while still retaining your original culture, but isn't already what accepting cultures is supposed to do?

[high gust]

well they could replace the accepted/tolerated/primary cultures with that. those categories have always felt very weak and gamy and just carry-over from eu4, which in turn carried them over from eu3 (though in eu3 they were entirely dynamic IIRC)

this could also theoretically allow for countries with no primary culture per se, which could be decent for places like china (assimilation into broad mandarin identitiy), hordes (golden horde wasnt really a mongolian identity assimilating every tribe into mongolians, they didnt care for tatars, crimeans, astrakhan tatars etc as long as they were part of the same horde), etc

most importantly it woudl stop the stupidest border gore that existed in pdx games since time immemoerial where after a player forms an emprie within 100 years that empires culture would somehow be everywhere very rapidly

When Scotland got unified with the UK in 1707, scotts didnt stop existing within like 10 years

But they sure did become assimilated into the broader english-british culture

I also dont like accepted cultures because it presumes that somehow all pops of a particular culture become assimilated, not just the pops of that culture living in ur actual countries that do

im looking more for something like this: https://youtu.be/c-WO73Dh7rY?si=QajCBgJBLelp520P&t=174

that allows for pops of a singular culture living in different provinces to be assimilated into different cultures