Hello. As you all know, currently it is quite impossible to push the start date further back than what Charlemagne does - and part of that is due to culture changes.



At the moment, cultural changes in CK2 are scripted - Normans only appear when Norse conquer Normandy, norse culture splits at about the same time as OT, frankish culture transforms into french, anglo-saxon into english, etc. Pushing the date even further back would require extensive amounts of scripting to create an accurate representation of the cultural changes during and after the fall of the Roman Empire. Therefore, I present an alternative, which relies on a few new mechanics.



1. Cultural Authority



This mechanic has similarities with religious authority. In essence, the authority of a culture depends on how big it is (the bigger it is, the smaller the authority - small cultures are more resilient), on how many provinces of its culture are under top level lieges of its culture (more is better, in %), on how many top level lieges there are over the culture (less is better), on how many counties are under counts of its culture, on recent wars (wars between same culture lower cultural authority, while wars with other cultures increase or decrease cultural authority based on who won the war), and on how many fractures of the culture have appeared (only applies to main branch of a culture group). It does not directly affect revolt risk, but it has a few other effects...



2. Cultural Splits



This is where it gets interesting. Cultural splits are comparable to heresies springing up, though they are different in nature. They are more likely to occur the lower the cultural authority is and less likely to occur the more counts are this culture. Effectively, cultural splits tend to happen within 150 years if either cultural authority is 0% or all of the counts and dukes ruling over the entire "nation" (or region, depending on how big the culture is); it also depends on crown authority (this is subject to change; another idea is that this would be more effective as a percentage rather than a random event happening).



There are two categories of cultural splits and three possible results resulting from the cultural splits.



Categories:



1. Total split - the entire culture is changed at once, moving towards another culture. Few remnants remain, which eventually get assimilated into the new culture. This would be the first stage in assimilating an entire culture into a realm, like some latin remnants in Illyria that were assimilated.

2. Regional split - a chunk of territory is changed due to external influences, mostly defined by de jure kingdoms/duchies.



Results:



1. A new culture within the same culture group results - This occurs when a split is done off the "parent" culture of the culture group; effectively an intermediary state.

2. A new culture within another, existing culture group results - This only occurs when a part of another group constitutes the ruling body over the people; the resulting culture is of that group.

3. A new culture within an entirely new culture group results - This occurs whenever another group constitutes the ruling body (even if not centralized; there can be multiple lieges, but it would be slower), its cultural authority isn't very high (> 80%), and most of its posessions are in this culture group. This can occur even when all of the culture is owned by that specific culture, in which case the old culture is also "dragged" into the new culture g roup.



Another way cultural splits could happen would depend on the religion of the rulers - orthodox vs catholic, catholic vs muslim, etc.



3. Cultural evolution



This one is also quite important.



Similar to how splits work, this can also occur every few hundred years, evolving the culture (and possibly changing the name of the old culture - for example Old Frankish if Frankish evolves in 800 AD). It also shifts the parent culture of the culture group, effectively acting as a more generic solution to the otherwise specialized anglo-saxon -> english, frankish -> french etc scripts.





I think that is kind of all of it, though there's a nagging feeling I missed to mention some idea I had with this somewhere; I think it would be a great addition to the game and would really add a way to bring back the game even further, perhaps even creating the possibility of having 1000 years+ of CK2 (which would be amazing). Now, time for some more Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney... heh