Ever since the "Royal Court" DLC came out, Crusader Kings 3 has given cultures a variety of special bonuses and modifiers. You can use cultures to unlock marriage traditions and gender norms that religions normally control, or make every character of a culture tend to favor certain personality traits.
The ruler in Crusader Kings 3 who controls more of their culture's counties than anyone else can change that culture's Traditions and guide their Innovations. However, there are times when it's better to create a new culture, or hybridize your culture with a neighbor that has more Innovations and Traditions. Doing so can cost a lot of Prestige, but the instant benefits can be worth the price.
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How to Diverge a Culture
The first thing you need to diverge or hybridize a culture is the "Royal Court" DLC. Without it, the only way to create a new culture is with a unique decision. These decisions include:
- Form the Outremer Empire
- Embrace English Culture
- Establish Norman Culture
- Promote Christian Settlements (Hungarian)
- Found Portugal
- Found the Kingdom of Aragon
With "Royal Court" active, you can select your ruler's culture to bring up the culture menu. At the bottom, you should see a button that says "Diverge Culture." This button is available to every ruler in the game, because you don't have to be a cultural head or even an independent ruler to create a divergent culture. The only requirement is that your realm needs to include at least one county of your ruler's culture.
The first thing you need to do after opening the divergence menu is change one of your culture's Pillars. These include Ethos, Language, Heritage, Martial Custom, and Aesthetics. However, even cultures that formed as hybrids in the past will only have a single Language, Heritage, and Aesthetic. This means you'll probably have to change your culture's Ethos to one of the other seven options. Thankfully, every ruler has free access to all seven Ethos options.
Your other option is Martial Custom, but the "Equal" and "Women Only" options aren't available to most rulers. Here's how to get access:
- Follow a faith with a Gender Doctrine of "Equal" or "Female Dominated."
- Your current (not future) culture must have the "Equal Inheritance" or "Matriarchal" Tradition.
- For "Women Only" in particular, your realm also needs to have High Crown Authority. This means your culture needs the "Royal Prerogative" Innovation.
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After you choose a new Pillar, you can choose to swap in a new set of Traditions. Your new culture will have the same number of Traditions as your old culture, even if your Tradition limit is higher or your culture is currently adding a new Tradition. Your new culture also keeps all the Innovations discovered by your old culture, but it doesn't get access to any new ones.
The base cost of diverging a culture is 500 Prestige, while each Tradition you change costs the same as it would to add the new Tradition to your existing culture. This is ultimately cheaper than reforming your old culture, since replacing an existing Tradition costs 50 percent more than adding a new one. Your new culture also gets to benefit from all its new Traditions immediately, instead of needing several years of integration and several decades of cooldown.
You can also decide your new culture's name and map color. The game always offers a default name, and this is most often based on the name of your domain. But if that name doesn't work for you, you can change it to anything you like.
Once your new culture has all the Pillars and Traditions you want, you should look at how many of your vassals will convert to the new culture with you. Each vassal has a chance to change culture or refuse, based on a few variables:
- Your vassal's opinion of you
- Your relative Diplomacy skill values
- Your Level of Fame
- Whether the vassal belongs to your current culture.
- Your vassal's Personality Traits.
A divergent culture will tend to spread itself automatically in counties that belong to your realm and belong to your old culture. Aside from that, a divergent culture follows all the same rules as a normal culture.
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How to Hybridize a Culture
Hybridizing cultures takes a few more steps, but doing so gives you a few extra bonuses. Here's what you need:
- Your ruler does not have to be the head of either culture.
- Your ruler does not have to be independent.
- Both cultures must be present in counties within your realm.
- The target culture must have a different Heritage Pillar than yours.
- The target culture cannot have hybridized or diverged from yours, or be the culture yours hybridized or diverged from.
- The Acceptance between your ruler's culture and the target culture must be at least 40, or at least 80 if either culture has the "Staunch Traditionalists" Tradition.
- The base cost of hybridizing a culture is 1,000 Prestige instead of 500.
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Once you know which other culture you want to hybridize with, you have a few choices to make.
- You can choose between either culture's Ethos, Heritage, Language, and Martial Custom.
- You can choose any of the Traditions held by either culture, up to the maximum allowed by your current culture. You can't choose any new Traditions, but you don't have to keep any of the Traditions you don't want.
- Unlike when you diverge from a culture, choosing more or fewer Traditions won't change the hybridization cost.
- You can choose the details of your hybrid culture's Aesthetics, including military equipment, names, architecture, fashion, and coats of arms. For some options you must choose one or the other, but for others you can keep both.
One of the biggest benefits to hybridizing cultures is that your hybrid culture will have access to all the Innovations discovered by each of its parents. This includes regional Innovations you otherwise might not have access to, and it means the hybrid culture can unlock Innovation Eras your current culture hasn't yet reached.
The default name of most hybrid cultures is xxx-yyy, but a few hybrid cultures have unique names based on historical cultural groups. For instance, the Franconian-French culture is Rhinelander, Anglo-Saxon-French is Angevin, and Lithuanian-Estonian is Livonian. However, you still have the final say on what the new culture's name will be.
Much like divergent cultures, your vassals may or may not convert to your new hybrid culture once you create it. However, the new culture will tend to appear on its own in counties that belong to either parent culture, and so any reluctant vassals may convert to the new culture eventually as it catches on.
Crusader Kings 3
- Released
- September 1, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Paradox Interactive
- Franchise
- Crusader Kings
- Platform(s)
- PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Grand Strategy
- How Long To Beat
- 70 Hours
