Culture

VIET adds a myriad of new cultures, ranging from the Sicilians and Picts to the more exotic Khitan and Somali. A good number of these are playable, and those that aren't (such as various Jewish cultures) can and will appear in the game through other means (usually through spawned courtiers) or at least can be accessed in ruler designer. There are quite a number of changes to province and character histories to account for these new cultures.

Unlike other large overhauls such as CKII+ or TPATT, or map mods such as SWMH, VIET doesn't aim to add hundreds of cultures simply because. In fact, I have rather strict requirements as to what cultures I want to add. In general, I try to add cultures that: These requirements are a bit tighter for melting pots, but are more or less the same.
 * 1) Can inhabit an area of 5-6 counties, 2-3 duchies, or one kingdom at some point in CKII's timeframe. This would rule out Cornish, for instance, which would occupy only two provinces at most, but allow for Icelandic, since Iceland is its own de jure kingdom in VIET.
 * 2) Are distinct and don't require a lot of work for little gain. A number of mods have, for instance, split the Italians into sevreal different cultures, such as Tuscan, Corsican, Venetian, and so on. While there are advantages to doing this, it requires a significant amount of changes to province and character histories - outside the scope of VIET, really - and also doesn't really work with vanilla's map as it leads to messy culture maps. These sort of miniscule splits are more appropriate for map mods like SWMH that add many new provinces. That isn't to say I'm against splitting existing cultures - I have in fact split plenty, such as Persian and Ethiopian, but those that I've split fulfill the other requirements and were necessary because they covered such a ludricously large area in vanilla.

General Changes to Culture
Overall cultures work the same as they do in vanilla. There are some differences which may not be noticeable at first, however.

Firstly, culture conversion is much slower compared to vanilla. You won't see Italy turning German within a century, for instance, and unlike in vanilla it's more likely that rulers will be assimilated into the culture of the local populace rather than the other way around. There are also other tweaks to culture conversion in specific circumstances - the Turks will more quickly Turkify the interior of Anatolia, for instance, while it's easier for the Italians to keep their own culture while under German domination.

Secondly, there are a number of new localized titles for many cultures both old and new. Some are relatively recognizable: for instance, Greek Douxes rule over a "Theme," English counties are called "Shires," and Russian counts are now "Boyars." Others are a bit more obscure: Georgian Princes are "Tavadi," Turkish stewards are "Defterdar," and West African barons are "Ton-Tigui." With these new localizations I tried to maintain a balance between accessibility and variety - to not have every title completely incomprehensible and foreign like in SWMH (i.e. "Jarl Balgruuf of the Jarldom of Winterhold" instead of "Waxyatapampwoe Balgruuf of the Zpikmatlkeaom of Dustrarpwo"), but not to have it as bland as in vanilla.

Thirdly, there are many new dynasties. In particular I've tried to add a lot of new dynasties to vanilla cultures that didn't have a lot, such as the Khazars or Komi,  but even a number cultures that do have a lot of dynasty names in vanilla still get a lot of new ones in VIET. Overall, there are more than a thousand new dynasties in VIET, allowing for a greater variety of family names.

Lastly, a lot of vanilla's culture namelists have been overhauled, courtesy of the many users on the PI forums who created them. Some of these simply add in a lot more names for variety, others fix historical discrepancies and anachronisms, and many do both.

New Culture Groups
VIET adds in a number of new culture groups. All are accessible through ruler designer.
 * Andamanese
 * Central African
 * East Asian/Sinic
 * Formosan
 * Gallic*
 * Indian
 * Judaic
 * North African*
 * Papuan
 * Southeast Asian

* Indicates culture group containing vanilla cultures

New Cultures
Below is a full list of VIET's new cultures.

Playable Non-Melting Pots
The cultures below are meant to be playable. Some of them technically do not have any playable characters available yet, but these will be definitely added in the future. At the least, these cultures have at least 5-6 counties, 2-3 duchies, or 1 kingdom where they are the dominant culture in the provinces. Note that some of these cultures may not be playable at all start dates!


 * Azeri (Persian)


 * Bactrian (Persian)
 * Beja (East African)


 * Cumbrian (Celtic)
 * Daju (East African)
 * Hausa (Central African)


 * Icelandic (North Germanic)
 * Kanuri (Central African)


 * Lombard (Latin)


 * Mossi (West African)
 * Nilotic (East African)


 * Nubian (East African)


 * Pashtun (Persian)


 * Pictish (Celtic)


 * Serer (West African)


 * Somali (East African)


 * Songhai (West African)


 * Tajik (Persian)


 * Udmurt (Finno-Ugric)
 * Zaghawa (Central African)

Melting Pots
A good number of "Melting Pots" have been added to the game. Most of these are like vanilla's English melting pot, forming under specific combinations of cultures. A few are more like the Scandinavian cultures (Swedish, Danish, etc.) that 'evolve' out of older cultures, but I count them as melting pot since they are created via events like melting pots. Some of these cultures (such as Siculo-Arabic or Norse-Gael) do have a few playable characters, but others don't.
 * Chagatai (Altaic; appears after ~1300)
 * Crimean Tatar (Altaic; appears after ~1300)
 * Griko/Siculo-Greek (Byzantine; appears after ~1100)
 * Norse-Gael (Celtic; can appear anytime)
 * Pashtun (Persian; appears after ~900)*
 * Sicilian (Latin; appears after ~1100)
 * Siculo-Arabic (North African; can appear anytime)
 * Sudanese Arabic (Arabic; appears after ~1300)
 * Tajik (Persian; appears after ~900)*

* These cultures are only melting pots at the 867 start - from the 1066 start onwards, they are normal playable cultures. That is, they only appear via the special events if you play from the 867 start.

Spawnable
The cultures listed below generally do not have any playable characters at the game start (at least without ruler designer), although there are a few exceptions. These cultures will only appear via courtiers who may spawn in various courts from time to time; in general, they will only spawn in certain cultures or regions. Ethiopian Jews, for instance, will usually only appear in East Africa.


 * Ashkenazi (Judaic)


 * Beta Israel/Ethiopian Jewish (Judaic)


 * Bukhari Jewish (Judaic)


 * Chinese Jewish (Judaic)


 * Crimean Jewish (Judaic)


 * Gujarati (Indian)*


 * Indian Jewish (Judaic)


 * Mizrahi (Judaic)


 * Romaniote (Judaic)


 * Sephardic (Judaic)*


 * Swahili (East African)

* Indicates culture that does have a playable ruler somewhere.

Miscellaneous
Cultures listed below don't belong to any of the above categories. Many of these are unusued and/or will be used in the future either as spawnable courtiers or for reasons other than the ones listed above. With the exception of the Khitan (who have playable rulers from 1141 until the Mongol invasions) and Punjabi (who have playable rulers at the 867 start) none of these have any playable rulers and can only be accessed via ruler designer.


 * Andamanese (Andamanese)


 * Cham (Southeast Asian)


 * Chinese (East Asian)


 * Formosan (Taiwanese)


 * Japanese (East Asian)


 * Javanese (Southeast Asian)


 * Khitan (East Asian)


 * Khmer (Southeast Asian)


 * Konkani (Indian)


 * Korean (East Asian)


 * Malay (Southeast Asian)


 * Moluccan (Southeast Asian)


 * Papuan (Papuan)


 * Ryukyuan (Sinic)


 * Sindhi (Indian)


 * Sinhala (Indian)


 * Sogdian (Persian)


 * Tagalog (Southeast Asian)


 * Tamil (Indian)


 * Tibetan (East Asian)


 * Tocharian (Persian)


 * Uighur (Altaic)


 * Vietnamese (East Asian)