I really like the culture system. It nicely reflects what happened in history, the fact that cultures evolved over time, had different strengths and weaknesses at different points in time and that we can still see vestiges of our past in our cities.

What I don't like so much is that it can be incredibly immersion-breaking when you pick cultures that are from vastly different culture groups. I have no issue going from Myceneans to Greek to Byzantium to Ottomans etc. but if you start as the Zhou, you don't have a Far East Asian Classical culture to chose from and I often just stick with Zhou in Classical and only flip again in Medieval where we do have Asian cultures to pick from.

But even then I find that most of my run-throughs end up very limited as I force myself to pick 'plausible' cultures each time, rather than the cultures that would be most appropriate (from a game-mechanics point of view).

So what I am suggesting is that we add an option to pick the bonus (legacy/unit/district) independently from the name/aesthetics/architecture of a culture.

Say I am playing the Harappans in Ancient era and want to go Greek because I would like to focus on Science in the Classical era. I can pick the Greek bonus of science and hoplites but could pick the aesthetics and architecture of the Mauryans which are more culturally plausible. In other words I am deciding that my nation will evolve into 'scientific Mauryans' instead of the 'aesthetic Mauryans' (which might well have happened if situations had been different).

Then for the AI I would define 'culture groups' so that they would know what is plausible to pick as well. That would help a lot with the cognitive dissonance of having my Aztec ally suddenly appear in full Samurai garb!

The visual part of the culture pick would not be locked, i.e. multiple players can pick the same. Only the bonus would stay on the first come first served basis and remain exclusive.

I appreciate that we don't have every slot in every culture group filled yet, but that would also be ok, because you could keep your previous era culture aesthetics/architecture as well. E.g. going back to the Zhou, since there is no East Asian classical culture, you could just stick with the Zhou's aesthetics/architecture in the Classical era but decide to get the bonus of the militaristic Romans. And maybe we could just rename the nation to be "Classical Zhou" to show that they have evolved to that era. And for the player of course let us rename our nation!

Obviously unique units and districts would still 'look' out of place but that is no worse than building the Hanging Gardens in China or the Notre Dame in Mesoamerica and it is something that would be much less jarring than the full visual change we experience every era right now.  And for units you might even be able to do something where within the same unit class the models could be swapped (e.g. if I am in the Medieval Era as a European culture and pick the Aztecs, the Jaguar Warriors could be replaced by say the Varangian Guard model) though all that might be more complex/confusing than it is worth.

It's a decent idea, but you forgot that it's one of the main features and "ideas" behind the game. Devs definitely don't like when someone challenges the main vision of their work ;) 

The only solution I see here is... modding. While I like the idea of customizing the empire with various cultural flavors - I'm not a fan of absolute freedom and ancient Romans evolving into Aztecs and then Japanese. Because, unlike you said, cultures didn't evolve that way in real history. Cultures living on particular area were changing only after conquest and specific policy (not every conquest resulted in change of culture after all) or massive migrations. When left alone - no entire cultures were adopting a totally new, different culture. 

That's why to some people this main idea behind the game feels... wrong. And to avoid any unwise "then stop playing" comments - just because this game has 1 feature I dislike doesn't mean I should uninstall it and don't enjoy the 99 features I like. Let me enjoy this 99 features I like and wait for a mod changing that one I dislike, so that I could enjoy it fully.

Well I wouldn't say it "challenges the main vision" as the key aspect of that, i.e. the changing of cultures every era, is still present. All this add is extra customization to make it more plausible.

I mods can address this, then great, but I would suspect that this is quite core to the code and not easily done without developers help.

Krikkitone wrote:

That seems like a good idea.... but then 

1. a lot of the units/buildings themselves have a certain feel... you would have Mauryan Hoplites, or Soviet Jungle Infantry, Aztec Grand Mosques, etc.

2. How would you deal with that in MP(or in sp if you let the AI do it), where the name is a good shorthand for knowing what the bonuses of the other empire are

I agree about the feel but I think it is less jarring than what you have right now where you essentially throw out your existing culture. Plus even right now you still keep your units from the previous era. So you can still field Hoplites even after you decided to go Aztec or whatever which is no less strange.

For your second point I think it could be something like 'Greek-inspired Mauryans' or 'Greco-Mauryans' i.e. adding the two names together. And in this way again it might make sense in a real sense of culture-blending instead of culture-swapping.  E.g. in your Mauryan Hoplite example, we do know that in history Alexander met with Chandragupta, and it is not unreasonable that the Mauryans could have adopted the Hoplite way of fighting in some alternate universe (The Seleucids, i.e. one of the successor states of Alexander sure adopted the Elephants from the Mauryans!).

Anyway all of this is supposed to be an 'option' so for folks that don't want this mode of playing they could still do it exactly as it is now. What I am suggesting is meant for people who want a bit more of a historical plausible flair to their playthrough.