One definition of culture for states and provinces (population-weighted), with breakdown in tooltip, CSV and chart

[barrulus]

PR #1777 by @inviktos adds a culture column to the Provinces editor. Reviewing it turned into a wider question that deserves community input before the rework lands: what is "the culture" of a state or province, and how should the editors show it? This post is the proposed answer. Please poke holes in it.

The problem

Today the answer differs by screen:

• The States editor shows the culture the state was founded with (its capital's culture). It never changes unless you edit it or regenerate.
• The province name dialog shows the culture of the province's centre cell and calls it "dominant culture", which it often is not.
• The Cultures editor and Charts overview count real population: rural people under their cell's culture, townsfolk under their burg's cell culture, weighted by the urbanization setting.

So a province full of orcs with a goblin centre cell is "goblin", and a state whose founders were outnumbered long ago still reports the founders. inviktos's use case was naming provinces in the tongue of whoever actually lives there, and sorting on that. That needs one definition.

Proposal

One rule everywhere: population-weighted. The culture of a state or province is the culture holding the largest share of its population, using exactly the rule the Cultures editor already uses. Numbers then reconcile across Cultures, States, Provinces and Charts.

Provinces editor. A new Culture column with the dominant culture, sortable, visible by default and toggleable like the other columns. Hovering it shows the full breakdown:

Culture: Trow 62% (12K); Elladan 30% (5.8K); Vengrian 8% (1.5K)

The name dialog's "Dominant culture" line and its generate-name button use the same culture, so names come out in the right tongue.

States editor. The Culture column keeps its dropdown, because a state's culture is an input to generation (forms, naming, kinship). Its tooltip gains the same population breakdown, and a small chart icon opens the breakdown chart.

Generation. After states have expanded, each state's culture is set to its population-dominant culture, so a freshly generated map starts consistent. Locked states are left alone, and a culture you pick by hand in the editor stays until you regenerate states or cultures. State forms on a new map can therefore differ from today for the same seed where the founding culture is not the majority. This is the one behaviour change; emblems are unaffected.

CSV export. Both editors' CSVs gain a Cultures column with the same breakdown text, so what you can see in a tooltip you can also get in a spreadsheet.

Chart. No new chart. The Charts overview already plots states or provinces by population grouped by culture; the editors will open it preset to that view.

Under the hood. One function decides which culture a cell's population belongs to, and everything else consumes it. That is deliberate: if burgs ever gain a culture mix (multicultural cities), that single function splits the townsfolk accordingly and every editor, tooltip, CSV and chart follows without further changes.

What this does not do

• It does not rename anything automatically. Names are chosen at creation and stay yours.
• It does not add a per-province chart or a bubble chart. That would be new chart work.
• It does not migrate old maps. Provinces from older files pick up their culture the first time the Provinces editor opens or provinces regenerate.
• It does not make cities multicultural. It only leaves the door open.

Questions for you

1. Is population-weighted the right single definition, or is there a case for keeping "founding culture" visible somewhere for states?
2. Is the tooltip breakdown format above readable, or would you rather see it another way?
3. Should the Provinces "Culture" column be on by default, or off until you enable it?
4. Anything else you would want from a culture column while these files are open?

The work will land on PR #1777 as follow-up commits after inviktos's own, so he keeps the credit for starting it.

[Azgaar]

Sounds a way more complex than it is, so I'm more interested in implementing it as a minor changes not affecting any logic.

We already have culture for states and burg - we count it as 'official culture'. Nothin changes here. We can add culture for provinces as well to follow the pattern.

Cultures composition: we only show it on hover and we can even calculate it in runtime, no need to do a pre-calculation. It can work the same for states and provinces. The change is only in tooltip and a new function.

Table label is always just Culture. Tooltip says:
Official culture: cultureName
Culture breakdown: cultureName1 x%, cultureName2 y%, ...

[inviktos]

I added in my response to @barrulus that it might be nice for us to choose between official and dominant cultures when generating names for provinces. Do you think this would be a good change?

[inviktos]

Great discussion! I think there should likely be two definitions of culture (same for religions) being an Institutional/Official culture (Think of how the Mongols would be the institutional culture of the Yuan dynasty and Ilkhanate) and a Dominant culture (Yuan's being Han Chinese and the Ilkhanate being Persian. I think this would help clear a lot of things up. Adding on to what @Azgaar said, it would be nice to be able to edit the Official/Institutional culture of provinces and be able to choose between an institutional culture name and a dominant culture name when generating names for provinces and states.

[Avengium]

I agree with inviktos. This moment is the opportunity to gave better detail to cultures. "Official culture" or "dominant culture" could be the one that rules the province / states / burg and there is another "base" or civil culture of people who are not the government that are another culture.

There are times when the dominant culture and civil culture are the same and some times where they are not. And adding two definitions of culture could be a great opportunity.

But I think this idea is out of scope of this PR and this feature I talk about is more important that this PR, so for this PR, let's do the easier thing. Keep only one culture, and in a future development, do the thing of "two definitions of culture".

[Azgaar]

We already have almost everything, no need to change the data model other than adding culture for provinces. This change is simple and pretty small.

[fmg-discord-bot[bot]]

The idea is to have cultures tools show the dominant culture prominently and then have a way to show any sub cultures.

Theme

Cultures / Religions / Society

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Reported via Discord by @barrulus — https://discord.com/channels/515358903299735564/576822220886900767/1551245725348921405

[fmg-discord-bot[bot]]

L’idée est que les outils liés aux cultures affichent clairement la culture dominante, puis offrent un moyen d’afficher les éventuelles sous-cultures.

Theme

Cultures / Religions / Society

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Reported via Discord by @barrulus — https://discord.com/channels/515358903299735564/576822220886900767/1551246533607817237