Awakening and beyond: Culture

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This is one for the long term, but I am writing it now to inspire some changes in thinking for when we get there. This is a substantial change to the design, so I don’t want to only bring it up when people are already making plans for exactly what to work on.

From Baklava to salmon hats, culture can be more or less defined as all behaviour that does not come directly from genetic programming, or individual learning, but is instead transferred between individual organisms.

Part of the inspiration for this post was the thought: “In the pre-social stages, you edit the design of a species, and during gameplay you play a single individual of that species. In the Awakening stage, you control a group of people during gameplay, but what do you edit?”

Another motivation here is that Thrive as a project has always quite proudly proclaimed to (attempt to) be relatively scientifically accurate. Both in the mechanics, and in using terminology close to what is used in the sciences. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that for the fields of biology and chemistry in the biological stages so far, so I feel like we in a way “owe” it to fields like history and sociology to look at the social stages in the same way.

And while I can see a lot of effort that went into existing designs for the later Stages like the Society Stage in concepts like the Nation Editor, I think it does not quite go far enough in applying consensus scientific theories to game design, in the same way that has been done for Microbe/Multicellular Stage and biological evolution.

For example, by tying everything to the “Nation”, they really seem to assume a homogenously mono-cultural nation-state. And while some scholars do see something akin to nations (a large number of people that recognise themselves as a group and connect that to a certain area) in societies back to ancient times, by far the majority consider them to be a modern phenomenon. And certainly, the idea of striving for nation-states is an 18-century invention. The vast majority of states in earth history (especially the large ones) are multi-cultural/ethnic empires. So any serious attempt on our part to approximate history needs to treat cultures and states as connected but separate things.

Focusing more on improving accuracy in general, building mechanics around the concept of cultures is much closer to how scientists talk about human behaviour, especially pre-historical.For example, you can clearly see how in the fields of anthropology and especially archeology, people typically talk about the spread of “material cultures” (as defined by specific recognisable sets of crafted artifacts), long before any recorded history. These recognisably moved around, exchanged knowledge and/or replaced each other. We can even tell in combination with genetic evidence exactly whether certain cultural traits, like agriculture, spread via population replacement or inter-cultural exchange to specific areas.

The Concept

Just like how the game keeps track of different species right now, starting from the Awakening Stage (possibly but less likely the late Aware Stage), the game would keep track of Cultures. Sapient (post-aware Stage) populations/individuals belong to a culture in the same way that populations/individuals currently belong to a species in the biological Stages. Cultures would be an absolutely central part of Awakening and later stages, possessing many traits and statistics critical to the game.

A note on multi-species cultures

I would propose having cultures not be hard-locked to only “belonging” to one species. I do expect in the vast majority of cases, at least before the Space Stage, cultures will be made up of members of the same species. But exactly because we do plan to have a Space Stage eventually, I believe having the implementation be more flexible is the smarter option. This would also leave the door open for having multiple sapient species evolving on one planet in rare cases.

Whatever exact design(s, since the currently written plans have differences between Stages) we decide on for technology discovery, the “possession” of a technology would be linked to a Culture, the same way a cell has an organelle. And similar to how a biological species has behaviour/tolerance sliders, a Culture has sliders on how much they value nature, aggression, cooperation, etc. This could even have interesting combinations, such as an individual’s likelihood of attacking first being a sum of “genetic” aggression and cultural norms. This would then constitute a “Culture Editor” similar to the Cell, Multicellular and Macroscopic Editors.

The difference between cultural and biological evolution is that these cultural changes become much easier/cheaper when you are in contact with another culture that has them. Your neighbours have started planting crops for food? Maybe you can try that. They’re trading food with you? That makes it even easier. Wild and savage barbarians are invading your peaceful society? That motivates people to accept becoming more militaristic themselves.

As Cultures move and spread around the world, members of one Culture also end up in different environments, and/or simply too far to still be in contact with each other. So, again like species, Cultures also end up splitting and diverging into new ones. At first, after minor changes they might still consider themselves “the same” (though mechanically they would be accounted separately), but as differences accumulated, members would see each other as more “different from us.”

More technically, Cultures don’t purely relate to each other in a “descent tree” like species. Instead, any two Cultures have a similarity % based on how much they have in common. They might use this to determine how much members of the Cultures trust/distrust each other. The ease with which technologies and other ideas spread between Cultures would also be affected by this. And for example, the “switch to another related species if you go extinct” ability could use this similarity to pick a “related culture” if yours disappears.

Aware Stage?

As the examples at the start probably suggested, while traditionally seen as a human trait, there has been plenty of research on culture in non-human animals as well. Which means there is an argument for introducing the Culture system late in the Aware Stage. If so, the Awakening Stage should probably be entered upon reaching a certain level of cultural development, rather than pure brainpower.

However this would also have clear issues, such as having to track Cultures for a bunch of additional species that are not relevant to later stages, if we go by the the scientific literature on which species may have something that could be considered culture. Therefore, I think it would be better to have the development of Culture as a mechanic itself, be the defining change at the transition between Aware and Awakening.

Awakening Stage

You would start out with a fairly “blank slate” Culture that doesn’t really alter anything about what abilities you have available or how your species members behave. Possibly, part of your starting cultural traits can be based on the behaviours of your species at the end of Aware.

When moving and spreading around the world as the human species did, you are not moving/controlling the spread of your species per se. Instead, you are now controlling the spread of your culture.

The unique part of this Stage would be co-evolution between culture and biology. As you would still be able to edit your species (though slower and less dramatically than in the Aware Stage), you would also be able to tweak your species to work slightly better with the cultural choices you made.

Society Stage

As referred to earlier, in the Society stage, it is very likely that many “societies” will end up with multiple Cultures inside them, through conquest or otherwise. The “primary” culture of your society, let’s say the one of the “ruling class,” would still be directly controlled by you as it was in the Awakening Stage. However, other cultures in an empire would be evolving independently, though interacting with and exchanging things with your own culture. For example, technologies you research would still only directly go to your primary culture, but it would spread to other cultures in your society faster than those outside. And you could similarly learn things from those other cultures.

I believe that there is also space here (especially after the very start of the Stage) for a “State” layer with laws and institutions, separate from but interacting with the culture itself. But I will leave the specifics of that to other design posts. But the general idea is that your state’s policies might be liked very well by your primary culture, but be despised by some distant subjugated culture, causing problems.

Industrial Stage

Technologies are discovered more frequently/cheaply, but due to the shorter timespans “cultural mutation rate” in general is actually lower. This leads to “hilarious” situations, such as “we invented machine guns, but have not yet realized we should not be running at them” or “machine-powered factories have made artisans unemployed and flooded people into cities without social adjustments, now everybody is miserable.” On the other hand, communication becomes easier, especially worldwide later in the Stage, so ideas and technologies spread faster.

That combination means more spread compared to “fully novel” Culture changes, which then results in some homogenisation worldwide.

Space Stage

The Space Stage has possibly the least solid pre-existing designs, but I can imagine that spreading throughout the solar system, and especially entirely different stars would again be quite a force towards cultures diverging from your own. You will also come across alien Cultures that did not at any point have a relation to, and might even have biological proclivities pushing them towards a different type of Culture from yours. Organising an interstellar empire would then come with many Culture-related problems to solve. But alien cultures could also teach you things that never appeared in your developmental path.

So, this replaces a decent chunk of what is currently known as the “Nation Editor” but does it in a way that also covers our needs in the Awakening Stage without needing a different system there. It also greatly improves the accuracy and believability of the Society Stage(s) while adding a lot more meaningful challenges to play around.

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Dynamic Systems in the Civilization Stages
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Didn’t know about salmon hats, really interesting.

But I really like the over-arching idea here, of attaching the gameplay perspective to a culture as opposed to a nation. I do ultimately think that there will be big overlap for a large portion of the later societal stages, where increased logistical/technological capability arguably can lead to more of a centralized identity. But before this point, there’s a huge gap if we just look at things from a “national” perspective.

I think it also ties in nicely to other mechanics and prior stages. Like you mention, culture is not tied to writing at all and emerges in non-(complex)-societal organisms, so the roots of this feature can emerge in the late Aware Stage. Industries can pop up in the Awakening Stage, being a facet of culture. And the idea of, upon losing the game, switching to another culture to play as feels more cohesive than choosing another nation.

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Yes, I was imagining in Awakening you are controlling at most a relatively small band of creatures that exists within a likely much larger (though at this time spread out) culture. While early in the Society Stage it becomes at least possible to unite all of them under your control, but it’s still possible to have people of your culture in other societies (either because it is still split into several city states or some of the land they live on has been conquered), and if you’re going the imperial route you will have people of other cultures under your control.

That’s why I think for Society Stage and beyond there could still be a Society/State layer on top that more directly represents “the players”, though it would still have one primary Culture as its most important attribute. The “Society” would carry the things that don’t quite fit in the Culture itself, like laws that affect everyone in the society, economic policies, etc. (basically the other things currently designed for the Nation Editor) So in the Awakening Stage you would be handling Creature Editing + Culture Editing, while in Society that switches to Culture Editing + Society Editing.

If there is a separate (but connected) Society system, we could even offer people the choice between another Society that has the most similar Culture, or one that “inherits the institutions”. I’m thinking for example here of new independent societies in the wake of the collapse of the western Roman Empire, where many new kingdoms were clearly not of an Italian but did inherit the Roman law system, religious institutions, etc.

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As someone who plays a lot of 4X games, it’s going to be hard to make getting conquered not feel like losing for the player, but if we want things to be realistic, players shouldn’t expect their first nation to survive throughout all of recorded history, so things that would be considered “losing” in a 4X game should ideally be part of the overall strategy of the society stages in Thrive.

Culture seems like a good way to start that conversation. If the goal becomes influencing the values and beliefs of your species instead of conquering the world and painting the map, the strategy changes completely.

For example, if I want my species to be peaceful artisans, I’d make my starting group a peaceful village of craftsmen and spread those ideals to other groups through trade. But, if a huge empire starts forming nearby and they close their borders to me, it might be advantageous for me to get conquered by that empire so I can keep trading with the cultures inside and spread my ideals to them. In that case, getting conquered isn’t “losing”; it’s strategy.

That way of looking at those stages does mean the player might not be in control of any nations at some points in the game and it could even mean they control (or have partial control over) several nations at once if we’re okay with that.

I do think if we go with the culture approach to these stages, the Space Stage should still be a more traditional 4X experience to give a payoff for the culture the player developed during the other society stages. That way, they can view the Awakening, Society, and Industrial stages as shaping the culture that will eventually lead their interstellar nation.

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This is indeed an eternal problem with 4X games, and I also know it from grand strategy games. Players generally don’t like losing anything, and are quite likely to quit (or reload a previous save), even if their new position can be recovered from.

But I also think there is some interesting comparison with our existing Stages already. Given all the species evolving during the game, if selection was random, it should be pretty unlikely for the player to never go extinct. And yet, players actually pretty rarely do, and that doesn’t actually feel that odd in-game. It just so happens that players pick the path that does survive. And for times that they don’t, we have the optional ability to switch to a different species. Is it possible for the societal Stages to work the same? That the player can usually find a way to survive somewhere/somehow?

While playing one species, players are also constantly “losing control” over patches their species were previously living in, which we have had surprisingly little complaints about. So perhaps it is actually possible to condition players to accept some losses if it does not feel all that punishing?

Ah, the Greek strategy. Or the Chinese one, I suppose. Though in those examples, it’s not really an intentional thing of course. I think it would be a bit weird for this to be something we expect the player to actually try. So perhaps, it’s better to think of this as a good-enough backup for the player, rather than something to intentionally aim for?

I think a lot of this comes down to the specifics of how we expect you to control things/play in the Society Stage. As per my concept here, the Culture would be pretty important, but the main framework would still be being in control of a group of people in Awakening, and a society/polity/state in Society and beyond.

So the question then is: what would playing as a Culture without being in control of a state look like in the Society Stage? If most things are built around the State perspective, then as a Stateless culture you would be pretty limited to just editing your culture. And perhaps to have it work technically at all, we would have to construct a kind of “fake State” with limited functionality if you don’t have a real one to control.

Note that even within the “only political organizations” framework, there is some potential for “continuing on after being conquered.” Many empires, especially early ones, just forced submission of other city states, without really changing anything about the local administration. For people into 4Xs or GSGs: that’s basically just a forced relationship without erasing any “countries”. Though of course there are also cases where imperial administration was much deeper, and we come to the question of how deep, if at all, we want to go into a Crusader Kings-style layering of different playable authorities.

You can even think of things like (parts of) governments going into exile, or underground resistances.

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The key difference with our existing stages is that each new generation really represents the player’s old species becoming extinct and a new, mutated species taking their place. So, in universe, the player’s species in constantly going extinct. If we wanted to be realistic, we could ask them to pick a new name for their new species every time they leave the editor (but that would be really annoying).

I don’t think that idea of the old thing dying off a something new and improved taking its place would translate very well into the later stages.

Using Crusader Kings as an example, the state management is actually pretty shallow in that game (at least in the second one. I never played the third). Most of the depth comes from controlling your dynasty and interacting with other leaders. You’re even locked down to only editing one law in your state every so many years. The problem there is that the only goal in Crusader Kings is still just to conquer everything, so it’s ultimately just a map painter where any little setback feels like a loss, which I think is a problem we need to solve for Thrive to be realistic in these stages.

I wonder if we could do something similar with cultures instead of dynasties, but with a more interesting goal than painting the map (or at least, a more interesting way to paint the map). That could definitely be a big change from what everyone has pictured these stages as, but I think it’s worth talking about what that would look like to see if we can come up with something more realistic than (and at least as much fun as) a typical grand strategy game.

I have some thoughts about what it could look like, but I want to think through them more before I post anything and make everyone read my ramblings.

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I think this is partially true, but not 100%. Part of cultures changing is simply old people being replaced by young people with different ideas. And the “main line” of a species can change over time without their being a split into different species (with one going extinct), see anagenesis.

I would say that quite similarly, states change through reform over time, but may also suddenly be “replaced” through revolutions, coups, civil wars, etc. You could see that as some people wanting to “evolve” the state in a different direction.

Well, we’re veering into more general Stage design questions that deserve their own discussion, but I think Thrive at least has some fairly general goals that go for all Stages:

  • Survive.
  • Advance to the next Stage.
  • Do whatever else you feel like along the way.

And typical painting the map does not necessarily have to be made all that beneficial for those goals.

I think a game built around a “state” basis for the strategy Stage will be the easier thing to do (for the reasons I stated before), but I am curious to see what you think of when you’re ready!

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Yeah…I think you’re right. The more I thought through my ideas, the more holes I found. So, while I think we could make the game more culture-first than nation-first, it would add a lot of complexity to solve a problem no one seems to care much about, anyway. On the bright side, trying to think of how we could make a culture-first game work did lead me to coming up with some other cool ideas I’ll make a separate post about this weekend.

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After reading this thread, I had an idea on how culture-focused strategy stages might look like (at least the ones after Awakening): what if we shifted the focus onto the culture editor, and made it an active part of the stage?

The gist is, the editor would be more of a control interface than just an editor; the player would be able to take actions through the people of their culture. Settling new land, establising trade routes, building buildings, inciting rebellions against states that have subjugated your culture. Or even states of your own culture, that, for one reason or another, are disadvantageous to your strategy.

In a way, the framing of these actions as done by the culture, and not by the state, like in most strategy games, might be a better one. Migrations to Brittany, trade, the Viking conquests/trade/migrations*, most pre-modern production, etc. weren’t necessarily directed by states, but by groups of people, with no political power.

* The Viking conquests were more complicated than that, in my understanding, but they weren’t connected to a single state. Though they were sometimes done by members of the nobility.

Of course, we shouldn’t diminish the influence that a state has. The Republic of Venice conquered territories and negotiated quarters in Mediterranean cities with the purpose of protecting trade; many medieval countries regulated production/trade through monopolies, etc. That influence would add another dimension to the game, because not only would the player have to struggle against other cultures, but also against states.

In addition, many building projects were directed by states. Such as castles, aqueducts, roads, etc. Cities were, too, sometimes founded by states (e.g. Lugdunum). That’s something to keep in mind.

Now, to address the elephant in the room. Do I think that the player should be able to control states of their own culture? Probably yes, but not while being in the “culture editor”. Just like in our current stages the player can control both the entire species and individual bacteria, but not at the same time. So, maybe the player could choose to “possess” states, and play as their rulers, and return back to the “culture editor” at will.

We need to take care not to make it seem like the culture that the player controls is a hivemind or some sort of shadow government. One way to do that is to make actions more like nudges, rather than direct decisions. Instead of building a mine, the player would encourage mining activities in a town; instead of starting a revolt, the player would sow discontent and make the population of a province more likely to rise up; instead of founding a city, the player would direct migrations to a location, or establish trade routes over that place, making it a good spot for a city to be founded. So, the player would basically be in control of a collective consciousness; not controlling individual people, but directing masses of people towards a desired outcome.

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On the main topic: From the discussion and the reactions on the initial post, I think the consensus is positive on the design itself. So I am planning to add it to the dev wiki for easier reference and link to it from the relative Stage pages, next to the “older” designs.

So if I understand you correctly, the core here is just being able to “control” things regarding the actions of people of your culture beyond just what would be “editing” its properties? And perhaps with a separate view for that compared to the “control a state” mode? I think that’s fundamentally a good idea, and it even parallels what we have right now, for example with how you migrate your species around the patch map.

Two points though:

  • I think this is still compatible with a game design where you primarily control one state (with a specific primary culture), rather than one where the primary perspective is the culture, and you can switch freely between controlling different species. That’s not a negative about the idea, just saying that it can be applied to multiple potential designs.
  • I think for Awakening we will still “skip” between generations (akin to the fully biological Stages), with that being the moment for species and cultural editing (and other cultural actions like migrations). But for the societal/true strategy Stages, I feel like things will play out more “continuously?”
    And I think for that, situation, you are expected to do “culture things” and “state things” more or less in parallel (remember, I really think that “technology” should be discovered on a Culture level, even if you are only controlling one State). Then I think it might be better to think of this as two “tabs” on the main control screen, rather than two entirely separate modes to switch between.

I think I am personally currently leaning towards:

The Culture is the primary thing you’re trying to keep alive and develop, but you are primarily in control of one State in parallel to the primary Culture that State belongs to. You cannot freely swap back and forth between different States. But you can easily switch to a different State/Society of the same culture if your current one “dies” or there are specific events, like you make a separately governed colony somewhere, a civil war breaks out, etc. Potentially, you can continue playing with just your Cultural actions if you don’t have a State to control.

I think this is perhaps actually a closer parallel to our current Stages: The primary objective is a Species, but during gameplay you control one individual. Switching between individuals is not free at any time, but happens on death and reproduction.

As for my reasons:

  • I do think for later in the Society Stage and the Industrial Stage, we do want the development of the State itself and its institutions to be something you care about. Freely switching between them might really lead to people only caring about the Culture side.
    In other words, I do think the development, “evolution”, behaviour, competition between and splitting (or succession) of states is an interesting perspective that deserves to be represented also.
  • Switching between States would leave them AI-controlled in-between when you’re controlling them. I don’t think there’s really any avoiding that causing problems with the player experience. It also further exacerbates the previous point.
  • I don’t know how much exactly we’re going to have the situation of “multiple States/Societies of one Culture”, where also switching between them freely will make sense. From the Cultural mechanics, we also want there to be sufficient divergence between cultures. For some real life examples:
    • Ancient Greece, pre-unification Germany and Italy: All cases of independent societies belonging to “one” culture, but:
      • They all had different forms of government and objectives, do we really not want the Player to pick one and use that as the thing they want to evolve and view the world through(/maybe unite the whole)?
      • Lots of the interesting history here is about all of them competing with each other for survival and dominance. Is de-emphasising that what we want to do?
      • Are they really the same Culture? There’s local differences, even today. Maybe they are just closely related Cultures?
    • Korea, China and Vietnam during civil war and afterwards: Stronger claim than the previous examples of being singular Cultures, but:
      • Clearly, the main story here is the competition between State systems over what shape the State should take. (though the ideas that led to them are culturally transmitted). Does it make sense to just be able to switch between them?
      • If still split afterwards, how long before they’re not the same Culture anymore.

I do think this all sounds like how a State/government would interact with culture? These are all things that States IRL do and have done.

So I think if we want to simulate control over what the Culture itself is doing, things would be a bit more direct than what you are listing here. (For example, deciding I want my Culture to discover this technology is actually a very direct impact)

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This makes a great deal of sense. Firstly, for the sake of some intuitively understandable parallels to the preceeding culture. Secondly, because being able to switch in between states could encourage meta-gamey exploits which don‘t make sense „in-universe“. Want to take over a hostile state of your own culture? Just switch to it, swear feality to your primary state and switch back to your primary state. I‘m sure there are other examples.

The playing as a closely culturally related state when your primary state is obliterated part and the decide if you want to continue playing as your „heartland state“ or as the breakaway colony also reminds me of Crusader Kings, which I love. There, the inheritance and relatedness are more literal since you play as individual rulers and you play whoever of your lineage inherits your primary title upon death. The breakaway colony part reminds me of the titular crusader kings: When you participate in a holy war which is one and your „candidate“ to rule that newly won holy kingdom gets it, you get to choose wether you want to continue playing as your current character who probavly is in a safe and comfortable position or wether you want to take over tge crusader king you installed whose situation is probably much more volatile and who likely rules a territory surrounded by hostile states.

Exiting stuff to read and think about!

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Alright, so, having thought over this subject, here’s what I think:

  • The point about culture and state developing alongside eachother is a good one. Being able to edit culture while also controlling a state would work, though I’m not entirely sure if the player should also be able to use cultural “powers” while playing as a country. Would that be too much power? Would it feel weird to be able to control both a state and a culture?
  • Regarding the exploits that are possible if the player can switch to another state, I feel like the current concept might have those exploits as well. E.g.: attack another country of your culture, give up all of your land in a peace deal, then switch to the winning country, because your existing one was destroyed. I see two solutions:
    • Make it possible to switch countries only under some circumstances, such as a civil war, colonial rebellions, etc. This would force a game over if the player’s country is destroyed otherwise. This is kind of similar to CK2 mechanics
    • Make switching countries cost MP (or whatever currency the Culture Stage will use), making these exploits unviable or very expensive

Good point.

Maybe if interactions between states and cultures are really fleshed out, both will matter. Though the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that to fully realize all the concepts I described in my post, we might need to create something very different from a normal grand strategy game, using some entirely new concepts. If there is an interest in that, I might have a few ideas on how that might look like.

If not, the solution with playing primarily as a state seems fine to me. I mentioned above that I’m not fully sure if playing as a state should allow the usage of cultural “powers”, especially ones like building buildings that normally aren’t built by a state.

At the same time, playing without a state should still be possible, especially if there is no state with the player’s culture, in which case it can be a sort of “rebellion mode”. This kind of solves the problem that was raised in this thread before:

Switching between countries should also be a thing, to some extent; at least after your country gets destroyed. Given how frequently and consistently states IRL fell and rose, this is something we would want to portray in the game.

Not really related to this point, but it does make me wonder how culture conversion, assimilation, and mixing is going to work in regards to player culture. E.g. if the player controls the Anglo-Saxon culture after the Norman conquest, do they still get to play as the culture after the resulting mixing? If the player is playing as the Normans in this context, can they switch to the resulting culture? Is the resulting culture even a hybrid one, or an evolved Anglo-Saxon culture?

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Again, Crusader Kings handles this quiet elegantly. You can only decide the direction of development of the culture you‘re part of when you control the most provinces of your culture out of all rulers of that culture. That means you‘re the „culture head“ and you get to decide what invention the culture focuses on and which new traditions it unlocks.

Cultural splits can be done by non-culture-head rulers though, either trough divergence or through merging with another unrelated culture into a hybrid.

CKs culture system is quiet good for a grand strategy game IMO, but it’s still rather rudimentary though and isn’t perfect. Of course, since this is going to be a way larger focus for Thrive than it is for CK, such a system would need to be more refined and in-depth than that of CK. For example, the cultural head and divergence systems will often work in unintuitive or illogical ways. As an example, if a culture is made up of 75% small mercantile city states and of one unified more bellicose state which has 25% of the territory, CK would treat that larger states leader as the culture head of the overall mainstream culture, even though that might realistically more be a case for divergence since the mainstream of that culture should be more strongly influenced by the 75% city states as long as the larger state doesn‘t conquer them first and force its more warlike culture upon them.

This example is of course extremely simplyfied and probably anthropocentric, but I hope you get the idea how Thrive could develop a CK-like culture system in a more complex direction, maybe by even reusing some logic of the auto-evo code, e.g. regarding divergence.

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I think this at least can be done well enough that it’s not much of a problem. I think lots of “abilities” in strategy games already would be more in the cultural sphere than what states would do directly. So we would actually by comparison just be restricting some things to not directly affecting all cultures in the controlled territory.

Well, depending on what you switch to, you already have two potential costs:

  • A series of AI edits to the “State” that are not what you chose (like with species now).
  • Diminished power and/or influence (though in the specific example you gave, that’s obviously not the case)

I think it’s also worth considering again that this could be a difficulty setting-controlled option, like we have with switching species upon extinction (in fact, I would have it as one setting). With it off, you can only switch in those special events, with it on you can also switch whenever you “die.”

I’m definitely interested in hearing your thoughts on it. I think it will be valuable, even if we don’t end up fully going this way.
By the way, an example of a game where you can control States but don’t primarily play as them would be Terra Invicta.

So, the way I envisioned this is that Cultures would not directly mix or hybridize into something new. Rather, in the right circumstances, they would converge towards each other. One of my ideas was that the closer the interaction between two Cultures, the cheaper/easier it is to “evolve” in the direction of the other Culture. Be that adopting “known ideas,” selecting the same options, moving sliders towards where they are, etc.

So, assuming there are at least some things that both would like to gain from the other (include possibly also the idea that more similar Cultures have less problems/conflict between them as an additional advantage), over a long time period the Cultures would become very similar. Perhaps at the point that they are the same, they just merge into one?
One additional thing I had in mind is that the discounts can be dependent on the % of a culture that has contact with another one, and this can be an incentive for the player or the culture auto-evo equivalent to split away from their existing culture.

So, in the given example:

  • Part of the Normans invade the island.
  • There is now a “State” (the primary Culture is Norman) with part of the Norman Culture in it and (we’ll assume) all of the Anglo-Saxon Culture.
  • Living in a Norman Society and having contact with Norman Culture people gives the Anglo-Saxon culture discounts on moving towards Norman, and they take some of those options.
  • A similar thing happens for the Normans, but an additional complication is that if you were to look at the Normans in the island and in Normandy separately, they see both different “prices” and different benefits for options. So, the English-Norman splits off from Norman, moving towards Anglo-Saxon.
  • Regardless of which Culture moves more in which direction, eventually both Cultures are essentially the same, at which point they get re-labelled as one new English Culture.

Now this does raise questions like “does your Culture just gain control of a bunch more people for free?!” But I think this is also somewhat the core of the idea: Cultures are different from species, and you got there by actively trying to accommodate another Culture. To speed it up you need to be actively moving actively towards them (but maybe you actually wanted to do something else?)

Maybe in another context, the incentives are not there and the Cultures only adopt a few things from each other while staying on a mostly divergent path.

But I do think this might be another reason to primarily have the player “inhabit” a Society/State instead of a Culture. There would be slightly less shenanigans with growing in power by assimilating into a larger whole.

Speaking of assimilation, I do think it makes sense for this to happen with fairly small populations of a Culture living with another one. But I think overall “person changes from one Culture directly into another one” should not be typical.

I forgot about this part, that can also help prevent some oddities. Though it is not so compatible with playing a Culture that does not have a Society attached. But that may also not be a necessary feature.

Yes, I think the auto-evo comparison is particularly good in the example you give. Say the player is in control of said bellicose state and makes edit X. Auto-evo says “actually edit Y is better for the situation the rest is in” and thus they split of into a new Culture. It might even say “Z also seems like a good option inside the bellicose state (or at least part of it)” and that then creates a somewhat problematic counter-culture.

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