Culture

I have considered culture an isolated game mechanic rather than a separate resource because it only really feeds into public order rather than being interdependent on many other resource types. The higher the cultural proportion in a province that is your culture, the lower the public order penalty.

Culture applies province-wide, even including enemy factions that may share a province with you. The most prevalent culture in a province is shown as a symbol just below the settlement’s name when a settlement in the province is selected. Next to it is the cultural influence of the most prevalent culture. This may be below 50% if there are three or more cultures of significant influence in a province.

The symbol and % are also shown in the Province Details map below the Public Order section, along with the symbols of other cultures with any influence. Hovering the mouse pointer over each symbol gives details of the breakdown of influences of that culture:

Latin Culture
Latin Culture
Celtic Culture
Celtic Culture

The new (as of patch 8) way culture works is that there are two proportions, the current proportion of different cultural influences and the equilibrium proportion. The current proportion gradually changes towards the equilibrium proportion, changing faster the further away the current position is from the equilibrium position. The equilibrium position is determined from the ratio of the influence values of the different cultures. In the example above with Latin 30 and Celtic 6, the equilibrium ratio is 30:6, or 83% vs 17%. Since matters have not changed in Britannia for very many turns, the current proportion has already reached this steady-state equilibrium position. If, for example, I built more culture buildings, or destroyed some, Latin influence would increase or decrease, changing the equilibrium proportion so that, turn by turn, the current proportion would shift towards this new position, quickly at first and then more slowly at it approached its goal.

The Latin influence breakdown in Britannia is 18 for buildings (12 for three Nymph groves and 6 for one Temple of Jupiter) and 12 for technologies (2 for philosophers, 4 for natural philosophy and 6 for cultism).

The Celtic influence breakdown in Britannia is 0 for buildings because I long ago destroyed any buildings that would have Celtic cultural influence, and i am not sure if there are any celtic factions left alive to have any technologies, if they had ever researched one that raised cultural influence. A relatively big (and the only) influence is local traditions. This is a never changing factor for a province. Over the span of the campaign there will always be an indefinable something that makes a province affiliated with a certain culture, no matter how much you may Romanise it with fancy marble buildings and fancy philosophical ideas. Most provinces have a far lower local traditions value than Britannia.

Other influences on culture include friendly or enemy generals with certain traits and the Romanisation Edict.

For a given level of current cultural % proportion, the accruing public order penalty can be reduced by various factors. For example, possession of the Stonehenge wonder reduces the public order penalty due to the local presence of foreign cultures by 20% faction-wide.

To change the current cultural % proportion in your favour, you must obviously change the equilibrium position. However, it may well be insufficient simply to build enough buildings that is calculated to come to a desired equilibrium % (the ratio of your and all alien influences) that you have determined will result in an acceptable level of public unrest. This is because it will take ages to reach that level. Better to generate a healthy excess of influence factors to shift the equilibrium % right over to your side. Then the current % will shift much faster. When you get to the desired public order level, you may then if you wish save resources by removing or swapping out these influences to a sufficient degree merely to keep it at this level but not so much as to allow it to drop again.