Europa Universalis 5: Culture Guide (Opinion, Favors, Strategy)

Europa Universalis 5 recently got an overhaul to its Culture system, drastically shifting the strategy, making things like Opinion more important than ever.

But let’s start with the basics. Culture is key in this game as it allows you to get Core locations, which massively expand your Control. Of course, though, there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of here, making it all pretty overwhelming!

In this guide, I’ll try to explain everything you need to know about Culture to make things easier for you.

Culture Basics

In this game, a Culture is a group of people that shares a kinship. A Culture can be defined into 4 different categories within each location, as follows:

• Primary – The majority Culture in the location. Pops within this Culture have +25% Satisfaction.
• Accepted – Essentially a secondary Culture, trailing right behind the Primary Culture. Pops in this Culture have +10% Satisfaction.
• Tolerated – A small minority Culture, but one that is still in good graces of the Primary Culture. Pops within this Culture get +5% Satisfaction.
• Discriminated – The smallest minority Culture within a location, it gains no Satisfaction bonuses.

Cultures can be upgraded and downgraded within these ranks, though downgrading them has a massive penalty to the Pops’ Satisfaction.

Each location has a varying Cultural Capacity, which is a sort of currency required to enact various cultural actions, such as Accepting or Tolerating other Cultures.

There are also two other key stats to track. Cultural Influence is an offensive stat which is pitted against another Culture’s Cultural Tradition, which is a defensive stat. This primarily affect Assimilaiton, which we’ll discuss later.

Additionally, each culture possesses a shared Language and belongs to a set Culture Group. It’s cheaper to Accept and Tolerate other Cultures if you share a Language and Culture Group.

Which, on that note, Cultures have Opinions on other Cultures. These can vary greatly, depending on the world state and interactions between these Cultures in the past. I’ll go into more detail later in this guide.

Regardless, that is the very basics of what you need to understand when it comes to Cultures! What’s important next is how this plays into Assimilation and Integration, so let’s talk about those.

Culture Assimilation

As multiple Cultures share a location, the larger Culture will assimilate Pops from the smaller Culture. That means, primarily, that you can convert others into your Primary or Accepted Cultures.

There are a myriad factors that affect Assimilation, however. I recommend checking the Demography tab for the location where you want to assimilate Cultures, as that will show you all the modifiers taking place.

Generally speaking, though, you want the targeted Culture to have a positive opinion of your Primary or Accepted Culture. They should also have a lower Cultural Tradition than your own Cultural Influence.

Conversely, you want your own Culture to have a negative opinion of the targeted Culture. Simply put, accepted and tolerated Cultures assimilate much more slowly.

In short, for maximum Assimilation rates, you’ll want to dislike a Culture that likes your own Culture. That’s why effective Diplomatic Actions and Culture Opinion management are key!

To improve another Culture’s opinion of your own, you can use 50 Favors for the “Ask to Improve Culture Opinion” Diplomatic Action. You can get Favors through positive Diplomatic Actions, such as “Send Gift.”

At the same time, you can lower your own opinion on other Cultures by right-clicking on them in the Culture Breakdown tab. This costs 10 Prestige to do.

Again, though, there are a myriad factors that can speed up or slow down the Assimilation rate. Remember to check each location’s Demography tab to get all of the details and see what you need to adjust.

Location Integration

The ultimate goal of all of the Culture metagaming in Europa Universalis 5 is to turn Locations into Core Locations, commonly known as just Cores.

To keep things simple, a Location is considered a Core Location when 50% of the Pops within belongs to the owner’s Primary or Accept Cultures.

As of version 1.2, Locations will also lose their Core status if the Primary or Accepted Culture drops below 50%. This is why it’s important to keep track of Assimilation even after you manage to turn a Location into a Core one.

The main benefit of having Core Locations is that each one provides +20% Max Control. You’ll also get +0.1% Monthly Control, and your Primary and Accepted Culture population will grow.

Ultimately, turning locations into Cores is the main goal of the Culture metagame. Assimilate other cultures into your Primary or Accepted Cultures to ensure you can reach and stay above the 50% threshold and improve your Control.

Wrapping Up

That’s the end of this Culture guide for Europa Universalis 5, so you should now have a general strategy of what to do and how things like opinion and favors play into it all.

That said, the current Culture system is extremely convoluted, which is the sentiment shared by most fans. I tried to keep things as simple as possible, but there are many moving parts that can drastically affect every part of the system.

On the other hand, the developers seem to be working towards addressing the main issues with this complicated system that the fans have brought up. So, I hope their changes and this guide help you have an easier time with integrating Cores!