In EU4, every country has a primary culture and is part of a culture group. Culture shifting is the process of changing the primary culture of your nation.
This can be done easily by making states in your target culture provinces and having 50% or more development among your stated provinces.
Is Culture Shifting Worth It
Some nations need to be a specific culture to form that nation. For example, to form Germany, your country needs to have one of Germanic cultures as the primary culture. Similarly, you need to be an Iranian culture group to form Mughals, Muscovite or Novgorodian culture to form Russia, Turkish culture to form Rome, and so on.
Another reason could be that you want to be part of a larger culture group so you have more accepted culture provinces, or simply for roleplaying purposes.
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How to Culture Shift
Before starting the process of culture shifting, make sure you have plenty of admin and about 100 Diplomatic points; furthermore, time it so that you don’t have any admin idea groups going at the time.
Also, have a bit of a bank because you won’t be able to full core all new provinces as you won’t have enough admin points. You’re going to lose some income for a few months.
Start by accepting the culture you want to shift to, then unstate cells that are not the right culture and state the provinces you want to shift to. Do it a few times and keep an eye on the percentage.
If you are lucky, the new culture you’re shifting to will have high development, so you get to 50% faster.
Keep in mind that you cannot unstate the provinces assigned to an estate. You will have to unassign their state. This might bring some estates below the threshold level, and they may become disloyal.
Removing a province from a disloyal estate leads to rebel outbreaks. Although these rebel outbreaks are fairly minor and shouldn’t be a big deal, have your armies on the ready anyway.
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Also, you can’t unstate the capital province, so hopefully, you don’t have to unstate your capital to get to 50%. In case you do, you’ll have to move your capital to one of the provinces with the target culture, which costs a lot of mana points (200 admin points plus more depending on the difference between development between the two provinces).
When you reach the 50% mark on a culture, the culture shift button becomes active. Click it, and you have changed the primary culture of your country. It’s going to take a few years to full core all new stated provinces, so it’s best to restrict yourself to either smaller conquests or feed conquered provinces to your vessels for a while.
How to Culture Shift as an Empire
If you’re an empire and you want to culture shift to a culture that’s in your accepted culture group, you will have to culture shift twice.
You can’t culture shift to another culture in your culture as an empire. Therefore, you will have to culture shift to a culture out of your culture group and then culture shift back to the culture you wanted to.
For example, if you formed Arabia as an empire, you’ll have to switch to Greek first by getting Greek states to 50% state development, then switch to Turkish by the same method.
Second Way to Culture Shift
There is another way to culture shift, and that is by converting your provinces to the culture you want. However, this is a painstakingly long process, and it’s not recommended.
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Conclusion
Culture shifting may seem daunting to new EU4 players, but it’s an advanced game mechanic that can be done very easily. This guide provides a step-by-step process
