I'm not really in favor of adding cultures that will completely homogenize entire empires, so I will not go forward with this suggestion. However, I will still add a melting pot culture to the Great Lakes area.



This new culture is Vindgarder, a mixture of Chicagoan and Northman/Yooper culture that initially appears in Chicagoan provinces that are held by a Northman/Yooper ruler. It'd be comparable to Norman in the base game - the culture would be part of the Lacustrine culture group, but with a significant northern influence. Vindgarder rulers will not be able to raid overseas with boats, and are more likely to adopt an organized religion than their northern brethren. My only concern with this idea is that it might wind up eliminating Chicagoan culture entirely in most games, given that the area always seems to be conquered by either the Norse or the Rust Cultists.



I'm also going ahead with the suggestion to add a melting pot between Cubano and Gulfard in South Florida. I'm calling the culture simply "Miamian" for now. It's going to be in the South Anglo culture group, but will be heavily influenced by Cuban and other Hispanic cultures. Also, Nuyorican will be implemented as an Easter egg - it won't take much additional effort to do this.



Noticing a pattern? All of the melting pot cultures added so far, with the exception of Nuyorican, are part of the culture group of the "province cultures", but contain significant influences from the "ruler cultures". This paralells most of the melting pot cultures in Vanilla (Norse -> Norman, Norman -> English, Frankish -> French, etc.), and it makes intuitive sense - the common people aren't fully abandoning their language and customs, but they have been influenced so heavily by other cultures that they can't be said to be part of their original cultures anymore. Some people might not like this direction, though, so I'm considering making "Miamian" a Caribeño culture instead.



Please let me know what you think!