Rus culture should possibly be formed sometime between 867 and 1066 but for the game purposes you can fire na event allowing a player (but perhaps not AI) to form if they so choose at 867 start. Two reasons I am suggesting this: first is to allow the player to form the culture with the heritage of their is choosing and second is even in 945 there are members of the Rurikid family using names of Germanic origin. These are known through the Byzantine-Russian treaty of 945.

If you are interested in adding more characters I am working on adding thousands of historical characters which also includes a few Rurikids as part of it so I can make some suggestions. Most of these are known through the Byzantine-Russian treaty of 945 so not existing in either start date and people known from the treaty. Since some are known or thought to be of Igor's family, but the exact relation of only a couple or so are known (Igor's nephews whose parents weren't mentioned), instead of pointing out to my work (which you can find in PDX forum if you so choose anyway) I'll instead give you a source in case you may want to implement those whose connections are not known differently than me.

https://books.google.com.tr/books?hl=tr&id=lU3HIGV5D5IC&q=Ouleb#v=snippet&q=Ouleb&f=false

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27%E2%80%93Byzantine_Treaty_(945)

Below are a few other things regarding character additions I may not add sources to all at the moment


Malusha was the daughter of Malk, and she had a brother Dobrynya, who had descendants that exist in 1066 start. Dobrynya's grandson Ostromir's wife Theophano was also supposedly the daugher of Anna Porphyrogenita and Vladimir the Great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobrynya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostromir

Since you've mentioned Oleg, he wasn't the son of Rurik and he is thought by some to be the brother of Rurik's Norse wife who was called Efanda and whose parents are also not as portrayed in the game, but can't recall who they were supposed to be right now.

Of the several origin theories regarding origin, one that is implemented by the game, he is the son of Umila, also has more members of his family. Umila was the daughter of Gostomysl who had sons but all predeceased him, he also had 3 daughters, one is Umila. Another is possibly named Efanda ( Rurik's Norse wife is also named Efanda in some stories/theories), third, whose name I've had no luck finding had a son, "Vadim the Brave" who rebelled against Rurikids in 860s.

Olga of Kiev has several theories regarding her parentage, two of them worth mentioning:
First is she is the daughter of Oleg. Second is that she was not from Pskov which was then called Pleskov(Плѣсковъ) but rather from Pliska(Пльсковъ, romanized spelling: Plĭskovŭ ) the Bulgarian capital and she was the daughter of either Vladimir Rasate who ruled for a while after his father Boris' abdication or his younger brother Simeon who replaced him when Boris deposed Vladimir Rasate.

Originally posted by Abaçı:

Thanks for the detailed post with suggestions and historical info. I'd be interested in seeing your mod, so feel free to share it here!

I've read some papers discussing the treaties you mentioned, with the presence of Scandinavian and Slavic names. I agree that the best way to model Rus culture is to probably have it be formed via event or decision after game start, which is how I believe CK2 did it. There's actually already a mod that does this named Slightly More Interesting Russia.

At the moment, I've held off on doing this to maximize compatibility with other mods that change culture or add start dates. My current setup is imperfect, but I'd like to think it does the best with what Paradox gives us at the start. I also don't like how it prevents further hybridization until ~50 years after the game start, so I might explore a solution like a decision at game start like you suggested.

I also appreciate the notes about the Rurikid's historicity. I've been scratching my head over how to represent Oleg - I believe Historical Invasions just has him appear as an event-based invader, but I'm trying to make my mod more 'organic.' I've been considering adding some kind of events or decisions that has more Rurikids appear near the game start or during the conquest of Rus, but haven't made any concrete plans for it.

Originally posted by meat plague:

Originally posted by Abaçı:

You are welcome. My "mod" is not yet released as a mod but I continually update it and post the updated version to forums (will provide link at the end). It is mostly Bulgarian and Byzantine characters but the "Byzantine" here is very broad, so broad that I've added missing members for families( or even families that were entirely missing like gens Anicia) that had members marry with Byzantine families and also for families that were under Byzantine rule/service, for example the Ostrogothic Amalings. Rurikids, for example, I've added due to their marriages with BE but I've also added a few historical characters due to their marriages with Rurikids like Malusha's family I've mentioned above or added two brothers to Rogneda of Polotsk because she had brothers who were murdered by Vladimir the Great.
I've also added their (possible) marriages with Krum dynasty, one of the people suggested to be the mother of Saints Boris and Gleb is Boris II of Bulgaria's sister. I think I've already made Oleg a brother of Ingrid, but I also intend to change the parentage of Ingrid (Efanda's Anglicized form it seems) to Kettil Salmon.


Edit: Oh, another thing I did is to implement the two theories I've mentioned regarding Olga of Kiev, I've implemented both after a fashion: I've added a fictional daughter to Oleg and made Olga the daughter of her and therefore a granddaughter of Oleg and made Vladimir Rasate her father.

Although they are made of fictional people due to lack of knowledge, I am also adding known tribes (not yet posted), so far it's mostly Turkic, Germanic and Slavic tribes in Balkans and Pannonia and intend to add a couple of Arabic ones that became Byzantine subjects but once I am finished there I also intend to start adding several Slavic, Turkic and possibly Finno-Ugric tribes that are relevant to Rus though when that would happen, if it happens at all, I'm not sure. Possibly after I release the mod (hopefully in Spring) so late Spring/early summer at the earliest I guess.

Below you can find my work so far, contents table is not updated so there's more to it than what is written there. I've also added some detailed information for most of the people. You can find the Rurikids(and related families) by searching this: NONE BYZANTINE FAMILIES



https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/abbc-additional-byzantine-bulgarian-characters.1607409/

Good day! Thank you for such a wonderful mod.

I noticed that since the recent update, this mod sometimes spams the error in the log "Event rus_invasion.6 has been queued twice with the same data including delay", the log file increases in weight to hundreds of megabytes, the latest speed settings become unplayable.

Most often it appears when the AI is at Rus Conquest wars with 4 or more rulers at the same time (except Khazaria).

Also, spam errors "New data types does not contain a 'Character' data context" and "Data error in loc string 'SPOUSE'" appeared in the log file, but I'm not yet sure that it was caused by your modification (I noticed only one mention of "SPOUSE" in your modification files, but have not yet determined what exactly is wrong with the error and why it occurs).

Of the major mods I only use "More Interactive Vassals" mod.

Originally posted by Hummer of Justice:

Thanks for catching that! It was a simple mistake and I've added a couple guardrails that should prevent that from happening again.

As for the spouse one, I haven't seen it and don't believe that would be from my mod either. I'll keep looking out for errors to squash, though.

it conflicts with EPE/Cultures Expanded don`t know why, but when i disabled this mods, Rus culture appeared

Originally posted by Falvick:

it conflicts with EPE/Cultures Expanded don`t know why, but when i disabled this mods, Rus culture appeared

Thanks for letting me know. Not very surprising because culture mods tend to conflict with each other - can you tell me more about what happened when you tried to load both so I can investigate? It could just be a load order problem, but I could make a compatch

It seems to work fine, so I think this is misunderstanding. Cultures Expanded does remove Rus culture at the start, but this mod is still compatible.

could you create compatch with CE? CE have more intresting cultures, traditions and visual

Originally posted by meat plague:

Originally posted by Abaçı:

Thanks for the detailed post with suggestions and historical info. I'd be interested in seeing your mod, so feel free to share it here!

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3175157355

It's done now. There isn't much addition for Rurikids beyond 900s but changes made to some related people. Will take a look at a later date to see whether there are more of them to add and I also intend to move his wife and Oleg/Helgi(he was possibly brother-in-law of Rurik) to another family.

Take a look into your coat_of_arms file in common — I believe there's a typo in c_beloozero's CoA:
I mean the double underscore

Originally posted by Premislia:

Take a look into your coat_of_arms file in common — I believe there's a typo in c_beloozero's CoA:

c_beloozero = { pattern = "pattern__solid_designer.dds" ...

I mean the double underscore

Thank you, I have just uploaded a fix

Looks like this mod isn`t work correct with More Holding graphics
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2262523658&searchtext=more+holding
which is must have in my opinion as light weight mod for deviding culture appearence one from another. Holding pictures are missing with this mod. I tried to plce it before and after more holding graphics. Also i use community flavour pack and patch for CFP + MHG

would be cool to have some decisions to "Byzantify" the Russian empire & perhaps even have a decision to dejure drift Parts of Byzantium into the Russian Empire. Perhaps make Constantinople Tsargrad :^)

to fix comp issue with EPE and this mod (slavs change clothes to white T's), i changed brus_cultures.txt

clothing_gfx = { epe_east_slav_clothing_gfx northern_clothing_gfx }

this is line used for this cultures clothes in EPE, im not even close to be a modmaker, so cant tell properly, but tried something i had prediction and that worked, hope I helped you, your mod is so cool it made me try fix it to play, so big big thanks for your work

Originally posted by Авантюрист:

to fix comp issue with EPE and this mod (slavs change clothes to white T's), i changed brus_cultures.txt

clothing_gfx = { epe_east_slav_clothing_gfx northern_clothing_gfx }

this is line used for this cultures clothes in EPE, im not even close to be a modmaker, so cant tell properly, but tried something i had prediction and that worked, hope I helped you, your mod is so cool it made me try fix it to play, so big big thanks for your work

Thanks, I don't use EPE so didn't get around to fixing it yet. I'll create a compatch based on this when I have time in the next few days