BM is not civilization. Culture is something players will have to create themselves not game mechanics.
However, I feel there should be something to encourage people to create more unique cultures in the game. The game used to have many unique cultures but it feels like for the past 5 years or so, many realms in the game are pretty much the same except a couple.
To allow this, I think the game should really integrate how religions work. The game should allow religious holidays which are chosen by different religions. Allowing different religions to choose different days as their holidays will change how each realm celebrate their culture. The game even has a system that tracks seasons. We can use that to implement this. If there are two religions called "Sun Lovers" and "Moon Lovers", they can choose up to 7 days (BM days) to be their holidays. They can even choose if those days will be separated or be combined to form a long festival.
Each lord can either allow religious holidays in three levels.
1st - Allow all religious holidays. This option will make the region celebrate religious holidays of all religions that influence the region. Depending on the ratio of people in each religion, region production will fall but morale will be boosted.
ex) Region X has 10,000 pop. 2000 are Sun Lovers and 6000 are Moon lovers. The remaining 2000 are pagans. Pagans don't have holidays so they don't celebrate anything. on Sun Lovers' holidays, X's production falls to 80% but morale and loyalty will rise by 20%. While production returns to 100% after the holidays end, morale and loyalty will stay for a few days. They will decrease over time. Same goes for Moon Lovers. 60% production will fall while 60% morale and loyalty will rise.
2nd - Allow the Lord's religion's holidays. The lord is a Sun Lover and only Sun Lovers' holidays are celebrated. This will make Moon Lovers rather unhappy. Pagans of course don't care.
ex) On Sun Lovers' holidays(SLH), Moon Lovers will be displeased. Depending on luck, anywhere from 0~25% of them will be unhappy. Since there are 6,000/1,0000 Moon Lovers in the region, on SLHs, instead of gaining 20% morale and loyalty boost, the region will gain anywhere from 5~20%. When 25% of Moon Lovers are unhappy, the region will only gain 5% while when 0% are unhappy, the region will gain full 20% boost.
3rd - Disallow holidays. If the region is majorly pagan, this won't affect anything. However, if the people mostly believe in one religion, this will make them quite unhappy.
On holidays, filling kegs is free if it is being held in a region with a marketplace.
Maybe religions can declare saints from a list of dead characters to name their holidays after.
Wouldn't mind seeing something akin to wonders. I think each realm should build something that represents them or differentiates them from other realms. Also, to show off to other realms what they can build. But this should be a long term project which requires combined efforts of all its members. Once built, you get an announcement across the continent with some realm wide stat boost to celebrate.
