What is Cultural Acceptance in Crusader Kings 3: Royal Court and how to increase it

Updated: October 8, 2024

This guide is current to the Update 1.13.0.4!

Crusader Kings 3 can be a confusing game with numerous stats and figures tied to your small nation and court. Cultural Acceptance is just one of these stats, and it’s gained increased significance due to the release of the Royal Court expansion. Here's everything you need to know about Cultural Acceptance in CK3, and how to get tons of it quickly.

What is Cultural Acceptance in Crusader Kings 3?

Cultural Acceptance is precisely what it says on the tin: It’s how accepted a particular Culture is within your realm. Each Culture will have its own Cultural Acceptance value, which will change due to several factors.

But what makes Cultural Acceptance so important? At its core, Cultural Acceptance will affect how characters from different cultures interact within your kingdom. For example, Low acceptance leads to more rebellions, vassal discontent, and overall instability, while higher acceptance opens doors to higher opinion and peace.

The baseline acceptance between cultures is determined by several factors such as shared heritage, language, religion, and location. Each of these factors provides a bonus to acceptance, which you can either build upon or damage through various in-game actions.

How to increase Cultural Acceptance

There are multiple ways to increase Cultural Acceptance within your realm. Below we’ve listed some of the best ways to boost Cultural Acceptance:

1. Having Bordering Cultures: If your culture shares borders with another, you'll automatically gain +0.05 yearly acceptance for each border county. This bonus is capped at +1 per year, but it adds up over time.
2. Having Shared Realms: If both cultures exist within the same realm, you can gain up to +0.5 yearly acceptance. The amount depends on how prevalent both cultures are in your realm. For example, if 50% of your realm is Norse and 40% is Sami, you'll gain only +0.1 yearly acceptance.
3. Vassal Relations: Vassals from another culture can boost acceptance, with higher-tier vassals (barons, dukes, kings) contributing more to this growth, capped at up to +0.5 yearly.
4. Promote Cultural Acceptance: You can assign your Steward to Promote Cultural Acceptance, which will increase acceptance by +0.01 per year per level of their Stewardship skill, with an additional +0.05 if you're an independent ruler. I try to further boost this modifier by having the Customs Dynasty legacy unlocked.
5. Granting Counties to Local Nobles: One of the most effective ways that I use to immediately boost acceptance is by granting titles to nobles of the local culture. This action provides a flat bonus, capped at +2 per county granted.
6. Perks and Legacies: Certain perks like Open-Minded from the Scholar Focus or dynasty legacies like Customs can grant significant acceptance bonuses. Scheme decisions like Learn Language also provide a flat +1 acceptance boost with the target culture.

Additionally, adopting artifacts from other Cultures will help Cultural Acceptance. In general, if an action has a positive diplomatic effect, it will likely increase Cultural Acceptance within your realm. Once you’ve increased Cultural Acceptance enough, you’ll be able to hybridize your Culture and create a Hybrid Culture.

How to avoid losing Cultural Acceptance

Just as it can be gained, Cultural Acceptance can also be lost if you’re not careful. To prevent this, these are the actions you should avoid doing:

1. Declaring Wars on Other Cultures: Whenever you declare war on a ruler of a different culture, you lose cultural acceptance. The rank of your target determines how much you lose. This value is -1 for counts, -2 for dukes, -3 for kings, and -4 for emperors rank characters.
2. Changing County Culture: If you forcefully convert a county’s culture, you will lose acceptance with the culture that previously ruled that county. This is a flat loss that can hurt your relationships in the long run.
3. Revoking Titles from Other Cultures: Similar to declaring war, revoking titles from vassals of a different culture leads to acceptance penalties with values -1 for counts, -2 for dukes, and -3 for kings. However, barons don’t cause any loss.
4. Lack of Interaction: If two cultures have no interactions that build acceptance (such as bordering counties or sharing realms), their acceptance will decrease by -0.5 yearly. To prevent this, ensure that your cultures remain engaged through diplomacy, vassalage, or even marriages.

Apart from the above factors, Cultural Acceptance also naturally decays towards its baseline level. Cultures with a high acceptance rate but no shared heritage will gradually lose acceptance at a rate of -0.01 yearly for each percentage point above the baseline.

For more on Crusader Kings 3, check out All Achievements added in CK3 Royal Court on Pro Game Guides.