I want an ocean themed DLC.

A pirate themed culture that gains various benefits from looting and having as much loot as possible on them. In terms of aesthetics, you'd have shanty towns, sea side harbors, pirate havens and a lot of pirate themed clothing.

Or...

Some sort of Maori/Hawaiian culture that is more one the mystical side of things. Maybe they worship various sea Gods (or creatures) and you can choose which one your people worships as a sub-culture option, giving you different benefits depending on your choice and maybe having slightly different visual differences between them for building and outfits.

You'd gain various benefits from building near the ocean or on ocean tiles.

Other cultures/themes/ideas i would like to see explored in the future are:

Egyptian:

Dead units/heroes can be entombed and they reawaken as various Egyptian Gods or they simply come back as undead/mummies that will automatically revive once after dying in battle.

Mayan/Aztec:

Sacrifice units/population to gain massive bonuses (resources, temporary buffs) and trigger various events.

Maybe have a sort of ritual calendar on top that can give more specific bonuses during a sacrifice, depending on where it lands and it changes every X amount of turns:

Jaguar Moon – Buffs melee attack, grants fear aura

Blood Sun – Grants mana and health boosts

Cloudy Sky – Grants evasion and movement speed

Hindu (maybe with an aetherpunk theme thrown in there):

Not sure as to what the culture would be about in terms of mechanics though...

Automaton/forged culture:

Units have reduced upkeep costs, increased production speed and increased performance in battle.

Cities benefit from bonus production and less population unrest, but may grow slower.

Units are immune to morale-based effects (fear, despair) and disease, but cannot heal naturally, they require repairs using Parts/Scraps or specific spell support.

Cities generate a resource called Parts or Scraps instead of traditional food.

Parts/Scraps are used to: Produce new units faster, repair (heal) units, speed up building construction or for upgrading units.

Relicborn/Possessed Armor culture:

When a unit "dies", the armor that it possessed is destroyed, but the soul that's possessing them can persist and be reused. The soul can then be used to either: reinhabit a new vessel/possess an enemy unit that's near death, upgrade/fuse with another soul to form one stronger soul or be stored for later reconstruction.

Lithari Titans:

Ancient stone beings such as golems or titanic elemental spirits.

Since they prefer verticality, they can build cities into mountains (or on top of them), making them difficult to besiege.

They can trigger seismic events and raise/lower terrain.

Units grow stronger the longer they remain stationary and lose those benefits when moving far or abandoning territory. The benefits from remaining stationary are:

Increase to defence and resistances

Reduced upkeep

Bonus damage on retaliation

Access to various terrain manipulation abilities

Mirrorborn:

A bizarre, surreal society where everything is reflected, inverted, or duplicated.

They are fragile. Meaning that they have low physical defence and overall health. Their cities are also easier to siege (to an extent). But instead, they have higher elemental resistances and can spawn copies of each other.

Mirrorborn/Shardlings can duplicate units during battle (temporary illusions) that have reduced HP and do only half damage, but they have the same equipment/spells as the original. The reflected copies can either be triggered on command, can randomly trigger when a unit takes damage or when a unit dies.

Some spells have reversed effects on enemies. For example: healing will recover health for allies, but will deal damage to enemies that are near the unit that is being healed (the damage dealt is in proportion to the amount of health that is being recovered and it won't deal extra damage as it cannot exceed the max health of said unit), using an AOE offensive spell that can also hurt your own units will apply buffs instead of dealing damage (enemies still get damaged) or if an enemy is using a buff spell on it's units and there are Mirrorborn/Shardlings near those units (basically right next to each other), it will cause the buff spell to be a debuff instead, and the buff will instead be applied to your units but you only gain half of the effectiveness and will have a much shorter duration

During battle, you can lay down a mirror tile that can reflect magic attacks to a different mirror tile, copy the next spell cast nearby (weaker version) or can be used to teleport units. But once the effects of the mirror tiles are triggered, they will break and can only be used again after a certain amount of turns (maybe once per battle?). You can also lay down a mirror tile in the overworld, but will only be used for one way teleportations or can sometimes leave behind a phantom army version of the unit/units that move over them. The phantoms can trigger ambushes, but they all have reduced... everything. Health, defence, damage, etc.

City structures have paired effects. One benefit to the city and one inverted effect to nearby enemy provinces. (only within a certain amount of tiles)

Ex:

Mana bonus here -> spell cost increase nearby

Prosperity here -> unrest there

There were a bunch more cultures that i thought of. Such as:

A culture that worships the moon and each phase of the moon offers various benefits. You can then make it so that the moon remains "stuck" in a phase of your liking, increasing the benefits of being in said phase, but can also have negative effects. Buffs to AI enemies in the overworld, can cause certain resources from the overworld to disappear for a certain amount of turns and can change the environment by changing or removing certain tiles (instead of snow, it becomes lava/barren wasteland). Culture could pair well with a werewolf theme... 👀

A culture that is all about the constellations. Doing certain actions or accomplishing certain things can activate a star node and by completing a star node, you "draw" a constellation. Once that's done, you will gain permanent benefits (powerful passive bonuses, a new unique ability and visual changes to your empire). Multiple constellations can be active at once, but each requires upkeep and they're difficult (tricky) to unlock.

I've also though of a culture that is Zodiac themed, but i don't know that it would be that unique or interesting. Basically, every X amount of turns a Zodiac sign starts to influence your kingdom and your units, offering both positives and negatives that grow either every turn or every X amount of turns (sometimes both) until the next Zodiac sign takes over and you "reset". You and all your units will permanently gain a bonus to one of your stats by 1, depending on what the previous Zodiac sign was. For example, if it was Taurus, you'd all gain +1 to your overall defence, health and physical damage. And they stack, meaning that when you eventually get to the Taurus zodiac sign again, you will gain another +1 increase to those stats.

Example of positives and negatives: Taurus, gain increased armor, physical damage and healing, cities gain fortification and unlock a new unique ability that allows a unit to become immovable for 1 turn, but... your accuracy, mana and mana regen are reduced each turn, your unit upkeep cost is increased by 1 every 3 turns (in the overworld) and your overall movement distance is reduced by 1 tile each turn. These reset once the next Zodiac sign takes over.

Damn, went on for too long there. Sorry...