[Mod] CulturalDecay

[Bhruic]

CulturalDecay makes two significant changes to culture. First, any time a city is lost (conquered, destroyed, etc), it sends a "Culture Shock" through the region, resulting in the loss of 50-75% of the culture generated by the city. Note, this culture is NOT the culture visible in the city screen, it is the culture that determines the city boundaries, and which Empire will be able to work a square. The Culture Shock makes it much easier for an Empire to exert control over squares surrounding a city when it is conquered.

The second thing it does (which gives it its name) is cause squares outside of an Empire's borders to slowly lose culture over time. This loss (5% of the square's culture every turn, resulting in a half-life of roughly 14 turns) makes it harder for an Empire to regain lands that they lost in the past.

Installation:

CulturalDecay should NOT be installed in your main Civ IV location, as it will overwrite necessary files. Instead, it should be installed at: "My Documents\My Games\Civilization 4".

CulturalDecay makes use of the DataStorage mod to track culture generation on a square. Because it needs to store the information every turn, using this mod on games in progress will not result in optimal behaviour (although there should be no problems doing so).

History:

v0.2
- removed the cultural smoothing effect
- added the Culture Shock effect
- switched to using DataStorage to store cultural data
- borrowed some code from Mylon to determine Cultural boundaries

v0.1
- first release

Bh

[Xerxes712]

Can you explain what the problem is? When I destroy a enemy city, the culture boundary disappears?

Or is it if the enemy city falls into ruin due to me pillage and siege the city; then the cultural boundary will shrink to fit the new city size??

That maybe useful for pillaging a enemy city that is too strong to take straight off. That way my culture boundary dispute will fill in the void.

I guess I do not understand what exactly it is fixing.

[MattPilot]

Cool mod - was hopeing for something like that.


Need some clarification though:

Also, any square that is a cultural 'high point', that is, the culture on a square is higher than on all surrounding squares will have it's culture lowered 5% unless the square is (a) a city, or (b) within 2 or more city cultural boundaries.

Lowered 5% every turn until its even with surrounding, or what? I don't understand this part.

[Bhruic]

Yes, it will be lowered until it matches whatever square is the highest of its neighbours.

Can you explain what the problem is? When I destroy a enemy city, the culture boundary disappears?

There are two forms of culture in the game. Cultural boundaries and square (or plot) culture. They relate in the fact that in order for your cultural boundary to encompass a square, you must have the most culture for that square. So if I have 1000 culture on a square, and you have 500 culture on a square, then I will 'own' that square, as long as it's within both of our cultural boundaries.

So let's say you destroy my city. Your forces leave the area. I come back and rebuild my city. Despite the fact my new city has no culture, I still have all the culture from my previous city. So I still win the 'cultural boundary' war, and will own the square.

This is true even if I build the city 500 turns later (although, in that time, you will almost certainly have developed more culture).

Ideally I want to have culture slowly decay to whatever the city values currently are. But unfortunately, the functions dealing with culture aren't terribly advanced, so that may not be possible.

Bh

[Xerxes712]

Wow, I did not know that. Thanks for this mod!

No wonder the AI would 'pop' back up full of strength and cultural boundary so fast, after I pillaged or destroyed his city; so I could make room to expand my empire.

I agree, the culture should decay away.

This should also help with when a city is captured, and other neighboring rival cities maybe taking over so quickly, that are in a contested area.

[Bhruic]

Yeah. Unfortunately, while there are functions to determine how many squares away from a city a specific square is, there isn't one to determine what city it is. Until I can grab that, I'm not sure I can make this work exactly the way I want.

Bh

[Crazy_Ivan80]

does this mean tile-culture has a drop off point? i.e. the value returning to 0 when it's just too low (solving the 99% #insert culture# value that just remains forever)

[Tiberius]

What does exactly the 5% mean? 5% per turn from the initial value? If so, the culture will fade away completely in 20 turns. Isn't it too fast?

Or is it 5% per turn from the previous turn's value? As in:
100-(100*0.05)-(95*0.05)-...
Obviously this way it will take a lot longer to reach 0.

Otherwise this is a great idea

[pauli]

how does this affect unflippable isolated cities?

[Bhruic]

[SIZE=1]
Or is it 5% per turn from the previous turn's value? As in:
100-(100*0.05)-(95*0.05)-...

Yeah, that is the way it works. Half life of 14 turns. But yes, it does take awhile to completely fade out, which is the effect I was going for.

Bh

[Tiberius]

Sounds good. I'll use it.

[Xerxes712]

I cannot get it to work.

Do you need to start a New game? I placed it into the CustomAssets folder.

Using the cheat and looking at the plot values, nothing is changing.

What am I doing wrong? I really would like this too work.

I have a city that will never convert to even close 50% alot of revolts. After 100 turns, I would say there does need to be a decay rate, though I would have it at maybe something less than 5% per turn, but better than zero (say 3%).

Can you give me any tips? Obviously you have it working. I have a square that is very far away from the original enemy city, and it does not decay.

Must I start a new game for this to work? It is just a python program and XML that gets loaded upon a restart of Civ4.

I should say, does it work with a savegame in progress started under 1.09 or do I need to start a fresh game?

[Bhruic]

It works fine with games in progress.

I'm not entirely sure how you are expecting it to be used. Perhaps you can post a screenshot?

Bh

[MattPilot]

while looking into your files, i notice the "TechConquest" entry.


Did i miss a (great) mod from you, or have you just not released it yet?

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by MattPilot
while looking into your files, i notice the "TechConquest" entry.


Did i miss a (great) mod from you, or have you just not released it yet?

While I'm not sure it's the same exact mod, look here for your answer - http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=144315