CultureRot Mod idea and development

[Xerxes712]

CultureRot Mod idea and development.

After studying various culture related Mods from Bhruic and Stone-D, I would like a to make a new mod based upon their coding techniques.

Basically, it is simple idea. There exist a universal 'hole in the bucket' for all culture plot points total on all tile squares.

I want the enemy culture (or mine) left over on a square anywhere should rot away with time.

As it is now in game, any culture built up on a square never is erased. it will stay there forever, even if no city is around to keep it in existance. As is known in Bhruic CultureDecay Mod, this leades to problems. This is another variation, take on his idea.

I am just making a more simple model that continuously leaks out a percent of total culture points an ALL squares no matter who or what is there, owned, built, or unclaimed.

You must keep feeding real true culture points to that square to negate the effect, or else a solid pecentage amount will be removed per turn until approaches asymtopically zero. Since it is a percentage, small and large cities will be in proportion. It will not matter who owns it or if it is inside a city border or not.

[Zuul]

Cool idea but will this make the borders expand faster?

[Xerxes712]

It should actually make border expansion slightly slower. You must make up for the small loss that is continuously in proportion being drained away.

[Xerxes712]

Another change update.

No culture points will be removed from a civ's square total accumulated culture points as long as there is a positive increase net flow (coming from that civ's nearby city) feeding it points, else it starts to decay at a small percentage.


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A side note, with so many copies of Civ4 sold, it does not seem very many people in general really care about using all these mods in this forum area. I wonder why?
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I made a HOTKEY reassignment Mod. I like to use the (Y) key instead of the (CTRL+Y) to toggle yield overlay display off/on easier, etc. You would think people would like to reassign HOTKEYS and combos.

[JDexter]

Originally posted by Zuul
Cool idea but will this make the borders expand faster?

Borders will expand faster if you "fight" an enemy culture border, but only if the culture (= the city it comes from) is destroyed / changed owner. It won't be as hard gaining new territory from a weakened opponent.

[Impaler[WrG]]

City Border Radius expands based on the Cities cultural level (these need tweeking I think). Each turn all the tiles get culture rained down on them but its denser near the city and only "sprinkling" out at the edge, thus it gets incressingly harder to "push" the deeper your land grabbing is going.

I think it might actualy be interesting for the City to be subject to the same culture drain, effectivly this would mean a cities culture would max out at some level equal to its output * (1/drainpercent). So if you output 10 culture a turn and the drain is 5 percent you "MAX OUT" at 200 culture. The progression is fast at first but exponentialy slows down as you aproach your Max. This would have stagering changes on the game and should be done just for experimenting purposes.

[Xerxes712]

Indeed that would happen. It would make Culture Victory a challenge. Maybe I can take into account the rate at which a city produces culture.

Example if a city has +200 culture points per turn added to its core center square and it is maxed out, then if it suffers a culture producing building lost due to a riot, revolt, earthquake mod or nuclear attack/meltdown, it would start to lose culture points to its new level instead of keeping the total produced frozen; until said building is rebuilt.

That lost culture would be reflected upon the cities borders quite possibly shrinking in extent.

It would be nice to even allow the spy a mission to destroy a rival's building as an objective to achieve this end. Though I know not if the AI even uses the spy. I assume the AI script can be changed just as any other.

[Bhruic]

How would it affect Culture Victory? The CV requires city culture points, not plot culture points. There is no relation between to the two, except that they start with a common base.

Bh

[Xerxes712]

Yes of course, I should say a somewhat slower victory, by in that example 5%. Yes, not much change really to achieve cuture victory score. What was I thinking...

+200 to +190 per turn late game is still not that much.

[JDexter]

I thought you were talking about culture rot on terrain plots, not on cities... Because for culture victory you don't need any plots, just the three cities on legendary culture level. And city culture should not rot IMO.

[Xerxes712]

OK, that is somthing to consider. Tht is why I float this idea out there to see some feedback and what would make the model look good.

Of course, changes can always be made after release.

This what I gather.

Let say it will affect a tile's cuture plot total only. The value you see in cheat mode when hoovering the mouse over a square while holding down the SHIFT key.

The amount of lost is determined ONLY by its value, the original idea. So even if within a city culture boundry or not, it will still lose a percentage.

That approach could seriously handicap a culture win in this respect. If it was set for only 1%, if you have legendary culture at 50,000 -the lost would be -500 culture points per turn. Thus the city would have to turn out that much per turn to over come that huge lost!

If it was a small and younger city with only 2000 total plot points on the square, then the lost would be only -20 per turn. The city would have a much easier time making that up.

You only need three cities with legendary culture for a normal win, but I also want to consider all city boundary growth too.

So I was going to leave out a tile square that has a net positive flow from being affected with rot.

Now that we have the two extremes. I further thought maybe determine culture lost on a square even with a positive net flow, in proportion to the net rate of accumulation. This would I hope create a happy middle.

The culture points removed from a tile square per turn for a fixed Rot rate is a function of two variables: Net Positive Culture Flow, and Total Culture Points.

A tile with no positive flow will feel the full effect of a percentage removed. Tiles that have a positive flow rate will have a proportional lessing effect on that lost amount. IE Squares that are receiving alot of culture per turn are less affected by Culture Rot lost rate per turn.

Another interesting note will be that using the Culture Bomb will be effective at first to expand your culture boundary, but over time unless that city is producing alot of culture per turn, it will diminish as if you never used it. Thus the affect will not be permenate, justifying it large +4000 addition. The Culture Bomb effect would fade away from a culturally poor city much faster than a culturally rich city.

Using it would let a small new city to gain a huge culture boundary quick in the short run, but it will lose it faster too, compared to a city that is cranking out alot of culture per turn already.

It would help soften that exploit. Making the decision 'a more interesting choice' between a one time shot 'Great Work of Art', or a longer term 'Super Art Specialist'.

[Impaler[WrG]]

If the city culture rot effect were to be included then we would simply alter the requirments for Culture levels and thus balance out the Radius growth rate and time needed to aquire a cultural victory. In addition we could change culture points coming in from various building and specialists.

Also I am wondering is culture recorded as floating point or Integer, plots with small values might be seeing less then 1 point of loss in many cases.

Nice point on Culture Bombs and realy like the effect (the art world is ruled by fads so the bombs effects fade over time). The Super Citizen effects are weak across the board if you ask me, this should help artist a lot but I think they might need an even greater bost (but this is a topic for another mod).

OH great Idea, Culture Rot should temporarily halt durring Golden Ages. With that 'hole' plugged your culture could inflate to higher then normal Maxed out levels and expand your territory. When GA ends it would deflate.