{The List-} Culture

[Shogun Gunner]

I've read the pros and cons about flipping in the forums.

One impression I have observed is that players seemed ticked off when they capture an enemy city, park their troops it for one or two turns, but when they go to move their military on to the next objective, the reduction of troop presence is enough to cause a flip. I would argue that is a nice check, both for playability and realism, on military campaigns.

In one of the other threads we are discussing "cold war" or "low intensity conflict" type warfare. (in fact many of the folks posting in this thread have posted on that thread as well) The discussion has been centered around what units would work, what capabilities would be present, and the level of user control (units versus abstraction). Additionally, the ideas presented regarding demographics in this forum are very interesting and I hope they are adopted. Both sets of ideas would work well together.

Lacking those in the current civ, leaves us with a higher level, perhaps clunky, implementation of partisan resistance or cultural conflict within a civ. There has to be some representation of resistance fighting, civil unrest and occupation.

Yes, perhaps clunky, but if some of these new ideas are not adopted, I would hope the developers would not remove culture flipping from the game.

[alva]

I suggested this when Civ 3 first came out. Militaristic civilizations should garner culture from the barracks and forts they build. Temples, I think, should always grant culture, because you can be praying to the War god. Of course, then you need to figure out how to make religious civilizations worth it.

That's how I see it too.

[wrylachlan]

I think culture and nationality should be separate things. Nationality is which Civ a person belongs to. Culture is the cultural subgroup which can exist only in one civ, or cross boundaries and exist in 2 or more civs. For this to work, culture must be dissociated from borders.

There should be a different mechanism for borders - "Power" maybe? that expands until it hits another civ, then goes on further. The idea of your nations borders moving is... odd.

But back on topic, how would cultures work. At the beginning there would be hundreds of cultures which are each tied to a geographic area. The culture where you start your first city will be your Civ's main culture. When you branch out and build a city in a region of a different culture, the first population point is your main culture, but any population points after that have a chance to be the "native" culture. That chance goes up the farther away from your original city you are.

Eventually you will have a Civ with 1 main culture, and many subcultures, some of which will cross Civ borders into other Civs. If you treat a culture better than your neighbor does, his cities that have a lot of that culture's citizens will want to be part of your civ.

Any city that doesn't want to be a part of it's Civ, can do a couple of things. One - it can crank unhappiness untill the Civ is willing to trade it away. Two - it can create guerilla troops which are of it's own Civ, and try to take the city. Three - it's population can emigrate across to another Civ's city that has a large population of the same culture.

If it does the guerilla thing and manages to take the city, it then becomes a unique 1 city civ (unless this happens to a few cities at once...) It then has the choice, based on the potential future happiness of it's citizens whether to continue as an independant civ, or to subsume itself into the other larger Civ that has the rest of it's culture.

[POTUS]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I think culture and nationality should be separate things. Nationality is which Civ a person belongs to. Culture is the cultural subgroup which can exist only in one civ, or cross boundaries and exist in 2 or more civs. For this to work, culture must be dissociated from borders.

There should be a different mechanism for borders - "Power" maybe? that expands until it hits another civ, then goes on further. The idea of your nations borders moving is... odd.

But back on topic, how would cultures work. At the beginning there would be hundreds of cultures which are each tied to a geographic area. The culture where you start your first city will be your Civ's main culture. When you branch out and build a city in a region of a different culture, the first population point is your main culture, but any population points after that have a chance to be the "native" culture. That chance goes up the farther away from your original city you are.

Eventually you will have a Civ with 1 main culture, and many subcultures, some of which will cross Civ borders into other Civs. If you treat a culture better than your neighbor does, his cities that have a lot of that culture's citizens will want to be part of your civ.

Any city that doesn't want to be a part of it's Civ, can do a couple of things. One - it can crank unhappiness untill the Civ is willing to trade it away. Two - it can create guerilla troops which are of it's own Civ, and try to take the city. Three - it's population can emigrate across to another Civ's city that has a large population of the same culture.

If it does the guerilla thing and manages to take the city, it then becomes a unique 1 city civ (unless this happens to a few cities at once...) It then has the choice, based on the potential future happiness of it's citizens whether to continue as an independant civ, or to subsume itself into the other larger Civ that has the rest of it's culture.

[Fosse]

How do you propose we "treat" a culture one way or another? In current Civ terms, the only way you can treat a culture poorly or well is to either have them in your civ, or go to war with another civ that has them.

The idea might very well be sound, but it needs some reworking as it is such a departure from current Civ that it won't fit without some other adjustments.

However, let's just assume that my question was already answered: I like the idea of unhappy regions having several methods of expressing that, leading to potential rebellions and so forth. I'd like to see those new "one city civs" be able to build and expand as a civ in their own right, and seek to become major players in the game.

[Rasputin]

once i got used to the culture situation and city flipping, i have nver had a city flip on me again, if i take a large city with a few risisters and it located close to the enemy capital i will leave enough units there to monitor the situation till i get growth and my citizens start taking over. once the reistance ended rarely do i lose and citys. Mainly becaue i build lots of culture in my citys and especialyl newly aquired ones. i find most people who complain about city flipping are the ones that want to crush the world with their horses in BC years and dont build culture only build a rush of archer/horses/sword whatever...

[Fosse]

Well, true. But a similar argument would be:

Once I got used to placing a unit on every single tile of a borderland that I shared with my neighboring Civ, then the AI stopped tresspassing.

I know that culture flipping can be slowed in Civ 3... but it is still a system that is very clunky, and could be improved upon greatly in Civ 4, and possibly with some of the suggestions in this thread.

And for the record, I am not one who likes to conquer the world with swords... I just find the system to be inadequate. You need absurdly high numbers of units to avoid flippings in many situations, those units vanish with nary a trace when a flip does occur, and there is no warning or way to stave it off except rush temples and hope you aren't already too late. It might not be random, but if definatly feels that way, and it isn't fun.

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I think culture and nationality should be separate things. Nationality is which Civ a person belongs to. Culture is the cultural subgroup which can exist only in one civ, or cross boundaries and exist in 2 or more civs. For this to work, culture must be dissociated from borders.

There should be a different mechanism for borders - "Power" maybe? that expands until it hits another civ, then goes on further. The idea of your nations borders moving is... odd.

It seems you are calling nationality = citizenship and culture = ethnicity.

Let's take an example that's been in the news a lot recently = Iraq. By your example, Everyone living in Iraq has the Iraqi nationality. The culture subgroups are: Arabs and Kurds (in the north, near Turkey). Since Turkey, your neighbor, has a lot of Kurds in it's population, whichever country (civ) treats the Kurds citizens better in their own cities will have the opportunity to flip a city of the neighbor that have Kurds.

What is different than the current model? It seems you don't like the terms that's all. I think the idea is to interpert "culture" to be an amalgamation of military power, diplomatic power, economic power...perhaps even religious power, propaganda and nation-state rivalary.

Regarding the idea that a city could break away from the main country (civ, again), that I think I could be for this kind of kida...perhaps a little bit more detail about "the how".

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Fosse
And for the record, I am not one who likes to conquer the world with swords... I just find the system to be inadequate. You need absurdly high numbers of units to avoid flippings in many situations, those units vanish with nary a trace when a flip does occur, and there is no warning or way to stave it off except rush temples and hope you aren't already too late. It might not be random, but if definatly feels that way, and it isn't fun.

Use the "tried and true" method of putting every citizen to entertainer, let the city die off one pop point at a time, start to build temple, cathedral, etc. When the city becomes smaller, which by then, you would have pacified the resistance, you got an empty city ready for your population.



Shogun Gunner's Ethnic CleansingTM

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner


Use the "tried and true" method of putting every citizen to entertainer, let the city die off one pop point at a time, start to build temple, cathedral, etc. When the city becomes smaller, which by then, you would have pacified the resistance, you got an empty city ready for your population.



Shogun Gunner's Ethnic CleansingTM

Well, yes. But I'll go out on a limb here and say that this approach isn't actually fun gaming, even if one does glean a certain demonic pleasure from it.

It's true that there are workarounds to the current system, but we shouldn't have to "work around" game models to avoid their negative results... we should work with them to get the results we want.

Besides.. the all entertainer approach is just a touch unrealistic...

IRAQIS: Please leave our country, invader.
BUSH: Dance!
IRAQIS: Hooray! We love the President Day!

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Fosse
How do you propose we "treat" a culture one way or another? In current Civ terms, the only way you can treat a culture poorly or well is to either have them in your civ, or go to war with another civ that has them.

Since you can control happiness on a city by city basis, you do have control over the relative happiness of a culture's people vis a vis people of that culture in another civ. If your border cities are happier than theirs, they want to joing you.

You could also do an absolute happiness mechanism, where if your civ and your neighbors are both treating the culture poorly, the people want to break away from both of you and form their own civ.

Another mechanism might be to do some sort of return of the city - connected military unit from civ2. Maybe each government type allows you a certain amount of free units, and every unit after that is attached to a certain city, thus causing war weariness. This would represent your regular army being fully deployed and you calling in the National Guard or Reserves. With that mechanism in place, you would get to pick and choose which cities experience the war weariness, by choosing which cities produce the Reserves.

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
It seems you are calling nationality = citizenship and culture = ethnicity.

Not really so much as cultural subgroup. To my thinking the culture is more attached to regional subgroups, so for instance you would have in the US. a New England culture, that has some overlap into Canada. A Southwest culture that overlaps into Mexico a bit, and a California culture that is totally unique to the US, among others. They don't necessarily break down by ethnic lines. They could also develop along the course of the game. So for instance the Southern Culture might develop in the US, with a dislike of the Northern Culture and cause a civil war. This would allow the same mechanism to be reused for both city flipping and civ wars.

Let's take an example that's been in the news a lot recently = Iraq. By your example, Everyone living in Iraq has the Iraqi nationality. The culture subgroups are: Arabs and Kurds (in the north, near Turkey). Since Turkey, your neighbor, has a lot of Kurds in it's population, whichever country (civ) treats the Kurds citizens better in their own cities will have the opportunity to flip a city of the neighbor that have Kurds.

Yup, that's it in a nutshell

What is different than the current model? It seems you don't like the terms that's all.

What's different is that cities don't really "flip" any more. They emigrate and or revolt. Having the revolt create a new civ allows the creationg of guerilla units that don't create war problems between civs. In the Iraq example, if a Kurdish Iraqi city created a Guerrilla, it's nationality would be Kurdish. Iraq could try to quell the rebellion without pissing off Turkey. The Kurdish Guerrilla, since its part of its own sovereign civ(as long as it stays alive), could try to make a deal for help with another civ.

Essentially it makes the mechanism of flipping more realistic, and strategic. Why does putting military units in a city prevent flipping? Because if the Guerrilla attacks the city, you have some defense. If I am Iran and I hate Iraq, I can send a hidden nationality unit to help out the Guerillas and attack the city. Iraq will think its Turkey, etc. etc. There are a lot of interesting permutations of using this.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by wrylachlan

Since you can control happiness on a city by city basis, you do have control over the relative happiness of a culture's people vis a vis people of that culture in another civ. If your border cities are happier than theirs, they want to joing you.

But how often would this matter then? We never see situations when a player has every city as happy except for that one, which happens to be of an oppossing nationality.

The way the current happiness works is, every city has exactly whatever number of happy people it needs to either not riot, or celebrat WLT?D. You would have to rework how happiness works to make your idea viable.

(Incidentally, I am all for redoing happiness, but in a way that may or may not be compatible with your ideas. I've posted about it before, but am at work so can't take the time to hunt them all down.)

Another mechanism might be to do some sort of return of the city - connected military unit from civ2. Maybe each government type allows you a certain amount of free units, and every unit after that is attached to a certain city, thus causing war weariness.

Ughhhh... Wasn't this one of the most universally loved changes from Civ 2 to Civ 3?

What's different is that cities don't really "flip" any more. They emigrate and or revolt.

Well... I like that sentiment!

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Fosse
I just find the system to be inadequate. You need absurdly high numbers of units to avoid flippings in many situations, those units vanish with nary a trace when a flip does occur, and there is no warning or way to stave it off except rush temples and hope you aren't already too late. It might not be random, but if definatly feels that way, and it isn't fun.

Just a simple message that would give you the amount of units needed and the time before the city is made revolt-free would be a big step in the right direction.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Fosse

But how often would this matter then? We never see situations when a player has every city as happy except for that one, which happens to be of an oppossing nationality.

its not happiness vis a vis other cities in your civ, it's happiness vis a vis other cities of the same cultural subgroup in another civ.

Ughhhh... Wasn't this one of the most universally loved changes from Civ 2 to Civ 3?

Yes, but the difference is that in civ2 EVERY unit was connected to a city, which caused a micromanagement hell. I'm talking about having a pool of "National Soldiers" which are not connected to a city. And then every unit above a certain number is connected to a city. Someone who plays a defensive game would never pass the limit, while a warmonger might have to deal with 25% of his troops being connected. The more you want to be a warmonger, the more micro you have to deal with with. As it currently stands this is represented by war weariness, but my suggestion would do away with a civ-wide percentage war weariness, and instead for every connected unit, that city gets some weariness. You'd mearly be trading the one micromanagement for another.

Note, this isn't an idea I'm totally attached to, so much as another way a specific cities happiness might effect their desire to rebel which was the point of my earlier post.

[DarkCloud]

Besides.. the all entertainer approach is just a touch unrealistic...

But it's an abstraction.

Yes, but the difference is that in civ2 EVERY unit was connected to a city, which caused a micromanagement hell.

Not if you ran monarchy or dictatorship or fundamentalism... I never had any problem when running those forms of govt.