Culture Bombs

[OzzyKP]

How exactly does this work? I was playing the Earth 1000AD scenario and I took a city from the Byzantines and immediatley brought in a Great Artist to give it 4000 culture. It made no difference on the borders, the city was still completely surrounded, and I know the other enemy cities near it didn't have 4000 culture, probably like half of that.

[Fried-Psitalon]

If the city was still in resistance, a Great Artist has no effect - either until the resistance clears or not at all; not sure which.

[Arrian]

I'm not sure, but maybe the city was still in resistance (did it have a little fist w/a number next to it? That's the number of turns it will be in resistance). Perhaps the culture doesn't kick in until the city comes out of resistance.

I know that I've used culture bombs to great effect in my own cities, and even in cities I've captured a while back. But typically I'm going up against the culture of AI border towns, not "core" AI cities. It's not supposed to do a heckuva lot if you use it in the middle of a bunch of well-established cities (even if they aren't at 4000cp).

-Arrian

[OzzyKP]

I used it while the city was in resistance. I believe it came out of resistance right away after i did it, but it didn't affect the borders much at all.

[Arrian]

Inverse Icarus claims (over at MZO) that creating a great work in a newly conquered city does indeed immediately quell the resistance. That's interesting.

If it's done in the core of another civ's empire, the border effect should be fairly small. Once you nail a few more cities, though, it should do a good job of filling the gaps.

-Arrian

[Proteus_MST]

It would be interesting to know
what your cities culture value was after the resistance ended, OzzyKP
to determine
if your Borders didn´t expand because the surrounding landscape is under too much influence of the enemy civ,
or if the culturepoints for the great work were lost because of the resistance

[OzzyKP]

The culture was still 4,000. They didn't get erased, they just didn't have much of an affect.

And my guess on the other cultures ratings is based on the fact that my city was top in the top 5 cities, had about twice as many wonders as the number 2 city, and only had like 3,500 culture. So I can't imagine the other foreign cities having culture that was so dominant over my 4,000 culture bomb city.

[Aeson]

Hold Shift while mousing over the surrounding tiles. It will show you the cultural ratios present. If the Byzantines have any cities with cultural borders which extend to those tiles, they still get the old city's cultural buildup counting in their favor for border resolution. You probably just don't have as much culture there as they do. (EDIT: you'll have to Alt-Shift-D and click "Allow Debug Tools" for this to work.)

Building a Great Work does end resistance instantly.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
And my guess on the other cultures ratings is based on the fact that my city was top in the top 5 cities, had about twice as many wonders as the number 2 city, and only had like 3,500 culture. So I can't imagine the other foreign cities having culture that was so dominant over my 4,000 culture bomb city.

The Great Work applies it's culture fully to the city. It doesn't apply the culture fully to surrounding tiles. There is a diminishing effect as you get further and further from the city. Something like 1/3rd influence on the tiles directly adjacent.

Normal Cultural influence on tiles isn't entirely based on city culture. How long you hold the tile, and it's proximity to the city, also affect the influence.

[Addled Platypus]

I tried doing a three prong approach to this idea.

The situation was simular to the battle of the bulge. The AI was in the buldge,

I had three cities borders slowy pinchin towards the 1 AI city.
I started to rotate GP to each one of my three, as well as building more cultural pont buildings. I seemed to make a difference.
I did see a see-saw border happen over the years. How could 1 city protect agaisnt flipping.

Would a large deffense force help?. At least 9 units present.

I did somethind simular, but had placed units right where the borders meet, this seemed to add to the effect of flipping. Smaller sized city that did flip to me.

[V3nom]

yeah, as Aeson said the fact that you had more culture doesnt necissarily mean that you'll control more tiles.

all the surrounding tiles are saturated with your opponents culture. However now that you've got this big culture bombed city you'll start to add your own culture onto them, after time those squares will flip to you if you're giving them more culture than your opponent

[OzzyKP]

So you think it has more to do with the culture rate than the culture number? Like having 20 culture per turn in a new 0 culture city is better than 0 culture per turn in a 4,000 culture city?

Your point is interesting Platypus. Having military on the border affected the flip...

[FalloutBoy123]

I captured a Roman city with a lot of culture. It had Mike's Cathedral and was the Christian holy city. Many turns later, the surrounding tiles still belonged to the Romans, although they were gradually becoming more Russian (appx 1% per turn). When I dropped a culture bomb on the city, the surrounding tiles immediately became about 10% more Russian. After two of these culture bombs, the gold deposit nearby is 59% Roman so I figure it will be mine soon. Usually a tile will change sides when is more than 50% your culture.

[Arkalius]

You have to realize that tiles have culture values now. If you capture a city in the middle of an enemy's empire, and then culture bomb it, it will give the city lots of culture, true, but it won't immediately affect the culture levels of the surrounding tiles. They will still be dominated by the enemy's culture and therefore owned by them. You'll have to wait while the large culture you gave your city "spreads" into the neighboring tiles. If the nearby enemy cities already have lots of culture, even a culture bomb may not be enough to give you any significant amount of border increase, simply because they will continue to increase their culture in the tiles as you do, maintaining control over them, or at the very least severely slowing your rate of "domination" of the tile.

Basically the more culture a city has, the more "culture value" it adds to surrounding tiles. Tiles farther away seem to get less of this value than tiles close by. It's culture level indicates how far away it adds this culture too of course. When a tile is contested between two cultures, it will go to the one that has the most culture value in that tile at the time. The higher your city's culture, and the closer the tile is to the city, the faster it will add value to the tile.

This is why you may find captured cities with no culture get their borders sqeezed in. The surrounding tiles have enemy culture value but none of yours. Even with a culture bomb it takes time for those tiles to build up your own culture points. If a rival city's culture border pushes into one of your cities such that it starts adding culture value to the square your city is on, it will start affecting the nationality of the population of that city. The more of the population in the city that belongs to the rival, the higher chance it will go into revolt and eventually flip.

Note that all the above information is based on speculation from observations in the game. Do not take any of this for pure fact, as I can't be truly sure it's all correct, but it seems pretty accurate.

[Digital_seraph]

I read this, i think in the manual, that while a city is in rebellion it generates no culture, and since after capyure the culture is reset to 0, you have no culture till the resistance ends and your city radius is limited to 1 square while in the resistance.

Don't ask why i read the manual, its a bad habit.

I have done this in the game to keep newly captured cities from reverting and it workls well, the radius bumps up 2 levels i think during the turn i do it, or mabye the next.

haven't tried while in rebellion, hmm...