The Culture Bomb

[AunoAdam]

Originally posted by Genghis Jon
I'm new to Civ, really new, this is the first game in the series that I've played. Bear with me if this is something obvious, I just wanted to share my 2 cents, cause I lurrrve the Great Artist culture bomb thing, especially using it on new land on a continent map. After playing a few games on the easiest levels to learn the game, I'm playing one now on Noble, on a standard continent map. Here's a screen of the culture bomb thing on some newly settled land... when I used it, my city was just the new city culture size, just the 8 spaces adjacent to the city itself. But for some strange reason, even after 2 revolts, Musa's city won't join my civ.

A city could not revert to your civ in the second riot...
The way they join to you is this:
First Riot: The city will continue belonging to its owner
Second Riot: 50% possibilities of join your civ
Third Riot: 100%
You can read it in the game guide.

[TenderBranson]

Re: New term

Originally posted by piotrr
What you need is a new term for the Great Artist effect.

A culture bomb is any way to explosively expand your cultural borders, right? So a Great Artist-assisted cultural expansion - judging by its area of effect - must be a Culture Nuke.

No need to thank me.

Move along.

Actually, I do need to thank you. Definatly like the idea of Culture Nukes!

Now for my story. While playing as the Mongolians, I didn't like the way that Osaka was encroaching on New Sarai's territory so I dropped the Culture Nuke (damn I like saying that) on them. It worked so well, that it actually pushed the borders back further than I was expecting and I wound up controlling what had been Japan's only source of horses (and my second)!

On the next turn, Japan demanded that I give them horses, and naturally I refused. Japan all of a sudden declared war on me right then and there! Thats the first time I ever had war declared on me for refusing a demand. Luckily I was prepared and took half a dozen cities before I turned my attention elsewhere. Japan still has no horses.

So I'm wondering, has anyone else seen that happen? Just taking a resource via culture causing a war I mean.

[siom99]

Laptops work:
Toshiba P30
Pentium IV - 3.6GHz
ATI Card - 128MB
RAM - 1GB

Haven't tried the cultural approach yet, too busy trying to spread blood over the battle field. More satisfaction from the game when you cripple the evil Incan's to the last city with my Pretorian's.

[Glostakarov]

I took iron from the romans once with a culture bomb, just after they had pumped out their first praetorian. Made him easy meat for my cho-ko-nu. I had actually only intended to strategically move the border near one of his cities to facilitate an attack, but the new border wrapped around the city radius and scored the iron for me.

[gingoblin]

I find myself using culture pretty extensively so far... it suits my lazy style -- no micromanaging stacks of units, just place your citys correctly, and wait. )

I have found though that the number of cities exerting "influence" is pretty darn important. In my current game, I had an incredibly frustrating situation, where the french plopped a couple of cities right near the border of my capitol. (one in a spot I'd flagged for expanding to myself -- the dam frogs just beat me to it) Since I was planning on using the capitol as my GP pump anyhoo, I kept building wonders there, and pumping the culture out, even using a culture nuke or two to expand the borders...

sadly, 1500 years later when moscow hit Legendary culture, NEITHER of these cities had flipped, despite being only ~20% french and having next to no workable tiles due to my surrounding borders. One had revolted once, but not again in >100 years.

In the same game, I captured a city in the middle of an opposing civ and decided to have a go at using it to push them back. I knew it was a risky call, but figured it was worth a shot... I dropped the nuke, rushed a bunch of wonders, and all the culture buildings I could, ran at 40% global culture, and even plunked some Prophet super specialists for the little extra they would give. It revolted once, but SLOWLY stabilized, and eventually got down to 0% chance of revolt. Since I was lagging the tech race a bit, I dropped the global culture to 10% to try and catch up while I waited for another GArtist, and BAM... 5 turns later it had flipped.

It seems like "support cities" are more important in a culture war than I originally thought. Having one or more major cultural centers nearby seems almost more important than what you do in the "outpost" itself... or possibly more the placement of surrounding cities.

Has anyone determined what effect (if any) garrisoned troops have on rebellions? I do tend to run a bit light on troop numbers... that might tie in as well.

[TenderBranson]

Originally posted by gingoblin
Has anyone determined what effect (if any) garrisoned troops have on rebellions? I do tend to run a bit light on troop numbers... that might tie in as well.

Haven't done the math on it, but yeah, garrisons make a big difference. Check your chance of revolt thingy just before moving units into or out of the city and it will go up or down. Not sure if there is a point at which troops will quell all chance of a revolt though, as I've had over twenty troops (as a Mongolian) in a formerly French city on the border with Indian, and it still actually flipped over to India (not France). In fairness, it had been under heavy Indian pressure since waaaay before I showed up.

[Becephalus]

I won a cultural victory on Monarch, but I was forced to sabotage an enemy spacship part about 20 times, costs 30,000 gold...

I had my culture slider at 40% for much of the late game because I was unable to build many cathedrals

The most important think for expanding cultures are cathedrals.

[bender_Sastre]

does my laptop suck entirely too much?

So I was reading this thread and several people mention the degree of suck on their laptops, and I have a laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 8000(latest greatest thing 4.5 years ago) with a Pentium III, 798 mHz, and 256mb ram. Does my laptop suck too much to handle Civ IV? I used to be a Civ III addict, and have half a mind to buy Civ IV, but I'll not bother if my laptop can't handle it. Can any of those limitation be upgraded by simply switching out a part myself?

[slackerjoe]

Re: does my laptop suck entirely too much?

Originally posted by bender_Sastre
So I was reading this thread and several people mention the degree of suck on their laptops, and I have a laptop. It's a Dell Inspiron 8000(latest greatest thing 4.5 years ago) with a Pentium III, 798 mHz, and 256mb ram. Does my laptop suck too much to handle Civ IV? I used to be a Civ III addict, and have half a mind to buy Civ IV, but I'll not bother if my laptop can't handle it. Can any of those limitation be upgraded by simply switching out a part myself?

It's time to get a new laptop. No chance* to run Civ 4 on your current system. 4.5 years has been a long enough wait, hasn't it? Go get yourself a nice new laptop.

*No chance means that it may actually install and play a bit but the performance and graphics will be so awfully, terribly bad, that it won't even be worth playing.

[Mylon]

How do culture bombs work? Does the nationality of the city suddenly change afterwards?

I want to know if it changes city culture (which doesn't do too much by itself) or if it boosts plot culture (which is what determines city flipping). Does the nationality of nearby cities also change after the culture bomb?

[Mozi]

Hi,

I'm a newb and fascinated but confused on the whole Culture bomb thing. I understand you can win by having 3 cities with legendary culture, but how do you get other foreign cities to join you from your culture? Could someone put a condensed strategy up? I like the idea of winning without fighting just because military buildup and maintenance bores me.

[cal_01]

Hmm. One of my recently captured cities rioted several times, but never flipped.

[Thoth]

According to the manual, cities you conquor will never flip back to their original owner. (Unless you are playing a custom game, in which case you can select the option to allow flipping after conqest).

[Mylon]

That's funny, because I think the option in the custom games is to disallow a city flipping back to it's conquered owner. Maybe it's mislabelled?

[Thoth]

No, it's properly labeled. My wording was poor. I should have said "you can deselect the option to disallow flipping".