SO confused about culture exertion on tiles - help?

[drtechno]

Ok.. I am SO confused about how culture affects who controls a particular tile.

Initially I thought the amount of culture exerted on a tile is directly proportional to the total amount of culture that a city has that turn. For example, if a city has 1000 culture, then the culture of an adjacent square is 80% of 1000.

But from using debug mode, it appears that culture is ACCULMULATED in particular tiles, in a rate proportional to the culture of nearby cities.

Here is the problem however:

I took over washington DC, and rebuilt its culture to 9680/50000 (through great artists, etc) The nearest american city is about 5 tiles away and has 2394/5000. Other american cities in the area, but further away, have something like 500 culture, so are inconsequential.

So why on earth do I not control the square adjacent to washington DC ? In debug mode it claims the USA has 19669 versus my 8588 effect on the square. But my adjacent city (washington dc) has 9k culture now! So how can the adjacent square culmulative culture only be 8588 ? Do great artists not effect the cultural aura ? Is it only the "+ X" culture rate that gets added to adjacent squares for cultural effect ?

Furthermore, if you take over a city and zero its culture, why do the adjacent tiles still have "memory" for the amount of culture exerted on that square previously by that city ?? Shouldn't that also be zero'd ?

As an aside, there are a few tiles north of the city that have 8k my influence vs 11k USA influence yet are under my control. Again, I don't quite understand why since my culture on that square is lower than his.

But this all basically means that taking a city with high cultural value, or pillaging it, will do nothing to the cultural effects on adjacent squares. i.e. it is almost impossible to take and hold a high culture value city because you will not have any usable tiles (since the adjacent tiles cultural memory is so high there is no way to match that in a reasonable time)

Can anyone better explain to me how culture effects on tiles are calculated, and how control is determined (since it is NOT just a simple 'who has a higher culture score in a tile' effect) (example a different square - 6700 my influence to 9400 USA yet I control the square)

How much culture is added to a tile on a particular turn ?

I can provide a save-game if anyone wants to take a closer look.

Anyway, its safe to say that I'm confused. Especially about how culture is handled in a captured city.

[Kc7mxo]

Yeah, I agree that something is very wrong with that. What I think is happening is that the culture on a tile is effected by how much culture was on the tile previously.

So whily your city has 9k culture now, the tile next to you has been effected by the 2k culture for a long long time.

But I'm not sure that makes much sense either.

[Cordelayne]

I guess it makes sense that if all the local folks have been living one culture for thousands of years, they will be resistant to change. It's sort of a way to model sociocultural resistance. But I agree that the resistance is a bit too stiff. On the other hand, it's not as bad as 25 guerrillas popping into neighboring hills as in Civ3.

[drtechno]

Maybe. But its a pretty harsh penalty considering the time scale of the game.. since you could almost never "catch up".

But more curiously, why do I control some tiles that don't have the top culture in ??

I should post a screenshot and label how much culture is in each according to the game.

[ulyanov]

From what I have seen the tiles culture only flips when you are the %leader.

On turn 1, your 10000 point city exerts your pressure, and wining over the 8000 point city nearby. That takes the squre from 100% American to 99% American.

So, based on that, I think it takes 50 turns for you to take over, assuming noone else is in the game there.

I have never seen the ratio change faster than 1% per turn, unless the other guy is completely removed from influence.

I just took out some Roman towns. in one corner there was me (with a dual culture bombed town that had been mine for 50 odd turns), the Romans and the Chinese. When I took the roman town, the chinese took control of some of the squares. with 35% ownership. When I killed off the romans, the squares went immediately tp 55% chinese.

so what I am saying is that you need to have to most culture for a long period of time, not just on the day...

[Alphard]

Also take a look a the MOD-s forum. I believe Bhruic made a MOD that increased the cultural Decay to 5% per turn. It might be just what you are looking for. Also He might have better insight into the workings of culture in captured city's boundaries, so again.. ask in his thread.

[Urban Ranger]

Yes, it works by accumulation.

Also don't forget that each tile is affected by all surrounding tiles. So if you have 10K cultural influence on a tile, but the other side has 2K influence from 6 tiles, you aren't going anywhere fast.

[TheHateMale]

One of the effects of this is that using a Great Artist in a border town doesn't seem to expand your borders. I think what happens is (if you use it in a town with 1 cpt) You start putting 1 cpt down on each sqaure within the third borders size. The "fat cross" + 1. While this won't immediately flip squares to you, it slows down the rate at which tiles gain opposition culture (relatively).

Culture bombing will then be more effective as the culture will accumulate on more squares. If you or someone else then takes the civ out, you'll get the full cultural border and it'll be a lot stronger than another new(ly captured) town in the same area.

[Riotamus]

Originally posted by drtechno
But more curiously, why do I control some tiles that don't have the top culture in ??

I should post a screenshot and label how much culture is in each according to the game.

I believe this happens when a tile has a lot of culture from a large city that was captured/destroyed, but doesn't lie in your opponent's cultural borders. This can be quite deceiving, since a pathetic size 2 town can expand its borders and instantly flip the tiles you conquered. The best solution is to eradicate the entire rival nation, I guess. Or at least make sure they don't settle anywhere near anymore.