The Culture Rate

[Verrucosus]

One tool I find myself using only rarely is the culture rate. The main problem - not from a game design perspective I hasten to say - is that it's a powerful, but also a very crude tool because you cannot specifically target the cities that really need culture or happiness (border towns, overpopulated cities). In particular, the happiness effect is no longer linked to the city's commerce output (as it used to be with luxuries/psych in previous versions), so it's basically the same in each city. Some fine-tuning is allowed by using the theatre/collosseum bonus, but in general, the culture rate is still quite inefficient because 10 % (or more) of commerce converted into culture in a city that doesn't need it is a complete waste of potential money and science.

I suppose the happiness benefits can be valuable on higher levels. I'm still having a great time on Prince level, so I don't normally have much of an unhappiness problem. Sometimes, after abolishing Hereditary Rule, I temporarily raise the culture rate to ease the transition to a different form of government. The added culture output itself is needed when I want to push out my borders to take control of a critical resource, but in most cases the culture generated by religion and science buildings is enough to maintain and often even extend my cultural influence. I find little use in all-out cultural battles with neighbours. It takes ages to get foreign cities to flip and the loss of science while all that commerce is poured into culture is enormous. Consequently, the only use I've found for a really high culture rate is during the final push for a cultural victory.

Apart from the context of cultural victory, I've seen little discussion about the culture rate as a strategic tool, so I wonder how other players make use of it. Are there any other typical situations where it pays off to raise the culture rate?

[axisworks]

Well there's always the culture victory. I tend to have mine at 10-20%, but only later in the game when the AIs are loading each other's cities up with the various religions.

You can set specific border cities to convert 50% of production to culture. That's saved some of my cities from flipping, but if the city is right next to an AI's cultural powerhouse city with a huge population, you're in for a long and potentially unwinnable cultural struggle. Spies standing in an AI's bordering cities can help you figure out how much culture they're producing, and what you should build to counter that cultural incursion, as a result.

[wardhali]

how do you do that axis? i think that there should be a base culture rate, adjustable in individual citys, therefore you wouldnt have to complain about micromanaging, you could just use the base rate, but if you need to bost culture in a specific city, u could tweak the culture up in just that city,

however te counter to your argument Ver, is that you need to take away a scientist or other specialest and create an artist, i think priests can generate culture as well.

[Blake]

The AI are fairly aware of culture, they'll definitely push culture in border cities, and love to culture bomb a threatened city. Beware your neighbour getting the Music artist.

[Verrucosus]

axisworks is quite correct. After you have researched Music you are allowed to convert a citiy's hammers into notes at a rate of 2 : 1 each turn. Of course, this blocks the build-queue and is not a good choice for a newly established border town that needs to get up its infrastructure, but it is a viable option for established cities that happen to be close to the border to a culturally strong opponent. You still lose the city's production, but that may be a price worth paying for maintaining or extending your cultural influence in the region. The important point here is that it is a city-specific method of generating culture as is that of using artists (priests and other specialists don't generate culture unless you have the Sistine Chapel).

It's exactly because of the variety of city-specific ways to generate culture (buildings, specialists, converting hammers) that I haven't found too many examples where it is preferable to raise the empire-wide culture rate.

The culture-pushing by nearby opponents, as described by Blake, is different from the examples that I have given because it's not just an occasional problem, but a standard concern. If I could be convinced that raising the culture rate is the best option to meet that concern or at least a necessary part of any response, it would become a much more important part of my repertoire than it is at this point. For the moment, I still have some doubts. Raising the culture rate will counter the opponent's cultural pressure, but it will do so at the expense of gold and science even from cities that are not threatened. It's very hard to measure this, but isn't it more flexible and efficient to keep focused on gold and research in order to (a) get earlier access to culture-generating buildings like theatres and universities and (b) rush those buildings selectively in threatened cities?

I'm not certain myself yet, and it might be possible that I underestimate the power of the culture rate. (After all, it took me years to learn to appreciate the magic of the luxury rate in the original Civilization.)

[axisworks]

To be honest, I have no idea how one gets a cultural victory, but it was the first victory I ever received. I ended up conquering half a single-continent world, and my research was into Future Tech, so I just brought my research down to 10%, and jacked up culture to 70%. Two turns later I was handed a cultural victory.

I think it might be based on the theoretical conclusion that none of the other players or AIs could beat my culture at that setting (and their civs would eventually be engulfed by mine), regardless of whatever they did, so I essentially made the game unwinnable for anyone else.

[drsparnum]

I'm pretty certain a cultural victory results when 3 of a civilizations city achieve legendary (75,000) culture.

I started a game with the goal from turn 1 to win a cultural victory, since I'd never done that before. I've only ever used the culture meter to this end, and even then only after pushing deep into the tech tree to get all the cultural buildings and wonders and then building culture in these 3 cities. First, I wouldn't sacrifice science too early to bump culture because technology leads to unlocking cultural buildings at all stages of the game, especially late game with juicy cultural wonders (eifel tower, hollywood, rock and roll). Furthermore, if it was possible to adjust the culture meter in just the 3 cities where I was pushing for legendary culture, I'd have done that. I only upped the culture meter because I was trying to squeeze as much culture/turn as possible and this was the final resort available to me after building all available culture buildings and building culture in those 3 cities. As a general rule I usually focus my cities on a different goal (e.g. units; science; commerce; workers and missionaries). One of those things I might focus a city on is culture. If I'm on something that looks like a penninsula, or any land formation where I've got only a limited number of cities bordering other civs, I'll focus those few border cities on culture*. However, even in these cities, I focus by building cultural buildings, not the crude meter. I think converting hammers to notes isn't as practical as using hammers to make buildings that build notes, which would then let you use your hammers to make other buildings that build notes and so on, and so forth. I suppose that if you were absolutely desperate for immediate culture, (maybe your city is in revolt) and weren't using a civic that let you rush buildings, you might have to use the culture meter. However, if you'll allow me to continue rambling, this desperate city is probably at the perimeter of your empire and unless it is near a critical rescource, isn't worth dropping the science rate of your main cities by even a meager 10%. Cities under cultural duress simply tend to be new and insignficant cities, at least in my experience.

*A city focused on science also tends to make good culture, since alot of the early science buildings generate culture. Cities with high production tend to make alot of culture because you'll favor those sites to build wonders. In short, a good city will usually get culture as a side effect of its normal business. Unless a city is only building commerce boosters and units, then they should get enough culture to get by. All this is just in my experience, and all from single player and non-competitive multiplayer.

[drsparnum]

I should also mention that I haven't really needed the happiness boost because I haven't played at the highest couple of difficulty levels. At those levels it might be important for happiness, but I'd also speculate that a drop in science would also hurt more at those difficulty levels.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Just a clarification: the value for "Legendary" culture is a function of game speed. I think (repeat, think) that it's 50,000 at Normal, 75,000 at Epic, and 150,000 at Marathon.

[marvinkosh]

Most of the time I play with the bare minimum of crank on the culture slider, letting the cathedrals and specialists do the dirty work of boosting the output in a particular city.

However, if you plan to overcome the cultural resistance of a border city, cranking that slider and leaving it there is necessary, because tiles switch cultures over a long period of time.

[drsparnum]

Ahhh....when my third city hit 50,000 and I hadn't won, I thought something was fishy. The next turn my highest culture hit 75,000. I thought I had just gotten the numbers mixed up, when I was thinking 50k. That's another thing to watch with the culture victory. You've got to try to give those high culture wonders to your city making the third most culture. You don't win when one city hits 150,000 (at normal speed), you need 3 cities to hit 50,000.

[unamablebuiler]

yes the culture rate is a crude tool for generating culture but at 20 percent r it shores up your bordercities that have n o other sorces till religion ot structures can be built. i have also found the culture rate indespensable at prince if you don't have happy resources as i often do until the end game.

the culture for a new city in the late game can be 2 per turn with your civics set rightand before religion however you must have trade routes with someones city to be worthwhile. this will gain you about 50-100 turns before you can get culture by other means and can easily exceed that of buildings in terms of generation.
On annother tangent your larger cities will not depend on resources for thier happines and you will have a buffer against the loss of resources thus mainting your economy in wartime.

[Ijuin]

I tend to put the culture rate at 10-20% after getting Biology because by that time many of my cities have grown so large that all of the other happiness bonuses are still not enough (cities size 25 and larger).

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by drsparnum
Ahhh....when my third city hit 50,000 and I hadn't won, I thought something was fishy.

If you forget the threshold you can check the Victory Conditions screen; it shows the value. I remember being startled when I checked that screen in the Devel Workshop I game and saw 150,000!

[gdgrimm]

Re: The Culture Rate

Originally posted by Verrucosus Apart from the context of cultural victory, I've seen little discussion about the culture rate as a strategic tool, so I wonder how other players make use of it. Are there any other typical situations where it pays off to raise the culture rate?

Scenarios where I've used the culture slider...

1) The obvious -- Culture Victory
2) Temporarily combat war weariness in the late stages of a war
3) When my empire geography has very long borders with others (i.e no real 'inner' cities, since almost every city borders somebody)

That's about it. Otherwise, I'll use the horizontal controls to focus on science, and deal with point culture problems with Artists or by building Culture.