BtS unofficial patch

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
How exactly do you recalculate them, though?

When you add points to a city each turn, you add some fraction of them (defined by the aforementioned f(distance)) to the tiles in range.

Isn't that what the game does anyway, essentially?

[Kuciwalker]

This would also have the advantage of being 1) much more transparent and 2) actually editable in the WB.

[Solver]

Yeah, but no variation of sum(f(distance)) would work there. Yeah, a city adds culture points to plots based on distance. But what if a city is gone? Then you'd also lose its stored culture value, but the cultural value of surrounding plots shouldn't change. So I don't quite see how it'd work.

Assuming you could, though, what'd the advantage be? You'd still need to cache values for individual plots to prevent huge performance drops, you'd shrink savegame size somewhat but instead have to recalculate when you reload, making loading longer.

[khearn]

So if you only remember culture stored in cities, wouldn't that mean all of the culture in an area goes away if the city is razed?

[Solver]

Probably not all the culture, as most areas are covered by more than one city, but yes, that'd be the major problem.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
Yeah, but no variation of sum(f(distance)) would work there. Yeah, a city adds culture points to plots based on distance. But what if a city is gone? Then you'd also lose its stored culture value, but the cultural value of surrounding plots shouldn't change. So I don't quite see how it'd work.

That's part of the point

If you're really set on changing that, you'd just leave a ghost city that decays over time (not directly visible to the player).

Assuming you could, though, what'd the advantage be? You'd still need to cache values for individual plots to prevent huge performance drops, you'd shrink savegame size somewhat but instead have to recalculate when you reload, making loading longer.

1) It's far more transparent to the player.
2) It's actually editable in the WB*.
3) It makes sense.

* this is actually a huge gripe of mine. The WB should let me edit every independent part of the game state, except maybe the AI state.

[Solver]

1) It's far more transparent to the player.

It's not. The player would still see culture in cities and on plots. He doesn't care how they're stored in in-game variables. Great Works creating discrepancy is a separate issue.

2) It's actually editable in the WB*.

That's a general problem with WB (that it sucks). You can't create anything reasonably complicated in it anyway. Such as culture percentages or many other things. It's a weak editor.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
It's not. The player would still see culture in cities and on plots. He doesn't care how they're stored in in-game variables. Great Works creating discrepancy is a separate issue.

It's not a separate issue, it's only possible because of how culture is implemented. With the current system, you cannot concisely describe the implementation of culture to a player in more than general terms. With my system, you can, and exactly too for those who want it. In addition to the rules being easier to understand, the human player can actually see all the variables that determine culture borders rather than having some hidden.

That's a general problem with WB (that it sucks). You can't create anything reasonably complicated in it anyway. Such as culture percentages or many other things. It's a weak editor.

I agree

[Envomni]

Umm.. wow, that stirred the pot ?

To clarify, the Great Work that dumped 300,000 culture in one shot was my edit, not a downloadable mod. I saw someone had a mod like this for missionary workers, so I did this test myself by editing my copy to do that. At 2, 4, 6, 8k tests nothing happened. So I set it really high, and it seemed to max out at 300,000. Like I said, I wanted to know what it would take to make the nationality (yes culture) switch to my own quicker.

I still can't accept that after putting in 1.2 million culture, my culture is not quickly becoming the dominant, even though Moscow had from 3500bc to 1950ad to build up. Its a freakishly unreal test of course, but it shows how completely hopeless it is to take a city later unless you kill the guy right off. I just want to put civs under my foot later in the game, not have to chase them down to nothing.. gets too boring doing that. Too much lather, rinse, repeat work.

Another way to think of it - here in Canada, the French setup shop a long time ago in Quebec. Other than one referendum in 96(?), there has long been no chance of the province revolting and becoming a part of France or its own nation.

Even more so... the first nations community here. It still exists, but not to any extent where Canada is going to lose a city. There is a culture that spent hundreds of years developing, and inside of 100 years, European culture over-wrote it.

Oh and I found the mention of the patch by doing various searches on Google for Civ4 and Culture. This thread came up for the list of features that mentioned a few culture items. I knew about Apolyton (remember it rather), as I use to check it out for Call to Power, but didn't know it was still around.

[Kuciwalker]

See how the current system is completely counterintuitive to the player, Solver?

[Envomni]

Quiet you.

It's not counterintuitive. It just doesn't work right. :-)

Now how about Sid Mieir's railroads.. got any fixes for that thing and its rediculous train stalling issues?

[Solver]

It's not a separate issue, it's only possible because of how culture is implemented. With the current system, you cannot concisely describe the implementation of culture to a player in more than general terms. With my system, you can, and exactly too for those who want it. In addition to the rules being easier to understand, the human player can actually see all the variables that determine culture borders rather than having some hidden.

Then your proposal becomes a pretty big reworking of the culture system. While I agree that it needs reworking for the sequel, that's not exactly the direction I envision.

You know, few players care about knowing all the variables. You can explain the basic culture system quite easily - just need to know what the function for spreading culture into tiles is. That basic understanding is absolutely enough for most players.

There's a lot you'd have to simplify to make everything obvious in-game, and that'd just be a problem. Combat is far, far from transparent, the system for resolving combat is complex enough. Yet most people are fine with just seeing the odds. Just like most people are fine, say, with only knowing approximately what determine a tech's beaker cost.

I agree, though, that city culture should be essentially the same as culture in a city's plot - as in Great Works contributing to both, for example.

[Kuciwalker]

Then your proposal becomes a pretty big reworking of the culture system. While I agree that it needs reworking for the sequel, that's not exactly the direction I envision.

I don't see how the actual results would be significantly different. It would just change edge cases in a way that's probably beneficial.

Oh, and as an aside: culture with colonies is messed up. When I found a bunch of cities on some island and liberate them, my culture still shows up in the tiles of the island and the cities, and it takes a bit to be replaced by my colony's. With culture stored in tiles you can't really just replace all of that culture with the colony's culture, because you can't be sure where the border is [between the colony and the parent civ]. With culture only in cities, you just have to change the cities' culture and the borders come out exactly right.

[Solver]

The results would be significantly different in wars and especially razing ones. For example, if I raze half your empire and you later rebuild there with new cities, you'll then have no culture there under your proposal.

And for the culture colony issue, there's the patch

[Kuciwalker]

The results would be significantly different in wars and especially razing ones. For example, if I raze half your empire and you later rebuild there with new cities, you'll then have no culture there under your proposal.

Well yeah, if you raze and burn all my land and kill everyone, I shouldn't have any culture...

And for the culture colony issue, there's the patch

Ah, I hadn't created a colony since the patch, so I didn't know it was fixed.