culture after capture-unfair-please help

[aracuan_76]

Dear all,

When i m taking an enemy city,i see that the culture of the conquered city is droping to zero.No matter how many improvements pushing the culture high i will built,the city NEVER gets the radius that should have.the only expansion is only to sea tile,very little in land(usually none).This is completely unfair,making the conquering cities,uselless.What should i change in the xml to make this less effective or in the game rules in the beggining?the game level i m playing is prince.Do you agree on this?

[snoopy369]

The issue is that there is culture in the tiles themselves in addition to the culture of the city. The culture of the tiles determines who will own them; the culture of the city determines how the culture applies to the tiles.

For example, a city of radius 4 (5,000 culture in a normal game) will have squares 4 tiles in each direction gaining some culture. Each tile in the 4th radius gets (#) where # is the amount of culture generated per turn; each tile in the 3rd radius gets (20+#); 2nd radius (40+#); first radius (60+#). Every turn.

This means that if you hold a city for 100 turns, you have put a huge amount of culture in the tiles around it. You can only take those tiles back if you remove all cities that influence that area; once no cities exert influence over those tiles you gain them once your internal city culture is high enough (regardless of the tile owner).

Basically, the only way to take them back is to keep conquering... or to conquer earlier on in the game (a city conquered in the first 100 turns or so will be pretty easy to gain its tiles back; 200 turns in is still not impossible, but after 250 or 300 turns it's extremely hard in the time remaining).

[Quillan]

Snoopy's hit the nail on the head here; the square belongs to whichever civilization - of those whose cultural borders currently include the square - has the highest accumulated culture. As long as parts of the city's new borders fall within the borders of the old civilization, the accumulated culture will overpower yours thus leaving it in control of your enemy.

Personally, I'm fond of razing all the cities in an area beyond where I want to stop my conquest, just so I have no cultural pressure out there. However, if they bring in a settler and plop down a new city, even 50 turns later, I'll wind up losing a nice swath of territory because the culture still overpowers mine.

[Theben]

I always seem to have a lot of culture in my cities so that's never an issue, until late-game conquests.

[aracuan_76]

thanks,but...

Dear all,thank for your reply first of all.

It seems that there is no hope then.This game supports full conquer and therefore full distruction of an entire civilization.It forces you not to make war.If you do,you must destroy an entire civlization.Black or white( ).no shades of grey.
i think totaly diferent.wars usually have a motive,in order to gain something resources,for example.something similar,can be done here since they are cleverly exist.but it seems it cant.i simply dont agree that a war must leed in a destruction of a civilization,cause almost this has never happen in human history.you simply cant turn a war into global domination.wars for the 95% had began for claiming lands,or resources.and it s insane,that the occupied cities revolt and join the previous owner.
let us remember simple examples;balkan wars,the 100 year war,and mostly,the era of imperialism(random order).
civilization,is a game that tries to represent human history.some say its not.i beleive it is,cause each expansion try to be closer and make it more realistic to what we do.so it make me feel physically sic,to capture a city and not be able to take advantage the lands,because of...culture!even if i m far more advanced,the...zulus have more culture,yet they havent discover liberalism for example...
however,if you have any idea,editing xml,please advice me...

[Wittlich]

Aracuan, if you raze the AI city (or cities) that are culturally pushing in on your city's borders - your borders will then have an easier time expanding (out of default).

[rah]

Re: thanks,but...

Originally posted by aracuan_76
it s insane,that the occupied cities revolt and join the previous owner.

There's an option to disable this I believe.

[snoopy369]

I don't think cultural values are easily modded, I imagine you could in a SDK mod (C++) but even with python it wouldn't be easy (you could force-give culture or force-take it away but it would be a lot of work).

It's actually a lot more realistic than you say - for example, take a city like El Paso (Texas). It is a border city, and has been since the Gadsden Purchase in the 1800s. It's been what, 150+ years since El Paso was bought from Mexico; yet our borders haven't increased one whit to the south. We still essentially have all US 'culture' to the North half of El Paso, but all Mexican culture to the south. There's very little 'workable' terrain between El Paso and the border - just a river.

So in this sense I think it is highly reasonable and realistic. You take over an AI city east of you, you get to use the territory between you and the city, but nothing past the city into the AI territory unless you either invade further, or you spend a lot of time building culture. You'll eventually get the 21 square radius - and much faster the western side, if not immediately; it won't take more than 100 to 200 turns to get the 21 square radius if you make an effort. Expand to 3 or 4 border expansions quickly (by this point you should be able to get about 15-20 culture/turn pretty easily, not to mention great artists or culture slider). You'll get there in time.

You may also be venturing a bit too far outside of your own borders (or not building enough culture). If you're not interested in taking over an entire country, but just one border city, you should be doing so in an area where you already have reasonable cultural presence at least up to the current border. Obviously if the US went to Venezuela and took over Caracas, you'd not expect us to own the rest of the country - or even much of it - unless we took over some more cities, right? The same applies here - you may need to take over another city or two that are either in between you and the target city, or else adjacent. As long as the AI doesn't have any cities that exert cultural influence on a tile, you can easily obtain that tile for your workforce; just check that before you invade.

[jbp26]

Re: Re: thanks,but...

Originally posted by rah


There's an option to disable this I believe.

i thought this was the default setting, and that particular option actually enabled it? either that or i just always play with it on, i forget.

anyway the way culture work in no way forces you to annihilate a whole civ just to get some land. if you capture a city early and aggressively pursue some culture you'll have plenty of workable tiles in no time. or you can raze the next closest city to make some breathing room, or just take a couple of cities and make them your vassal. its not unfair, it just requires a little planning.

[Willem]

Originally posted by aracuan_76
If you do,you must destroy an entire civlization.Black or white( ).no shades of grey.

Sorry, but you're the one that's missing the grey. Don't capture the bordering cities that are causing the culture problems, just raze them. That will solve your problem just as well, and provide a nice cultural buffer between you and the other civ. You certainly don't need to destroy the entire civilization just to secure your boundaries. That's just over-reaction.

and it s insane,that the occupied cities revolt and join the previous owner.

A captured city can never culture flip back to the original owner. Unless there's a third civ exerting strong influence nearby, the most a revolt will do is disrupt your production.

[jkp1187]

Re: culture after capture-unfair-please help

Originally posted by aracuan_76
Dear all,

When i m taking an enemy city,i see that the culture of the conquered city is droping to zero.No matter how many improvements pushing the culture high i will built,the city NEVER gets the radius that should have.the only expansion is only to sea tile,very little in land(usually none).This is completely unfair,making the conquering cities,uselless.What should i change in the xml to make this less effective or in the game rules in the beggining?the game level i m playing is prince.Do you agree on this?

By the way, this isn't the "culture" of the city that is dropping to zero, but rather the defense bonus given to the city's defenders that is dropping to zero. The city's actual culture level is unaffected by your bombardment.

And if you force a civ to capitulate to you in wartime, any cities you take from them will always have the full "fat cross" under your control -- although they are still suceptible to unrest until you've increased your cultural strength in that city.

[aracuan_76]

2 things more

Well,

I forgot to tell you something that i should have done from the begginig.I m playing the archipelago map,snaky continets.size standard or small,and with this way are existing 4 or 5 continents.and then,lastly,i have made an invasion to england,having 3 cities.i manage to capture london,and destroy the nottingham,and then,with one city remained,i couldnt take advantage NONE piece of land,from a city it was 7 away!!!!era?modern.
my other question is this cause i m a bit confused:which is the option i should put the "x" in order to avoid as much as possible this unfair event?

[couerdelion]

I think it’s just that fact that you are experiencing the problem for the first time that makes you see it as unfair. Personally, I don’t mind the culture because it creates a certain check on the conquest mentality that most people find so easy in the game. The culture is the best defence that the game has over such players to reflect the fact that you may have conquered the city but you don’t REALLY control it. The inhabitants take a long time to get on your side and the only way you can get round this is to destroy all links with their original civ.

By contrast, if you really are fighting for territory that is “rightfully” yours, you yourself should have significant culture in the area already. Those where you have no cultural influence are simply wars fought for possession of material that you want.

[nbarclay]

It looks to me as if Firaxis developed a formula for culture and let the formula drive gameplay instead of figuring out how the game ought to feel for players and looking for a way to design game mechanics that would provide the right feel. The big problem with the current design is that in anything resembling the real world, there are two ways for a nation to control territory, but except for the city tiles themselves, Civ IV's culture mechanism only considers one of them.

1) There is military/police control, which forces people to obey the controlling nation's laws whether they want to or not.

2) There is cultural influence, which reflects which nation people would want to be part of if they have a choice.

The cultural mechanism in Civ IV reflects both of these factors for city tiles. If a sufficiently close civ's culture is dominant in a city, it is necessary to station enough troops to persuade the people that a rebellion would be futile, or else the city is likely to revolt and join the civilization a majority of its people want to be a part of.

But for tiles other than the city tile itself, Civ IV completely ignores the military dimension. Firaxis took away the traditional way of using military force to gain control of the tiles surrounding a city (the rule that capturing a city gives a player control of the surrounding tiles), but failed to provide any kind of replacement. So aside from city tiles themselves, control depends solely on culture, and even the most powerful military presence in the history of mankind can't make a hill of beans' worth of difference. That is totally unrealistic, and there seems to be a consensus that it undermines the game's fun as well.

One relatively simple way to fix the problem would be to have military units in a city add a bonus to the effective culture for tiles within a city's "fat cross" except in cases where doing so would result in taking the tile away from another city's fat cross. The bonus should probably be larger for the tiles immediately adjacent to a city tile than for tiles farther away. This type of mechanism would give captured cities a way of working enough tiles to have a strong enough economy that they can build up their culture over time. It would also, as a side effect, reduce the occurrence of situations where no one is allowed to work tiles because they are in the fat cross of a city from one civ, but under the cultural control of a different civ.

I don't know whether the code that would have to be changed to implement this kind of mechanism is somewhere that people with the SDK could make the necessary change, or whether Firaxis would have to do it themselves. But the change itself shouldn't be too hard, aside perhaps from the problem of trying to figure out the best balance.

[Ming]

Another trick would be to use a Artist for a culture bomb in a key rival city that you have taken over. That can solve a lot of problems