culture after capture-unfair-please help

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by 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

Was wondering when someone was going to say this. I like to save up a couple of artists when I'm in the mood for a "landgrab" war, as compared to just annhiliating someone.

Me.

[nbarclay]

How well does the artist trick work late in the game? I tried it once in vanilla Civ IV, and the artist had so little impact that I don't remember ever trying it again. In any case, great artists are rare enough, or require enough sacrifices to get more of them, that they can't provide anything close to a complete solution to the problem.

[Asmodeous]

It actually works fairly well. If you nab, say, three nearby cities, and bomb each one of them with an artist, the closest will have a full Fat-X, the other two won't, but will have enough workable tiles to survive and begin the counter-culture war without the stream of revolts.

It's not really that difficult to get a handful of GAs, and by that I really mean 2-4. Any more than that is really unneccessary, but all you have to do is have one of your early-on cities build all them Great Artist wonders, such as the Parthenon, National Epic, Hermitage, Mauselleum (if you can get to it), and Statue of Zeus. If you focus those ones into one city, you should be able to pop at least 2-3 GAs by the time you get to the Industrial age, and I tend to hoard them until that point, because Late Game Wars are where GAs shine the most, honestly, they make those cities worth taking as compared to something you just burn down to extend your cultural border a couple of tiles.

Me.

[jbp26]

yeah but expending 3 GAs just for a few AI cities?? what a waste. i would much rather use them for almost any other option. its so much more economic to just go raze a few cities and relieve the culture pressure then it is to waste great people on opening borders. i guess if youre really pressed for space and tiles it might make sense, but it still seems very wasteful.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Asmodeous
....
It's not really that difficult to get a handful of GAs, and by that I really mean 2-4. Any more than that is really unneccessary, but all you have to do is have one of your early-on cities build all them Great Artist wonders, such as the Parthenon, National Epic, Hermitage, Mauselleum (if you can get to it), and Statue of Zeus. If you focus those ones into one city...

What you call "not really that difficult" i would consider a fairly tall order (if you play on a level that provides a challenge for you) and a costly endeavour... Not only is hard to build all, or even the majority of all, the wonders you mentioned, but to concentrate them all in one city is... well... hard to say the least. Besides, i would rather then use all the GAs to pull for a cultural victory, anyway.
I like the idea of the military control, btw...

[aracuan_76]

"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."

thank you my good man.you are quite right.you simply say,what i cant cause english isnt my first language.My respects for your integrated point of view.

As far as concern the culture bomb,i tried it also,no effect...i think i must either change this amount of culture.instead of 4000 might change it to 20000 in order to have some effect.thats the only if we can call it,"solution" to have in my mind.

[Ming]

You only really need one GA to do it right.

Lets say you capture two cities on your border. But there is one city deeper in enemy territory that is causing the culture problem. Take that one, and culture bomb that one. The enemy culture will still stop you from using about half the land on the side of the city still close to the enemy, but it should give you culture control of everything behind that city.... ie., the area around the two cities behind it that you took.

Then if you raze the closest cities near the city you culture bombed, you should eventually get control of the total area.

No need for three GA's.

[Shalkai]

For late-game, try Corporation culture-bombs. Found a couple of the culture-bonus Corps, and just spread those into your new cities. It won't be quite as instant as a GA culture-bomb, but it won't take very long at all. Plus, Corporate Execs are a whole lot easier to produce that Great Artists.

[rah]

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.

Totally unrealistic...hmmmmmm
Thinking about afganastan, we control the cities proper but not the surrounding areas.

Think about the green zone in Iraq, safe within, where our troops are, but outside........
In time it will get better as our cultural influence gets time to have impact, but it's going to be a long haul.

I think it's quite realistic. And I find it fun because you're challanged to resolve it.

[nbarclay]

By the standards of most bloodthirsty warmongers through history, the war in Iraq has been a clear success, albeit a bit more costly one than we would have preferred. The only reason why so many people consider the war a failure is that most American's aren't bloodthirsty warmongers, so we are a whole lot more sensitive to casualties - civilian as well as military - than bloodthirsty warmongers would be. The situation is further complicated by the fact that our Democratic Party has been coming very close to promising the terrorists in Iraq that if they can kill enough people, we'll pull out. That is the exact opposite of the message that a nation intent on a successful occupation wants to send.

Afghanistan is close to being a worst-case scenario for invaders, with a combination of militant religious beliefs to motivate guerrillas and terrain that is highly favorable to guerrilla tactics. It is not a typical example of how easy or difficult a time invaders have controlling captured territory.

And consider the fact that in Civ IV, even when turns proceed at a pace of one per year, captured cities often remain in resistance for close to ten years (and sometimes longer) before they start being productive. So Civ IV has a mechanism reflecting the fact that Baghdad is still in resistance completely independent of how the culture system works after the resistance is over.

Regarding the question of fun, the real problem is the lack of good options, at least until culture-producing corporations hit their stride (assuming I have one or more of them). If players don't mind razing cities, I can see how a strategy of razing cities in order to avoid culture problems might be fun. But to me, destroying cities instead of capturing them is strongly distasteful. So being pushed into considering razing cities just because of rules that I consider highly unrealistic isn't fun for me.

[Unimatrix11]

If a campaign is a success or not, depends on what its goal is. What the the goal is, depends on who talks about it. The official goal was to rid Saddam from WMDs - in that aspect, the war was a success even before it started, cause he never had any to begin with. The true goal is to have a prolonged conflict that will justify to continue to shove enormous amounts of tax money into the pockets of the great weapon´s contactors (among other reasons of that quality) - in that aspect the war is a grand success also (and continous to be that, the longer it lasts). And having been in the states for half a year, i almost daily saw the GI-death tolls and critizism on the war was based mainly on an extremely short casuality list when compared to prior wars and especially loss of lives (soldiers and civilian) of the people who were "supposed" to get "liberated" - noone seemed to take unduly concern of that - at least not on TV. The war was never supposed to be a simple bank-robbery, but rather a prolonged hostage-drama to buff up the police-budget, to speak in analogy. The war on terror will never end as long as the people who started it wont come to realize its true nature. The americans are loosing this war - at home - by paying for something that is totally not in their interest. To "support the troops" means to bring ´em home, before their abuse causes america even more damage. To mean that slogan differently is like watching a girl being raped and root for her with slogans like "hang on there girl - you got my full support !", while the rapist is pickpocketing you.

[nbarclay]

If we are going to talk about Iraq here, we need to be careful that we talk only about aspects that are related in some significant way to the issue of cultural control of captured territory in Civ IV. Unimatrix11's message seems focused purely on trying to convey his opinions about the war, with no connection at all to Civ IV, so I'll resist the temptation to respond to its contents.

[Krill]

Honestly, I'm suprised that the OP doesn't just commit genocide. It solves the problem pretty throughly.

[jbp26]

i still dont understand what anyone sees about this that is unrealistic. culture works like this on purpose, its supposed to scale with the age and rightfully so. if you tried to capture and hold a foreign city today, the chance of it ever being productive is infinitessimal. imagine if the US suddenly conquered paris. to make the surrounding lands american, you'd have to effectively remove the presence of the french. its not going to happen without killing all of the people. thats the whole point of the culture system, that territory and country is definied by more then just the placement of a city.

[Krill]

After the industrial era the most realistic way to make lands productive is to annexe all of it ie WW2 France (I'd look at it as an in game Vassal)