Culture weirdness, or even <gasp> bug

[vulture]

So, can someone explain to me how this is intended game mechanics, or is it a bug.

Our story starts in 1802, when I have recently captured a city on my border - Tekkeda. I am the blue country to the north, my enemy the brown civ to the south. The only change in who controls which tiles is the actual city tile of Tekedda.




The tile of interest is the one circled in red, which I own by 50-49 against Mali at this point. I have held the tile the whole game, and his city right on the border (founded some time later) never managed to gain control of it.

Next stop, 1848. I have l;ost control of the tile (I lost it pretty close after 1802 actually). In the bottom left hand corner yhou can now see that mail owns this square 57-42. In spite of the fact it is 1 right next to one of my )captured) cities and 2 tiles away from a high culture city (50 culture per turn at this point - all culture buildings and a wonder or two). The captured (and renamed) city is producing 13 culture per turn now.



Just for the record, here is our total cultures - mine is the top one, his is the brown line which has recently dropped from 2nd to 3rd.




And here we can see where his nearest cities are. A fair way away.



So, how is it that a tile that I've held the whole game despite his best efforts to get it away from me by planting a city there... the tile only changes hands after I've captured his closest city and started producing a fair amount of my own culture in it. And suddenly his culture in that tile is outstripping my 2nd best culture city a whole 2 tiles away (and with the same number of cities I have much more culture total than him).

Nothing about that makes sense to me.

[Garth Vader]

Total culture is meaningless. He must be producing more in the two cities than you are in the two of yours. Or he used a great artist recently on one of those cities.

[TriMiro]

Sometimes late in the game the AI will decide to go for cultural victory and might be close enough to it despite the fact that you have more culture (total culture is not the same as three cities with huge culture). If the AI has decided to go for the culture victory, he will pump the culture bar close to 100%. Now look at all the towns around Timbuktu, chances are all of them are going towards culture. That is my opinion and that is all I can say without looking at the world builder to see what is happening exactly.

My solution to the problem: raze Timbuktu. If the AI going for CV, that could be your only chance anyway.

[Ming]

Originally posted by TriMiro
My solution to the problem: raze Timbuktu.

Indeed... when ever you have a culture issue, the solution is simple. Raze the city causing the problem

[rah]

Naw, looks like a sweet city. Take it and keep it.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Garth Vader
Total culture is meaningless. He must be producing more in the two cities than you are in the two of yours. Or he used a great artist recently on one of those cities.

His culture doesn't show the jump of a great artist being used (and using an artist has never given me any appreciable change of borders in BtS, certainly not gaining me a tile 5 squares away from my city and inside the city radius of a foreign city). In my experience, cities are very likely to keep their own city radius against culture encroachment even with pretty weak culture (in the case of no enemy cities' radius overlapping yours).

Spying around in worldbuilder does show that his two cities are very high culture (12k and 7k IIRC).

Deleting Timbuktu doesn't give me control of the tile, although it does give me a bunch more tiles near the ivory. Suspiciously, I gain control of 3 of the four diagonal tiles around Heidelberg (1, 7 and 9 from the city via keypad), while Mali retains control of 2, 4, 6 and 8 (and 3). I.e. I gain control of tiles that are nearer his remaining cities than the indicated tile. Coincidentally (or not), those 4 tiles (2,4, 6,8) are the 4 closest to Heidelberg. Which all makes it look like Heidelberg is still acting as an ongoing source of culture for Mali.

For some reason it didn't occur to me to try deleting Heidelberg and see what that did to the culture map - will have a crack at that this evening.

[couerdelion]

That does look weird. Which cities of Mali have that tile in their cultural range? They are the only ones that can possibly compete with you for that tile. If both of them are are Influential level then they are in range of both and you'll need to capture them or probably lose the city to a rebellion

[wodan11]

Possible Mali used a spy to increase culture?

Wodan

[snoopy369]

A GA can give a significant change in culture in a city already producing significant culture (in the hundreds), because it gives 20 'cycles' of culture, 200 at a time (on normal), each popping in the entire city's culture output plus 200 onto each tile (plus 20*L-1 in each inside ring of course). Usually you don't notice because either a city is giving a lot of culture already, and thus doesn't have anything remotely close by to affect.

The issue with deleting a city is because culture is tile-centric, not city-centric. So long as you have a single city with that tile in its radius, it doesn't matter how MUCH culture that city has.

Do you know how culture works? My guess is no given your answers, though you seem to have a decent understanding of it without knowing the details.

Basically, there are two elements: City culture, and Tile culture. They combine to make the very elegant but sometimes confusing culture model of Civ4.

City culture: A city produces X culture per turn. That amount contributes to its own City Culture, which at certain predetermined numbers expands its 'cultural radius'. This radius gives you access to tiles in that cultural radius if you are the only city which contains that tile in its radius.

'Tile culture' is individual to each tile and is the sum total of culture you have applied to that tile, compared to other civs.

You apply culture to a tile each turn in the following formula:
CPT for the city + 20*(city culture level - 1)

This is how a city will usually control tiles near to it compared to a city far away; the 20*culture level usually is a significant amount. So, if you have 2 expansions (one past the 21sq radius/BFC), your inner ring (the 9 tile box) is 3 levels in, so it gains 40 culture/turn plus your natural culture, while the rest of the BFC tiles get 20 cpt plus your city's CPT, and the outer tiles gain your city's CPT.

It is also possible to gain culture from two sources at once, which can be a significant gain.

Either way, once culture is applied to a tile, it is there forever. The tile will 'belong' to whichever civ has it inside the 'culture expansion' radius of one of its cities, and has the most culture on the tile of those civs who qualify (have it within a city radius). It is not uncommon to have cities where you control none of the tiles around them for quite some time, if you stop conquering other cities around them.

In this case, both cities were one away from maximum expansion, so they had quite significant degrees of control over the tiles (six away from . The reason for the 1,7,9 was not Timbuktu but Kumom Seleh. It has enough expansion to control the tiles around Heidelberg except for the very furthest away ones.

Since the culture on the tile remains forever, basically what happened is that Heidelberg (or Timbuktu, or Kumom, or some other cities) generated a ton of culture, and applied it to those tiles; and now, until those cities no longer contain those tiles in their cultural influence (by being razed or conquered), Mali will continue to control those tiles, unless you apply quite a lot of culture yourself (probably thousands).

The reason you lost it in the first place (went from 50-49 to 57-42) is Timbuktu is clearly producing a lot of culture, and you probably are not. If you are producing 5 culture per turn, and have a theoretical radius of 2 (BFC only) (you can see this by seeing which expansion you are currently working on - how much culture is needed for the next expansion?), you are gaining only 25 cpt on the tiles around your city. Timbuktu is certainly putting more than that out - i've never seen a capital late in the game not put out at least 40, and i'd guess over a hundred if it's that high. You'd have to have at least two more expansions to be able to fight that, plus a lot of actual culture per turn also.

[Hauptman]

Unfortunatly we cant see the Mali cities, but I'm willing to guess they are both 80%. Yours being at 60% would be the issue. His cities are just wtfpwning yours. You were going to loose that tile soon anyways I recon. His 80% might have only recently started effecting it, but I'm sure the influence had been growing rapidly since. I've had legendary culture cities destroy ancient capitals in OOC games. You have 2 options. Take the man out, add his cities to your empire. Or start cranking it until you'rs hit that 80% bonus.


Yes just by counting the squares we can see timbuctu at least is at 80%. One 80% will easily steal tiles from 3 40% and 1 60%. Get that culture up son!~ But as the only way to start beating an 80% is with legendary culture, that would be a won game, so on second thought. you have one option.


WAR.

[joncnunn]

Looks to me like you've been sorely neglating the cheaper culture buildings along all your border cities.
e.g. Library, Theater, Temples, Monstaries pre Sci Method.

1802 AD and just now getting around to Libaries in them???

Long Eton is in serious risk of out right fliping to your opponents.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Hauptman
Unfortunatly we cant see the Mali cities, but I'm willing to guess they are both 80%. Yours being at 60% would be the issue. His cities are just wtfpwning yours. You were going to loose that tile soon anyways I recon. His 80% might have only recently started effecting it, but I'm sure the influence had been growing rapidly since. I've had legendary culture cities destroy ancient capitals in OOC games. You have 2 options. Take the man out, add his cities to your empire. Or start cranking it until you'rs hit that 80% bonus.

The Mail cities are at 9k and 12k culture - can't remember off-hand which is which - vs my 3k in Cwmcarn (the size 15 city north of the red circle with the obscured name).

I guess what has really cost me the tile is the fact that it is now in the cultural radius of both those cities, so is gaining significant CPT from both. I'm putting 143 culture per turn on that tile and barely holding my own, which at 57-42 means that he is getting 190ish CPT there (give or take a pretty large amount, admittedly).

BTW in Snoopy's rather informative post (thanks), he says "You apply culture to a tile each turn in the following formula:
CPT for the city + 20*(city culture level - 1)". Would I be right in guessing that the city culture level bonus drops by 1 rank (20 CPT) each ring of tiles you move away? So The first ring of a lvl 4 city gains 60 extra culture, the next ring 40 and so on to the outermost ring which gains the same CPT as the city?

Originally posted by joncnunn
Looks to me like you've been sorely neglating the cheaper culture buildings along all your border cities.
e.g. Library, Theater, Temples, Monstaries pre Sci Method.

1802 AD and just now getting around to Libaries in them???

Long Eton is in serious risk of out right fliping to your opponents.

To be fair, I've only conquered the three border cities recently and they'd only just popped out of anarchy at that point. Build order for all three of them: temple, theatre, library IIRC.

So, go kill seems to be the message. I'll just go get over my sulk about the culture model first

[Arrian]

Once or twice I've been in this situation and decided to drop a great artist culture bomb... which did precisely nothing. You're up against really old cities with huge amounts of accumulated culture. The only solutions are: 1) a long and costly culture war (in which case I'd say settling a great artist is the best move) with artist specialists and the whole nine; or 2) Shooting war.

I usually pick #2.

-Arrian

[snoopy369]

Vulture you are correct... 20 drops for each ring. That's the only 'bonus' you get for each ring, culture wise. Zero for the outside always, and 20 more for each inner ring from the outside.