In defense of culture

[dawidge]

Originally posted by nato
Another cool thing would have been to have a 4th specialist who made culture (someone else suggested this). That would really simulate artists ... they don't produce anything physically useful, but create culture. Ah well, I don't use specialists in Civ3 anyway!

I love this idea, but it might skew the early game. I like the specialists from SMAC, which appeared only after certain techs were discovered. Perhaps make artists available only after discovering some otherwise dead-end tech, like Free Artistry. Alternatively, grant the ability for an idle worker sitting in a city to generate culture for that city. This would simulate all those people who do seasonal construction work, but make velvet Elvis paintings and Led Zeppelin hook rugs in the off season.

I guess like Captain points out though, a lot of extra culture generating buildings messes up the cultural victory condition... hmmm. Might put you in the position of having to turn that condition off and having culture around solely for border/culture flip determination.

One thing I dislike about the cultural victory condition is that it is based on hard limits and does not consider the relative prominence of your culture. it doesn't matter if the next highest culture to yours is 95,000, if you hit that 100,000 mark (or 20,000 in one city), you've won. It should be a cultural dominance based on the same rules as territorial dominance. You can win by culture if you have exceeded 100,000 culture points (or 20,000 in one city) if you also hold 2/3rds of the world's *total* culture.

[nato]

I think to win culturally, your culture already has to be so-much ahead of the second highest culture ... not sure because I go for domination victories, though I have stumbled into culture victories.

[Akka]

I think to win culturally, your culture already has to be so-much ahead of the second highest culture ... not sure because I go for domination victories, though I have stumbled into culture victories.

To win culturally, you have either having a single city with 20 000+ culture points, either your whole country having BOTH 100 000+ culture points AND at least twice the size of the second highest culture.

the fact that a library can move borders back more effectievly than a panzer division is crap.

Not at all. Military can conquer a land, and hold a land. But as soon as they are gone, so is the domination over the land and people that inhabit here.
Culture, on the other hand, give people the feeling that they're part of a society, hence giving them more loyalty. The cultural borders in the game are a very good idea I think they reflect how a more civilized civilization does not have to resort on weapons to dominate people.

Though I admit that fortress could emit a border, allowing the pure brute force territory keeping.

[Spiffor]

As a builder, I love the culture concept.
There is nothing like a culture flip in favour of the player

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nato
I guess like Captain points out though, a lot of extra culture generating buildings messes up the cultural victory condition... hmmm.

Not necessarily. You just have to reduce or remove culture creation of some of the science/happiness buildings. It needs delicate playbalancing (like every good mod does), but it can be done.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

or just change the condition to needing a large amount of RELATIVE culture....

[lockstep]

Unlike tweaking culture creation, this is NOT possible with the current editor.

[nato]

Phoenix's solution would be fine, if only it could be done.

Lockstep, you have a really good idea too, and it can be done. Reduce or remove culture from happiness and science buildings... very interesting. That would really make culture its own completely seperate thing ... you would really have to choose between culture and other areas.

That would also lower the value of those original buildings, and lower the value of being a scientific or religious civ. Not necesarily a bad thing, just a factor to consider.

Also, the big question is: can the AI adapt to the change?

I like the idea though ... maybe set Temples and Libraries to zero culture, and let Cahtedrals and Universities still make 1 per turn maybe, since they are such big buildings. Or whatever.

Captain, you added shrines and things ... have you changed the cultural values of the original buildings while you were at it?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nato
Lockstep, you have a really good idea too, and it can be done. Reduce or remove culture from happiness and science buildings... very interesting. That would really make culture its own completely seperate thing ... you would really have to choose between culture and other areas.

Actually, this is already incorporated in korn's blitz mod, but still subject to tweaking (with a little assistance of me). A possible solution would be

- reduced culture for temples, cathedrals, libraries and universities (10-12 total culture points),
- no culture at all for colloseums and science labs,
- three new 'culture-only'-buildings (theater, opera, museum) with a total of 16-20 culture points.

As soon as korn has v1.06/beta8 of his mod ready (which should be in a few days), I recommend everyone to give it a try.

[lockstep]

Two additional comments:

- The reason not to remove culture at all from temples and libraries is to maintain contiguous empire borders for civs that don't choose a 'cultural' strategy.
- In korn's blitz mod, some of the AI's are definitely building theaters etc.

[Heffalump]

Some good ideas here.

I'm a very big fan of the culture concept although i feel it could have been implemented better. As nato says, it boils down to having a lot of cities. Buildings generate culture pts and for buildings you need cities.

Ok, that's fine to a point. You don't exactly see small countries like Belgium overwhelming the world with their culture. But it's too simple and just encourages the already immense pressures to expand, expand, expand.

Probably more than anything else i've played around a lot with culture in the editor. Ideally, in my view, wonders should be more important to culture than improvements. I've done this to some extent, upping wonder culture pts and reducing improvement culture pts. It helps and made wonders a lot more important in my games. But you can only go so far. To many culture pts for wonders and you'll hit the victory ceiling .... too few for improvements and your city borders expand painfully slow.

But i think a nice "fix" is going to involve some combination of being able to set the culture victory condition in the editor (patch idea?), upping the culture generation of wonders, and adding new culture producing wonders in the editor.

I think adding culture producing "wonders" is better than improvements because this approach lessens the dependence on the number of cities. But new wonders need not necessarily cost so much as normal wonders, or have special affects. I classify them as wonders because they're once per civ, or once per game, rather than once per city.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Heffalump
I think adding culture producing "wonders" is better than improvements because this approach lessens the dependence on the number of cities. But new wonders need not necessarily cost so much as normal wonders, or have special affects. I classify them as wonders because they're once per civ, or once per game, rather than once per city.

A different, yet very interesting approach. I agree that some additional 'culture-only'-wonders or small wonders would make a cultural strategy easier to follow for small civs. However, IMO there are also good reasons for 'culture-only'-buildings:

• They provide the opportunity of 'cultural combat' - aiming for or preventing a cultural flip of specific cities.
• Provided they are costly in construction and maintenance, they make it impossible to go out for conquest and be a major cultural power at the same time.

[Inverse Icarus]

if i'm at war, and i have a panzer sitting on top of an oil square in enemy territory, i should be able to use that oil

[lockstep]

Even if you're surrounded by enemy territory?

Generally, the concept of supply would enrich Civ-type games IMO (and was implemented in the EU series). But I guess it's too late for Civ3.

(At least, the enemy won't be able to use that oil, too.)

[notyoueither]

Actually, in that sense supply is in civ3. You can plop a worker down on the oil and pump away, just as soon as you roll back his cultural borders far enough.

You can't trace any resource route, be it from trade or colonies through a civ you are at war with, but you can anytime you are at peace with them.