In defense of culture

[Carver]

Originally posted by 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.

I've always thought that you should be able to have a line of troops from the resource to your border and this would allow you to use the resource. Of course, it would be hard to hold a solid line in war - but it should at least work with resources that are close to the border, creating another hard fought battle zone.

[Coracle]

Of course "culture" has merit.

But "Culture Flipping" cities and borders, and vanishing garrisons, is NONSENSE and entirely non-historical.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Carver


I've always thought that you should be able to have a line of troops from the resource to your border and this would allow you to use the resource. Of course, it would be hard to hold a solid line in war - but it should at least work with resources that are close to the border, creating another hard fought battle zone.

That's a great idea. No idea how difficult it would be to implement in the game.

But this gave me another idea (also probably hard to implement):
Two types of culture -
1. "Permanent Culture" - this would be culture as we know it, eminating from cities and contiguous.
2. "Temporary or Occupation Culture" - This would be culture enforced in wartime by your troops. If you are at war with a civ and send troops into their territory, the squares where your troops are located temporarily fall under your culture, representing martial law. If your troops form a solid line cutting into the enemy culture, any squares behind that line become temporarily yours.

With this idea, a line of military units to a resource would work, just set up a colony and a road down the line of units and voila access to the resource. This would also incorporate the earlier stated idea that military units should contribute to borders.

And the coup de grace of this idea would be to make a combat bonus based on the number of adjacent squares that belong to your culture. This would make it much easier to defend against strikes deep into the heart of your territory as the attacker would be at a disadvantage with few friendly squares around him. This would create much more realistic combat as you attempt to move a solid line of attack forward. The rationale behind the bonus would be that the more friendly territory around you, the better you know the lay of the land.

My $0.02

[Captain]

Originally posted by nato
Captain, your shrine idea sounds really cool. Actually, with a low shield cost, but a high gold maintanence cost, it is almost like a way to turn gold into culture ... so it is almost like a way to split gold into luxuries, science, taxes, and culture ... a 4th slider. Maybe that is how culture should have been originally, but your shrine is a really clever way to get a very similar effect. Good work!

Thanks! I'm glad others are finding it a good idea. If anyone wants to implement it in one of their mods (or one of the popular ones like the blitz mod) so we could see how other people use it, that'd be great. I'm pleased with the idea but then I have a certain play style that's ancient warrior, medieval builder, and industrial quitter (by then the fun part's over for me) os it'd be neat to see how others use it.

I use them as a quick way to plug culture gaps (so the AI stays out of my territory) or expand city radii to that critical resource, then sell it because the drain on the treasury is too much.

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!

Good idea! I also think a shield specialist would be great too, to represent the technical prowess of skilled labour.

One thing that to me is not optimal about culture is that high culture basically boils down to having lots of cities. This is because culture comes from culture buildings, and the only way to have lots of culture buildings is to have lots of cities. This is another reason I really like culture only buildings ... it gives better possibility that culture is less determined by number of cities, because large empires might not have bothered to build the the culture only buildings (like they would temples and libraries).

True. But everything in Civ is kind of like that. It's always been more cities, more population, more production capability, overwhelm enemies by fielding bigger armies faster, researching faster, building spaceships faster... I'm not sure that can be really changed, since gold/shields are req'd to produce culture and so production is again the key to high culture.

But to combat ReXing, I think having more valuable specialists might make a few megacities gain more appeal than billions of tiny cities. Right now the tiny city is more useful because once over size 21, the citizens don't work the tiles anymore and are only specialists so unless specialists are more productive, it's better to make new cities. The shrine idea I have also makes cities more spaced out because you don't have to cram in cities to fill all available space, the faster culture spread keeps the AI settlers out of your territory - but of course, it'll cost ya.

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.

Yeah, too bad its hardcoded. Otherwise this wouldn't be such a problem.

[Captain]

Originally posted by lockstep

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.

True, that's a good solution while the hardcoded limits exist. Playbalance is always essential too. But I guess the only thing is, that I'm partial to giving old city walls 1 culture to keep them useful (I had 2 kinds, mud brick walls at 20 shield and stone walls at 40 shield, stone is stronger since ancient brick crumbles with age, but req's stone, so brick is for those without resource access) so to balance that, I think taking away the culture of temples and other things would seem "unbalanced" even though it would be necessary for actual balance. The reason walls get cp is that in the ancient age, the city gates were the marketplaces and courthouses where the elders would sit and render judgements and officiate transactions with other cities, thus the city gate was a hotbed of culture. Later its effect would diminish but it was the "seat" of local gov't for many centuries/millenia.

If walls get 1cp, then cathedrals should get at least 4 cp, but with added culture bldgs, that might be too much. Then again, the wall thing might just a personal quirk. I'm sure the playtesting of the many Apolytoners who use popular mods have brought out a lot of the playbalance issues.

[Captain]

Originally posted by nato
Also, the big question is: can the AI adapt to the change?

AFAIK, the AI in the games I played used it quite well. In fact, I even made a "Palace Court" SW, available to monarchy only, where +4 happy in city, plus 4 cpt, plus lux bonus in city, but at the cost of 5gpt, and +1UNhappy in all other cities (the aristocracy puts the squeeze on the populace to fund this extravagant royal court and to patronize the arts). The AI not only used shrines to good effect, but also my forum (+culture, - corrpt, avail to republic only) and even the Palace Court. In 1 game, the tiny 12 city Japanese had 7 lux (compared to my 3 lux in my 30 city continent), so they built the Palace Court no problem while I was forced to sell off mine because the people kept rioting. The Jpns had 3x my culture (I was at war with 4 civs for a while so culture took a backseat to survival). So it seems that sometimes the AI can make great use of it. Russians had only 4 lux, and I don't think they were able to afford to maintain the Palace Court.

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

No, I never did. Mostly because I'm interested in the earlier ages, so I don't have much experience playtesting or modding the post industrial. I haven't played much past the medieval age so my experience in long-term effects isn't solid. I know that in the ancient age, it's fine. I'm sure there are tons of well play-tested mods that have balanced out the cp bldg issues.

Also, I should note I design for UU off (see my posts in the thread on UUs to see how I plan to implement UUs in an organic, flexible way). But, so far, there's no telling how having civ specific traits will affect the changes I made.

I also changed terrain values and ctizen food reqs, so there are fewer cities in my mods. Maintenance costs for units have been boosted. So I have a much much lower city/unit count than most mods. I don't like tedium, that's why I did those.

[Denday]

Wise words

Originally posted by Captain
culture good!
hardcoded "culture in one city" victory conditions bad.
I want to add LOTS more culture bldgs incl. some pure culture-only bldgs (musuem/gallery) but don't want 20k cp victory too easy!
otherwise, culture good!

read theses wise words again because this is the promblem

I totally agree with the captian.
Culture is a great step up but the victory conditions a downfall.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by UberKruX
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

Yes, I entirely agree with you UberKrux.

[SpencerH]

I finally achieved my first cultural victory while playing GOTM VI. I think two factors contributed to this. The game was only at warlord so I got 80-90% of the wonders including the early wonders. In my normal games at monarch and up I usually only get colossus early. Secondly, I was forced to warmongery by the lack of resources and I ended up with more cities than normal. It seems strange to have to be a warmonger to win a cultural victory!

So my question is this, who has one a cultural victory or a one city cultural victory at monrach and up and how was it done?

[dawidge]

Monarch, Huge, Continent 70%, Normal, Temperate, 5B, Roaming, Babylon with 15 Random opponents.

I won the race to the lighthouse and populated all the islands before anybody else could (this was under 1.16 and the AI seemed reluctant to try to cross sea and ocean squares, even if it would be a "safe" passage (starting and ending in coast)).
I put my FP on the most central island.

I only fought defensive and punitive wars. "Sorry, Persia, I'm not gonna wait for you to amass strength to try to take my territory again. I'll give you the Dacia treatment." You can find Dacia on any map by looking for Romania. Guess who they double-crossed one too many times. It was tough fending off Immortals with Bowmen, but City Walls helped a lot. It was even harder for musketmen and knights to fend off Riflemen and Cavalry, but parking an army of muskets on top of a border mountain with iron went a long way toward blunting his attack. Soren's fixed the AI quirk that produced those kinds of reactions since 1.16, but it was effective then.

Fortuitous GL generation gave me the Sistine Chapel and I rush built about 40 Cathedrals before 700 AD.

As a side question, does "double effects from cathedrals" include Culture?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by dawidge
As a side question, does "double effects from cathedrals" include Culture?

According to the editor helpfile, the Sistine Chapel doubles only happiness.

Anyway, if you rushed your cathedrals before 700 AD, they should still yield the double amount of culture points before 1700 AD.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by lockstep
According to the editor helpfile, the Sistine Chapel doubles only happiness.

That's been my experience. TFM says "happiness effects" while the 'pedia only says "effects". Of course, TFM also says "Michelangelo's chapel" rather than "Sistine Chapel" so I tend to take TFM with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if you rushed your cathedrals before 700 AD, they should still yield the double amount of culture points before 1700 AD.

That's why I mentioned the year. I think the CV kicked in around 1920.

[graeme]

Of course "culture" has merit.

But "Culture Flipping" cities and borders, and vanishing garrisons, is NONSENSE and entirely non-historical.

I absolutely agree with that! I can think of no historical preceedent.

However I was thinking about the nature of imigration, for example what factors influence peoples decisions to leave one country and settle in another. And the overriding reason appears to be economic.

In the case of the British empire immigrants came to Britian from colonies but intrestingly this also worked in reverse as people went forth to seek their fortunes.

I think a system where immigrants (a settler?) is generated instead of a "culture flip" would better balance the effects of culture. And be somewhat more realistic.

Graeme

[loleod]

Originally posted by graeme


I absolutely agree with that! I can think of no historical preceedent.


Graeme

I was under the assumption this game wasnt 100 percent historical. There must be a time in history when a city turned sides. I would look at Roman times for that. Possibly even early american times. I like the idea that a small town might flip if it is almost right next to my capital city ( Which will proably have at least one wonder and many small culture builders, not to mention the palace). Let me ask you this , if the somehow the Germans managed to cross the atlantic during WW2 and took over Long Island New York, dont you think sooner or later the residents of Long Island would rebel ( Seeing as they are close to New York City , which would have one of each cultural buildings and at least a few wonders).

[Cyclotron]

Really, culture flipping is an ancient phenomonon involving the slow assimilation of entire peoples and regions. The two factors of military might and cultural identity are the driving forces of empire consolidation and civilization development throughout history.

Is culture "flipping" unrealistic? Yes. It's probably a rare occurance for a city to suddenly change sides in a day. But turns in Civ are years, not days. Your units garrisoned in a taken enemy city are not a brief occupation force, they are a long term presence in the area. Those troops live in a foreign environment for years, and likely develop ties to the community. Culture flipping is not a historically accurate feature, but Civ3 is not a historically accurate game and most people do not want it that way.

Really, culture flipping is an attempt to guage the powerful force of national and ethnic identity that has been a great factor in the rise and fall of empires, and to make culture an important part of the game. Without culture flipping, I have no reason to add more culture than a temple to expand my borders and a few other buildings for their other purposes (library for science, etc). Now a civilization with strong ethnic traditions is a viable force on the planet. That is the real realism of culture in Civ3; Flipping as a detail is "unrealistic," but the power of culture and identity is important "just like in real life" now that culture flipping is incorporated.

I believe some simply can't see the forest because of the trees: Flipping as a feature makes no sense to them, but they do not step back to examine the new importance of culture in Civ3. Firaxis wanted to incorporate a culture model that would make culture important, and I'm glad they stepped up to the plate and made culture significant instead of adding some minor "realistic" features that wouldn't have made anyone think twice about culture. Do these immigration models proposed above have power behind them representing the force of culture throughout history? The question to be asked is not how we can make culture flipping more realistic, but how a "more appropriate" model of culture's effects can be added that makes realistic sense to those who disapprove of flipping, but still gives culture the power and significance it is due in the context that Civ3 tries to make an enjoyable game out of.