I was playing a singleplayer match with the AI, and I noticed with one civ, I was taking their land little by little (over the course of 100's-1000's of years), but another civ was taking MY land. And I noticed nearby, it would say "57% Persian" for example. So what causes this? I figured my culture was very high, but perhaps they were better propagating culture. Or are there other attributes at work? Please explain this concept to this poor Civilization newbie :)

Do you have same religon as they do? And who has the holy city?

I think the civ in question that stole my tiles were Buddhists, and made their holy city. Does that causes tiles to get absorbed? Any countermeasures against this? Fortify nearby city with my own religions and religious landmarks help at all?

If you have the same state religion as they do and they have the holy city then you are gonna get lots infulence from them. Best counter-measure is to found or switch to another religion, but then they'll hate you for having different religion blah blah blah. :mischief:

Thanks ... race to convert people :P

actually ... the only thing affecting your borders is culture, just make sure it is high and you're getting a lot of it per turn on your border cities. This can relate to religion a little though, as holy cities get a lot of culture per turn.

Not just holy cities, but don't temples and monasteries spread culture? If you build a Taoist monastery in a city next to an opponent's city which has Taoism as their state religion, does this give that and other Taoist buildings cultural bonuses? If you're a Buddhist, you may not be so impressed by the cultural signifigance of a Christian temple.

i still dont get this culture thing in civ4 - it was easy in civ3, but no idea how it works nowadays..

i mean, i can have a newly-captured city that is situated right at the border of my empire due to highly-developed enemy cities being nearby, allright. since i am a very cultural empire (civics etc.), i station a huge garrison in the city to prevent riots and start hurrying culturul building.. city's making 50 culture per turn rather soon - i can even add a culture bomb.. however, the damn border won't move a single tile away from my city, even though the next enemy city is 4 tiles away.
in the end, i am one level under legendary ("xxx of 75000 culture" on epic!), but the city's still surrounded by borders on 3 sides, rioting around like mad.
how does all this work?

Holy cities and religions have nothing to do with this case. The only thing that matters is CULTURE produced by the cities in question. For every turn each city "puts" on each tile an amount of culture. As long as your "total amount" is bigger than the "enemy total amount" the tile is yours. But if your opponent is continuously putting a bigger amount of culture than you, then eventually he will probably surpass you in total number and the tile will flip.

Countermeasures are: buildings that produce culture (like temples, libraries, etc, and especially cathedrals), Free Speech (doubles the culture in all cities), Hermitage (doubles culture in the specific city), or the use of a Great Artist either for a "culture bomb" or for putting him into the "city in danger".

If things become dangerous and they eventually "eat up" all tiles until the central city tile, then your city will probably revolt and after the 2nd revolt will flip side. This can be somehow countered by stationing many units into the city.

If you have the same state religion as they do and they have the holy city then you are gonna get lots infulence from them. Best counter-measure is to found or switch to another religion, but then they'll hate you for having different religion blah blah blah. :mischief:
What makes you say any of this?

I was playing a singleplayer match with the AI, and I noticed with one civ, I was taking their land little by little (over the course of 100's-1000's of years), but another civ was taking MY land. And I noticed nearby, it would say "57% Persian" for example. So what causes this? I figured my culture was very high, but perhaps they were better propagating culture. Or are there other attributes at work? Please explain this concept to this poor Civilization newbie :)

The Persians are Creative so they get 2 culture points right off. They also seem to really like developing their culture. So you'll have to work harder to out-culture them.

In a nutshell, a tile between your city and a rival city will slowly convert to the culture of the city whose rate of change of culture is higher.

Countermeasures are: buildings that produce culture (like temples, libraries, etc, and especially cathedrals), Free Speech (doubles the culture in all cities), Hermitage (doubles culture in the specific city), or the use of a Great Artist either for a "culture bomb" or for putting him into the "city in danger".

that doesnt quite answer my own questions, sadly. :)
as i said, once some borders are set, i see no way of moving them, regardless of my own culture. so even if i am one level short of legendary, the borders will be next to my city, making it revolt every other day (with the enemy city being 4 tiles or so away).

hmm i should probably open up a new thread on this one..

Countermeasures are: buildings that produce culture (like temples, libraries, etc, and especially cathedrals), Free Speech (doubles the culture in all cities), Hermitage (doubles culture in the specific city), or the use of a Great Artist either for a "culture bomb" or for putting him into the "city in danger".


so it's not about total culture, but about culture per turn? if so, what is it with culture bombs?!

that doesnt quite answer my own questions, sadly. :)
as i said, once some borders are set, i see no way of moving them, regardless of my own culture. so even if i am one level short of legendary, the borders will be next to my city, making it revolt every other day (with the enemy city being 4 tiles or so away).

hmm i should probably open up a new thread on this one..

It sounds like the nearby enemy cities are also very cultured. The "level" of culture (legendary, influential, etc.) doesn't specifically matter. The total culture matters. If the neighbors' cities have more culture than you (no matter what your "level") they will have more of the land between cities. If they found earlier, have a cultural civ, have cultural civics enabled, or build more culture improvements it may well be impossible to win the tug of war (short of multiple culture bombs).

The bottomline is, if your RATE is higher (you are increasing faster than them) even if you are lower in total, you will gradually see the "in between" spaces go from 60% them/40% you to 50/50, to 49/51 and so on, once the square is "more yours than theirs", it will be under your borders. It is very hard to affect cultural borders when you capture a medium to small city, mid- to lategame, that happens to be near a huge, old, cultured enemy city. After all, you have to start from scratch, and build a lot of buildings before yours will even start producing significant culture. This whole time, the other big enemy city is churning out serious culture every turn. (i.e. you fall more behind)

In short, note the "percentage" yours vs. "percentage" theirs on any square. After several turns check back, you will be able to see who is winning the tug of war, and this can help you decide whether you need to boost the city's culture or not.

If the AI culture is really THAT strong, then rather try to win the possibly hopeless culture fight, build an army and sack their city. That removes that city's culture and gets your city some breathing room.

It's funny how despite all this talk about different victory conditions, most things still boil down to war.

Spies work wonders for turning a decent-city on it's back. Atleast that's the way it seems for me. I managed to reduce Alexander's influence massively just by repeatedly bombing his theatres.

Of course you need to be at war for this to really work to your advantage. Seeing as how they're putting the pressure on you anyways, it might not hurt to get a force mobilized and do some damage.

so it's not about total culture, but about culture per turn? if so, what is it with culture bombs?!

They're very useful for claiming land in unsettled or newly-settled areas. If you're in a land grab situation, they kick arse.

that doesnt quite answer my own questions, sadly. :)
as i said, once some borders are set, i see no way of moving them, regardless of my own culture. so even if i am one level short of legendary, the borders will be next to my city, making it revolt every other day (with the enemy city being 4 tiles or so away).

hmm i should probably open up a new thread on this one..
First of all, you don't need to open a new thread - there was one thread exactly on this subject, but sadly I couldn't find it (it was about a month ago).

Now, you are misinterpreting two different things: TOTAL CULTURE on a distant tile and TOTAL CULTURE on the central city tile are two different things. The story goes (as I have understood from the article and noticed in my games) the following way:

in each turn your city produces culture, and thus you are "putting" some culture points on each tile that your city can access (whether this tile is yours or not). The exact amount is determined by a) the distance from the city center (there was in fact a debate about the influence of this parameter) and b) the cultural output of the city. The same is done by all other civs. The civ that has put the most "total culture" on the tile AND has access to the tile through one of his cities occupies the tile. (Proof of that: when you conquer a city and the opponent civ has not another close city, some city tiles will not be 100% yours, even though they are in your occupation). That is repeated for each round.

When you use the "culture bomb" you are putting a huge amount of culture on the tiles, again according to distance from city center (that means, if your Artist gives 6000 "points" in the center, it doesn't also give 6000 points to each of the more distant tiles). That's why your city center may be almost legendary but the other tiles to be "outgunned". Also remember that the fact that you did once put an amount of culture doesn't guarantee that in the next turns you will continue to put culture (because of course the total culture depends on the culture you put per turn), so the tiles will tend to flip again.

i see.. it's really complicated nowadays, yet still much better than in civ3.
i see that they tweaked any border-related problems i saw back then (like, having damn AI civs found a ciy just next to your border, which would then result in the border moving a tile in his favor and, soon, a second tile until his city radius was complete.. you couldnt do much against this except for razing the city).

actually, civ4 tweaked so many problems ive often been thinking about, just as if the devs were looking into my mind. and they even fixed problems i never consciously perceived, but now realize to have been a constant annoyance (no idea if that was proper english..)
hmm such a brilliant job from those guys. :)

and thanks for the replies.

First of all, you don't need to open a new thread - there was one thread exactly on this subject, but sadly I couldn't find it (it was about a month ago).

I think that might have been mine. I was trying to make sense of the culture system, but didn't quite do it. I guess I may just have to take a bunch of data and attempt to analyze the trends.

I tested the theory of "Culture gets added to all tiles equally once they are accessable" but found it didn't quite hold. Unfortunately, it only failed as badly as my "total culture*distance modifier" theory. Perhaps it could be a mixture?

But basicly it's what Atreas said: Cultural Control of a tile is based on the total culture level in the city, and whoever has more culture wins the control. The farther away a tile is from a city, the less influence the city has over it.

10 culture at radius-2 has about the same influence as 100 culture at radius-3. Influence does not however follow a simple 1/10 evey radius level though, what it is I have not yet figured out.

When a city is captured, all of its cultural influence remains, but cannot act to claim territory unless it is within a cultural-radius of that civ. It may degrade with time though.

After reading thro' all the posts I still think no one really can understand culture,
For me collesium & theatres do help culture rating.
But Ultimately, I find war is the easiest though I DO try my best not to start one. It take the funs out of cities management.
For me, Civ4 is a very complicated game so much to learn But that the fun of it

Speculation only:

If you take a city from a civ that stil exists, there is a 99% "other civ' in the nationality bar. This makes me suspect that the culture built up from the city before you took it is still in effect. As you build culture, you are not only contending with the culture from the neighboring city, but also the culture the conquered civ previously produced in the city.

Your influence may actually be only the percentage of your culture produced that is yours compared to the total enemy culture that was generated from that city. The most of the enemy culture is centered in your city because that's where it was generated, so it doesn't see the four tile distance modifier, but rather the inner ring bonus from when it was owned previously. And if the neighboring city four tiles away is the same civ you took it from, you have all the culture that was generated from the captured city before you took it to overcome, in addition to the culture from the neighboring city. All that culture will add to the equation. That's also why, if you have two or more cities throwing culture at a nearby enemy city, you will flip it much faster than having only one city working to flip it.

That is probably why, even at almost legendary status, you can't move the borders. Add a couple close cities on your side to the culture war and watch the borders move back faster.

How long the city has existed may or may not have an effect as well.

edit - I guess tiles on one of the inner rings of the city border sees a multiplier effect (apparently a +20 bonus per layer per turn as you move toward the center) on the culture value of the individual tile, but not one time culture bombs, so a city that contributes culture over time has the advantage over the one-time artists, and the city that started earlier generally wins, per the following posts. - endedit

After reading thro' all the posts I still think no one really can understand culture,
For me collesium & theatres do help culture rating.
But Ultimately, I find war is the easiest though I DO try my best not to start one. It take the funs out of cities management.
For me, Civ4 is a very complicated game so much to learn But that the fun of it


Colosseums do NOT help Culture in any way, they help Happiness.


Also the 87% enemy 13% yours is the Culture of the City Tile, the culture that you produce is 100% yours

To Hans, supposedly if you put in cheat code=chipotle you can tell what the Actual culture is on a tile (not just %)

I tested the theory of "Culture gets added to all tiles equally once they are accessable" but found it didn't quite hold. Unfortunately, it only failed as badly as my "total culture*distance modifier" theory. Perhaps it could be a mixture?

I did some tests a while back and came to some conclusions (very heavily flavored by that article of yours a while back). Culture does get added to tiles every turn. At the farthest distance you can currently influence, you apply your full culture value. (ie. a city with 20 culture and 2 CPT will add 2 culture to every tile 2 tiles away.) For tiles closer than the farthest distance away, you apply a bonus to your culture and add that instead. I stopped short of figuring out what that bonus was. But, if I remember correctly, a level 2 city (10-99 total culture) that was only getting 1 CPT was still applying somewhere around 20 CPT to the immediate ring of tiles. A level 3 city, again with just 1 CPT was applying something close to 50 CPT to that same ring.

What I found was that the effects of the world editor are not the same as what goes on in the game. If, in the world editor, you assign a city a certain cultural value, it will add that value (less the previous value) to every tile in the city's new radius (with no proximity bonuses). In my experience, Great Artists have the same effect, the culture is applied without most of the bonuses applied. That is why a city with 5000 culture mostly from a Great Artist can be losing the land battle to another city that spent the time growing its culture.

In my testing, I mostly stuck to low CPT cities with fairly low total culture values. I'm not sure if the proximity bonuses are strictly additive or if they're multiplicative. At the time, I was fairly certain they were additive. The effect of the additive bonus is somewhat diminished in high CPT cities, but it does allow low CPT cities to have a fighting chance of keeping their nearby tiles when faced with distant high CPT cities.

Also, keep in mind that a single tile can be influenced by multiple cities of the same civ. So, if your high-culture border city is having trouble holding its own, it could be that there are two opponent cities competing with it. That's a tough fight to win, as the additive proximity bonuses will be applied to both opposing cities' CPT.

even if i am one level short of legendary, the borders will be next to my city

It's very simple. The city influences its surrounding tiles through its culture every turn. The highest culture wins. What you don't seem to get is that if a city began influencing a tile earlier, then it will have more culture "built up" on that tile. Thus, the city which took over a tile sooner always has an advantage.

You seem to think just because your city has a high culture it should automatically get the surrounding tiles. How do you know the other city doesn't have a higher culture? I'm willing to bet that that city was founded before yours, meaning that even if the culture was the same for both, the first city would have an advantage.

If your city comes later, you have a culture "deficit" to make up. It's not easy to do, especially if your neighbor is also big on culture. If there's a World Wonder or two in that city, you are going to have a hard time gaining influence.

Well I poked aroind the SDK a bit and I think I found the formula
The culture a tile in range gets each turn is

City Culture per turn +20 for every level the city is beyond it(Bonus Culture)

City Level:Distance: Bonus Tile Culture per turn (Distance here is measured in tems of Level..rings of culture ie if you could get it at level 1, it is Distance 1)

1:1:0

2:1:20
2:2:0

3:1:40
3:2:20
3:3:0

4:1:60
4:2:40
4:3:20
4:4:0

5:1:80
5:2:60
5:3:40
5:4:20
5:5:0

Lengendary City
6:1:100
6:2:80
6:3:60
6:4:40
6:5:20
6:6:0



So unless you have very High Culture per turn, the Bonus Culture matters more. So basically whoever had it longest is likely to keep it.

Yeah when invading the enemies motherland, it's better to nuke the place from high orbit. Bring along extra troops or settlers to hold the ground you've taken and move to the next city. Settlers are important as the other civs will move in since you've done the heavy lifting. Attacking the high population cities should be a number one priority.

Well I poked aroind the SDK a bit and I think I found the formula
The culture a tile in range gets each turn is

City Culture per turn +20 for every level the city is beyond it(Bonus Culture)


Good work! Thanks for finding that. I have to say, I'm not too enamored of that formula - it should be possible to move borders, even later in the game.

Well Later in the game the best way to move borders is to take cities... even if they have the most culture on a tile, if it isn't within reach of any of their cities, they can't claim it.

Krikkitone, excellent work :)

So if your cities are in a culture border battle it seems that it is very important to expand your borders to obtain the higher bonus for the next level even if you have a low basic cpt. To do this you could either move the cultural slider (although that might waste commerce in other cities) or add a few artists to accelerate the expansion and then after the border moves reverse the change to allow the cpt and the now higher bonus to work on the squares. This will modify my tactics :king:

Would two cities of the same civ add their culture to each others tiles? Hence the "tag team effect" of two lesser cultured cities out doing one higher cultured city of the rival civ? I have my suspicions that yes, this is the case, but would love an experts view.

Petrucci, yes that is the case.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how Great Artist culture bombs figure in. It expands the city instantly to level 4 or 5, so all future culture applied to the city's surrounding tiles will accumulate with those increased bonus values. But does the culture bomb itself add any influence to either the "before" or "after" set of tiles?