Okay some of you have seen other screenies by me, I think "WHAT THE HELL is he up to", right now I am modding the game extremely much to my own taste, when finished I may release it.

However here it goes. The city with the lion have extremely much culture, while the other one just east, is have low culture. You can see that the cultural stronger city, does not take land from the weaker... And far east is a test of units spreading culture. This is all just tests so far, but I think it looks promising.

Fascinating. I'm not sure what sort of scenario culture-spreading units would be ideal for, but it would definately change the way the game is played!
Keeping borders defined would be good for historical earth scenarios. You could have the countries exactly outlined and have the entire country flip to you if you capture its capital!

I really, really want to see this when you release it.

A little teaser picture... What you see is two normal cities... BUT you can also see a "town improvemnt" on a tile with borders! What is this??? It is a colony.... Still just testing around, but this can end up very nice, and I am doing a lot of progress...

Sweet. This is a major breakthrough --- providing the AI is smart enough to use them.

Keep us updated!

Sweet. This is a major breakthrough --- providing the AI is smart enough to use them.

Keep us updated!

Well, right now, I use just settlers. An algorithm determines if the new founded city is a city or a colony. However I were think to add an additional found function or something, I dont have made any decisions on how the actual function will work in the end. Just testing around. However programming the AI to understand a new kind a "city type" is not so hard, as it may seem.

This is really interesting, I have been thinking for some time about creating a mod that introduces some new twists to cultural spread and I really like what you are trying to do here.

One of my ideas is a new ability for forts. Specifically I would like forts to inhibit the accumulation of foreign culture in the fort's square and those immediately surrounding it.
Along similar lines, it would seem to me to be sensible if the rate of spread of culture from neighbouring civilization was affected by whether you have open or closed borders.

Would anyone have any idea how difficult these might be to do?

(I am pretty proficient in C++ and have looked at and debugged through a lot of the SDK without finding any nasty surprises, I just haven't got around to looking into this yet)

The rationale behind culture suppression by forts.
The idea would be that forts could not expand your borders but they could hold off the encroachment of others.
The growth of culture is all very well but repression of cultural heretics is also a time honored tradition, in fact the suppression of foreign culture is just as important historically as the generation of culture of your own,

I have seen suggestions on here that forts should spread culture, but if one looks at remote forts/castles historically, they had two primary purposes defending the border/region and controlling the local population. Having a fort spread culture just doesn't seem to fit.

However I do think it would make perfect sense for a fort to inhibit slightly the spread of foreign culture. This would represent well their roll in subduing the peasants and reminding the locals of the power of the current leader. It would also add an interesting twist to gameplay and give a very solid reason to build forts along contested borders. The biggest problem would be getting the AI to use them effectively.

Perhaps by providing forts with this ability we could simulate (as Monty Python put it)..."the violence inherent in the system"
Peasant: Help I'm being repressed...
Arthur: Bloody peasant!

Another picture... Look closely at the mountains. The borders go around them. It is still just some random testing, but I want to include it for rivers etc. to make a more natural growth of the borders, so we in the end get more realistic borders.

I do like the idea of culture being blocked by terrain - it should not spread so easily through terrain with high movement costs (I assume this is how you are determining it?). Personally I think mountains should be able to gain culture eventually to prevent silly looking gaps in your empire... maybe when they are surrounded by your culture on three sides they should be able to gain their own culture?

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

I do like the idea of culture being blocked by terrain - it should not spread so easily through terrain with high movement costs (I assume this is how you are determining it?). Personally I think mountains should be able to gain culture eventually to prevent silly looking gaps in your empire... maybe when they are surrounded by your culture on three sides they should be able to gain their own culture?
I will find a nice way, so it will look good.

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

No, I think you misunderstood something here. The problem with the system now is you can lose precious resources because of a city expanding, without even starting a war, which is unrealistic, and it doesnt add anything to the gameplay and is certainly not fun either. So my idea were:

When founding a city, the city will get it initial 8 surrounding squars, unless some of them already are owned by others, if so, then to bad you wont get them. Cities still build up culture. When a city expands its borders, it will expand on unowned land (unclaim so to say), but it will not expand and take over owned land. So if you claim a plot of land, you will have it forever, unless the city were it belongs want to switch to another civilization and you grant it permission to do so OR you lose the city through war.

Aaah. That makes more sence, though I'm still not sure I like it.

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

I don't think this is the situation - in Civ 3 a newly built city gained culture around it regardless of an enemy territory, thus stealing it. From what I've seen on NikG's pictures, culture spreads only to unoccupied tiles.

I kind of like it as it makes it tougher for the human player to "steal" resources simply by adding a city near another civ's large cultural city. Maybe there could be a pop-up asking if you'd like to start a war to get the full 8 tiles? And if you're willing then the other side would get an option to start one to not allow you to get the 8 tiles?

Jouda-> you are absolutely right...
woodelf->that is an interesting idea. I will look in to it, wouldnt be to hard.

So if you claim a plot of land, you will have it forever, unless the city were it belongs want to switch to another civilization and you grant it permission to do so OR you lose the city through war..

Do you think you could make it so that a civ could claim even a single tile (without capturing the nearby city)? That would be even better! For example military units could have this ability. What do you think of this?

Jouda yes I could, and I have had the same thoughts... However I think it could ruin the game a bit, I am not sure. Because if so you could claim everything in a war, without attacking cities, and in the end take over the world in a rather "peaceful" manner. But I not really sure yet, if we could find a nice way to do it, I will certainly implement it.

So I suppose then that the "our close borders spark tensions" factor should be lessened since the real reason behind that is that the borders in the standard game are rather fluid. If they don't change, there's no reason for there to be so much hostility.

That said, I'd like it if one could lay claim to tracts of land and demand the AI cede those plots rather than surrendering only cities. So if the AI has some resource I want and they have a bunch of and its just one tile next to my border and I'm a lot bigger and meaner than they are I could just bully them into surrendering that tile :)

Also, what happens when you conquer cities during war? Do captured cities retain their original borders? Or do they drop to just 1 plot of culture and then are unable to expand at all so long as the enemy's borders are around it? Or do they get a standard 8 tiles right off the bat?

Hey Dom Pedro II,
The close border tension needs of course to be change along with this, however I intent to alter the whole memory thing too, to a more realistic approach, so a war 200 turns ago, dont effect the relations now.

The idea with claiming land and bullly the owner to cease them, would certainly be very cool, and I would like to try to implement this.

Regarind conquest of cities, the idea is that the borders are tied to the cities, so when you conquer a city the culture of that city would of course decrease to the level you have in that city, but the border will be retained.

So in the end: borders dont shift because of greater culture, the owner is who first claim it, and you can conquer land by conquering cities. Cities can still shift owner with their corresponding borders, becuase of greater culture. Look at my signature to get an idea of it, in the "more city options".

Hmmm, perhaps you could have a system whereby a unit or fort can 'Annex' territory IF said territory is either (a) unclaimed or (b) is claimed by a city with very weak culture. Annexed squares could then be traded like resources during negotiations.

Aussie_Lurker.

Hmmm, perhaps you could have a system whereby a unit or fort can 'Annex' territory IF said territory is either (a) unclaimed or (b) is claimed by a city with very weak culture. Annexed squares could then be traded like resources during negotiations.

Aussie_Lurker.

That is actually an intriguing idea, although the intricacies of getting the AI to correctly value squares during trading would be...well...intricate. I had an idea similar to this for units claiming territory during war as follows:

I'm not sure if in NikGs system culture continues to accumulate in squares outside your borders or not. If it does (as I would hope) then those squares effectively have two owners, a cultural owner and a physical owner. It would make sense that limited border wars/engagements could be fought over those dual ownership squares in order to bring the borders in line with the cultural spread. I suspect this would be much more in keeping with historical realities than the existing culture flipping of squares.
Under such a system the cultural owner of a square could claim that square by occupying it with a millitary unit at any time during a war. This would represent nicely the shifting of borders due to military action. More drastic shifting of borders (to take ownership of squares from their cultural owner) would still require the taking of cities.

Hey Dom Pedro II,
The close border tension needs of course to be change along with this, ...
I may be misunderstanding the way you have implemented the changes to cultural spread but I assume culture continues to spread beyond your borders it just no longer causes the border to move except in the case of unclaimed squares.
If my assumption is right then surely the existence of squares with two owners, one cultural and one physical would be the very thing that causes border tensions.

I may be misunderstanding the way you have implemented the changes to cultural spread but I assume culture continues to spread beyond your borders it just no longer causes the border to move except in the case of unclaimed squares.
If my assumption is right then surely the existence of squares with two owners, one cultural and one physical would be the very thing that causes border tensions.

Within the confines of the game, however, it would not really have an impact. As it stands, if I'm playing as Arabia and I'm next to France (why do the French always end up being in the example?) if France has 80% culture in a tile I control, I'm not going to control that tile for very long. So that's bad for me. I'm losing out. However, if ONLY the means by which plots exchange ownership is changed, then France can have 100% culture on that same tile I own and it won't have any effect for me. Only when the discrepency becomes so great that it might cause my city to rebel will it be an issue for me.

Of course, I personally would like this system to be changed as well. I would like a "rural population" on each tile that would grow and expand and largely take the issue of growth out of the hands of the leaders. I was arguing for it publicly when we were waiting for Civ3, and I think I finally may have a chance to get it. In that case, it might make a great deal of difference if one's culture becomes dominant over another.

Another key aspect however that must change is that a civilization should somehow feel entitled to that land where its people are in the majority. It has been one of the most influential and unfortunately destructive trends of the 20th century, the issue of nationalism. As it stands, however, this rather 1-dimensional value based on borders really only has to do with the shifting that comes from cultural growth or domination.

Within the confines of the game, however, it would not really have an impact. As it stands, if I'm playing as Arabia and I'm next to France (why do the French always end up being in the example?) if France has 80% culture in a tile I control, I'm not going to control that tile for very long. So that's bad for me. I'm losing out. However, if ONLY the means by which plots exchange ownership is changed, then France can have 100% culture on that same tile I own and it won't have any effect for me. Only when the discrepency becomes so great that it might cause my city to rebel will it be an issue for me.
Which is actually the point. If there is no longer a game mechanic that automagically flips that plot to the French then it is the very existence of plots like this which are French in culture but are under the ownership of Arabia that should cause severe border tensions and result in the negative attitude adjustment for an AI.

Of course, I personally would like this system to be changed as well. I would like a "rural population" on each tile that would grow and expand and largely take the issue of growth out of the hands of the leaders. I was arguing for it publicly when we were waiting for Civ3, and I think I finally may have a chance to get it. In that case, it might make a great deal of difference if one's culture becomes dominant over another.

Another key aspect however that must change is that a civilization should somehow feel entitled to that land where its people are in the majority. It has been one of the most influential and unfortunately destructive trends of the 20th century, the issue of nationalism. As it stands, however, this rather 1-dimensional value based on borders really only has to do with the shifting that comes from cultural growth or domination.
Precisely the point I was trying to make only not quite so eloquently. This is why fixed borders are important to correctly model the modern age and the tensions that can arise when borders and nationalism are out of sync.

Just so you guys know, the main purpose of this change was for it to be used by modders to implement into their mods only if their mod has more than 5 culture levels.

Such a change to the original game without more culture levels would cause a major problem I think.

Just so you guys know, the main purpose of this change was for it to be used by modders to implement into their mods only if their mod has more than 5 culture levels.

Such a change to the original game without more culture levels would cause a major problem I think.

What kind of problems do you mean? I must say I love this mod the way it is and hope NikG will finish it. It's definitely what I wanted to do myself but had neither time nor skills :)

What kind of problems do you mean? I must say I love this mod the way it is and hope NikG will finish it. It's definitely what I wanted to do myself but had neither time nor skills :)


WHOOPS! Nevermind... I thought this was another topic. :p

Ok maybe I'm missing something here, but if you can't use cities to push against other borders (which is how I understand the way this mod work) then you eliminate cultural conquest of cities, which is a big part of the game IMO.

However, unit spreading culture, that's something that I wanted to do, and now that you already did there's no reason for me to worry about it. :) The reason I wanted to implement this feature is because I want to give explorer a new ability. I'm gonna go a bit off topic here so read at your own risk...

I'd like the explorer to have the ability to plant a 1% culture on a resource tile outside your borders so that you could build an improvement there. This is so that there'd be no need to build cities in middle of tundra just because there's iron resource there or something. This is the gist of it but I do have a more detailed implementation in mind so if you, NikG, want to perhaps look into implementing something like that, or anyone just wants to know more let me know and I'll post or send PM or whatever, I just don't want to hijack this thread any further.

Hey Rabbit, White.

Cultural conquest of cities do still exists. Culture is accumulated just like before, the only difference is that the tiles/plots dont change owner, unless the city does. This changes nothing about cultural flipping, cultural victory etc. It will be excatly like it is in vanilla civ. My main problem were that it seem rather unrealistic that borders did push one way or another without real diplomatic effect.

An example:
I once had a game were my borders with the indians change every 5 turn, either their way or mine. So my city did have rice, then it didnt. Then it had... and so on! It were driving me nuts. And imagine that this resource were oil, and you didnt have anyother! The it would for sure get irritating!!!

Well, back again. I would like to more about your explorer idea, just PM me. However there exists no such thing as 1% culture really. It is just a convention when we look at the game. I mean 5425235 out of 436346436 culture doesnt not say much... Anyway just babbling here, Rabbit just PM me!

Verify interesting idea's Nik. I would love to work with you on this project.

AnY updates on this project ?