It may just be my play style, but there are several traits that just don't seem to offer that much.

In particular, culture traits as well as spiritual/spirituality seem weak.

Traits that seem quite powerful are:


expansive
financial
productive
Milataristic
Power
Charismatic
Liberty



Traits I am still tryign to find value in:

Oraganized
Agricultural


Situational

Philosophical
Seafarer


I would like to get the input of others to help me "see the light". How would you all rank the value of the traits?

TIA,
ET

Culture allows you to make big borders, and "never" have problems that enemy culture will take over your title. As Germany on random map i had a problem like that. Had one source of uranium and was close to build ICBM and an AI city culture was higher than my city and took that single uranium mine title... I lost all progress on that ICBMs...


Spiritual. I value it high. Can change civics with no anarchy, very good if you are "raider". I use it fotern to have philosophy, caste, heridary/represendation at peace. In war time i change to Feudalism, Teology and make units to defend afainst invadeor, after war i switch to serfdom to quickly rebuild lost improvements, and than to Beurocracy, Theology to quickly rebild army in capitol, when rest of cities work on economy/science. And than back to peace time civics.

Organized.
You like pandemies or not ?

Agricultural.
You must be an agricultural civ to use this. It will not work well for Japan on World Map lets say...

Philosophical
Its usefullness depend on what GPs you go for and how you use them. Now its been weakened to only +50% not 100%

Seaferer
You need to have navy to use this.

I agree with the OP that the civics and national values that add culture are rather weak.

In vanilla civ4 and warlords, there is a civic (free speech) that adds + 100% culture (and +2 commerce from towns) and there is a civic that adds + 10% science (free religion). I admit that they aren't in the same category and thus you can pick both. But still it tells you something about how Firaxis and the beta testers viewed the balance between culture bonusses and science bonusses.

Were they horribly wrong? That could of course be true.

However, the problem with a +x% bonus on culture is that it doesn't lead to a +x% increase in borders or a + x% increase in border tiles. The effect of the cultural bonus is hard to see and it is hard to guess how many extra tiles it might offer you during a game.

First of all, I have to remove a myth that many many civilization gamers think is true. The amount of cultural influence on a tile is NOT equal to the amount of culture produced in the city during the time the tile was controlled by the city.
The amount of cultural influence points produced on a tile during one turn (when the city culture radius is n) is equal to
-The amount of culture produced in the city
plus
-0 for the tiles at distance n from the city, 20 for the tiles at distance n-1 from the city, 40 for the tiles at distance n-2 from the city, 60 for the tiles at distance n-3 from the city, 80 for ...

You can see that the amount of cultural influence points produced in a tile can be a lot higher than the amount of culture produced in the city. This is usally true during a large part of the game. Only in the late game when cities start to produce 30, 50 or 80 culture per turn, will the culture produced by the city itself be more important than the bonus cultural points from border expansion.
For instance: A city is producing 2 culture per turn. After 10 turns it expands its borders and gets a cultural radius of 2. The tiles at distance 2 now get 2 cultural influence points per turn. The tiles at distance 1 now get 22 cultural influence points per turn.

To actually culturally overwhelm tiles from another city, you typically need to get one extra border expansion compared to the competing city because then you will get the same cultural bonus points at radius 3 that the other city will get at radius 2 (or the same cultural bonus points at radius 4 that the other city will get at radius 3). Each border expansion costs about 10 times as much as the previous one, so you have to seriously outproduce (or should I say outculture ;) ) the other city.

Because of the exponential increase in cost to expand the borders and the importance of border expansion for the control of tiles, the effect of a percentage bonus on culture is rather limited.
If you place two cities with 4 open tiles inbetween them and let one of them produce 20 culture per turn and the other 22 culture per turn, then the border will be perfectly in the middle between these cities. Even with 20 culture per turn and 25 culture per turn, the border will be perfectly in the middle between those cities (for the tiles directly inbetween the cities). It probably takes something like 30 -35 culture per turn for the stronger city to win the culture battle and push the weaker city one tile back along the border.

The 10% culture bonus from spiritual can help you to win a culture battle, but it will seldom do so. You already need a significant advantage in culture production to actually let the 10% bonus be enough to make a difference.

By the way. With the amount of semi-critical posts that I'm making, I feel the need to say again that this is a great mod. Great job from the Total Realism team. :goodjob:

That's very interesting what you're saying (especially about the culture from distance stuff), this makes me want to improve Creative and NV: Tradition. Which values would you suggest to make them on par with other traits and national values (which have to be less powerful than traits)?

That's very interesting what you're saying (especially about the culture from distance stuff), this makes me want to improve Creative and NV: Tradition. Which values would you suggest to make them on par with other traits and national values (which have to be less powerful than traits)?

Heh, it's a lot easier to critisize than to make up some values of your own. ;)
Still, thank you for asking.

When I first read about the cultural bonus points from border expansion, I was surprised too. It does explain why a culture bomb of 6000 culture doesn't change the borders between cities with several border expansions. The culture bomb however does give the culture bombing nation a larger production of cultural influence points thanks to the border expansion and it could lead to shifting borders after some time.

Without further testing scenarios in the worldbuilder, I would go for

Creative: +1 culture, +40% culture,
+50% production of theatre, collosseum and library (you do have to be creative to write books).

or

+50% culture,
+50% production of theatre, collosseum and library.

I would like to give the trait a bonus that you'll notice directly because most other traits have a bonus that you'll notice quickly. That's why I suggested the first version. But you removed the +2 culture, so I guess that you didn't like it.

Spiritual: +25% culture.

If you have a creative neighbour of a Spiritual civilization, then you don't want to let them get ahead of you in culture production. You'll want to build that first culture producing building quickly.

Is there something in the AI-coding that makes creative leaders or leaders of spiritual civilizations more interested in building structures that increase culture? It would be nice if the AI tried to use their trait. At least the production bonusses on certain buildings will help.
I do know that the BetterAI mod improved the AI's capabilities in a culture war.

With Creative, it will be easier to win culture border ties. It won't do it on its own (except on tiles at equal distance from two competing cities). But if you get a lead on culture production, then you'll push the enemy borders back. Spiritual will be far less effective than Creative. It will help you in a culture border war, but will certainly not win the culture border war for you.

If you want to do some tests in the world builder, then I would suggest creating 2 cities at distance 5 from eachother (4 tiles inbetween the cities). Give one city a culture production of 10 and the other one a higher culture production. Try to find the value where the borders start to move in favour of the stronger culture. It's very interesting to see the effects of a cultural border expansion of the stronger civilization. You'll notice that they start to gain influence on the border tiles until the other civilization also gets their border expansion and things stabilize again. The effects of the cultural bonus points of border expansion are very noticeable if you know what to look for.

Leader AIs are individual, but it is safe to say that most creative leaders have a prolific accent put on culture-producing buildings. In TR, unlike vanilla, you'll even see some AIs going for the cultural victory.

Sorry for the lack of response on my part. Work has had me completely engaged lately.

I appreciate the insight on culture. I didn't realize it worked that way, but it is starting to make a lot of sense. I could adjust the rates in the XML and then try some games.

Just from a general perspective I know that when I face creative/tradition leaders I typically consider them to be "pushover" opponents. Perhaps with a little tweaking the traits could be respectable. Right now I feel like they are limited in respect to leaders with other more powerful traits.