Okay, this morning I am revving up to revamp my Game Speed MOD...and I have noticed something that I think explains a "problem" with BTS...

First the "problem": Regardless of the level I play at, more than 75% of my games have ended with a Cultural Victory achieved by the AI with more than 50 turns left in the game...Whereas in Vanilla and Warlords, a Cultural victory was somewhat rare to see from the AI...

Well I think I found the reason. By now we all recognize that BTS has provided us with a good number of new Wonders, Buildings, and events which can provide a significant boost to the cultural growth of our cities...however, in beginning work on my MOD, I have stumbled over the fact that in the Assets\GameInfo folders for both Warlords and BTS there is no file named "CIV4CultureLevelInfo.xml"!!

This indicates a couple of things:

First, in spite of adding new culture producing Wonders, Buildings, and events to BTS, Firaxis did NOT change the Culture goals AT ALL making Cultural victory significantly easier to achieve! They did not alter the Culture goals for Warlords either, but it wasn't noticable there as there was almost no impact to culture in that Expansion.

Second, unless I am crazy, this indicates to me that both Warlords and BTS are essentially written as MODs to Vanilla, using most of it's assets and only replacing some with versions of its own.


The conclusion I draw from this is that I can simply add "CIV4CultureLevelInfo.xml" back into the Assets\GameInfo folder of my MOD and not only adjust the goals to fit my longer game, but also adjust the Culture rates for BTS and "fix" this "problem". I am 99% certain that I am correct in this logic, and that I can just add that file into my mod and have it work like that...

Can someone verify this for me (I am not in a place I can test this out right now) and give me that 1% I am lacking? Can you modify the files that exist in Vanilla but not BTS and have them affect BTS properly?

<Rant>
Digging into the XML files and my old mod and comparing...I am shocked to learn that Firaxis STILL does not know math!

1200/460 does NOT = 3...so why did they just take all of their numbers and multiply by 3 for Marathon?!?

Granted I am fine with them keeping to a solid formula and using the SAME numbers for almost all variables starting at 100 for normal...but when they just bump it from 100 to 300 from Normal to Marathon...that doesn't track!

You only get 2.6 times the number of turns to accrue 3 times the ammount of culture?!?

Makes me wonder if cultural victory in Vanilla is even POSSIBLE for the AI in Vanilla or Marathon speeds...
</Rant>

Cultural victory does seem somewhat easier now... in my last game I achieved it accidentally without even trying before I noticed my culture lead sometime in the 1800s. Not having to wage wars with the new passive AI helps too...

Thank goodness someone else noticed!
Can anyone answer my original question definitively?

The answer to your question is yes. You are correct that Warlords and BTS act as mods for Vanilla.

Great! Then not only can I proceed as normal with my Speed Mod, but I can ALSO "fix" this problem that firaxis seems to have failed to notice!

Just to clear one thing up, the main reason you're seeing more cultural victories by the AI is that Blake's better AI included with BtS actually understands and will pursue cultural victories.

What I've found, however, is that if I notice an AI pursuing a CV, they've pretty much neglected their military (I'm look at you, Dutch guy!) and are an easy target.

Actually I have just finished the math and the math speaks for itself.
Based on probabilities and averages for high cultured cities, and the aditional buildings and wonders available, the Cultural target for a city to reach "Legendary Status" should have been adjusted as follows:

-For Warlords, a small adjustment should have been made to Legendary Status should that would have increased the Level of Legendary at Normal speed to 51200. An Admitedly small increase of 2.3% overall.

-For Beyond the Sword, a Much Larger adjustment is pretty much necessary to Legendary Status which would increase the Level of Legendary at Normal speed to 54675. An much heftier increase of 8.5%.

This means that a cultural victory can be one on average 8.5% faster and easier than in Vanilla Civ for BTS, and this problem carries out across all of the gamespeeds with only Marathon faring better than the others because Firaxis fudged the numbers so badly on Marathon and just decided to throw a 300% increase on everything but turns when a 260% increase was all that should have been done based on the increase to 1200 turns. Of course this does spoil Cultural victory in the other direction, giving you 180 less turns than you should have to win with given a 300% increase in everything but number of turns...

Also keep in mind that these are estimated minimum changes which should have been made to Cultural victory numbers given the new possible sources of Culture....also I have done some fairly arbitrary and liberal estimates on the number of turns one would be likely to gain these benefits. It can be reasonably stated that one could rationally round these numbers out either way to err on the side of caution.

Personally I intend to use 51200 and 54500 as my new bases for Legendary city status.