How does this work ? That is, if it actually does . .
There was an AI city which had my culture on three sides. Their culture was falling by a steady 1% per turn, and was down to 32% when I launched my spaceship. They having nothing better to do, I sent my spies to spread my culture into the city, by a stated 5% a time and at trivial cost.The AI culture still fell by a steady 1% per turn (except for one turn when it didn't fall at all) despite 23 successful "spreads" during my ship's flight, so the spy activity had no effect whatsoever. During that time, the city's garrison remained at 2 longbowmen and it completed no buildings.

I believe it is 5% of Their Culture. (so 5% of 32% is about 1%)

1). In that case, it ought to be called "reduce their culture", not "spread" - by implication, spread yours.
2). Their culture fall rate was totally unaffected by my spy missions. It had been falling by 1% a turn before my spies started to move in, and remained at that rate, unchanged, after 23 "spreads".

if your launching your spaceship and the ais still using longbowmen you are either playing on a very low difficulty level, using the worldbuilder, or you are very good.

if your launching your spaceship and the ais still using longbowmen you are either playing on a very low difficulty level, using the worldbuilder, or you are very good.

Probably. But I once had a city in the middle of my empire that I never remembered to upgrade, and it still had spearmen in the modern era. :D

Actually I relooked at the code, what hapens is the "insert culture" changes the City Culture, not the Plot culture

Short culture lesson:
You city generates City Culture (for itself) and Plot culture (for all the plots in its radius)

The city culture is the amount you see, ie a Theater and nothing else means +3 City culture per turn

The plot culture depends on the plot... each turn a plot around the city with a Theater gets
+3 (the city Culture)
+20* (the City Culture level - distance from the city)
+1

Plot Culture determines who 'owns' a plot and it is what is reported in the city screen (the Plot culture of the plot the city is on)



So assume the AI had 200 culture in this city.... they would still have an ADDITIONAL 20-60 culture in the Plot for Every turn they had the city (which adds up to a lot)... as does the 'plot culture' from your cities.

What you added was 5% of 200 Culture to the city... so that if you Did take over the city it would start with 10 culture of your own (the next spy would add 5% of the total 210 culture to the city (200 culture of theirs and 10 of yours))

The amount of 'Plot Culture' you get for the 'spread Culture'
is
0
+20* (the level the city is of Your culture ie 10 would be first level -Distance)
+1

so you would get 21 culture (or 41 or 61 for some of your later spies) on the city plot. (not significant for an enemy that had had that city for a long time

The real use would be guaranteeing/speeding up the first border pop in a city you are about to take. (or looking at an early city)

if your launching your spaceship and the ais still using longbowmen you are either playing on a very low difficulty level, using the worldbuilder, or you are very good.May be (or may not be), but all that is really irrelevant to the purpose of thread. This unprovoked & irrelevant trend of "you're either playing at a wuss difficulty level or your cheating" posts lately is getting really really tiresome. Thanks to Krikkitone :goodjob: I learned something from this post, the OP did, and maybe you would too if you just focused on the point of the thread and stopped guessing critiquing irrelevant aspects of the OP's game. :confused:

... This unprovoked & irrelevant trend of "you're either playing at a wuss difficulty level or your cheating" posts lately is getting really really tiresome...

I completely agree. :goodjob:

Actually I relooked at the code, what hapens is the "insert culture" changes the City Culture, not the Plot culture

It calls CvCity::changeCulture() with the bPlots argument set to 'true'. That means it does plot culture as well. So each plot inside the virtual city radius gets the 5% culture figure, plus the 20*level bonus.

It works exactly as if you owned the city and that 5% figure were your culture/turn. So that spy mission can bring you closer to having a majority plot culture for flipping purposes, or increase your majority if you already have it (i.e. make it more likely that the city will flip).

Given the small amounts, however, I agree that it's more useful for preloading normal city culture, in preparation for conquest, so the borders pop immediately after resistance ends.

As matters of fact, this was at Emperor level in the late 1800s: the city owner, Ramesses, had robotics, but no units beyond infantry and SAMs(no oil - ha, ha, ha !): the city was a miserable pop. 2 and 1 hammer outpost in the desert, which he hadn't bothered to defend more strongly in the knowledge that I could, if I so wished, capture very easily.
But the city had accumulated 20% cultural defence, and goodness knows what that means in terms of "culture points" (if those exist). So from what Krikkitone has said, not only was the culture added by my spies an insignificant proportion, but the proportion actually decreased with time because the home culture points were rising faster than my efforts.

Regarding Krikkitone's final point about speeding up the first expansion of a captured city, I have found that setting such a city to build culture works very well, especially if you have the Eiffel Tower. The generated culture builds up while the city is still in resistance, and when resistance ceases out go the borders. The beauty of this is that bigger cities take longer to come out of resistance, so have accumulated more culture and expand farther.

Edit: just read Thanny's post. Alas, I didn't keep track of what was happening in my plots surrounding the city, and the game has now been deleted.. Good point to note for the future !

Regarding Krikkitone's final point about speeding up the first expansion of a captured city, I have found that setting such a city to build culture works very well, especially if you have the Eiffel Tower. The generated culture builds up while the city is still in resistance, and when resistance ceases out go the borders.

This isn't true. The city generates nothing whatsoever while in resistance.

Maybe you did some insert culture missions, which adds to a fixed value that the city receives as soon as it's out of resistance.

This isn't true. The city generates nothing whatsoever while in resistance.

Maybe you did some insert culture missions, which adds to a fixed value that the city receives as soon as it's out of resistance.

I think captured cities do generate ONE turn of culture before coming out of revolt. I have never used the Spread Culture mission, and whenever I manage to spread a culture-generating corporation to a recently captured city, it comes out of revolt with the equivalent of one turn worth of culture intact (usually starting with the BFC if I have a lot of seafood and Sid's Sushi). So either that's a bug, or some weird game mechanic, or bad memory on my part. Anyone care to diagnose? :)

I think captured cities do generate ONE turn of culture before coming out of revolt.
Before BtS they did. In fact, they got one turn of everything as they came out of revolt. Not so with BtS - your cities do nothing until the turn after coming out of revolt.

I don't know why they made that change.

Before BtS they did. In fact, they got one turn of everything as they came out of revolt. Not so with BtS - your cities do nothing until the turn after coming out of revolt.

I don't know why they made that change.

Ah, thanks for explaining. Was I really remembering from all the way back in the Warlords days? lol

As matters of fact, this was at Emperor level in the late 1800s: the city owner, Ramesses, had robotics, but no units beyond infantry and SAMs(no oil - ha, ha, ha !): the city was a miserable pop. 2 and 1 hammer outpost in the desert, which he hadn't bothered to defend more strongly in the knowledge that I could, if I so wished, capture very easily.
But the city had accumulated 20% cultural defence, and goodness knows what that means in terms of "culture points" (if those exist). !

Assuming normal speed

20% cultural defense means that the city has 10-100 culture (Egyptian culture) and if Ramses is the founder that is the only culture it had (until you spread culture)
that means that each time that you spread culture you would add 0.5 to 5 of your culture to the city.
And 21-41 of your culture to the city plot (essentially 1 turns worth)


It calls CvCity::changeCulture() with the bPlots argument set to 'true'. That means it does plot culture as well. So each plot inside the virtual city radius gets the 5% culture figure, plus the 20*level bonus.

It works exactly as if you owned the city and that 5% figure were your culture/turn. So that spy mission can bring you closer to having a majority plot culture for flipping purposes, or increase your majority if you already have it (i.e. make it more likely that the city will flip).!

You Don't get the extra... the City "Change Culture" function gives 0 culture to the plots

Your 'normal' culture production does
City Culture
and
Plot Culture

Seperately

the Spread Culture function works with Cities + Plots in the same way giving 0 extra culture to plots (only the free *20 +1 bonus)
[it goes through the functions: change culture(amt)->setculture(amt)->Plotculture(0)]

It works the same with Great Works (except they go through 20 cycles on Normal Speed so you get 20 turns worth of the 21/ 41/ 61/ or 81 Plot culture.. the 4000 culture you get only goes in the city)


What this mean is that if you want to make a city revolt from "Spread Culture" alone, you need to give it at Least as many "Spread Culture" events as it has had turns under the enemy. (and some more to account for all the Normal/non free culture that was deposited on the plot)

What this mean is that if you want to make a city revolt from "Spread Culture" alone, you need to give it at Least as many "Spread Culture" events as it has had turns under the enemy. (and some more to account for all the Normal/non free culture that was deposited on the plot)So ... does the conclusion from this that the most useful aspect of spread culture (other than to expand in advance the fat cross of captured cities as soon as they come out of revolt) is to try to use it against a city that a second AI is about to capture from another AI ??? so you can try to get it to flip to you after it comes out of capture revolt?

Just trying to figure out the strategic usefulness of this. That's a pretty obscure usage, but it's the best I could come up with.

I completely agree. :goodjob:


i dont

i find that reading from people (noobs) playing on low level talking about their games and strategies a waste of time.

Please try to contribute to threads in a constructive manner. This is not constructive.

Seems like that even in the best of circumstances, its just not worth the possible loss of spies and espionage points to do the spread culture mission.

So ... does the conclusion from this that the most useful aspect of spread culture (other than to expand in advance the fat cross of captured cities as soon as they come out of revolt) is to try to use it against a city that a second AI is about to capture from another AI ??? so you can try to get it to flip to you after it comes out of capture revolt?

Just trying to figure out the strategic usefulness of this. That's a pretty obscure usage, but it's the best I could come up with.

Well the other major use is the Espionage Cost Modifier.. the Cost of performing an Espionage mission depends on the City culture (not the Plot culture)

You Don't get the extra... the City "Change Culture" function gives 0 culture to the plots

This is wrong. The CvCity::changeCulture() function takes two boolean arguments indicating whether or not plot culture is updated. The spy mission sets both to true.

I confirmed in a WB test that the mission adds plot culture to the city tile and surrounding tiles.

So can "Spread Culture" work against a recently captured friendly city to reduce the "We yearn for our Motherland" penalty?

i dont

i find that reading from people (noobs) playing on low level talking about their games and strategies a waste of time.

Please try to contribute to threads in a constructive manner. This is not constructive.

Mabye if this was a strategy thread, but it's not. It's a question about the mechanics of the game. If this was on Deity, always war, raging barbarians, and he gave the AIs a 20 turn head start, it makes no difference to what he is asking.

So can "Spread Culture" work against a recently captured friendly city to reduce the "We yearn for our Motherland" penalty?
You can't perform espionage missions on your own city.

This is wrong. The CvCity::changeCulture() function takes two boolean arguments indicating whether or not plot culture is updated. The spy mission sets both to true.

I confirmed in a WB test that the mission adds plot culture to the city tile and surrounding tiles.


You didn't look at my whole quote (or the whole function).. assume a spy is going to a city with 100 of My culture and 100 Enemy culture (city)... so the spy will add 10 to my culture
so the function will go

CvCity::changeCulture()
[add 10 to my culture of 100]
plot culture set to true

goes to

CvCity::setCulture()
[set my culture in this city to 110]
AND
add zero (thats right 0) Plot culture (because plot culture was set to true)

Now why would I add zero (0) plot culture.. are the Firaxis programmers that bored.

NO, whenever you add plot culture, even 0 plot culture, you get some Free Plot culture long with it... the 1+20*Level
[so using my example, because I am at the third Cultural Level, 100+, I would get 41 extra PLOT culture in the city plot]


The fact is that 41 additional Free Plot Culture has no relation to the 10 city culture I got
If My Culture in the city was 100, and the enemy culture was 1900, i would get 100 City culture (5% of 2000) and 41 Plot culture.

I have realised two things about this mission.
#1. You can't spread your culture if it's not already present in the enemy city.
#2. Even if you can spread it, it's very unlikely to be more than a drop in the ocean of enemy culture, unless their city is very new and/or already teetering on the brink of flipping.

Also, I misled myself earlier (see Thanny's post #11 in this thread). What happens is that there's a surge of culture as the city ceases resistance; production of culture then stops and you are asked what to build next.

So ... I'm still of the opinion that this mission has extremely limited application, am i missing anything? the only thing I can think of is 1) if I'm planning to capture the city & would like it to come out of revolt after I do with a full set of tiles to work right away, to avoid starvation. That's all I got for a real-world, everyday usage ...

You didn't look at my whole quote (or the whole function).. assume a spy is going to a city with 100 of My culture and 100 Enemy culture (city)... so the spy will add 10 to my culture
so the function will go

CvCity::changeCulture()
[add 10 to my culture of 100]
plot culture set to true

goes to

CvCity::setCulture()
[set my culture in this city to 110]
AND
add zero (thats right 0) Plot culture (because plot culture was set to true)

Now why would I add zero (0) plot culture.. are the Firaxis programmers that bored.

NO, whenever you add plot culture, even 0 plot culture, you get some Free Plot culture long with it... the 1+20*Level
[so using my example, because I am at the third Cultural Level, 100+, I would get 41 extra PLOT culture in the city plot]


The fact is that 41 additional Free Plot Culture has no relation to the 10 city culture I got
If My Culture in the city was 100, and the enemy culture was 1900, i would get 100 City culture (5% of 2000) and 41 Plot culture.
So, does this mean that if I'm having a border war with a rival city, I might be able to get the edge by spamming the "spread culture" mission in the rival city?

So, does this mean that if I'm having a border war with a rival city, I might be able to get the edge by spamming the "spread culture" mission in the rival city?

The general gist of this thread is that the spread culture missions provide A VERY VERY low amount of cultural bonus for you. So yes, if you throw tons of spies at a city, you can help your percentage. But its likely not worth the cost in spies and espionage points to do so.

Well the cost in Espionage points is probably relatively low... its mostly the cost in spies.

I had another go at spreading culture, from a reload one turn before a victory. It took 6 turns before my culture appeared, at 2%, in the remaining AI city, then 63 successful "spread" missions and two culture bombs over 20 turns to get it up to 74%. The cost of the last mission was some 1300 EPs, and I lost 11 spies in the process (very close to the predicted success rate). Then I ran out of patience.
My conclusion is that this mission is a total waste of time.

Could you use the spreading culture in war time to raise your influence above 10% pre city capture in order to Draft in that newly conqured city and help with your war effort ? How many spy would you need to do so?

The most practical usage is to preload border-popping culture into a city you're about to capture. It has to be a border city, of course, since you can't use this mission unless you have some plot culture on the city's tile, as pointed out above.

Beyond that, I like the idea someone else posted above. If your border civ is at war with another civ that's more powerful, and those border cities are likely to be captured, then preloading them with your own culture gives you an excellent chance of flipping them.

The cost in spies isn't much, but the cost in diplomacy from all the failed missions can be high. Best to not do it with a powerful neighbor.

But see my first post in this thread. 23 "spread" missions did not increase the rate of spread of my culture any more than was already happening due to my culture in two nearby cities.
Just for interest, I've just run another test in WB, planting a new enemy city with a 2-tile margin of enemy territory around it and a stack of my spies inside. None of my culture, of course, so no spreading. A culture bomb in my city (on the border, horizontally) immediately put 8% of my culture in, rising by 2% per turn: 10 "spread" missions did not alter this. Another try, this time with a culture bomb in a city on the third diagonal tile from the target, took 3 turns before spreading became available: 6 missions were performed, each adding 1% culture costing 1 EP, but a seventh was not permitted; 2 spies were lost. In the next 3 turns, spreading was again not permitted. In turn 5, 2 spreads were allowed and 4 spies vanished without trace - nothing on screen or in the log. Spreading was not allowed until turn 17, by which time the city was showing my culture at 6%; in that turn 14 missions succeeded but 4 spies were lost and another 2 had vanished. Turn 18 showed my culture as 12%, but no spies were available: turn 19 showed 13% (so 1% ws from the culture bomb, not the spies), 14 missions succeeded for the loss of 6 spies, the final ones adding 7 culture and costing 7 EPs each. Finally, in turn 20 my culture had reached 17% and I didn't bother to go any further. The very low cost in EPs was because I had moved my capital up to the border, to save time in getting spies back into action.

If I had had anything better to do, I'd consider my efforts a total waste of time, and there is absolutely no way I shall ever give this useless mission the slightest consideration in the future. Not ever. Definitely not.

Well it seems that the real use of this Mission is in the only time that City culture (rather than plot culture) of an enemy city is considered

Spy missions

Spread Culture in a city so that you can gain bonuses for Future Spy missions in that city... because Spy Missions Don't use plot culture for cost, they use city culture.

But how many spy missions do you intend to use against a city on, or very close to, your border, before you take it ? One to foment or poison (to cut down its production), one to cause revolt before your attack, perhaps one counterespionage if needed: and how many "spread" missions will it take you (at rising costs in EPs and lost spies) to reduce the EP cost of those other few missions by a small amount ? Tchah.

That depends... If you want to TAKE the city, the spread culture is only Really useful for that first Culture pop post conquest.

If you want to spy on the city (steal Tech, etc.) then the Spread culture should be useful

Interesting Thread. Sorry if this has been discussed, but I didn't think it was.

What about using this mission on a city of yours recently captured by an enemy, either militarily or culturally and you have a good overlap from your other cities.

Could this be enough to flip it back, (assuming your game settings allow it)?

I don't think this mission actually increases your chance of flipping a city, because of the arcane way the culture is applied. If you did capture the city (by whatever means), you would however start with a chunk of your culture in it, which can help shore up the borders

I would have thought, from the words "spread culture", that the purpose would be to help that city to flip over to you.

It does, but not well (the amount of culture on the city tile is MASSIVE for any decent city, and it costs way too much otherwise)

Spread Culture in a city so that you can gain bonuses for Future Spy missions in that city... because Spy Missions Don't use plot culture for cost, they use city culture.It doesn't exactly seem an efficient way to bring down the cost of the mission.

I know the cost of the mission itself is cheap, but risking those spies seems much costlier, especially given that it's already on the lower end of success rates for espionage missions.