Cultural Conquest of Cities

you know when you used to capture a city, and it would be eaten alive from all sides by other cities.. but then while latter it would regain territory, now step 2 is gone..

so if you capture city that isnt surrounded by other cities you capture, it will sit in small confined space, with no way to get extra plots, capturing plots with units isnt option as that option is present just in early game ,

that kinda annoys me ;/

I'm not sure but I think this is related to fixed borders. My sea units in this city have no way of escaping except building a fort or declaring war:

Personally I still don't understand why fixed borders can't be made optional. There is no reason to enforce fixed borders on people who prefer to play with the traditional expansion of borders through culture.

Because that would effectively "fork" the game? You'd have to balance the game both for with and without fixed borders then.

Arkatakor said:

Personally I still don't understand why fixed borders can't be made optional. There is no reason to enforce fixed borders on people who prefer to play with the traditional expansion of borders through culture.

Click to expand...

Earlier versions of AND had the option for using FB or not. Same for Barb Civ and Barb World and a long list of Options.

BlueTemplar Because that would effectively "fork" the game? You'd have to balance the game both for with and without fixed borders then.

Click to expand...

Again was already done in previous versions.

The current FB is the "Direction" that Afforess wanted the mod to have.

JosEPh

Afforess said:

I would approve of such an idea as well. Adding new RevDCM modifiers is fairly easy.

Click to expand...

I'd really like to see this issue addressed if a consensus can be achieved. Fixed borders right now is too de-powering to high culture strategies, at least in classical->Renaissance sort of timeframe.

Although (obviously) I like my own proposal it has an issue - it wouldn't work if Revolutions were not turned on, and since fixed borders are not an option any more but revolutions still are it doesn't really work to balance fixed borders with something that only works when a different option is turned on...

...so, we need more suggestions on how to balance it please (I think everyone is agreed there is a problem, but so far no compelling solutions)

Sorry I don't really understand this concept, I've just started playing with this mod and I am still learning how everything works. Does this fixed borders thing mean I am literally incapable of taking over a city via culture? If so, that sucks. I hardly ever go to war in these games and this is usually my primary way of taking over cities.

Bring back some of the Vanilla BtS values for Culture. Give back to the Great Artist the ability do a Great Work that actually influences adjacent cities tiles, commonly referred to as the Culture Bomb( was regarded by some as a player cheat, when it actually was a symptom of How the AI used culture). The AI used to do it too, just not as much as the player. And that was/is all because of How GP are generated.

Bring back the Entertainer.

How is Culture Now generated vs the way it used to be?

Do Wonders (both World and Narional) produce enough culture?
Can the AI keep up with the player on building Wonders?
What are the "mechanics" for building Culture, besides adjusting the Culture bar (%)?

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Bring back some of the Vanilla BtS values for Culture. Give back to the Great Artist the ability do a Great Work that actually influences adjacent cities tiles, commonly referred to as the Culture Bomb( was regarded by some as a player cheat, when it actually was a symptom of How the AI used culture). The AI used to do it too, just not as much as the player. And that was/is all because of How GP are generated.

Bring back the Entertainer.

How is Culture Now generated vs the way it used to be?

Do Wonders (both World and Narional) produce enough culture?
Can the AI keep up with the player on building Wonders?
What are the "mechanics" for building Culture, besides adjusting the Culture bar (%)?
JosEPh

Click to expand...

IMO it's not the generation of culture that's the problem, it's the dilution of it's effect (due to various factors of which fixed borders is just the most obvious). Personally I really like the idea of using culture to provoke destabilization across fixed orders, but I can't think of a way to modify the idea to work when revolutions are not being used.

<RANT>This is a general issue with any significant game mechanic being optional - it leaves us trying to balance multiple different games (which ultimately means that feature cannot have rich interactions or else you can't independently balance them, and the game loses subtly it should have). Left to me (you can be thankful it isn't) I'd just balance and develop the mod with a set of recommended options and accept that anyway playing with significant mechanics turned off will not experience the mod as it was intended, and just accept that non-recommended options might not work that well in overall balance terms. For that reason I am fully behind afforess in his decision to remove optionality from fixed borders. My own solution would be to give culture extra value through rev effects and just leave anyone that chooses to play with rev turned off having to accept culture is slightly broken (actually I'd make it so rev was not optional either if I'm totally honest). Speaking from an ai tuning perspective game options (to fundamental mechanics) are a total nightmare - when working on the ai you pretty much have to assume a set and tune for that, Hoping won't be too far out with other options.</RANT>

I'd just balance and develop the mod with a set of recommended options and accept that anyway playing with significant mechanics turned off will not experience the mod as it was intended, and just accept that non-recommended options might not work that well in overall balance terms.

Click to expand...

+1 I fully agree

Pakhawaj said:

Sorry I don't really understand this concept, I've just started playing with this mod and I am still learning how everything works. Does this fixed borders thing mean I am literally incapable of taking over a city via culture? If so, that sucks. I hardly ever go to war in these games and this is usually my primary way of taking over cities.

Click to expand...

You have a blunt way of getting your point across but I agree with you. There are quite a lot of people voicing similar opinions with regard to this here.

JosEPh_II said:

Again was already done in previous versions.

Click to expand...

I am fully aware of this, which all the more is the reason to ask why its no longer optional. If someone prefers fixed borders, they can still play with that option on, and the rest of us for our part would be able to continue our cultural strategies with fixed borders disabled. How is making everyone happy a bad thing?

Arkatakor said:

<snip>

I am fully aware of this, which all the more is the reason to ask why its no longer optional. If someone prefers fixed borders, they can still play with that option on, and the rest of us for our part would be able to continue our cultural strategies with fixed borders disabled. How is making everyone happy a bad thing?

Click to expand...

All I can say about this is Modder's discretion. It's Afforess' Mod and he's the ultimate sayso on what's in and what's out. <shrug>

We can voice our opinions and desires and if it sounds reasonable and a positive direction for Him, and not overly tedious to do (big factor here), we might get it. He's the one that took the time to learn how to mod and has made a good one. We didn't, so we "suggest" changes we'd like to see and If he's willing we might see some of them. But be aware of this fact most Modders burn out on their mods after 3 years. Zappara the creator Of RoM (the Father of these mods; AND and C2C) is now no longer even seen on the boards. Afforess has already stated that "endless betas" will not happen and 1.76 final is set for September. (He'll be back in school then and no time left for a Mod.)

It's unfortunate but that's how it's looking.

JosEPh

Ok, no promises on WHEN I would get round to this, but here is a concrete (as in I am proposing to code it) suggestion. It is in two parts to address peace time and war time. One of those parts requires you to be running REV for it to work (too bad if not), the other is stand-alone. Any comments you have are welcome. If the overall response is broadly positive I'll go ahead and do it (sometime - right now AI work is priority for me).

Peace time modification:

As previously proposed. Cities near tiles that are owned but not culturally owned get take a (local) stability hit for each such tile in proportion to how little their culture justifies their ownership and how close they are. This shouldn't require any significant AI changes except maybe to tweak up culture generation priority near border a bit (but it already does this really so probably little to no AI implications)

War time modification

Allow units to claim tiles (as they can now) even if they are owned tiles. Doing so is an act of war. When tiles claimed by units are vacated instead of reverting to the previous owner they revert to the cultural owner. This opens up lots of new strategic options (e.g. - using a chain of units to hold a supply line road open (as your claimed territory) for fast invasion movement) as well as allowing your culture to reclaim land (but requiring a war to do so). The big downside of this is that it will require significant AI work to make the AI take advantage of it/defend against it.

Sounds great! As long as the tiles that were not claimed by a unit revert back to neutral when a city is captured/razed.

Koshling, good suggestions.

I've been away for a bit, (life...gah!), but I've been catching up on the discussions. I was also thinking it would be nice if the delay for peace (default of 10 turns) was scaled to the gamespeed's victory percent. I think it'd end up being like 30 turns on Marathon.

In my last game I have send my agents to the other guy, made a "influence civic" mission and viola... all the area he was blocking due to fixed borders is now mine

How about an option to "buy" tiles via culture, civ5 style.
Have an option to alow exess culture to be accumulated in some sort of pool, this can then be used to claim any tile that shares a border with your influence, the tile must be either unowned or owned by some one your at peace with, the cost depends on the culture and distance of your nearest city and, if it is owned by some one else the culture and distance of their nearest city, also there could be a diplo penalty if you use it to much on the same civ.

One way this could play out:
You play on a terra map and settle the new world, now instead of setteling it all you just clam the land that issent owned by the anoying barbarians, using the culture produced in your home citys.
However once you reach the settelemts of some one else you will have trubble expanding your territory, as they can get the tiles around their citys a lot cheaper you will either have to use a lot of culture or build some new citys, over there, to hold on to that territory you claimed(or go to war :X).

No idea if this is codable, especaly for the ai though.

Would that be one pool per city, or a global one per civ?

I thought per civ but per city might work aswell.
The details and especaly the balancing would need a lot of thought anyways.

Just to add fuel to this fire, I've a 'sort of bug'

I actually had a city flip to me, due to Cultural pressure, or the 'rebels' in the city demanding to join my empire, the controlling AI relented, and I was given the option to accept them into the fold, or 'see you later'. I accepted.

Problem is, that the city was never released from the AI's cultural control, and I had to send in a Unit to 'Occupy' the city, to get the 1st BFC, to flip to MY culture.

So basically, cultural flipping is working, but it won't release control of the city to the new owner, till they send in a unit. A lot like the forts not being occupied, but still retaining the cultural BFC, of the last occupant.