Culture Calibration Mod

I really like that idea of taking damage in an enemy's borders, but if that were the case then it may be a good idea to increase healing to 2 per turn so that you could actually heal if there were nothing to pillage.
The AI probably would not cope with such a change very well.

MasterDinadan said:

I really like that idea of taking damage in an enemy's borders, but if that were the case then it may be a good idea to increase healing to 2 per turn so that you could actually heal if there were nothing to pillage.
The AI probably would not cope with such a change very well.

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I dont think healing needs a boost, i think pillaging should be the only recourse. The easy answer to this is that attrition damage should NOT KILL. It could only reduce units to 1 hp. This way, units wouldnt die from attrition in a failed invasion, they'd have to retreat. Now, enemy units could certainly still kill them at 1 HP.

Even barbarians are not terribly affected by this, they pillage anyway, never try to take cities, and would be actually killed more slowly than by city attacks. (And in some cases, not at all, as the city-attack might outreach early boarders.

I do not think the AI would have ANY problems with this. The AI already retreats wounded soldiers, and pillages occasionally - this would only speed up the process at which the AI felt it necessary to do so. The only real difficulty is the ownership of forts, and making AI's realize they can heal in them and not be hurt. Of course that's not terribly important. I'm also not sure if the AI could be taught that pillaging means healing, but if told to "pillage anyway" it might partake coincidently.


This would also mean that cities would not need to be buffed - there would be no need to make them more defensible. Weakened units have a hard time hurting cities, and attrition would do more damage than cities could do to large groups of units (though less to individual units). It would also making pillaging rather important, making newly conquered territory less valuable than it is now.


If i had my druthers, this of all options for culture seems like the best one (and easiest to implement). The one thing that is crucial though is that tile-aquisition via culture should be a flat rate, so that culture intensive cities grab up land quickly. I wish tiles were also purchasable outside of city-ranges. Tiles should still require being adjacent to territory to purchase, but i wish they could be purchased anywhere so long as they were adjacent.

EDIT/ADD: I also just realized that defensive fortifications of units could also mean that "holding off an attack" would be just as successful as destroying the opposing army. Less units could keep an enemy at bay, taking more and more attrition damage before finally having to retreat. This would buy the defending nation some time to construct more units.

QES said:

The one thing that is crucial though is that tile-aquisition via culture should be a flat rate, so that culture intensive cities grab up land quickly. I wish tiles were also purchasable outside of city-ranges. Tiles should still require being adjacent to territory to purchase, but i wish they could be purchased anywhere so long as they were adjacent.

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These should be easy enough with XML mods.
The rest of the suggestions are neat, but not exactly what I'm going for.
I could probably manage a combat boost for units inside of friendly territory (like the social policy for it, but toned down).
I just don't like the idea of units being halfway dead by the time they reach a city with big borders (which will also have high combat strength because of the culture) and having to rely on improvements (which may not even be present) in order to heal.
I've seen too many cases in which an under-teched AI opponent was unable to take a cultural city even with a ton of units besieging it, just because the culture city acquires so much combat strength that the units can barely touch it.
And considering that you can do well enough in Civ 5 with a relatively small but highly teched and promoted army (quality over quantity) I wouldn't want to see a change that further discourages large armies.

MasterDinadan said:

These should be easy enough with XML mods.
The rest of the suggestions are neat, but not exactly what I'm going for.
I could probably manage a combat boost for units inside of friendly territory (like the social policy for it, but toned down).
I just don't like the idea of units being halfway dead by the time they reach a city with big borders (which will also have high combat strength because of the culture) and having to rely on improvements (which may not even be present) in order to heal.
I've seen too many cases in which an under-teched AI opponent was unable to take a cultural city even with a ton of units besieging it, just because the culture city acquires so much combat strength that the units can barely touch it.
And considering that you can do well enough in Civ 5 with a relatively small but highly teched and promoted army (quality over quantity) I wouldn't want to see a change that further discourages large armies.

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I guess i really dont feel like large armies are discouraged. They get clogged, but it's better to have 2 swordsmen than 1, and better to have 4 than 2, and better to have 8 than 4.

Army sizes are not necessarily always about tactics but also reserves and multiple fronts. As I see it, cities fall quickly, not slowly. Which to me means offense is favored over defense. Be that a large army or small - something is benefiting units being on the attack. This idea was meant to counter that some.

Pillaging also goes largely ignored by the player, middling by the AI, and only really zealously pursued by barbarians. My conceit allows the player to reconsider it strategically. As it is, the medic promotion already makes an army on the move very capable.

I once conquered an entire continent (4 other civs) with nothing but 3 samurai. (I had more, but they never got involved with the fighting, because of travel times).

Each samurai had the "Medic" promotion, and bushido meant that the unit would always be considered to be at "full strength" for combat.

They'd move, attack something (units or cities), get damaged. Then rest a turn. This made them unstoppable.
Each medic promotion gives 1 HP in healing +1 to adjacent units. With resting itself giving 1HP, this meant that in one turns rest they healed 4 HP - and would always be considered at full for combat.

I was outnumbered and far outproduced, but 3 samurai with medic promotions can conquer the world. I dont think healing is in need. Just make sure attrition cant kill is all.

This is one of those things you can't fix without breaking something else.
The reason you can walk all over the AI is that they are very poor at playing defensively and wait until it's far too late to start taking down the attackers.

Giving borders some natural defense would help the AI stay alive against an aggressive play, but it would also make it nearly impossible for the AI to take the player's cities. As it is, using your units cleverly and having a decent number of promotions or tech lead can allow you to hold off an army much larger than your own pretty easily.

Considering the way the AI works, I can see this happening. The AI marches towards my city with unpromoted units. By the time he reaches it, his units are at half health or lower. He realizes he's too weak to take it so the turns around and goes home.

The AI is terribly bad at planning ahead and will probably find itself trying to take cities it simply cannot take, even more than it already does.

MasterDinadan said:

This is one of those things you can't fix without breaking something else.
The reason you can walk all over the AI is that they are very poor at playing defensively and wait until it's far too late to start taking down the attackers.

Giving borders some natural defense would help the AI stay alive against an aggressive play, but it would also make it nearly impossible for the AI to take the player's cities. As it is, using your units cleverly and having a decent number of promotions or tech lead can allow you to hold off an army much larger than your own pretty easily.

Considering the way the AI works, I can see this happening. The AI marches towards my city with unpromoted units. By the time he reaches it, his units are at half health or lower. He realizes he's too weak to take it so the turns around and goes home.

The AI is terribly bad at planning ahead and will probably find itself trying to take cities it simply cannot take, even more than it already does.

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Hm, that is very true. I could see the AI doing that as well. Your point about healing is then well regarded.

The more i think on it, the more i do think that "sitting and doing nothing" for a full turn is a lot to ask of a unit anyway - and allowing them to heal 2 HP is not a big loss.

So, I assume this would have the following consequence:
Healing in a fort/home territory heals 3
Healing outside of any territory heals 2
Healing in enemy territory heals 1. (After taking a damage of one)
Healing with or next to a medic promoted unit heals +1.

In enemy territory, 1 damage is done to those units on the move.
Next to a fort, an additional +1 damage is done. (This could make successive forts dangerous. - I like.)

The healing you propose isnt a bad conceit at all. Healing already does take a bit too long.

The more i think on it, the more i like your idea. The benefit of pillaging then would be that it gives gold AND heals. As if hitting the space-bar, but with gold. I like that.

One Question: Is attrition able to kill then? I'd still say "no" it does not.

I would say no as well.
But adding combat consequences to culture is not my main prioirity at the moment. It will be interesting to look at later, but I want to see how changes to culture in general play out. If cheaper policies make culture buildings highly viable, I will be hesitant to add even further incentives to having culture. Gotta give those uncultured slobs a chance too!

Right now, I'm considering what would be done to Free Speech and Cristo Redentor. First, I want to figure out about how much utility they have. Assuming you take 9 policies before picking up either (I'm thinking 2 for Tradition, 2 for Piety, 3 for Patronage, 3 for Freedom. I hope you can figure out which ones) and get 3 free policies during the game (to be honest, I keep forgetting about Sydney Opera House, but I don't mind because I find culture wins usually have all the policies they need before they have a chance to build it) then the base amount of culture saved for these is:
Free Speech: 13040 culture
Cristo Redentor: 17211 culture

These effects seem way too powerful. It would make more sense for me to nerf them enormously and then reduce the total amount of culture needed accordingly.
Given that the policy reduction mechanic encourages pooling, and I don't want that, I need to come up with a different mechanic altogether:
-Free Policies (done too many times already I feel, but could work)
-Extra culture from certain buildings
-Extra culture from specialists
-Extra culture from certain improvements

Though the number of buildings/specialists/improvements can vary a lot so it may be tough to balance.

i have an idea
why not to adjust a certain cost to every policy instead of getting it from formula? so first policies of the branches will cost cheaper but next ones will cost more and more.
e.g.
20 -> 30 -> 50 -> 100 -> 200 for some early branch
100 -> 200 -> 300 -> 600 for a mid-game branch etc.

also adoption of policy may give much more than it gives now, and later policies just adding to that effects. so we'll have something like civ4 civics system but "with upgrades".
also its possible to make more branches and divide them into groups of exclusive options and make player available to freely switch among adopted policies.
cost of policies may progress with time so cheap early game policies will be more expensive in late era than in era they get unlocked...

killmeplease said:

i have an idea
why not to adjust a certain cost to every policy instead of getting it from formula? so first policies of the branches will cost cheaper but next ones will cost more and more.
e.g.
20 -> 30 -> 50 -> 100 -> 200 for some early branch
100 -> 200 -> 300 -> 600 for a mid-game branch etc.

also adoption of policy may give much more than it gives now, and later policies just adding to that effects. so we'll have something like civ4 civics system but "with upgrades".
also its possible to make more branches and divide them into groups of exclusive options and make player available to freely switch among adopted policies.
cost of policies may progress with time so cheap early game policies will be more expensive in late era than in era they get unlocked...

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Not possible with XML modding. The formula used is part of the source code and the only adjustments we can make through the XML are specific parameters.
We may be able to change the policy costs with LUA but it would be more work, and frankly there's nothing wrong with the formula as it is.
If you priced the policies individually, then a culture victory would likely entail just buying whichever trees were the cheapest.
It would also violate the "cultures start cheap and get more expensive" mechanic which ensures that there is not an enormous difference between the number of policies adopted by a culture victory player and another player. Someone going for a culture victory could 50 times as much culture throughout the game as someone who isn't. Using a static pricing model, in the time it takes him to buy 30 policies, the other guy may not have even bought one.

yeah sdk is not available yet but i'm looking forward to that.

If you priced the policies individually, then a culture victory would likely entail just buying whichever trees were the cheapest.

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cheap trees may go up with time! btw, this will be the another reason not to pool

adoption of branches may cost not much so for example any empire could buy Authocracy as it gets unlocked (and it should give significant bonuces by its own with no or not many "upgrades" - taking policies in its branch).

Changing the NumCitiesPolicyCostMod directly in the the game XML files causes it to work properly in the game, but trying to change it through a mod doesn't (even though the change appears in the database file).
What the heck is going on?

Edit - Now it works. I didn't even do anything differently...
Well, the file I uploaded earlier *should* have 15% cost penalty for extra cities on all map sizes. I didn't document it because I assumed it wasn't working, but maybe I did something stupid. If you try it out, let me know if it works for you, because I'm not exactly sure what did it.

Culture cost of acquiring tiles:
In-game testing plus poking around the in XML suggests that the cost of acquiring tiles is:
20+(10n)^1.1
where n is the number of tiles already culture acquired. This is rounded down to the nearest 5.
Pretty much same formula as policies, just different numbers
I've given it some thought, and I don't have much interest in messing with it myself.
If you are interested in modding it yourself, look in the GlobalDefines.xml. The relevent fields are
CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT=20
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER=10
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT=1.1

If you want a flat rate (say 50), set the first to 50 and the second to 0.
If you want an arithmetic rate (such as 30, 40, 50, 60, ...) set the exponent to 1.

Version 2:

Free Speech now adds +1 culture per Wonder (modified by Constitution and other city modifiers)
Cristo Redentor now adds +1 culture per Specialist in every city.
To compensate for the the reworking of these mechanics (no more OP discounts), the policy cost formula has been reworked so later policies aren't quite as expensive.
The 15% policy increase per city has been working pretty consistently for me, so it shouldn't have any problems in this version.

I'm interested in your thoughts, Thal. It's about the most I can do without figuring out how to do some coding.

MasterDinadan said:

Culture cost of acquiring tiles:
In-game testing plus poking around the in XML suggests that the cost of acquiring tiles is:
20+(10n)^1.1
where n is the number of tiles already culture acquired. This is rounded down to the nearest 5.
Pretty much same formula as policies, just different numbers
I've given it some thought, and I don't have much interest in messing with it myself.
If you are interested in modding it yourself, look in the GlobalDefines.xml. The relevent fields are
CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT=20
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER=10
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT=1.1

If you want a flat rate (say 50), set the first to 50 and the second to 0.
If you want an arithmetic rate (such as 30, 40, 50, 60, ...) set the exponent to 1.

Click to expand...

Thx a lot for the explanation! I have started a discussion how changing this would affect the gameplay:Klick!

How are the gold and culture cost for tiles linked? I found some other lines that seem to define it, but I can't deduct a formula.



I found that the first tile seems to be set to 50, and every tile bought anywhere in your empire seems to add 5 gold (confirmed by experience). There is a "ring cost" (?) of 100 and 25 are added for water. I don't understand the modifiers regarding ressources on the tile and other stuff.

CS seem to grow 50% slower, and you can't get any lower than 75% cultere cost reduction (eg from SPs or wonders). You can buy tiles up to distance 3, but culture can grow up to tiles away.

Tomice said:

but culture can grow up to tiles away.

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five tiles

Is there a way to make Great Artists give +1000 culture for their culture bombs instead of the diplomatic shenanigans?

Glad I found your mod MasterD. Saw you talking about it before and didn't know you'd already posted stuff.

How has it played out? Any luck on the free policies? Maybe a Civil Code national wonder that you receive on founding that gives you a free policy, but that doesn't transfer if your capital is sacked?

Also, is there code for starting the game with culture the same as you could start with gold?

Thanks again for this mod.

I thought part of the idea of culture revamping was to make it less "policy-centric" thus allowing for the justification that other non-cultured peoples could get more policies, but without nerfing those who become culture-centered.

In other words, the end-game of culture becomes more viable for more people, but those who specialize would get added benefits elsewhere in the game?

QES said:

2)Make the owning of land something to value. I think that cities fall far too quickly. Adding a function where culture directly affects defensive abilities might help.

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Actually, that function already exists! Look through the cultural levels xml (forgot the name). Reaching a certain level of culture improves city strength.

jwallstone said:

Actually, that function already exists! Look through the cultural levels xml (forgot the name). Reaching a certain level of culture improves city strength.

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I meant in a more abstract way. Half of defense is keeping people away from your juicy innards.

Done with disaster relief drills at work (been busy with that the past few days) so can sit down and read through this now.

I think the free policies with each era is something we really should pursue. It's a fantastic idea you had, I think it would help open up options a lot more for non-culture victories to have a standard baseline # of policies you know you'll be able to get. It's boring to have a game where you basically can only fill out 1, maybe 2 trees for non-culture games. I'll look into it and do some research.

As for the rounding to 5, the reason they did it was obviously to have a cleaner-looking interface, as it's easier to read numbers that are closely base-10. Still, I agree there's not really much practical reason, and this was likely motivated by marketing.

More rapid border expansion in general is something I think would be nice. The current rate lets you expand at about the same rate as population growth speed... expansion meeting the need of working new tiles... side effect of this is increasing the expansion speed wouldn't really have a significant impact on cities.

Along those lines, one thing I should test for is if tile purchase costs scale with map size. It feels like it's fixed... which would be preposterous for obvious reasons of city quantity. I agree tile purchases should be possible beyond a city's limits... culture does after all. And the cost goes up dramatically the further away you are, so you want to pay that much you should be able to do so. It would be best to still limit it a bit though, maybe to 4-5 tiles away from the city, to prevent any potential abuse.

Regarding forts, AI's have basically ignored that tile improvement since the dawn of the Civilization series, or, spammed them everywhere (in Civ II). Even when they built them, they've never really used them. So it's risky doing too much that involves forts until the AI can be improved.

The attrition idea is interesting, it'll take me a while to think through what implications it might have. I'm a largely subconscious/intuition thinker instead of conscious/sensory, so I let ideas roll around for a few days and see what pops up. One thing I agree with wholeheartedly is the city attack thing is tedious micromanagement. It doesn't even use the same left-click-select, right-click-attack mechanic as normal attacks, and has that silly arrow other ranged attacks don't have. And even though the game tells you if you have cities that can attack, it lets you end your turn anyway, wasting it! The whole thing yells marketing gimmick to me, for cool screenshots and promotional videos.

I like the idea of making pillaging more interesting somehow. Would it be alright with you, if I come up with something, to credit you and turn something like this into a separate mod?

Like MasterDinadan said, I think for now we're focusing primarily how culture and social policies interact.

I really like the idea for a wonder giving +1 per specialist, and Cristo Redentor seems like a good place to put it. That's so much better than the original effect, and the mechanic compares to the Statue of Liberty nicely. Have you calculated how much +1 per wonder will give for an average cultural game? Seems like it might be rather small...

@Feyd Rautha
I like the idea of moving the culture bomb back to something that directly impacts the culture of a city, though not sure that's feasible until the c++ is available.

@QES
The primary purpose of revamping culture is to make it less focused on empire size. I don't think we're really planning on de-linking it from policies too much.