Explain to me culture please!

I am not modding now, but was browsing around. I have not played Civ 4 for ages. I am way to busy in school right now to mod. I do have a background in Anthropology and Geography if that means anything. My suggestion would be culture should be linked to technology. Making resources is a technology. Corn was developed in stages for example. Here is what I was thinking if interested. This is a modification I was planning to work on before.

Civilization Specific Tech Trees
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=275046

I was thinking alternate tech trees per era. For example lets say a Mesoamerican alternate history.

Different techs for producing different resources or particular increased production of a type of food. That was the idea anyway. Now how to go about it well I am forgetting at the moment. I was just thinking leaders decided your culture group if you are needing further specifics within a group, and perhaps the player could decide from a limited amount of choices based on what type tech trees that are in.

I was also thinking UU's and UB's being entirely separate. Basically that every civ has access to them but need specific techs to unlock them. I had in mind to make dead end techs for UUs and UBs and different ones per an unique tech tree of an era. For example a Neolithic Mesoamerican tech tree would have some choices as in what unique units they would get from the era specific tech tree, and once chosen the other unique units in that particular era specific tech tree would not be available. So they would be some overlap in some cases of unique units and buildings. Yes it would be a lot of work, and in the cases of techs spanning across multiple alternative tech trees I would just duplicate the tech with a new name.

Anyway if I am not making any sense I can break it down it more details. If you don't really care then oh well I am sorry for posting. I only check the forums every once in a while to see what is going on in the civ community. So if you want a response from me probably better to email me or send a pm.

@johny smith

We have actually been taking about your RoH. Glad to see you around. If you do plan to mod again C2C would love to have you on the team.

I was also thinking UU's and UB's being entirely separate. Basically that every civ has access to them but need specific techs to unlock them. I had in mind to make dead end techs for UUs and UBs and different ones per an unique tech tree of an era. For example a Neolithic Mesoamerican tech tree would have some choices as in what unique units they would get from the era specific tech tree, and once chosen the other unique units in that particular era specific tech tree would not be available. So they would be some overlap in some cases of unique units and buildings. Yes it would be a lot of work, and in the cases of techs spanning across multiple alternative tech trees I would just duplicate the tech with a new name.

Click to expand...

The UU and UB require buildings at the moment. Based on your regional culture and resource in the vicinity determines what cultures you can unlock. We thought about techs originally but we used buildings instead.

@johny,

Please stop in more often! Your input has always been very valuable.

JosEPh

Hydromancerx said:

@johny smith
The UU and UB require buildings at the moment. Based on your regional culture and resource in the vicinity determines what cultures you can unlock. We thought about techs originally but we used buildings instead.

Click to expand...

I know there are just limits of what can be done. I would generally think culture, resources, buildings, or whatever develops out of technology. I mean language options even develop from how symbology was perceived. I mean hieroglyphs for example were created from objects perceived then later these symbols progress in a alphabet more or less.

Can the buildings then be linked to a specific tech on whether or not there available?
I mean if you guys what an overhaul of it...

It is easy to make techs to represent smaller steps, but just really time consuming. I have no clue how the vicinity works in C2C, but it sounds like it is more complicated then just limiting it by techs. Plus for example the apple actually came from West Asia. It might be stereotypical to Europe now, but Europe really did not have that many common domesticated species actually made in Europe. Most were brought in from previous domestications. Which is where I stopped because I wanted civilizations to be able to trade the basic plants or animals, and then give civilizations the ability to just place resources on the map(rice farms, cows, and etc).

Anyway I had a lot of plans with no real way of doing them either because altering the game that far was too much for most, lack of time, or impossible to see what was in the exe.

I really doubt I will mod again. I just got disappointed with not be able to do many of things I wanted to do, and now I am writing a thesis now on Virtual GIS Archaeological models. I can give input though if you guys are stuck with a few options, and what to know which I would think would be better out of the choices available. I mean a million ideas can be made, but the game limits what can be done.

Can the buildings then be linked to a specific tech on whether or not there available?

Click to expand...

Yes you can have techs that require buildings. In fact that's what we plan to do for the alternative timeline techs. Such as a "Steampunk" wonder that unlocks non-tradable techs. We also have talked about civics being unlocked by these hidden techs that allow you to be on say a Steampunk, Gearpunk or Apocalyptic Civic.

It is easy to make techs to represent smaller steps, but just really time consuming. I have no clue how the vicinity works in C2C, but it sounds like it is more complicated then just limiting it by techs. Plus for example the apple actually came from West Asia. It might be stereotypical to Europe now, but Europe really did not have that many common domesticated species actually made in Europe. Most were brought in from previous domestications. Which is where I stopped because I wanted civilizations to be able to trade the basic plants or animals, and then give civilizations the ability to just place resources on the map(rice farms, cows, and etc).

Click to expand...

We have 2 main ways that city vicinity work. The first is double city vicinity such as if you have apple resource and lemon resource in the city vicinity then it unlocks an Orange Orchard. We have it for crops, animals and minerals too (note the links are old and out of date).

The 2nd way is for cultures which they only require 1 resource in the city vicinity but sometimes require a specific terrain and/or terrain feature. They also require a regional culture which is either African, American, Asian, European, Middle Eastern or Oceanian. These are given as the civs unique building. Note that both Japan and China have the same Asian unique building. And when in tandem with the Assimilation mod you can acquire another civs unique building when taking over their city. Thus allowing at civ to have more than one regional culture. You can see what requires what here.

Anyway I had a lot of plans with no real way of doing them either because altering the game that far was too much for most, lack of time, or impossible to see what was in the exe.

Click to expand...

That's how i felt at first but through some creative modding and the help of others we have been able to create many new things I never though were possible. As for time, its much easier to work as a team than it is alone. We could never have done what we have done in such a short time without helping each other.

I really doubt I will mod again. I just got disappointed with not be able to do many of things I wanted to do, and now I am writing a thesis now on Virtual GIS Archaeological models. I can give input though if you guys are stuck with a few options, and what to know which I would think would be better out of the choices available. I mean a million ideas can be made, but the game limits what can be done.

Click to expand...

Well at the very least try out C2C. I know you will like it. Get familiar with it and if you like it please post ideas and/or contribute yourself. For instance we would really like to add your Nomadic Camp, but no one has gotten around to converting it yet for C2C.

johny smith said:

Anyway I had a lot of plans with no real way of doing them either because altering the game that far was too much for most, lack of time, or impossible to see what was in the exe.

Click to expand...

There are very few real limits on what you can do in Civ4 except for graphics with the power that the DLL provides.
But of course some things are a lot more effort than others.

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense if cultures had prereqs you can actually influence (instead of resources which are random)?
It makes sense for some cultures, like horse for Mongolian but some of them create really weird situations like the Dutch one.
More cultures that require civics and religions are also an easy option.
examples:
Roman requiring a certain level of unit experience
Dutch requiring a certain amount of trade routes
Greek requiring both the 'Epic' national wonders
Portugal requiring a certain amount of exploration
Israel requiring a Holy city
Egypt requiring Divine Cult
Chinese requiring Confucianism

Some of these should be easy to implement, others probably aren't. But it would give more control to the player, and is probably a lot more realistic.
On a side-note, what about giving culture more than just UU's and UB's? This could make some underpowered cultures more desirable.
Examples:
Viking gives Amphibious promotion to ALL melee units
Maori get a higher coast tile yield
Israel build religious buildings faster
Asian gives higher rice yield
Middle Eastern gives higher wheat yield
American gives higher corn yield

Just 2 cents from a random noob

A random noob who's thinking along good lines though. Some great concepts in there. I don't think anyone would suggest we've got the culture system established in stone nor as it will always be and some of those thoughts should certainly be taken into consideration at some point. I've been thinking along some similar lines.

I'd also like to make religious centers diversify a lot more than it currently is. Only some churches would produce a great deal of gold revenue for the state. I'd like to see more variety there than just +1 gold per city with that religion for the city center building. We've introduced some variety and I'd like to see it deepen. +1 /city with the religion, +1 experience/5 cities with the religion, +1 / 3 cities with the religion, etc...

Meanwhile, I believe some, if not all, Cultural Centers would produce +1 gold per city with that culture (from tourism).

@Erfeo

We tried other factors like Civics, Regions and Wonders. American still requires Demoracy. However other civics did not seem to fit or were too limiting. I mean what if you want to have say Atheist Egyptians?

The other factor was with wonders you could only build the culture in one city. This became really lame for say the Holy Romans to have only 1 city since it was linked to the Apostolic Palace.

@Thunderbrd

However if cultures buildings produce say a culture resource then I could make them all wonders. Then I could make them much stricter in how you get them. Since you could spread it across your empire and even trade cultures.

Right. I think I'm following you.

So the system would be something like:

A Cultural Seed building is a World Wonder with intensive and complex restrictions. It gives the resource of that culture once (for your nation - not so much for trade...)

Then a city with access to a culture resource can build a cultural representation of some sort that basically states, people of this culture or at least those that really appreciate it and understand it live here (kinda like Culture (Cherokee) for example.) These minor culture buildings grant the nation another resource of that culture. These may be traded to other nations. For each such building of this nature in the world, a gold goes to the city with the original World Wonder. Those minor buildings also grant access to the uus and ubs of that culture.

Thunderbrd said:

Right. I think I'm following you.

So the system would be something like:

A Cultural Seed building is a World Wonder with intensive and complex restrictions. It gives the resource of that culture once (for your nation - not so much for trade...)

Then a city with access to a culture resource can build a cultural representation of some sort that basically states, people of this culture or at least those that really appreciate it and understand it live here (kinda like Culture (Cherokee) for example.) These minor culture buildings grant the nation another resource of that culture. These may be traded to other nations. For each such building of this nature in the world, a gold goes to the city with the original World Wonder. Those minor buildings also grant access to the uus and ubs of that culture.

Click to expand...

Something like that. I was thinking of linking he units to the culture resource. Such as the Cherokee Rifleman would require Cherokee resource as well as the normal Rifleman requirements.

Thus the buildings themselves only need to be built once. Also making them a resources means other buildings can benefit from them. Such as +% with Japanese resource at a Sushi Restaurant. Or something like that.

And the UBs would require the culture resource instead. This could be rather involved if we wanted to.

I'm all for this. Sounds like a lot of fun and the best way to go about this.

Then again, here's a thought: We have the ability to trade these cultures but if we have one resource for every city that builds the resource building that'd be a lot, too much, trade material. (Thinking of future travel agency corps...) So instead, we have a third culture building that generates the tradable resource and operates something like the old cathedral limitations 1/3 sorta thing.

Also... is there a way to limit the amount of a certain TYPE of building that may be built in a city based on the population of the city? Thus, we can establish that we can only build one culture type building per 3 population or something to that extent?

Thunderbrd said:

Also... is there a way to limit the amount of a certain TYPE of building that may be built in a city based on the population of the city? Thus, we can establish that we can only build one culture type building per 3 population or something to that extent?

Click to expand...

Or maybe limiting by the culture level of the city an/or upgrading the number of culture available in the city by buying space with the currently unused global culture.

Or maybe limiting by the culture level of the city

Click to expand...

I like this idea!

Hydromancerx said:

We tried other factors like Civics, Regions and Wonders. American still requires Demoracy. However other civics did not seem to fit or were too limiting. I mean what if you want to have say Atheist Egyptians?

The other factor was with wonders you could only build the culture in one city. This became really lame for say the Holy Romans to have only 1 city since it was linked to the Apostolic Palace.

Click to expand...

Personally I like the idea of having to sacrifice something to get a culture, besides you would only have to have Divine cult active in the ancient era when the culture is actually active.

As for wonders, I assumed we would have a way to spread a culture, mitigating that problem. Although I would say you'd want to only link a culture to a national wonder, not a global one.

Erfeo said:

Personally I like the idea of having to sacrifice something to get a culture, besides you would only have to have Divine cult active in the ancient era when the culture is actually active.

As for wonders, I assumed we would have a way to spread a culture, mitigating that problem. Although I would say you'd want to only link a culture to a national wonder, not a global one.

Click to expand...

The way culture spreads and is founded is undergoing massive adjustment now that we can make a culture a resource... watch closely as this system perfects!