An ambitious cultural mechanic for Civ VI

I think that most of us feel that culture is a very powerful force that has defined and changed the course of civilizations trought history. However, the representation of said force on the Civilization saga has been a little tad lacking, neither the culture - flipping of Civ 3& 4 nor the social policies of Civ 5 have been able to convey the flavour and trascendence of culture.

The culture of each civilization will divide in 5 crucial cultural aspects. Think of them as social policy trees. Said aspects are:


CULTURAL ASPECTS

- Language - One of the most powerful, defining characteristics of a nation and culture

- Lifestyle - The quirks, customs and intangible things that makes one feel "at home",

- Art - Expressions of human creativity and genious have a reach far beyond your own borders

- Religion - How does your civilization copes with his beliefs

- Political system - How a society organizes itself


Each cultural aspect will contain a series of seven cultural traits each. For example, when evolving your civilization's art, you will define its following traits:

- Painting
- Music
- Sculpture
- Architecture
- Performing arts
- Gastronomy
- Cinema

In short, culture is composed by cultural aspects (general areas), and said aspects are a sum of smaller cultural traits, which works pretty much like social policies (you purchase them by accumulating culture).

Needless to say, not every trait will be unlocked from the beggining, for some of them will require certain techs to be evolved (you cannot define how your civilization's cinema will be unless you have reserached electricity, for example).

Also, when defining the culture traits of your culture (the equivalent of acquiring a social policy), you will acquire certain bonuses while giving up another ones. Say, when you get to define your civilization's architecture you may choose between "monumental" architecture (+15% production towards wonders) or "ornate" (+2 culture to any culture producing building), but you can't have both types of architecture at the same time.

The more cultural traits one certain cultural aspect has, the more bonuses it will generate. Every cultural aspect will act as a package of different bonuses (traits). This is is how the culture level will work at a general level, but this is not the interesting part. The difference with Civ 5 will consist that pretty much like Civ 4's culture system, it will spread by itself and have a staying power and influence. But how so?

GIVING AND RECIEVING CULTURE

When starting to recieve cultural influence of a neighbouring civ, it will come to a point (5% of foreign cultural influence) when your city will have the option to acquire one foreign cultural aspect. Once another threshold is breached (25%), your city MUST adopt a foreign cultural aspect. That is, that city will adotp either the language, lifestyle, art, religion or political system of a rival civilization, meaning that it will adopt a "package" of different bonuses that will vary from your own and that it will substitute yours in that particular city. Say, if you adopt the French art, you will adopt the French painting, music, sculpture, architecture, performing arts, gastronomy and cinema. Needless to say, once you conquer an enemy city, it will retain one of its former owner cultural aspects, too (or even the whole lot if their culture was strong enough!).

THE PROS OF ADOPTING ANOTHER CULTURE

This will open a quite interesting dynamic. Adopting the cultural aspects of another more sophisticated civilization is a good way to ensure bonuses without needing to invest your own culture points. For example, why should you spend culture to develope your own language when most of your cities already speak English?

Furthermore, the top 10 cities in the world gain a "cosmopolitan" bonus: when any of these great cities adopt a foreing cultural aspect, it does not substitute your own, but stacks with them. Say, if a cosmopolitan city like New York adopts Spanish as its language, it will keep the bonuses provided by both English and Spanish language.

Finally, adopting a rival's cultural aspect will add a positive diplomatic bonus with said civilization, with each particular faction having his pet peeves: Americans will be interested in other civs that adopts their life style, while Arabs will show sympathy if you adopt their religion.

However, this is not a clear - cut decision of "gotta catch them all" regarding culture permeation. Adopting another civilization's culture is not necessarily a good thing. The foreign civilization's bonuses might differ from the ones you need and adopting a rival's culture will leave you more vulnerable to the owner of said culture, meaning that you only want to recieve - certain - cultural influences, preferably from friendly civilizations.

...AND THE CONS

Adopting - any - foreign cultural trait will double the war weariness in that city when fighting against said civilization, for starters. In addition to that, there will be other penalties or bonus for your rivals too:

Adopting a foreign language will double the profits of your rival trade routes with this city

Adopting a foreign Lifestyle will lead your citizens to emigrate to your rival civilization during periods of unrest

Adopting foreign Art will double the cultural assimilation rate of your city

Adopting a foreign Religion will make your city loose 33% of its combat strenght against your rival's units

Adopting a foreign Political system will make your city more vulnerable to spyionage and increase your rival influence over City States and other civilizations


In addition to that, once a city of yours is completely assimilated into a rival's culture, it won't culture flip outright, but it will adopt every single foreign cultural aspect, and prevent you from winning a cultural victory unless you hand down this "infected city" to other nation or grant it independence (you cannot declare cultural victory if one of your cities is completely assmilated by a rival).

MULTICULTURALISM VS IDENTITY

That means that there are two essential approaches to deal with culture: either multiculturalism or homogeneous cultures. Both strategies have their place, and both are viable, but depending of which type of empire you are building, you will want to adopt one or another.

Multiculturalism is good for civilizations with big cosmopolitan cities aiming to spread their culture overseas, or for sprawling but peaceful empires interested in another means of domination other than culture or military victory.

Cultural homogenization, however, will be great for small besieged empires wanting to protect theirselves against agression and neglect others cultural victory, and for civilizations poised for world conquest.


In short, this system allows the following:

- You will employ the culture in the same vein as social policies in order to strenghten your civilization, by acquiring cultural traits

- By choosing your cultural traits you will customize your civilization, for unlike social policies, every single decision implies rennouncing to a set of bonuses while picking others

- Culture will permeate another civs, and will leave a lasting mark in them even long after your civilization is gone, making you able to shape other civilizations far beyond your own lands

- Culture will be a game of "give and take", and one will have to ponder how, when and by whom wants to be influenced

Whew, thoughts?

An interesting article and a nice thought...
But you said 'Each cultural aspect will contain a series of seven cultural traits each.' It's a bit strange. For example, why Language contains Painting and Music?

ALL MY WANT

I'm sorry that I have nothing more interesting to say, because I don't see any problems with this idea.

While I agree that no civ has had a strong focus on the culture of your civ, I'm not sure this would do it either.

For instance, in your example of art, music, preforming arts, and cinema all have a lot to do with language. Look at Shakespeare's plays. Many of his jokes could easily be lost on us today, without someone else to explain them to us. Even though he wrote in modern English, the language is different enough that his plays are, at times, hard to understand.

Also, some peoples have had an amazing resistance to other cultures, while others have been culturally dominated. For instance, the Greeks maintained their culture in spite of Persia and Egypt being so close, while Rome was virtually totally dominated by Greece's culture.

Language is a virtually impossible thing to work with. What makes one language different from another? How different to they have to be? I don't speak much Portuguese, and because of that it's totally impossible for me to understand people from the south of Brazil, where there are more Spanish sounds. Nevermind that some countries actually have languages that are very much recognized as different. There are officially FIVE different spoken languages in Spain (and little fact, none of them are actually "Spanish.")

While I think the idea is interesting, at a minimum, I'd say a few things would need to be worked out. How could one culture assimilate ideas of another? How would we keep track of 5 different categories of culture split into 7 subcategories each, or 35 overall, including potential foreign categories getting into our cities? How would it be possible to make different political systems work together (my political system is an anarchist democracy with a communist economy, and you push your culture of an imperial autocracy with state property as economic law onto one of my cities...how the heck is that city going to follow that when it is 100% the opposite?) How could we get enough variety in the different choices to make everyone look different in the end? How would the choices be distributed and what limits would be put on them (for instance, music today is mathematically correct, but not all music though history was, so some options would require math and others not, so when are these cultural choices made, or can they be saved, and how would other civs getting culture with a requirement work?)

As a way to further explain and expand this cultural mechanic, some things needs to be dettailed.

Each cultural aspect contains several cultural traits. Cultural traits works like social policies, and pretty much like SP, each granting bonuses to your civ. By choosing cultural traits, you define different great areas of your civilization's culture (language, art, and so on). Needless to say, certain more advanced cultural traits have certain technology and cultural requirements.

CULTURAL ASPECTS


ART

- Panting
- Music
- Sculpture - Requires bronze working (technology), painting (cultural trait)
- Performing arts (dance / theater) - Requires drama (technology), music (cultural trait)
- Architecture - Requires aestethics (technology), sculpture (cultural trait)
- Cinema - Requires electricity (technology), performing arts (cultural trait)
- Gastronomy - Requires globalization (technology)

LANGUAGE

- Phonetics
- Grammar
- Writting system - Requires writting (technology), grammar and phonetics (cultural traits)
- Literature - Requires literature (technology), writting system (cultural trait)
- Regional divergences - Requires Civil service (technology), phonetics (cultural trait)
- Academic language - Requires scientific method (technology), literature (cultural trait)
- Modern evolution- Requires Industrialization (technology), literature (cultural trait)

LIFESTYLE

- Communal Labour
- Superstitions - Requires mysticism (technology)
- Values - Requires philosophy (technology)
- Organized entertainement - Requires guilds (technology), communal labour (cultural trait)
- Educative system - Requires education (technology)
- Media - Requires mass media (technology)
- Pop culture - Requires globalization (technology), organized entertainment (cultural trait)

RELIGION

- Precepts
- Customs
- Traditions - Requires ceremonial burial (technology), requires customs (cultural trait)
- Religious practices - Requires drama (technology), requires (customs (cultural traits)
- Hierarchy - Requires code of laws (technology), requires precepts (cultural trait)
- Religious building - Requires aestethics (technology)
- Dogmas - Requires Theology (technology), hierarchy, religious practices (cultural traits)

POLITICAL SYSTEM

- Goverment
- Armed forces - Requires Warrior Code (technology), requires goverment (cultural trait)
- Social hierarchy - Requires philosophy (technology)
- Administration - Requires civil service (technology), requires goverment, social hierarchy (cultural trait)
- Economic system - Requires economy (technology)
- Goverment counter - power - Requires liberalism (technology), requires administration (cultural trait)
- National values - Requires nationalism (technology), requires counter - power, economic system (cultural traits)

And now, to answer some questions:

How could one culture assimilate ideas of another?

Click to expand...

The cultural influence mechanic is similar to the one founded in Civ 3 and 4. However, you can say that there are 3 stages of foreign cultural influence.


The first stage will take place once your city surpasses a certain threshold of foreign cultural influence (5%), you will recieve such a message:

"Sir, the citizens of your city of Munich have recieved enough French influence to adopt one of their cultural aspects... should they?"
>> NO. Resist this pesky foreign influence until we got no other option
>> YES. Let them adopt the beautiful....
a) French art
b) French language
c) French political system
d) French religion
e) French lifestyle

Needless to say, it will come to a point when the cultural influence will be far too great to ignore (20% influence) and you will be forced to adopt one cultural aspect. This is the second phase of cultural assimilation:

"Sir, the citizens of your city of Munich have recieved enough French influence and they will adopt one of their cultural aspects no matter what you say"
>>OK. Let them adopt the...
a) French art
b) French language
c) French political system
d) French religion
e) French lifestyle

The third and last phase of the cultural assimilation is terminal (more than 50% of foreign cultural influence):

"Sir, the citizens of your city of Munich have turned their backs to the ways of our people, they are adopting the entirety of the French culture and abbandoning ours altogether!"
>> They are still a part of our empire, let them stay with their weird customs *sigh*
>> This is unbearable. Cut them off before they become too unsufferable for us!