The cutural borders system used by Civ is a perfect representation of power and influence in the ancient times up through the renaissance. However, maintaining the Cultural Borders system well into modern times dosen't make sense.
I'm not a realism freak -- I'll always choose gameplay and balance over realism, but its just kind of silly to see this in indstrial and modern times, especially when exploits like Great Artist Culture Bombs are used - Elvis sings a song and your borders expand!
Therefore, I think a single game tweak might make things more interesting. What if the border system shifted from cultural borders to "political borders" when upon completion of the Nationhood tech?
Here's how it would work:
Until Nationhood, the regular cultural borders system is in place. Upon completion of research of the Nationhood tech, however, your borders would convert to hard "political" borders. This means that you can't expand them through culture, but also neighboring civs couldn't expand into your territory either. (Cultural expansion would still work over neutral territory).
The way to expand your borders (if neccessary) is by taking cities through conquest or trade. (of course, I've never seen an AI trade away a city, except as part of a peace treaty). When you conquer cities in modern times, you would attain the entire cultural "turf" of that city, instead of creating a "no man's land" around the newly conquered city, which must be built up culturally again. I'm still in favor of the city losing it's built up culture points however. The conquest would merely extend your political borders to the extent of the conquered city's cultural influence.
It would be very cool if it was combined with some kind of system that let you negotiate borders, right down a single square. Of course, this would require some kind of complex interactive map, plus it might be too confusing for the AIs.
Opinions?
I'm not a realism freak -- I'll always choose gameplay and balance over realism, but its just kind of silly to see this in indstrial and modern times, especially when exploits like Great Artist Culture Bombs are used - Elvis sings a song and your borders expand!
Therefore, I think a single game tweak might make things more interesting. What if the border system shifted from cultural borders to "political borders" when upon completion of the Nationhood tech?
Here's how it would work:
Until Nationhood, the regular cultural borders system is in place. Upon completion of research of the Nationhood tech, however, your borders would convert to hard "political" borders. This means that you can't expand them through culture, but also neighboring civs couldn't expand into your territory either. (Cultural expansion would still work over neutral territory).
The way to expand your borders (if neccessary) is by taking cities through conquest or trade. (of course, I've never seen an AI trade away a city, except as part of a peace treaty). When you conquer cities in modern times, you would attain the entire cultural "turf" of that city, instead of creating a "no man's land" around the newly conquered city, which must be built up culturally again. I'm still in favor of the city losing it's built up culture points however. The conquest would merely extend your political borders to the extent of the conquered city's cultural influence.
It would be very cool if it was combined with some kind of system that let you negotiate borders, right down a single square. Of course, this would require some kind of complex interactive map, plus it might be too confusing for the AIs.
Opinions?