Just how IS cultural-control calculated anyways?

[Hans Lemurson]

This thread is dedicated to deciphering the formula used to calculate the %cultural control of a tile. I do not believe that his has been done yet, so I am doing it now. The goal of this is tro produce a formula that will determine %Control of a tiles based on the culture-levels and distances of nearby cities. This will allow us to predict when a tile is going to flip to or from your control, and to implicitly determine the culture values of rival cities.

(The ♫ will represent culture. It should look like a music-note, if it looks like a box, your browser might hate unicode or something. It it typed by alt+14 on the numpad.)

Things that I have figured out so far:

Tile distance:
-Tile distance is based on what radius the tile is in; the set of tiles that appears as a new layer when your radius expands are all considered to be the same "distance".
-At normal speed,
radius-1 occurs at 0♫,
radius-2 at 10♫,
radius-3 at 100♫,
radius-4 at 500♫,
radius-5 at 5,000♫,
radius-6 at 50,000♫.
I am unsure what the next one is. The city-itself will be referred to as radius-0.
-The relative effect of culture decreases with distance. It might be a fixed multiplier for every further distance out, but this requires testing.
-I believe that the city itself is considered to be the same radius as the 8 surrounding tiles it has initially.
-A tile at radius-3 from a city with 100 culture and radius-2 from a city with 10 culture split control 50/50. (This I measured in the WB)

Culture Level:
-The more culture a city has, the greater it's influence on any given tile.
-As a city's radius expands, it can then extend it's influence into further surrounding tiles.
-I do not believe that the maximum radius of a city has any other effect on cultural influence other than extending it's reach. A 99♫ city will exert about the same influence on a tile as a 100♫ city (numbers based on normal speed.)

Actual tile influence:
-I believe that for every tile there is a "control value" based on ♫ and distance.
-Whoever has the biggest control# gains ownership of the tile. In a multi-civ confrontation, simply having more than any other is sufficient, a majority is not necessary.
-I believe the %Control of a tile is determined by the ratio of these control numbers.

Culture Rate:
-Other than affecting the speed at which you accrue culture-points in your city, I do not believe this affects tile-control in aby direct fashion.

Time delays:
-Culture from captured cities does not disappear immediately, but only over time. The total native culture of a captured city persists and affects your control of tiles.
-When a drastic change in culture occurs, like the capturing of a city, the full effect doesn't seem to appear until the next turn.
-I do not believe that the amount of time you have controlled a tile makes a difference on its ownership, merely whether you have ever had influence there or not.
-In the rare case that there is a perfect tie for cultural control of a tile, whoever controlled it first wins.

As I get new and better information, I will update this post. Hopefully, we may even determine the explicit formula...wouldn't that be grand? If I get enough verifiable quality data here, maybe this could even go in the articles!

[Artanis]

Based on what I've seen using the debugging tools, here's some stuff on what I think happens:


-Each turn, each city adds culture to every tile in its culture radius. The amount added is equal to the culture per turn output of the city plus an extra few points based on how far away the tile is and what the city's culture radius is (IIRC, there's a post somewhere around here showing exactly what goes on in that regard, such as what those "extra few points" actually equal).
--Incidentally, this is an oft-overlooked advantage of the Creative trait. In the time it takes a non-Creative leader to build a Theatre, a Creative leader can have that city hitting its second border-pop and pumping a minimum 5 Culture per turn, both of which will do a LOT to stop third-party encroachment on your new lands.

-Control of the tile goes to whichever civ has the most total culture in it out of the civs that are have that tile within their cities' theoretical culture radii. This is an important distinction since culture never disappears from a tile as long as the civ remains alive.
--Example: If India puts 10,000 culture into a tile and Russia takes its nearby cities, putting 6 culture into that tile, then India will still have 10,000 culture in that tile to Russia's 6 or so. The tile will indicate "0% Russian" because 6 compared to 10,000 is really f****** small. However, Russia will control the tile because India does not have a city with that tile in its culture radius.
--Further example: Say Russia goes on to wipe India off the map. India's 10,000 culture will disappear from that tile (and from all tiles), so the tile will indicate "100% Russian" because the tile now has 6 Russian culture but 0 Indian culture.

-Total culture within the tile is all that matters, and distance has no effect on what the culture does. However, as I said, distance appears to alter how much culture is placed into the tile in the first place. Incidentally, this is why culture bombs do not do much to mature borders: hitting a tile with 4,000 Russian culture will do nothing when India has had enough time to pump 10,000 of its own culture into that tile.




...hope that helps

[Hans Lemurson]

Originally Posted by Artanis

-Each turn, each city adds culture to every tile in its culture radius. The amount added is equal to the culture per turn output of the city plus an extra few points based on how far away the tile is and what the city's culture radius is (IIRC, there's a post somewhere around here showing exactly what goes on in that regard, such as what those "extra few points" actually equal).
--Incidentally, this is an oft-overlooked advantage of the Creative trait. In the time it takes a non-Creative leader to build a Theatre, a Creative leader can have that city hitting its second border-pop and pumping a minimum 5 Culture per turn, both of which will do a LOT to stop third-party encroachment on your new lands.

My theory says that cultural control is based on the total amount of culture a city has, modified by distance, but your theory does indeed sound plausible. Adding the same amount of culture to every tile for every turn it is within your influence could have a similar effect, since farther tiles will have had less time to accumulate culture. I will have to think of an experiment to differentiate between the two.

-Control of the tile goes to whichever civ has the most total culture in it out of the civs that are have that tile within their cities' theoretical culture radii. This is an important distinction since culture never disappears from a tile as long as the civ remains alive.

I think I said something to this effect, though perhaps in less explicit terms.

--Example: If India puts 10,000 culture into a tile and Russia takes its nearby cities, putting 6 culture into that tile, then India will still have 10,000 culture in that tile to Russia's 6 or so. The tile will indicate "0% Russian" because 6 compared to 10,000 is really f****** small. However, Russia will control the tile because India does not have a city with that tile in its culture radius.
--Further example: Say Russia goes on to wipe India off the map. India's 10,000 culture will disappear from that tile (and from all tiles), so the tile will indicate "100% Russian" because the tile now has 6 Russian culture but 0 Indian culture.

Again, I may have said something about it, but perhaps not explicitly. I know I've noticed it!

-Total culture within the tile is all that matters, and distance has no effect on what the culture does. However, as I said, distance appears to alter how much culture is placed into the tile in the first place. Incidentally, this is why culture bombs do not do much to mature borders: hitting a tile with 4,000 Russian culture will do nothing when India has had enough time to pump 10,000 of its own culture into that tile.

Hmm...so you are saying that if half of my city's radius is being consumed by a culture-monster which has accrued 10,000 culture-points in these tiles, unless I can myself pump out 10k♫ I will never control those tiles.

This rather flies in the face of my total+distance theory, but does seem a lot simpler and explains well many of the discrepancies I have seen. It also seems to work better game-wise, since by my theory culturally dominating a tile would be next to impossible.

The general formula for cultural influence on a tile would then seem to be: C=T-Rc, where C is the cultural value on the tile, T is the city's total culture, and Rc is the "Radius-cost"; the amount of culture required to expand to that radius.

I like this, it is waaay simpler, but I'll have to perform an experiment to determine it for sure! (Or you could post the results of your own experiments.)

[dutchfire]

Hmm...so you are saying that if half of my city's radius is being consumed by a culture-monster which has accrued 10,000 culture-points in these tiles, unless I can myself pump out 10k♫ I will never control those tiles.

out of the civs that are have that tile within their cities' theoretical culture radii.

I guess he has already explained this, you won't controll the tile unless the other civ hasn't got a city with a culture radius reaching the tile

[DaveMcW]

Originally Posted by Hans Lemurson

Hmm...so you are saying that if half of my city's radius is being consumed by a culture-monster which has accrued 10,000 culture-points in these tiles, unless I can myself pump out 10k♫ I will never control those tiles.

His quote is a bit confusing, but I think distance still matters. You may only need 1000 culture to regain control of the first-ring tiles.

[kamigawan]

Originally Posted by Hans Lemurson

Things that I have figured out so far:

Actual tile influence:
-I believe that for every tile there is a "control value" based on ♫ and distance.
-Whoever has the biggest control# gains ownership of the tile. In a multi-civ confrontation, simply having more than any other is sufficient, a majority is not necessary.

This "control value" is equal to the % nationality. To see this value, mouse over any tile. The % nationality of the controlling nation is displayed. For cities, a detailed breakdown of each nationality is displayed. To control any given tile, the tile must be within the cultural borders of one of your cities and you must have more % nationality than any other civ who also has that tile within its cultural borders. So for a tile overlapping an enemy city, you need 50% +1.

Culture Rate:
-Other than affecting the speed at which you accrue culture-points in your city, I do not believe this affects tile-control in aby direct fashion.

Your influence over individual tiles IS directly affected by the cultural output of your nearby city. This is because individual tiles also accumulate culture in a way analagous to cities themselves, but not at full value. When your borders first expand to encompass a tile, that tile begins receiving culture from your nearby city, at a rate proportional to the cultural output of that city (handicapped by distance). The culture that tile receives contributes to swaying the %nationality of that tile. And % nationality determines ownership.

Time delays:
-I do not believe that the amount of time you have controlled a tile makes a difference on its ownership, merely whether you have ever had influence there or not.

errr...not exactly, the amount of time does matter to ownership, because you can only affect % nationality (the deciding factor of ownership) over a period of time unless you use a culture bomb. You need to generate culture on a tile in order to change its nationality. If you just capture a new city, all surrounding tiles will be around 100% enemy nationality. In order to reduce that number, you have to build your own culture there.

[snepp]

Originally Posted by kamigawan

Your influence over individual tiles IS directly affected by the cultural output of your nearby city. This is because individual tiles also accumulate culture in a way analagous to cities themselves, but not at full value. When your borders first expand to encompass a tile, that tile begins receiving culture from your nearby city, at a rate proportional to the cultural output of that city (handicapped by distance).

Cosigned. Here's a post of my observations, with some numbers (old post, pre-patches).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...79#post3315279

Basically, the outer-most ring (or expansion) accumulates culture at the same rate the city produces it, while the inner rings get a bump.

[TheNiceOne]

Originally Posted by Hans Lemurson

-At normal speed,
radius-1 occurs at 0♫,
radius-2 at 10♫,
radius-3 at 100♫,
radius-4 at 500♫,
radius-5 at 5,000♫,
radius-6 at 50,000♫.
I am unsure what the next one is.

There is no "next one". After having reached 50,000 culture, the culture bar in the city display will remain full, and display the current culture, but there is no new level.

I discovered this disappointment when I played an OCC game on noble. My city had achived more than 260,000 culture at the end.