Cultural Influences Mod

[kairob]

What do people think of using the Cultural Influences Mod with this one?

[Vishaing]

I have already merged this mod into RFC++, and so far people seem to like everything except starting with only 4 squares of culture, which will have been fixed in the next build.

But i would like other people to post their oppinions to to find potential bugs or trouble spots.

[McA123]

I think it's great, except for the border thing, and even that isn't all bad.

[dafiden]

Well, it certainly makes certain UHV's (e.g. Inca: trying to keep the Europeans out is tough when your borders take so long to expand and you have no culture buildings since all of your production goes to money since you need 5,000 gold by 1700AD) more difficult.

In general, I think the mod is too stingy on border expansion. But, the game unmodded is too generous. Maybe somewhere in between on the number of culture points it takes to expand.

[Tom Veil]

Link to Mod

Personally, I don't like the "shock". I think Vanilla is quite realistic that conquered cities are culturally resistant, and Vanilla makes for a deeper game.

[kairob]

I think the shock is good, look at the turks in istanbul, they have managed to make it thier own so much culture wise that even greeks call it by the turkish name!

[Blasphemous]

I agree, shock is realistic. We definitely need at least a few tweaks to the culture system to make it more realistic, and this modcomp seems to do a good job of it.

[Vishaing]

I am slightly tempted to disable shock because it has an unrealistic effect when combined with the influence driven war. Generally once oyu take a city the opposing civs culture is completely gone, and that is unrealistic. I plan to at least tune down the culture shock and influence conversion to account for the two working together. Expect a better balanced version in the next RFC++ build.

[kairob]

yeah, both of these aspects of the mod try to solve the same problem and so they do it too far when combined...

[lumpthing]

I don't think shock is realistic at all. Look at Quebec as part of Anglophone Canada, or Greece under the Ottoman Empire, or every overseas colony on Earth. Or imagine if Germany had won WW2; would the entire non-German population immediately adopt a new Germanised identity simply because of their military might. It takes a long long time for a culture to forget it's original cultural distinctiveness and decide it doesn't want to be independent any more.

A highly cultured defeated civ's culture should remain the dominant culture for centuries after it has been captured IMHO.

[holy king]

not if cultures defines borders, at least not after nationalism....

[Blasphemous]

Perhaps what should happen is that culture shock as such is removed, but for a while after a city is conquered, the conqueror's culture gets a temporary boost that fades for a while, to represent the conqueror's military control of the area. This culture will fade away quickly, leaving culture as it was, but for a while the conquered city will project the conqueror's control of the area and expand the border.

[McA123]

The Quebec example isn't such a great one... After they were conquered by the English, they were still granted many rights, such as being permitted to remain catholic and for french citizens to be allowed to obtain government offices or something like that. I learnt that one in school a long time ago though, so don't hold me to that.

[Blasphemous]

Actually now it seems to me that Cultural Influences should be made to leave conquests alone, and Influence Driven War should take over in that area because it does it so well.

[Tom Veil]

Originally Posted by kairob

I think the shock is good, look at the turks in istanbul, they have managed to make it thier own so much culture wise that even greeks call it by the turkish name!

It was most certainly NOT the conquest of Constantinople that made the city no longer Greek. It was the 600 years of developing the city into one of the most important cities in the Muslim world, and the single most important city in the Turkish world, that made the city Turkish. Greek culture survived well into the 1920s.

[Tom Veil]

Originally Posted by McA123

The Quebec example isn't such a great one... After they were conquered by the English, they were still granted many rights, such as being permitted to remain catholic and for french citizens to be allowed to obtain government offices or something like that. I learnt that one in school a long time ago though, so don't hold me to that.

Over the course of civilized human history, the vast, vast majority of conquered peoples have had, de facto, the power to retain their own language, customs, and religion. Acculturation was meant to happen by marginalizing the holdouts and rewarding the turncoats, rather than by outlawing the holdouts. It takes a modern totalitarian state to effect cultural change on anything faster than a generational pace.

[captain beaver]

Originally Posted by McA123

The Quebec example isn't such a great one... After they were conquered by the English, they were still granted many rights, such as being permitted to remain catholic and for french citizens to be allowed to obtain government offices or something like that. I learnt that one in school a long time ago though, so don't hold me to that.

Rights which were obtain to make us loyal citizens of the Empire instead of joining the American Revolution . So, it is not as simple as conquerors takes all. Using CIV as analogy, some conquered cities can, in RL, still produce their own distinct culture even after their conquest.
But right now the shock is way overpowered. Nothing is left most of the time and in small cities with only their basic 4 square borders, the loss of culture will make these borders shrink it back to only the city tyle. And then, you really can't do anything with the city.