Can you actually lose cultural tiles in ciV?

[gladoscc]

I haven't ever seen one of my cities lose a tile for the borders. Can this happen, or is this dumbed down again?

[builer680]

Originally Posted by gladoscc

I haven't ever seen one of my cities lose a tile for the borders. Can this happen, or is this dumbed down again?

Only if an AI Great Artist comes up and culture bombs you. Cities no longer 'push' against each as they used to. Similarly, new foreign cities no longer carve off a few tiles when founded next to your border.

[tenkk]

well that really sucks.. whats the deal with switching from cultural expansion to buying tiles and culture bombs? i am starting to notice how badly civ5 blows

[Montov]

Originally Posted by tenkk

how badly civ5 blows

I agree, civ5 is great.

Borders are much more realistic and playable than civ4. No more sudden border explosion to a big fat cross, but a smooth gradually developing border with 1 tile at a time. A city can have a bigger land area, the speed of bordergrowth can be helped by a policy, a unique building (Krepost), a unique ability (American) or by buying tiles. No more constant cultural border fight (which was annoying and difficult to control), but through Great Artists you can change borders.

Which version is dumbed down you say?

[anandus]

You could use Cultural Diffusion if you want to have it Civ 4-style

[Babri]

Originally Posted by Montov

I agree, civ5 is great.

Borders are much more realistic and playable than civ4. No more sudden border explosion to a big fat cross, but a smooth gradually developing border with 1 tile at a time. A city can have a bigger land area, the speed of bordergrowth can be helped by a policy, a unique building (Krepost), a unique ability (American) or by buying tiles. No more constant cultural border fight (which was annoying and difficult to control), but through Great Artists you can change borders.

Which version is dumbed down you say?

It was really annoying when u started conquering in cIV & the conquered cities were unable to work any good tiles due to cultural borders which would favour the old owner too much.

[tenkk]

Originally Posted by Babri

It was really annoying when u started conquering in cIV & the conquered cities were unable to work any good tiles due to cultural borders which would favour the old owner too much.

Maybe they were reluctant to work since they were conquered. Hell I remember the days when if you joined a captured worker or settler to a city that citizen would always reflect its civ.

Regards civ 4 if you captured an enemy city, part of the challenge was to hold it and pay money, fell forests etc to speed up happiness buildings to win them over and eventually increase the borders.

annoying but better yo

[Ellye]

Originally Posted by tenkk

Maybe they were reluctant to work since they were conquered. Hell I remember the days when if you joined a captured worker or settler to a city that citizen would always reflect its civ.

Regards civ 4 if you captured an enemy city, part of the challenge was to hold it and pay money, fell forests etc to speed up happiness buildings to win them over and eventually increase the borders.

annoying but better yo

"Annoying but better" makes no sense at all in game design.
Work is annoying. Games should be entertaining.


Also, I feel that the Civ5 way of dealing with borders feel much, much more natural than Civ4. It's more intuitive and streamlined.

[Akka]

Originally Posted by Ellye

"Annoying but better" makes no sense at all in game design.
Work is annoying. Games should be entertaining.

Limitations can be annoying and still much more entertaining. That's actually their point, to increase fun through forcing you finding way around them.

So yes, it DOES make sense.

[Ellye]

Originally Posted by Akka

Limitations can be annoying and still much more entertaining. That's actually their point, to increase fun through forcing you finding way around them.

So yes, it DOES make sense.

A limitation is one thing, and often, indeed, a good one - even more so for strategy games.

An annoying limitation is different, though. It might have been just a bad choice of words for the post I quoted, but nonetheless, I repeat: games shouldn't be annoying, ever.

(I, personally, don't find the Civ4 Culture system to be annoying, and find it valid and interesting on it's own way. But I do prefer Civ5 culture.)

[HappyBuilder]

A certain strategy element has been lost. The culture battles of Civ IV could get really heated as you fought to maintain control of your borders. It was an added strategic element. You could also do it reasonably peacefully. It was a Cold War, but it didn't automatically trigger a reaction. Dropping a culture bomb now can have immediate consequences.

I used to enjoy overwhelming other civs culturally and watch their land (and eventually their cities) defect to me. I wouldn't mind seeing it return in Civ V.

HB

[Ford]

I don't like the idea that a city's WHOLE cultural border gets taken over after being conquered. It would make more sense to just have the original 1 layer hex; the other, expanded parts should just fall back to empty no-man's-land like after a city has been razed, to be claimed again.
Apart from that, the border growing and expansion system in CiV is much better than CIV (IMHO).

[headcase]

What they really need is the ability to negotiate tiles in trades (most often, as tribute or to get a peace treaty), but yeah, I liked the "pushing" too.

[jbevermore]

I rather think Civ 4 went to far with culture. I liked how culture had a serious impact on borders and was critical to managing a strong city, but at the same time it made conquest of high culture targets almost impossible, you take a city and it flips back two turns after it comes out of revolt. And even if you held on to it.

At the same time taking that away was, I think, a mistake in Civ 5. I like the organic border expansion much, much more then the standard fat cross but I do wish there was a way to take tiles from an AI without going to war. Someone else suggested negotiating tiles in diplomacy, I think it's a fantastic idea. Got tons of iron? Sell a tile to Rome in exchange for a cotton tile.

[timtofly]

A culture bomb is not a declaration of war. It may be a tipping point, but not a declaration. If you are that close to an AI to steal their land, then they already do not like you, even if you are friends. If you are friends then your stealing their land is the best excuse for them to declare war.

Also when one starts chipping away at an AI civ, taking another city does not mean you are going to get all of that cities land. In fact you only get one or two tiles in their direction unless their cities are really far apart. Using a great artist to then get more land is not going to start a war, unless you have to wait to do so after a truce is called. Sometimes you need to get land that does not have fallout on it if your workers cannot safely clean closer tiles.

[Fluffball]

Culture wars were kind of interesting but were in a sense self defeating because you would have to focus a cities output to culture to stop it being overtaken but it's sole purpose was to build culture which was only benificial to itself. There were niche time this was actually worthwhile.e.g. if there was a tasty resource 1 tile into the enemy borders but you would be better served simply taking the city attached to it.
And moving onto why it was really bad is that if you captured a city, especially in the mid-game or later, you effectively activated a countdown in which you had to take the cities bordering it or there would be no available tiles for it to work and it would starve to death.
There was also the fact it you wanted a single city for example you couldn't just take that one city, you had to capture and burn all cites around it before you accepted peace or again the city would have no tiles to work and starve to death.

For the current system, the only improvement i would add which i expected when they announced you could buy tiles, is that you can buy/trade tiles with another civ.

[Tabarnak]

Civ4 culture spreading was pretty bad implemented. In multiplayer games, when you conquer a city and you can't keep it because the capital was engulfing every satellite cities and you have to raze all of them. It's a less worse in sp mode, but still annoying.

How this is supposely translate the real world? Who really think that Hitler razed cities around Paris because ''culture'' was too annoying to conquer even more cities and eventually Paris? wtf is that?

Way better with Civ5 and tile per tile spreading.

[tenkk]

Originally Posted by Ellye

It might have been just a bad choice of words for the post I quoted, but nonetheless, I repeat: games shouldn't be annoying, ever.

Well I myself quoted Babri's use of the word "annoying". What he suggests is annoying and you also agree with is to me entertaining. That was part of the stuff we used to do before we just pressed Next Turn.. fixing up cities and the like. I can imagine the culture system may be better for MP, but personally I never tried it and wouldnt so only speak for SP.

[turtlefang]

IMO, culture far better implemented in CiV than CIV. Cities don't just flip - and borders very rarely change except as a direct result of conflict. So the whole cultural war gig was annoying in CIV. And having to raze cities just to keep cities, as Tabarnak pointed out made no sense at all.

The only issue I would like to change with CiV is the ability to buy hexes a little further out - especially when you have a strategic resource four or five hexes out and you can't buy it - or the expansion will take forever. In this case, I miss the whole outpost thing, I think, from Civ III.

[Schalke 04]

Originally Posted by turtlefang

In this case, I miss the whole outpost thing, I think, from Civ III.

The only purpose of the outpost was to clear the fog of war. You could use a worker to build a colony outside of your territory, to connect a ressource to your empire. However, you normally didn't need to do it, because it was always a better idea to settle a city instead.

Here in Civ 5 such a colony would be a great idea, as settling new cities comes with a lot of costs and is not always the best idea.