C2C Cultures Discussion

[TrippedOnACloud]

Per http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=565281, I figured I'd open up a new thread to discuss some stuff relating to Cultures. Bear in mind, I prefer to play with Unlimited Wonders without the various Combat Mod options. Unlimited Wonders in particular makes a huge difference.

First off, there's three three main benefits to the assorted Culture wonders, so let's take each of those individually:
1. Culture Units - I don't see these as being an issue, as things currently stand. Possibly Combat Mod options might drastically change these, but in general the limit of 15 and fairly modest bonuses compared to contemporary units makes them limited in their effect. Possible exception for a few of the very early 7-strength units, but even those are generally manageable.
2. Wonder Construction Speed- Negligible effect in most situations, I believe. Maybe some shifting around between the first set and the more recent additions, to account for successor cultures or grouped cultures, but not a big deal either way.
3. Heroes - This is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.
Most cultures having a Hero unit is fine, and interesting. The problem arises when each one can be settled as a Great Military Instructor, which is a very strong permanent bonus to a military city. I find it's not unusual for me to be able to plant dozens of them, at least, in my primary unit production city. My current capital has something like 150 GMIs at this point, in early Industrial. My troops are basically unstoppable gods of war.
A pass definitely needs to be made limiting or adjusting what each Hero can settle as, or possibly some mechanism for decreasing returns on stacking GMIs or some other form of attached penalty. Not sure what can and can't be done within the engine, though. For example, is -% Military Unit Production per GMI doable? Something like -2% per GMI seems like it'd work out reasonably.

Also, with the addition of so many new cultures, I think it's feasible to bring back the more complex requirements for the culture wonders. Currently, I believe all cultures have a requirement of a culture group, a single resource, and sometimes a terrain requirement. I'd say that given the much larger number of available cultures, two-resource or two-terrain cultures are once again feasible.

Contributing to culture overload is how the Native Cultures work. Taking and holding a single city of another culture group is enough to open up that group for all cities you own. I've often found myself buying a single just-settled marginal city from a distant AI for the sole purpose of culture group access. Possibly change them to function per-continent instead of globally? That is, change Native Culture (European) to give a Culture (European) to all cities on the same continent, instead of all cities globally, for example.


The other major item I wanted to bring up:
The current Cultures for the Chinese historical periods are a bit of a mess. "Three Kingdoms" as a single culture is absurd, and the current "Chinese" is far too general and should probably be removed. The same thing probably applies to some of the other current cultures, but being Chinese myself it stands out more. I'd recommend the following, trying to minimize work needed but still be somewhat accurate:
Xia - Unchanged
Qin - Early Zhuge Nu - Shang Yang (name changed on unit, current Zhuge No)
Han - (some unit, roughly late Classical to early Medieval)* - Liu Bang*
(Three Kingdoms - split into Wu, Shu, Wei)
Wu - Doujian - Guan Yu (unit from current Three Kingdoms)
Shu - Zhuge Nu - Zhuge Liang (name changed on unit, current Cho Ko Nu)
Wei - (some unit, roughly mid Medieval)* - Cao Cao
Tang - Unchanged
Ming - Treasure Ship - Zheng He, Wanli (Zheng He from current Chinese)
Qing - Unchanged
People's Republic of China - Red Guard (Infantry)* - Mao Zedong*
I'm not sure what graphical assets are available or how much work would be required on that end, though. * would be new units. As a stopgap, the National Units can just use the same graphics as their generic Chinese equivalents, Liu Bang can be a renamed Abaoji, and Mao can reuse Yamamoto's graphic I suppose.

So... thoughts? Discussions?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

You did not mention the special manufactured trade goods some cultures give.

Heroes are a special Great Person. Some can be any GP but others not. I think most can be Great General. Some maybe should be changed from Great Generals to Great Admirals or Airmen instead. I don't think we have done that yet.

I did start work on a mod to turn off the hero in each culture that could not be used for the Achievement wonders as I felt you should only get both if you are playing with the Commanders option.

The idea was that a culture should give a hero that can build Achievements and 2 of the following

• hero
• special unit (combat, diplomat, spy, merchant, worker)
• trade good
• special plot improvement (currently we only have these on wonders)
• special promotions

There may be other options we should consider.

(I have experimented with replacing the special worker with a single bonus that is required to build the improvement and it works well. That means that all the workers in the nation get the ability, which works better in my opinion.)

Liangzhu is one of the cultures with special trade goods and is not mentioned in your list of Chinese historical Cultures. And yes it is a mess

 

[MacCoise]

Not a big fan of Heroes or bonuses for wonders. Would prefer unique buildings

Unique Units are great fun though

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

You did not mention the special manufactured trade goods some cultures give.

Oops. Particularly embarassing when one of those trade goods is Ming Vases.

Heroes are a special Great Person. Some can be any GP but others not. I think most can be Great General. Some maybe should be changed from Great Generals to Great Admirals or Airmen instead. I don't think we have done that yet.

Currently, all can be Great Generals; none are Great Admirals or Airmen. I don't know if others share the same opinion, but I feel like the value of +XP to all future units vastly outweighs the other Great Specialists.

The idea was that a culture should give a hero that can build Achievements and 2 of the following

• hero
• special unit (combat, diplomat, spy, merchant, worker)
• trade good
• special plot improvement (currently we only have these on wonders)
• special promotions

Good to know what the overall plan is meant to be.

Liangzhu is one of the cultures with special trade goods and is not mentioned in your list of Chinese historical Cultures. And yes it is a mess

Yeah, missed that one, along with a few others that probably count. Still, my main quibbles with that group are with the umbrella Chinese, Three Kingdoms, and lack of Han and PRC.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Currently, all can be Great Generals; none are Great Admirals or Airmen. I don't know if others share the same opinion, but I feel like the value of +XP to all future units vastly outweighs the other Great Specialists.

Great Generals do not give xp to all units. Only combatants (land combatants at that.) Admirals give xp to naval and Airmen to Air units (though some of that may still yet need to be defined properly.)

Yeah, missed that one, along with a few others that probably count. Still, my main quibbles with that group are with the umbrella Chinese, Three Kingdoms, and lack of Han and PRC.

Chinese as a whole is what modern China would have adopted now in the real world. Envision a game where you declare your culture as your nation's name and it can change as the game progresses. That's where we're going with this eventually.

 

[Taxman66]

I'd like to see some kind of limiting factor on cultures (and religions too). There'd be only so much tolerance before major issues arise. Even more so with religions which historically (until the modern age) actively worked to wipe out competitors.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Even more so with religions which historically (until the modern age) actively worked to wipe out competitors.

Not true with most polytheistic religions where they tended to either say "this is just another representation of our god X but their party is better, lets use that" or "this is a much more interesting god lets add it to our pantheon". I exaggerate of course.

The current set of Cultures is a good start but it is just that. Now that we see how they work we should have a look at how they can better be used.

Johny Smith had a suggestion about evolving Cultures where when you get to a point you get to choose one from a number of cultures that you nation gets. It can never get the ones it does not choose except through conquest and then only if another nation choose that culture, as they may choose the same culture as you did if they have the same circumstances at the time of the choice.

Then there is the idea of precursor cultures which is slightly represented in C2C already but could be expanded upon. For example both China and Taiwan could require at least one of Tang, Ming or Quin. Each of those three requiring one of Wu, Shu or Wei. This would be in addition to the required vicinity bonus, vicinity terrain, vicinity terrain feature or animal myth.

As to the relationships between Cultures both within and between nations (Religions also) this will take a lot of work in just defining how the various ones interact. Until someone understands Rev (which I think was working fine until extra functionality was added way back in RoM days) we can't use that mechanic which was ideal for such internal strife.

All of this is a lot of work that needs someone to dedicate some time to just to get an initial set of suggestions up for discussion.

BTW @Sparth you recently added a number of Cultures with new merchant units. Might it be possible to have something like a Merchant Tradition instead in some cases. This tradition would give access to a set of promotions for all the merchant units increasing speed, strength or return. I don't think we have tags for the latter yet.

 

[Taxman66]

From a game balance point of view stacking religion after religion after religion is not good and just contributes to more snowball. Same goes with cultures. Additionally what you described with polythestic religions isn't what is represented in tbe game where you can stack all the pretty buildings.

 

[JosEPh_II]

There are Options at Game set up and in BUG that changes this. I'm sure you are aware that you don't have to "stack" religions if you don't want to.

So what's the beef?

JosEPh

 

[Noriad2]

Latest SVN has a lot more cultures than v36. Not something I'm complaining about but if this inflation of cultures continues, perhaps more culture groups should be added, like Central American in addition to North and South American, splitting African in Northern African and Sub Sahara African, splitting Europe into North/South/West/East/Central Europe etc.

That would make it harder to "catch them all" so to say...Especially with Neanderthal cities often surviving past medieval times, blocking the emergence of "normal" barbarian cities and thus new barbarian civs.

The increased number of cultures leads to larger numbers of leaders that can be settled in your military city, adding an unbalanced amount of +startingXP to military units.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Sparth's New Cultures reside in the My_Mods module. If a player wishes they can be put into the My_Mods (Unloaded) and not be used. Simple cut/paste.

These new cultures do add a Bunch of new units. I also find it odd that Taiga and Tundra cities get African Cultures. 1 of my test games I've already added 5 or more of these to my cities in these terrain areas.

They also make good trade bait for the AI. Especailly if you have Tech Diffusion turned Off.

JosEPh

 

[Noriad2]

There are Options at Game set up and in BUG that changes this. I'm sure you are aware that you don't have to "stack" religions if you don't want to.

So what's the beef?

JosEPh

It is the job of the player to use everything and anything at his disposal to win. It is the job of the game designer to balance player freedoms/agency with opposition/barriers to winning. Telling the player to decide his own barriers during play ("you don't have to do that") forces the player to wear the "hat" of a player and the "hat" of the game designer at the same time. That is not optimal (at least after game setup). It is a sign of bad game design. After the game is set up, the player should ONLY wear the hat of a player.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I will have to disagree.

JosEPh

 

[tmv]

@Noriad2: This is not as farfetched as you might think, as you can see here: http://www.scenariogenerator.net/

By now there are 36 different games (not Civ 4, but for some reason Civ 5), where a random generator can offer you a certain constraint to play this game.

 

[Taxman66]

In my opinion the truth lies somewhere between your positions.

Personally, I don't see any options that effectively stop religion stacking (but IMO, all it takes is 3 or 4 of them much less 7, 8+) to start enhancing a snowball over the AI. Heck I've played games where I didn't get any religion (on purpose), except ones the AI spread to me, until Hellenism (which seems to come rather late btw).

And as for polytheistic religious acceptance, I think that is the exception and in all the cases I'm aware of it's not a situation of multiple religions, but rather some level of incorporating it into the existing religion. Frex: We don't have separate religions for the Roman version of Hellenism vs. the Greek version and to be honest I can't think of any other situation of polytheistic cross acceptance of religion. I can think of loads and loads of hostility between religions, and not just involving the monotheistic ones either.

As for the cultures, it's not the units per se. Though it does easily come to the point where you never seem to have to build anything but the special units. I don't recall ever building a regular swordsman... ever. No, the bigger problem is the number of heroes you get. It means getting the special accomplishments all pumped out by the end of the classic period and it means a ton of extra XP once the base units start to be in the combat value same class as the early leaders. Or heck if you want you can turn some of them into scientists too.

Lastly, in these cases I think 'Less is More' applies. Again just my opinion, but I believe it would add to the uniqueness if each game didn't have every single religion and every single culture represented.

 

[Dragonmosesj]

I'd like to see some kind of limiting factor on cultures (and religions too). There'd be only so much tolerance before major issues arise. Even more so with religions which historically (until the modern age) actively worked to wipe out competitors.

Perhaps Some of the more intolerant religions get a event if there's other major religions in your cities?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Perhaps Some of the more intolerant religions get a event if there's other major religions in your cities?

The problem with that is that religions go through periods of toleration and intolerance eg The Inquisition was one period of intolerance in Christianity. Earlier the Muslim world was very tolerant, at least towards others of The Book of Abraham ie Jews and the various Christians.

 

[Noriad2]

Earlier the Muslim world was very tolerant, at least towards others of The Book of Abraham ie Jews and the various Christians.

Apparently you have fallen hook line and sinker for old muslim war propaganda lies.
Islam has always been oppressive to non-muslims (as soon as they got the upper hand militarily). This old muslim war propaganda is nowadays copied by globalists who want to justify mass migration from the third world to the West, and naive leftist multiculturalists.

The muslim occupation of Spain is usually painted as some kind of multicultural paradise. In reality there are hundreds of recorded military battles throughout the period, many of which were spontaneous rebellions by the population against muslim slavers.

Also, in the below video, the myth of the peaceful invasion of Spain was checked against original historical sources from the period and was found to be wrong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhlvJ7jyYBg

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Tenth Century Spain, documentation from the Norse Sagas, people who were not even of The Book at the time.

Not talking about wars, rebellions or invasions they always involve death of innocents and give a skewed view. There were times of peace and prosperity even in the Emirate of Córdoba.

Slave trade, meh, was a way of life - woe be it to you if you were a red head in those days; the Vikings would sell you to the Muslims to fund their Grand Tour.

 

[Thunderbrd]

It's an interesting point that religions, as organizations or ethnic groups, have had varying degrees of tolerance towards one another. It's only been in the last few decades that Muslim faith has conflicted so directly with Buddhist by destroying temples and statues dedicated to the Buddha. This could be a factor we build into the ideas system somehow, possibly through advanced interaction with the platform of rev that we have once we get advanced enough to do so.