Cultural Events

[dagriggstar]

My starting point for this idea was that I've never seen a suggestion for a politics/culture mechanic that could be explained to a new player in a single sentence. So I was thinking about what to do with culture, especially early game culture.

A cultural event is (almost always) a one-time bonus you get from accumulating culture points. A simple example would be "great migration" - gain a free settler. There are no perquisites/trees (although starting culture costs vary) and events are repeatable (with escalating costs). This system could supersede needing great person points and even faith as a separate yield (Using "recruit great person" and various religious events instead).

The objective is to have a system that new players will get gameplay benefits from by simply playing 'naturally' (without a super clear idea what they are doing, just sort of along for the ride) and without being overwhelmed by having to consider more than about 5 turns into the future.

I'm thinking of this as an early and mid-game mechanic. We can save political systems as a late-game mechanic to shake up the world as it did in V.

 

[AffineConstant]

I'm a bit lost, do you "buy" these with cultural points? The core tenet of Sid Meir, and thus Civ as a series, is "good gameplay is a series of interesting decisions". And I'm not seeing a decision clearly here, let alone an interesting one, though I'm not sure exactly sure what you mean by these "cultural events" to begin with.

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

I remember a few policy trees in Civ 5 giving you a "free" something or other. Is that what you're saying?

 

[pokiehl]

I’m confused. Culture literally always has a purpose, from turn 1.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

This sounds similar to the 2010 board game version of the culture part of the game. You would accumulate culture and then spend that to move up the cultural path, drawing cultural events cards and recruiting great people. I don't know if I'd like to see something similar implemented in the computer game.

 

[dagriggstar]

A cultural event is a one-turn bonus that boosts your civilization in some way. It could be a free unit, burst of science, extra movement, great person, map reveal, burst of religious pressure etc.

1) Accumulate culture points
2) Buy cultural events

The choice is that different events cost different amounts of culture points, but they are repeatable (adding extra cost each time). So you might be choosing between a free settler now for 50 culture or (the most extreme case I can possibly think of) saving up for 1000 to unlock the next era of technologies. In that case, you weigh up if era advancement is worth 20x more than expansion. Or say, you're aiming for "trade mission" (earns a great merchant) but another faction starts threatening a city of yours, you might spend your culture points instead on "rousing speech", give your units +25% strength for one turn but delaying and potentially losing out on the great merchant you were aiming for (since you lose the accumulated culture points by having to spend them on "rousing speech")
Basically how faith works, except we don't need to use faith as a yield as it would be folded into this system.

Yeah it is similar to the board game, although I don't envision it being related to cultural victory like it is there.

I'm not suggesting this because culture is or ever has been pointless in a game. I'm suggesting this because explaining governments/policy cards/social policies/civics is always one of, if not the, hardest thing in my experience to explain to a new player. One-off bonuses (free units) is easier to explain than "if you decide you want to produce a mounted unit with this you can make it faster but you're stuck with this choice for the next y turns" (Then if they decide not to make a mounted unit they feel like they're playing badly and get discouraged).
Obviously I have to question whether this is actually easy enough to understand now given the confusion in the thread......

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A cultural event is a one-turn bonus that boosts your civilization in some way. It could be a free unit, burst of science, extra movement, great person, map reveal, burst of religious pressure etc.

IF the 'event' includes Units, Religion, Science, Map (exploration), etc. what limits it to a Cultural Event?

Why not simply label it, say, an Event, and require a decision on the gamer's part to get something out of it, or to see which of several things you might get out of it. That would make it equivalent to EU's "Events and Decisions", which was modded into Civ V many years ago and which provided a nice bit of variety to the game.

Example: you are told that a wandering bunch of mercenaries are at the border.
Your choices:
1. Hire them - get an extra Unit or two, but you have to pay Maintenance on them.
2. Offer to let them settle down on some of your un-worked tiles - get 1 or more new Population points.
3. Suggest to them that your neighbor has some very profitable tiles to loot and he isn't watching them very closely - your neighbor (Civ, City State) gets a Barbarian raid. Of course, the mercenaries may decide that was so profitable that they will try it again - on your territory.

The point is that each Event has more than one potential outcome, which are dependent on your choice. None would or should be Game Changing, but they provide little boosts and potentially, if you chose wrong, an annoyance.

 

[dagriggstar]

I was thinking of internal "events" that reflect the culture of the faction you are playing (since you are choosing the events).

I guess I was trying to answer the question "what can be done with culture that is easy for new players to understand, right from the start of the game?". So something easier to grasp/understand than social policies or policy cards or civics.

Once we get into random event territory with triggers and decisions and decision trees I feel like we add complexity that isn't needed.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I was thinking of internal "events" that reflect the culture of the faction you are playing (since you are choosing the events).

I guess I was trying to answer the question "what can be done with culture that is easy for new players to understand, right from the start of the game?". So something easier to grasp/understand than social policies or policy cards or civics.

Once we get into random event territory with triggers and decisions and decision trees I feel like we add complexity that isn't needed.

I'm all for historical events that will change depending on the choices you make.
But I don't think it should replace the idea of governing your civilization. I know you mentioned political systems late game, but it's not like political systems didn't exist until the 19th century with the rise of modern day ideologies.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I'm all for historical events that will change depending on the choices you make.
But I don't think it should replace the idea of governing your civilization. I know you mentioned political systems late game, but it's not like political systems didn't exist until the 19th century with the rise of modern day ideologies.

In fact, as I think I've pointed out before somewhere in the Forum, the names for most of our government types date back to Classical Greece: Democracy - rule by the (common) people; Theocracy - rule by Priests; Aristocracy - rule by the 'best people'; Kakistocracy - rule by the Worst People; Kleptocracy - rule by Thieves (still by far the most common form of government!); Tyranny - originally, simply rule by someone who grabbed power by illegal means, not necessarily a 'bad' ruler.

And, of course, many of those far predate Classical Greece: Uruk in Sumer had over 80,000 people by 3000 BCE, so it had to have something far more complex than a simple Chief giving orders to make it work: record-keeping dates back to before the beginning of Writing in the form of warehouse lists of numbers with symbols indicating what they are numbering, so 'bureaucracy' was another very, very early governmental apparatus.