1412 testing

[Seek]

There is no culture process in Civ5 and it may unbalance things to create it.

 

[albie_123]

I think that's a good idea. I can't really see a downside to giving the player more freedom. Choosing to build culture early to expand borders = less time to create units and buildings, a fair trade off.

For flavour / historical worth, maybe culture should unlock at writing? It's on the same 'tech line', just one column earlier. (I can't remember when science unlocks. If it's also at writing, then ignore this suggestion.)

 

[mitsho]

really there's not? Shame on me. You see I've never used it, but why would it be overpowered? a quick rush to a social policy might just be what we need. Of course we have culture specialists for that, but well..

 

[albie_123]

Get out, really?

How the heck did I not notice that?

 

[Seek]

Science is at Education, IIRC, and Gold is at Commerce. I'd vote for further back in the tech tree - maybe Theology or Acoustics.

I'd be okay with adding it if culture spread was slowed again (I had almost all three rings at t100 with Trad finisher in yesterday's 141.2 game) and later policy costs were raised (I don't think we want to speed up culture wins).

I'd prefer making the great artist's ability actually grant culture though. (With subsequent culture cost balancing of course!)

 

[rfxmills]

Research is at Education and Wealth is at Currency. I'm not a fan of adding Culture as a production option, but if it did have to appear I'd put it in Acoustics.

 

[rfxmills]

I'd prefer making the great artist's ability actually grant culture though. (With subsequent culture cost balancing of course!)

Yeah I think that GA should give a culture boost similar to the GS, they scale by era right? And the "culture bomb" should move to GG to symbolise a successful military campaign to grab land. It would need a new name.

 

[Seek]

Good idea!

Sneaks also had an interesting idea in the Great Works thread (a modcomp that gives culture to culture bombs): make the GA actually create something that can be looted from the city, like how we get culture from conquering a cultural CS.

 

[Txurce]

Science is at Education, IIRC, and Gold is at Commerce. I'd vote for further back in the tech tree - maybe Theology or Acoustics.

I'd be okay with adding it if culture spread was slowed again (I had almost all three rings at t100 with Trad finisher in yesterday's 141.2 game) and later policy costs were raised (I don't think we want to speed up culture wins).

I'd prefer making the great artist's ability actually grant culture though. (With subsequent culture cost balancing of course!)

Research is at Education and Wealth is at Currency. I'm not a fan of adding Culture as a production option, but if it did have to appear I'd put it in Acoustics.

Count me in as preferring not to add this, and to adding it later if we do.

And I want to second that cultural expansion has speeded up quite a bit as of v142.3, and that tile purchasing is way too cheap.

 

[albie_123]

I like the idea of it being lootable. Not 100% sure how it would play out, though - at the very least, there would have to be a 'You have looted Mozart's Symphony from Berlin!' alert, so the player doesn't just get a big lump of culture without realising what's happened.

Frankly I think the idea of a 'culture bomb' used to grab tiles isn't very good in the first place. I know it was mentioned a long time ago (I think it was one of those 'Wait for the SDK' things) where forts would give a one-tile radius of land and Citadels would give a two-tile radius, effectively giving the role of the land-grab GP to the GG.

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

And I want to second that cultural expansion has speeded up quite a bit as of v142.3, and that tile purchasing is way too cheap.

Me too!

In my actual game 142.3 I run in a situation were Polynesia is buying CSs like crazy with gold they can not have produced (even trade + GM is unrealistic). I added the logfile perhaps Thal can use it to find the reason for this.

 

[Txurce]

In my actual game 142.3 I run in a situation were Polynesia is buying CSs like crazy with gold they can not have produced (even trade + GM is unrealistic). I added the logfile perhaps Thal can use it to find the reason for this.

That's too bad, since you didn't have the problem last game. I haven't encountered it yet on my v142.3 game, but it's partly because the AI hasn't spread as much. Around what turn did the AI start their buying spree?

 

[Zaldron]

In a typical city, at this point I buy 1-3 tiles. This includes tiles towards other civs with ressources and natural wonders or tiles with strategic values. Afterwards, there's no need to buy a tile unless a settler is trying to sneak by and I'd rather use the gold for buying buildings or units that I need.

We can build culture in a city. What if that is available earlier and also lowers the threshold of tile aquisition so that it'd be really strong to quickly expand without investing money?

We can build culture in cities? I don't think I've ever built anything other than gold/research when I run out of buildings.

I would say I'll gold-buy 4-6 tiles in early cities because they're actually affordable. Later on I let my purchased buildings to the expansion.

 

[Zaldron]

And I want to second that cultural expansion has speeded up quite a bit as of v142.3, and that tile purchasing is way too cheap.

How many tiles do you usually buy? By the time you get to 15-20 total tiles purchased each tile is costing 150-200 gold+ (even second ring of new cities are probably ~120) which seems fine. Alternately it may have changed recently and I haven't seen the new costs. Or do we disagree that being able to purchase ~15 tiles with gold in the relatively early game is a reasonable goal?

 

[Txurce]

How many tiles do you usually buy? By the time you get to 15-20 total tiles purchased each tile is costing 150-200 gold+ (even second ring of new cities are probably ~120) which seems fine. Alternately it may have changed recently and I haven't seen the new costs. Or do we disagree that being able to purchase ~15 tiles with gold in the relatively early game is a reasonable goal?

I don't buy that many - no more than 15 with a tall empire, often less. My issue is with the strategy of building a city near the AI, then buying up every worthwhile tile (sometimes including hills) to secure tiles I would otherwise probably have lost. If others don't consider this exploitative, then I'm okay with it.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Bernd-das-Brot
I count 5 influence purchases for Kame between turn #1 and turn #113. The first number is the gold spent, and the second number is his gold supply. If there's any more purchasing going on it's vanilla doing it.

Turn 30 Kamehameha 270/270 spent for 40 influence with Vienna
Turn 41 Kamehameha 216/216 spent for 30 influence with Vienna
Turn 46 Kamehameha 212/212 spent for 30 influence with Sydney
Turn 47 Kamehameha 227/227 spent for 30 influence with Helsinki


@Txurce
It costs money to build a city near an opponent and purchase lots of tiles. There's also diplomatic penalties for doing so. I've seen the AI use this tactic, so I don't consider it an exploit.

Border expansion is intended to be something like 25% from and 75% from now. I'm not sure about the specific numbers, but that's the general idea. It makes gold more important.

 

[Txurce]

That's too bad, since you didn't have the problem last game. I haven't encountered it yet on my v142.3 game, but it's partly because the AI hasn't spread as much. Around what turn did the AI start their buying spree?

I spoke too soon. Gandhi has several CS in the four figures. He just hadn't met mine yet, since he's on the other side of the world. He just took one, and kept on pumping in the gold.

I don't have the stats because I forgot to load InfoAddict at the start, and can't find whoward69's utility.

 

[Delgar]

I just played through about 150+ turns with version 141. I used Korea, and I moved up to Prince this time (I had moved down to Warlord previously as I found VEM too hard when I first started playing with the mod).

The AI is not as crazily competitive on science and wonders as before. On my previous game using Korea and on Warlord difficulty (VEM 138), the Inca had entered the Renaissance era on turn 123 and was about 11 techs ahead. On VEM 141 though, I was able to keep just behind the tech leaders Polynesia by 2 or 3 techs. I grabbed the Great Library, Stonehenge, Hagia Sophia, Porcelain Tower.

I think I would have been able to win this game if not for the fact that it was very crowded on the continent I started on. Rome, Songhai, England all had their capitals within 2 cities' distance. By that I mean I was competing with them for space to plant my third city. Either they plant it or I plant it, and whoever is too late, too bad for them. Really very tight. I was on continents and standard map size by the way.

Songhai are hell bent on destroying me. They just took my capital with an overwhelming strike force. I forgot about the formidable might of their Mandekalu cavalry. I think that was the tipping point. I could have held them off despite having a weaker army, but the Mandekalu...*shakes head*

By the way, a few times I have tried to start a game with the "Lakes" map but it never initialized. I wonder if that's a bug?

 

[Txurce]

v141 is a little easier, but progressing from being crushed on Warlord to being competitive on Prince is pretty major. Expanding on tight continents is tough - sometimes you have to settle for less optimal sites, and at other times you may want to research Optics and settle on a nearby island (especially on the excellent Continents Plus maps). But learning how to put up a second city faster while going tall is really the first order of business. Try going Tradition down the right side to the GW SP, then Liberty for the free Settler and Worker. If there is a decent number of barbs around, insert Honor in between the first two Tradition SP's, then go after the barbs with two scouts or a scout and an archer. That will boost your culture while entertaining you (and racking up experience).

 

[Thalassicus]

Many specialized maps like Lakes don't interact well with mods. I intend to investigate the problem when I have time.