A little idea for Cultures

[Rasma]

I have been playing the mod a while now and I have to say I think the whole culture mechanic needs some work (by culture I mean your civ culture) and I was thinking, what if the civs were changed to be generic regional, for instance you would have a European, African, North American, South American, Islander, Asian, Middle Eastern, ect, as many as you want.
Then after perhaps the research of cultural identity you are given a national culture based on what you have researched/done
So for instance you could have weighted factors, such as income, stability, units, religion, civics, and have those define the civ you get, you could also assign traits this way, and perhaps even make them dynamic (I know ffh2 was able to swap traits around dynamically) And cultural identity could be set to change after a set period of time, or tech, or even just if the factors very by a specific degree, now I am going to admit I don't know python at all, but would this seem feasible/a good idea?

 

[Necratoid]

So basically throwing all the work so far out and then making your 'culture' just another civic... one with a stupidly long list of choices?

What would be the point... besides being hidiously unrealistic in your one culture society?

 

[Rasma]

It wouldn't be a civic at all as it would be chosen based on the factors of your civ, and most nations do have a single unifying culture, that is part of what defines them as a nation in most cases, and I find it more unrealistic that all my cities need resources in their radius to create a specific culture, and that through this every city could have a different culture, every city being able to have a different culture based on randomly placed resources seems flawed to me

 

[Necratoid]

I don't think you actually understand this... but you basically just denied India's existance... by taking this stance you have declared there are a billion or so less people in your world. That would be to start off.

Okay lets start off simple. The cities in Civ aren't random towns... they are the regional capital cities. They are the major cities like New York or Bejing or Paris. Ones that exist only by being supported by dozens of smaller towns and villages and eventually random cities. So its more like every state in the US having its own culture. Different, but part of a whole.

Most of human history has featured stupidly long travel distances between these cities. It tooks days, weeks, months, even years to go from one to another and outside the culture radius (your Civs Zone of Control) is wild lands that are likely to kill you. Even a century or so ago a book was written about circling the globe in only 88 days. Now it can be done in less than one.

In European Feudal times all you had to do to dodge a serf contract was escape and live outside the ZOC for a year and a day. Of course your rather likely dead after a week, but them is the breaks. This was a combination of hostile forces outside and the education level being, 'outside the farm... you have no idea what your doing'.

So every Civ level city did actually have its own local cuture and other population centers may as well have been legendary to most of the people alive.. within the same Civ.

For example, within the last century anthropologists tried to do something utterly insane. It sounds simple in theory... but things got real weird... disturbingly fast. This quest was to gather the local legends of the Hindu faith and map it. Turns out even villages effectively adjacent to each other had random gods in random rolls (war, harvest, whatever)... the legends often didn't add up remotely the same. Some gods didn't exist in one town and were the primary gods in the next one. They had random personallities based on no real pattern. This was in the local scheme of things.

In short, I never want to meet a Hindu deity... they are some incomprehensable combination of insane and random entities sharing a name and often little else.

Until the modern era the speed of travel and communications was so slow that the same culture was actually a gist level similarity. Well, unless someone in charge spent lots and lots of time standardizing things. Its just like the Mod is now... its not until it rescently that its possible to codify cultures easily on a large scale without a really involved leading caste.

Also, cultures in the context your talking about tend towards needing specific resources as they need them to qualify as that culture. You can't make Aztec Jaguars without obsian and wood to make their signature equipment for instance.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Wow... Necratoid... that came across to me as a needlessly hostile response to a reasonable complaint.

In response to that original proposition there, Rasma, we realize that the method in which cultures currently manifest is slightly off logic and a bit less than ideal, even if the thinking that caused us to go off course from the original manner in which cultures are determined (by initial player decision at the beginning of the game) was valid. We're in the process of making adjustments and debating new processes for this subject matter for that reason in another thread.

 

[Rasma]

Ahh I must have missed that thread sorry, I just had an idea that was probably needlessly complex anyways, hope it gives a few ideas at least.

 

[Necratoid]

@Thunderbrd, Rasma is basically asking for the Civ-wide over culture that blurs everything to one single, homogenus culture by installing a new Civic that isn't a civic.... for reasons of regional (bonus) cultures based on available resources being entirely unrealistic. Despite that being the reason they developeed in the first place.

That and the other point I can get from Rasma's planned change request is that once a subculture is founded in any city in your Civ it should instantly have it throughout... or be a new level of religionious mechanic rather than a new non-civic Civic. For reasons of not doing so being unrealistic.

Responding to something of this nature is just askiing for me either post a thesis paper/essay wall of text in response... which will either be ignored for being to long or 'speed read/skimmed' meaning the point is entirely lost due to imaginary time constrians of other people.

Getting effectively bet (some what self inflicted here) to write a soon to be ignored/glossed over essay in response to some half formed (at least to me) idea of how things should change because of how reality is somehow unrealistic... strangely puts me into a disgruntalled instructor frame of mind.

Lets not go into how the 'needlessly hostile response to a reasonable complaint' was gotten (from what I can tell) entirely from a single throw away paragraph at the front. After that its basically somewhat dry.

 

[Thunderbrd]

True, you did make a more clear and reasonable presentation afterwards, but when you start off with a slap across the face for saying what you feel was stupid to be said, it comes across a little... I dunno... undiplomatic, if you get my drift. It tends to shut the conversation down immediately. Furthermore, I'm not sure you really understood his complaint to begin with before leaping into a great many arguments against it.

But at this point, I'm just addressing the rudeness of your reply. Please try to keep things a bit more civil.

 

[ClassicFrog]

In European Feudal times all you had to do to dodge a serf contract was escape and live outside the ZOC for a year and a day.

Not on the topic really ... but would you be able to give some source material about that please? That's something new to me to learn and I'd like to read some more about it if possible. Thanks.

 

[Necratoid]

I originally think I heard about it in a Histroy Channel thing of somekind. Might have been on Feudalism. Just toss "serfs" and "a year and a day" into a search engine or wikipedia. Both are needed or you end up slogging through references to some random album.

Looks like an extension of a general rule for criminal (murder/contract violation/etc...activity that they had a year and a day to catch you for trial or the evidence goes stale and memories fade kind of thing.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I originally think I heard about it in a Histroy Channel thing of somekind. Might have been on Feudalism. Just toss "serfs" and "a year and a day" into a search engine or wikipedia. Both are needed or you end up slogging through references to some random album.

Looks like an extension of a general rule for criminal (murder/contract violation/etc...activity that they had a year and a day to catch you for trial or the evidence goes stale and memories fade kind of thing.

Today it is called "statute of limitations".

 

[Schwarzbart]

Just a thought how to improve the curent Culture system.
How about a National Wonder for each Culture that can build as soon you managed to build the Culture 2 times and when the National Wonder is build the Culture is spread to all Citys of the Nation.

This way you still have the feeling of local Sub Cultures but with the option that the player can work on it to become part of its Nations Culture and because its a National Wonder the player still have to choose if it is realy wort it.

 

[ClassicFrog]

Thank you Necratoid.


And on topic, I think cultures should be unique to each city or few cities if you meet the requirements ... but not quite. I think they should influence other cities in some ways and other cities it trades with or its close to would get some of the benefits. And i mean any cities, regardless of the owner, perhaps with some difference in how strongly another city is influenced.

Im thinking of something like a nationality bar in the city screen with % values for each nationality depending on culture influence. Cultures might work in similar way, competing with each other and giving some bonuses depending how much % of a given culture city has (im not sure how to put unique buildings or units into that ... perhaps they could be available once culture % get to certain level, say, 20% for some basic buildings, 35% for more sophisticated buildings and 66% for units - but thats just a wild guess). The influence would need to be a function of distance, civilization ownership, favourable terrain, trade route availability, active trade route, "compatibility" of nationalities and many more factors i cant think of right now
And one more thing, when a city creates culture it wouldnt have 100% of it but said culture would need to work its way through against "lack of culture" like, say, "barbarian culture" or some such thats present in every city (maybe influenced by default by a tiny bit to model the tendency for people to go their own ways and not care about all that culture business and some buildings like bandit camps, brothels ect) that by itself gives no bonus or gives penalty of some kind.
So a city creating a culture would become a local hub for it and radiate it around the world and have the greatest chance to obtain unique buildings and units but wouldnt have a monopoly for that if you play it smart.
Going from there you might consider having some culture specific buildings available at some culture % levels that would promote said culture further, so you might specialise to some extent for favourite cultures or keep multiple culture % levels in balance this way.
And finally you could tweak civics to increase or decrease the power of culture influence, modify the bonuses cultures give or culture % levels needed to access units and buildings.


IF its possible to mod at all that is