Border issue

[quasarsphere]

Hallo

So, I'm orange, and the Incas, who I banished from the continent at least 20 turns ago, are yellow. As you can see, I haven't got rid of all the splotches of Incan culture, even though I've got the culture slider way up, and most of the cities in the area are pumping out culture.

How do I sort this out? Inca's down to a couple of tiny little rubbish cities in the arctic wastes somewhere. Surely I should have got this land ages ago?

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

Problem with fixed borders, you have to Eliminate them from the game completely.

 

[quasarsphere]

Problem with fixed borders, you have to Eliminate them from the game completely.

Ah. Well, it took 60 turns, cos I really couldn't be arsed to go after those last two cities, but then it seemed I'd have to. So I did. And I razed them, just to be unnecessarily evil. Problem solved.

 

[Afforess]

Yeah I've noticed this too. Basically it seems foreign culture never goes away and the only solution is to wipe them out. This has bothered me in past games too.

I think culture in a tile should decay if not actively maintained. Probably a half-life of 50 turns or so (scaled for game speed). That way in 200 turns of neglect it would be mostly gone.

 

[Noyyau]

Yeah I've noticed this too. Basically it seems foreign culture never goes away and the only solution is to wipe them out. This has bothered me in past games too.

I think culture in a tile should decay if not actively maintained. Probably a half-life of 50 turns or so (scaled for game speed). That way in 200 turns of neglect it would be mostly gone.

That would be brilliant

 

[Spirictum]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to point it, but being new to this mod gives me much to think about it, and something just did not go right in my mind about fixed borders.

The whole concept is great, to be able to control tiles in war or just in the wilderness makes things much different. But this not only means controlled territory, it means a lot more.

In domination victory it may lend a hand in winning if you only lack territory to get the victory. Not sure if this can be exploited hardly.

The other point seems more problematic and already happened in my games. When you make a tile of your control far away from home, you suddenly have that tile fully covered by your economy (which can be centered anywhere on the map relatively to the spot you just snatched), which means you may upgrade your units (if they don't need a building, or if your tile has any connection with your commercial network to provide the resources needed, or if it doesn't need neither of them). This is strange, but acceptable. It's hard because only units that don't need resources to upgrade may do so, or well placed plots may lead you to desired upgrades.

The other and more problematic issue is the maintenance cost. As suddenly as you grab a tile for you, in the middle of the enemy, on another continent that you have no presence but an army, your stack of 100 units suddenly cost you nothing for being far away. This is an awesome way of making infinite wars (if you can manage the war weariness and your enemy's attacks as well).

This is not only ilogical, but it's also game breaking. I don't understand much about programming stuff, but in my mind Fixed Borders should only allow you to grab tiles adjacent to other tiles you own. With this the one tile surrounded by enemies wouldn't exist, and even seeming you would lost the capability of snatching far away resources with fixed borders and a big road, you would still be able to do it, but now you need to make a far away city (not exactly a good substitute) or a fort (indeed the good substitute). Forts could keep like they are because they are exactly the answer for trying to grab far away land without risk of rebellion or a great maintenance cost.

But far away single tiles with full economic support are bizarre.

 

[Arakhor]

I don't know about that specific timescale, but I think that gradually dissolving cultural borders would be a great idea.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to point it, but being new to this mod gives me much to think about it, and something just did not go right in my mind about fixed borders.

The whole concept is great, to be able to control tiles in war or just in the wilderness makes things much different. But this not only means controlled territory, it means a lot more.

In domination victory it may lend a hand in winning if you only lack territory to get the victory. Not sure if this can be exploited hardly.

The other point seems more problematic and already happened in my games. When you make a tile of your control far away from home, you suddenly have that tile fully covered by your economy (which can be centered anywhere on the map relatively to the spot you just snatched), which means you may upgrade your units (if they don't need a building, or if your tile has any connection with your commercial network to provide the resources needed, or if it doesn't need neither of them). This is strange, but acceptable. It's hard because only units that don't need resources to upgrade may do so, or well placed plots may lead you to desired upgrades.

The other and more problematic issue is the maintenance cost. As suddenly as you grab a tile for you, in the middle of the enemy, on another continent that you have no presence but an army, your stack of 100 units suddenly cost you nothing for being far away. This is an awesome way of making infinite wars (if you can manage the war weariness and your enemy's attacks as well).

This is not only ilogical, but it's also game breaking. I don't understand much about programming stuff, but in my mind Fixed Borders should only allow you to grab tiles adjacent to other tiles you own. With this the one tile surrounded by enemies wouldn't exist, and even seeming you would lost the capability of snatching far away resources with fixed borders and a big road, you would still be able to do it, but now you need to make a far away city (not exactly a good substitute) or a fort (indeed the good substitute). Forts could keep like they are because they are exactly the answer for trying to grab far away land without risk of rebellion or a great maintenance cost.

But far away single tiles with full economic support are bizarre.

Well put (much better than my fumbling ramblings over it) and some of the reasons I don't/won't use FB in any Mod that has it. Including this one of which I am a small member of.

JosEPh

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

In Caveman2Cosmos we have added in the Super Forts mod but have only had it in for one release and it has some bedding in problems. Fixed Borders has almost been removed from C2C because you can only have it if you have a particularly disadvantageous civic.

With Super Forts you need to build an improvement either a tower or a fort to claim territory. Towers and early forts only claim the plot. Later forts act similar to normal forts and connect the resource etc. This means you need workers in your army to do the building. It is also not instant.

However it is not necessary to garrison the fort or tower to keep the territory. PEA_V has some actions on units which make the tower yours as long as they stay garrisoned. I am thinking of adding that to the towers in C2C.

Just a suggestion for a replacement for fixed borders which seems a bit more realistic. I actually worked on this because of the problems with the Realistic Culture Spread in Prehistoric times, you just could never get your culture to expand to that obsidian or stone resource with RCS because the spread mechanism is for agrarian societies not nomadic. With the towers you could claim plots then when RCS expanded the culture you could replace the tower with the correct improvement and gain those oh so important strategic resources.

The suggestion to only allow towers to be built within x plots of your territory has been made but there is not enough evidence to suggest it is necessary. The AI loves these improvements and will also seek out and claim resources with them. Especially the strategic resources like stone and obsidian.

 

[quasarsphere]

I am loving this mod so much, by the way. I'm still playing my first game with it, and even though the war issues referred to in the OP really annoyed the hell out of me, this is still the very best Civ game I have ever played.

 

[Afforess]

Interesting idea about fixed borders and claiming territory. If a requirement for adjacent territory is added, it could be exploited with a team of two keeping 1 tile claimed adjacent to the tile ahead, allowing you to still claim arbitrary separated wilderness.

I do agree Fixed Borders is highly exploitable by the human in its current form.

I think the whole idea of claiming territory is tedious at best and complicated for players and worse for the AI. Instead I am wondering if land-only military units should generate a tiny amount of culture (str * turns fortified / 1000 ) in unclaimed tiles. This would cause unclaimed land to flip towards your units after a few turns (I believe you need 1 culture to be owner, but I need to check). However after your units left, decay would set in and cause you to lose the tile basically immediately. Enemy territory would have plenty of culture to repeal this. Because this is passive the AI needs little changing.

I dunno. I'm not sure if I like that idea either.

 

[<Nexus>]

I think the whole idea of claiming territory is tedious at best and complicated for players and worse for the AI. Instead I am wondering if land-only military units should generate a tiny amount of culture (str * turns fortified / 1000 ) in unclaimed tiles. This would cause unclaimed land to flip towards your units after a few turns (I believe you need 1 culture to be owner, but I need to check). However after your units left, decay would set in and cause you to lose the tile basically immediately. Enemy territory would have plenty of culture to repeal this. Because this is passive the AI needs little changing.

I really like this idea. Why not give it a try to see if works or not?
...if you aren't too busy, of course

 

[Noyyau]

Maybe conditions to claim a tile should be "adjacent to already owned tile AND connected to an owned city or fort" ?

I'm all for culture decay, but it shouldn't affect, as an example, the first ring of a newly founded city with still no culture-making buildings. Not exactly sure how that should be checked, though.

Units making a bit of culture sounds interesting, though I would let warships do that as well, to claim distant sea resources (whales and oil especially).

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Just to mention that fixed border isn't really fixed since some months now. You should all be aware that you conquer your opponent's tile if you have double its culture on that tile, even if it has fixed border.

 

[Afforess]

Since we started discussing the whole tile culture thing, I am wondering how many players (myself included) actually understand how tile culture works. We all know how city culture works, that's pretty easy to see.

Tile culture is nothing like city culture. Basically each turn, every city "adds" a certain amount of culture to each tile in its culture level radius. The amount it adds is in the global defines (and set at 22 culture). The amount is modified by how many culture levels the city has unlocked and how far away the tile it. If the city has only 1 culture level (1 border radius) the adjacent tiles each get 22 culture/turn.

Next culture level, the city radius expands. Now those tiles that were inside of the 1 border radius get 2x the culture, because the city culture level is 2. The newly acquired tiles receive 1x culture because they are 1 distance away. Even if you don't "own" a tile but it is inside of where your culture radius would be, it receives culture. This is how the tile flip works, when you put more culture in than what the previous owner did, and over time, you accumulate more. The key here is that city culture doesn't matter. It's how many culture levels the city has that matters. (Once you reach legendary or whatever the max culture is for a city, additional culture is a waste, at least for tiles).

Right now tile culture only goes up. If you raze a city to the ground, the culture it put into the tiles around it never decreases. I think the simplest way to remedy this is this - every 50 turns (scaled, of course for gamespeed) reduce the tile culture for every player by 1/2. Every tile. Its too much extra memory to try and keep track of what tiles are actively maintained. However, this halving does not cause tiles near your cities to ever lose control. In those 50 turns, even the farthest tile will get 50 * 22 more culture.

Instead of tile culture piling up forever, you'd get a sort of oscillation towards equilibrium. Because an image is worth 1000 words:

Left axis is culture, bottom axis is turns elapsed.​

And here is an additional example with a case where a city is captured at turn 200:

​

 

[<Nexus>]

Very impressive.
Thank you for explaining. You are a good teacher

 

[Spirictum]

However, this halving does not cause tiles near your cities to ever lose control. In those 50 turns, even the farthest tile will get 50 * 22 more culture.

Even when just conquering a city, I mean the possibility of you having 1 culture on the tile exactly in the turn the halving happens, because you conquered the city a few turns before the process (enough to only give you 1 culture)

But it sounds pretty interesting indeed

 

[Noyyau]

So how would this work with Realistic Culture Spread? Would it affect it in any way?
I admit I don't know if RCS is based on tile culture or city culture level.

This halving and the units-give-culture coupled with the modified fixed borders would make a much better system, imho.

 

[aggri1]

Regarding the proposed halving of culture on un-maintained tiles: as we expect, cities in newly conquered areas would become useful much faster. How much faster? As a simplistic example, consider this graph.

As you can see, with 50-turn-culture-halving, culture from a newly-founded city surpasses the old culture much more quickly: in about 50 turns rather than 250 (solid blue line crossing solid red line c.f. dashed blue line crossing dashed red line). Of course these numbers will vary, but they'd generally do so in favour of new cities because halving an existing big number every e.g. 50 turns is a much greater change than adding a constant fixed (e.g. 22) amount to a very small number.

Particularly if it's been some time since the old city was destroyed, a new city will very quickly take over the land - see the green line, which takes just a few turns to cross the solid red line. EDIT: note that the 'third' city is not anywhere near the 'second' city, it's got to make it's own culture from scratch!

I think this would be a positive change, as it's quite annoying to have very strong remnant culture completely covering an area you've conquered even when the original Civ's remaining cities are quite distant. It makes it almost mandatory to completely eliminate a Civ' whose heartland you intend to make use of.

The exact details of the mechanism (i.e. the divisor, e.g. 2.0, and the frequency, e.g. 50 turns) could perhaps be tweaked. They seem a little drastic (i.e. too fast) for me, but that's probably because I play on Epic or slower.

Cheers, A.

 

[Afforess]

FYI, as followup, this is now part of Rev719: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13238744&postcount=772

Turn frequency is a global define, specifically, CULTURE_DECAY_TURNS. It is set to 25 by default, and scaled by iGoldenAgePercent in GameSpeed. Normal Gamespeed has iGoldenAgePercent of 200, so normal speed, culture decays every 50 turns. Epic is every 75, Marathon is every 100.