Civ Cultural Suggestion

[Nevets_]

I've been poking around with ideas to make the Culture (_____) buildings more accessible. Alot of them are very hard to get, and you almost never get them in the city you want. Until you get access to Great Farmers, you can't terraform a city to match the requirements, and some require non plant/animal bonuses.

What I've come up with is splitting the Culture (_____) buildings into several different buildings:

Local ____ Tribe +1 1/2 cost
Requires original bonuses/terrains/buildings.
Gives nothing.

Culture (____) +1 1/2 cost
Requires Local ____ Tribe OR ____ Cultural Exchange OR ____ Cultural Mission, does not require other bonuses/terrains/buildings.
Gives normal production speed bonuses & UU prereqs.

____ Cultural Exchange +3 normal cost
Unlocked with Cultural Identity
National Wonder (1 allowed)
Can't be Built in same city as Local ____ Tribe, ____ Cultural Mission.
Requires 1 Local ____ Tribe somewhere in your nation.

____ Cultural Mission+3 normal cost
Unlocked with Trade
National Wonder (1 allowed)
Can't be Built in same city as Local ____ Tribe, ____ Cultural Exchange.
Requires 1 Local ____ Tribe somewhere in your nation.

National Culture (____) +5 1.5x cost
Unlocked with Philosophy
National Wonder (1 allowed)
Requires 3 Culture (____) somewhere in your nation.
Gives free Culture (____) to every city.​

So what you need is one city that has the right combo, that city can build the Local ____ Tribe, then can build the Culture (____). Then in any other 2 cities you can build the Mission and Exchange buildings, which lets you build the Culture (____) buildings. Once you have 3 cities that have them, you can build the National Culture (____) building which give you the Culture (____) building in every city in your empire. The costs are set so that it costs the same to build Tribe+Culture as it did the original Culture (____), and is cheaper than building Mission/Exchange+Culture.

I've created/modified the XML and tested it, it seems to work. There are a couple annoying things though:

• I don't know how to set the number of buildings required to be fixed and not changed by map size. I'd like there to be a path for people to get cultures to 'spread' even if you only have 1 city that can build it naturally, but on Giant map size <iNumBuildingNeeded>1</iNumBuildingNeeded> gets changed to 2.
  
• All the buildings use the same icon. Without some easy way to batch edit all 52 culture icons to add a little star or face or something I can't see spending the time to do it.
  
• If you don't play with the C2C hide unbuildable buildings option there are now 52 new buildings and 156 new national wonders clogging up the screen. They only appear when you have the discovered the appropriate techs, but by the middle ages you can see most of them.
  
• I didn't edit the TXT_KEY's beyond the basic description. So the Strategy/Pedia entries are just pointed at the original Culture(____) buildings.

If you guys have any suggestions or tweaks let me know, and if you want me to post the files as is I can do that too.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Nevets

A few things ...

1. This seems like a LOT of work. 5 buildings for EVERY culture type. Its one reason I have not started on the national culture because of how much work there is to do.

2. So what's the difference between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Mission? This seems redundant.

3. Most civs will be obsolete by Philosophy. I think it would be better just to get rid of Cultural Mission and Cultural Exchange and move National Culture to Cultural Identity like I originally planned. Thus making Local tribe redundant without other buildings.

4. Overall I think your making it much too complex for something that could be some much more elegantly with only 2 buildings (Local Culture and National Culture).

5. I would also hold up on any plans since strategyonly has something up his sleeves he says but won't even tell me what it is yet.

In short thanks for the cool ideas but hang tight.

 

[climat]

Why do Cultures become obsolete anyway? Culture system itself was introduced to represent alternative history, but Culture buildings must disappear like they vanished in "Our history"? Contradiction.

 

[Nevets_]

@Nevets

A few things ...

1. This seems like a LOT of work. 5 buildings for EVERY culture type. Its one reason I have not started on the national culture because of how much work there is to do.

2. So what's the difference between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Mission? This seems redundant.

3. Most civs will be obsolete by Philosophy. I think it would be better just to get rid of Cultural Mission and Cultural Exchange and move National Culture to Cultural Identity like I originally planned. Thus making Local tribe redundant without other buildings.

4. Overall I think your making it much too complex for something that could be some much more elegantly with only 2 buildings (Local Culture and National Culture).

5. I would also hold up on any plans since strategyonly has something up his sleeves he says but won't even tell me what it is yet.

In short thanks for the cool ideas but hang tight.

The Cultural Exchange / Mission buildings are two different buildings so you only need 1 Local Culture, I could be wrong but if they were the same building wouldn't you need 1 Local Culture per building?

I was under the impression that civs obsoleting will soon be taken out. I understand they don't serve much of a purpose after their UU is obsolete, but it seemed to upset most people that a culture would disappear.

If you use a National Culture building that gives Local Culture to every city, I think the Local Cultures 'stop working' the next turn since they lose access to their city vicinity bonuses (that weren't there to begin with). That's why I had to separate the building that has the vicinity bonuses from the building that gives the UU's.

I didn't want to add so many buildings but I wanted to have some kind of intermediate step between Local and National culture. If you don't then either you only need 1 Local Culture to build National and you might as well have no local culture at all, or you need several Local Culture and you never get National Culture for some civs, like Greek, that need a rare non-farmable resource.

I already spent the time to create the XMLs, so now most changes would be simple find/replaces. If you want to make any specific suggestions on how to change things I can try them out.

 

[Hydromancerx]

@Nevets

1. I am not understanding you. I know that Cultural Exchange / Mission buildings are two different buildings. But they seem like the same thing at 2 different techs. The idea was that you would need 3 Culture Buildings (aka Local Culture) to build a National Culture. Not a Cultural Exchange + Mission + Local Culture. Especially when you you cannot have more than one for an OR choice.

2. Unit obsoleting probably will (not sure what strategyonly has planed), but the culture building themselves DO go obsolete. Well at least some of them do. Also to answer climat I tired to have them appear and disappear at times historically when the culture is gone. In fact I was thinking of even possibly having more culture require other cultures since they are so linked however that just made it extremely hard to get so I left it at only colonial civs.

In fact the whole culture thing is rather confusing when you get to alternative timelines. I mean how far do you go? Should they break the regional culture barrier too such as Koreans emerging from Romans like revolutions has? Should Canadians appear before the French culture exists?

Thus I finally just came to the conclusion that you are your own unique culture and when you do overlap with real life then you can unlock their culture. Thus obtaining a culture is more like your empire has many similarities to the real life culture and thus can do the same thing as them. This also helps to explain why you can play as say the Aztecs but end up having a bunch of culture like the Inca instead.

3. Really? The Local Cultures stop working when given for free? I ave not tried it so I don't know. That's a bit frustrating if its true. We may need to make a culture "good" for the local culture. Thus if you build a local culture it could spread via trade routes. Then the national culture could make sure all cities get it. Though we may not even need a national culture then if the culture spreads via trade routes.

4. Personally I am leaning towards the new cultural "goods" that would spread via trade routes. This would be a much more organic way for them to spread. And we would not need so many extra buildings. The only down side would all the existing culture units and buildings would need o require this new "good" instead of the local culture.

5. Well the biggest problem is like you said cluttering up the screen with building you can't build and on top of that the same buttons. Having them as a good means it will not cluster up the screen to build since you cannot build "goods" only build the buildings that can create them. Thus the names would be changed to "Local Culture (Name)" for the buildable one and "Culture (Name)" for the "good" building that would spread via trade routes. And if we really needed to would could always add "National Culture (Name)" to spread the culture to EVERY city.

6. However I would hold off on all this until we know what strategyonly has planned.

 

[EldrinFal]

2. Unit obsoleting probably will (not sure what strategyonly has planed), but the culture building themselves DO go obsolete. Well at least some of them do. Also to answer climat I tired to have them appear and disappear at times historically when the culture is gone. In fact I was thinking of even possibly having more culture require other cultures since they are so linked however that just made it extremely hard to get so I left it at only colonial civs.

In fact the whole culture thing is rather confusing when you get to alternative timelines. I mean how far do you go? Should they break the regional culture barrier too such as Koreans emerging from Romans like revolutions has? Should Canadians appear before the French culture exists?

Thus I finally just came to the conclusion that you are your own unique culture and when you do overlap with real life then you can unlock their culture. Thus obtaining a culture is more like your empire has many similarities to the real life culture and thus can do the same thing as them. This also helps to explain why you can play as say the Aztecs but end up having a bunch of culture like the Inca instead.

I agree with Climat. And even if you can't build a Culture's UU or UB, there should still be a benefit from it that lasts.

I like that one culture stems from another. And that you need local resources to acquire that particular culture. Having that is accurate enough. Stay true to their origins, just not to their timeline. "Vikings" may have been "lost" as a Culture in the real world, but doesn't mean they have to in our Civ world. Culture, after all, is not a technological invention that gets improved and/or replaced. And even if there aren't men in boats raiding coastlines with horned hats anymore, I suspect elements of their culture still persist in the areas they originated from.

 

[strategyonly]

I understand they don't serve much of a purpose after their UU is obsolete, but it seemed to upset most people that a culture would disappear.

I have BIG plans on the old UU, DH is working on coding right now, and having somewhat a difficult time getting it to work correctly, i dont want to give too much away right now, but it will dramatically be ENHANCED with what i am doing only to the old UU, nothing else.

This is why i wish "we" had more CODER's, to help out.

 

[Nevets_]

@Nevets

3. Really? The Local Cultures stop working when given for free? I ave not tried it so I don't know. That's a bit frustrating if its true. We may need to make a culture "good" for the local culture. Thus if you build a local culture it could spread via trade routes. Then the national culture could make sure all cities get it. Though we may not even need a national culture then if the culture spreads via trade routes.

I just double checked, and they do stop working; but it seems that buildings that stop working still give you access to their UU's and production speed bonuses. When I saw the 'stopped working' message earlier I just assumed that you lost everything that building gave you.

So I guess you could just have a Local and National culture buildings. I just threw together a set of simple National Culture buildings if anyone wants them.

The National Culture buildings cost 1.5x of the Local Culture ones, give +3 , and need a Local Culture in the city to be built.

 

[ls612]

Bit of thread necro here, but with discussions going on about Gold and sliders I feel it's appropriate.

I know this has been dismissed as too much work before, but now it might be worth it. Should we make it so the game keeps track of culture globally AND keeps track of it by different cultures from Hydro. Then we could make Nevet's natl culture buildings require x culture globally from it's specific culture as a prereq, link Heroes to culture, AND encourage people to use the culture slider.

For code implementation I would take a look at Master of Mana, which has this for Mana and Faith. Thoughts?

 

[Flinx]

With the current system lots of cultures can´t be assesses since they prereq a native culture such as american, asian etc.
By now i´m forced to exclude most of the cultures by picking a civilization and it's appropriate native culture.
I think it would improve the game if cultures would be based solely on resources/terrain.

 

[Hydromancerx]

With the current system lots of cultures can´t be assesses since they prereq a native culture such as american, asian etc.
By now i´m forced to exclude most of the cultures by picking a civilization and it's appropriate native culture.
I think it would improve the game if cultures would be based solely on resources/terrain.

Not making every civ available at the beginning of the game is more or less a toned down version of the original vanilla civ 4 system where civs were given unique units and buildings. I did not want to make civs completely useless which is why they are a mixture of their cultural origin and the terrain/resource they are near.

In addition I will be adding many new choices for each region meaning that more than one civ will be linked to a resource but not necessarily within the same regional culture such as ...

Fish
- Huron (American)
- Japanese (Asian)
- Portuguese (European)
- Polynesian (Oceanian)
- Swahili (African)
- Phoenician (Middle Eastern)

As you can see they all require fish resource but each are from different cultural regions.

However one can gain access to all regions if you can assimilate a city from each type of region and then spread their regional culture to all your cities. For example if I play as the Portuguese i have Native Culture (European) and then I take over a Japanese city then I gain access to Native Culture (Asian) too. Thus unlocking any of the Asian or European cultures as long as I meet the resource/terrain requirements of them.

 

[Flinx]

my problem is not that i have to conquer a civ with a different regional culture; my thought are on the fact that currently there's no balance between the regions.
My main example remains the sioux culture with the dog soldier. This unit is available with axe making and has a strenght of 5 with 100% bonus against melee units. Even the normal axeman cannot counter this. In other regional cultures there's by far no unit that can compete with the dog soldier.

 

[Hydromancerx]

my problem is not that i have to conquer a civ with a different regional culture; my thought are on the fact that currently there's no balance between the regions.
My main example remains the sioux culture with the dog soldier. This unit is available with axe making and has a strenght of 5 with 100% bonus against melee units. Even the normal axeman cannot counter this. In other regional cultures there's by far no unit that can compete with the dog soldier.

Well then that is more of an individual unit balance issue more than what region a civ is from. We can always tweak its strength down. What do you think it stats should be?

 

[Koshling]

Well then that is more of an individual unit balance issue more than what region a civ is from. We can always tweak its strength down. What do you think it stats should be?

Either strength 3 (so it's just a higher melee bonus stone axeman) and strength 4 with only 50% to melee. Alternatively make is exactly a stone axeman with non-combat bonuses that reflect its cultural origin (movement 2, ignores terrain movement cost maybe)

 

[strategyonly]

Either strength 3 (so it's just a higher melee bonus stone axeman) and strength 4 with only 50% to melee. Alternatively make is exactly a stone axeman with non-combat bonuses that reflect its cultural origin (movement 2, ignores terrain movement cost maybe)

I say leave it at 5 but give it some huge - (negative) Terrain factors for being out in the open area (plus the melee mentioned above). Only good is trees/forest area. That way if he is hit even once, then he will die. I wonder if there is a way for it to receive NO promotions till he hits a certain level?

There now you have suggestions from str 3 - 5, take your choice.

 

[Flinx]

Well then that is more of an individual unit balance issue more than what region a civ is from. We can always tweak its strength down. What do you think it stats should be?

Well, that's another side of the coin.
I will have a look at the units and try to compare them over the regions.

As for the dog soldier:
either an axeman with 2 movement or axeman with additional bonus against melee, but not additional bonus and double movement.

 

[EldrinFal]

Well then that is more of an individual unit balance issue more than what region a civ is from. We can always tweak its strength down. What do you think it stats should be?

I'd say Str 3 w/Shock I & Woodsman I. It's easy enough to get that first promotion and choose between Combat I for the added 10% or Woodsman II when it is available.

Str 5 is way too OP imho.

 

[Koshling]

I'd say Str 3 w/Shock I & Woodsman I. It's easy enough to get that first promotion and choose between Combat I for the added 10% or Woodsman II when it is available.

Str 5 is way too OP imho.

Prefer extra movement. Otherwise it loses its uniqueness since you can fairly easily promote some axemen

 

[Hydromancerx]

How about this you guys?

Dog Soldier
Strength: 3 (like stone axeman)
Vs Melee: 50% (half of before)
Movement: 2 (This is what makes it unique)

Better? He is not as strong but he is still as fast.

 

[JosEPh_II]

If you can't upgrade him then he Needs his str 5 back amd his 100% vs Melee. You made him Unique And Non Upgradeable so his lifespan is limited!

If he's now Upgradeable then str 4 + Melee 75% and double movement. If you have no Obsidian or Copper available and you can get him he's the only unit that will save your behind against Barbs and an AI with Horse or elephant until you get to Iron.

I brought Him up for discussion in v16 cause you can't upgrade him. If you're gonna keep him Non upgradeable and lower his stats, then he becomes a "wasted" unit imho.

JosEPh