Cultural Glitch

[wioneo]

Has anyone else ever used border popping on a city in revolt? The manual says that the city will automatically come out of revolt, and gain 4000 culture(3 border pops I think). I had just conviently gotten a great artist as I was forming my stack, so I thought, why not put him to some use.

So, I sent him along with my stack to take my opponents second founded city(which somehow had a 75% bonus) After I killed all the defenders (using every attacker) I sent in the artist to pop the borders which would save me a whole lot of cash which would go towards upgrading to some berserkers. It would also stop the size 8 city from starving by capturing its 4 flood plains.

Then, the most annoying thing that could have possibly happened did. The culture expanded southwards, leaving the adjacent floodplains in unclaimed territory and grabbing 3 completely useless plains's. It also left a road out of my territory into his which would have served as a buffer against the impending chariot attack which would innevitabely kill my wounded axeman(this is Warlords). The only member of my stack with a movement point is one of my defending spears, but it had defended against three consecutive chariot/numidian cavalry attacks on the previous turn. Two chariots would be able to recapture the city, and it was starving. I thought about reloading an autosave, but thought that I would post here first. here is a diagram of the culture:

...EEEEEEE...
...EENNNEE...
...EEXNNEE...
...EEFFFNN...
...NNFFFNN...
...NNFFFNN...
...FFFFFFF...

E=Enemy land, N=Neutral Land, F=My land, X=The city

The culture lines weren't jagged like usual, they were straight. Does anyone know of a way to fix this, other than reloading?

 

[malekithe]

Any chance you could post a saved game demonstrating the behavior?

 

[wioneo]

Hold on a second...

EDIT:

Here is the save, and here is a better picture.

You can blame the differences on my bad memory and imagination I also whipped a library.

 

[Eqqman]

Did you play any turns past this point, or has this been persisting for a while? I ask since this isn't an uncommon situation to be in.

The tiles that you claimed to the southeast either had no culture at all or less than 4k of another civ's culture.

Hannibal has more than 4k culture in his tiles so you did not steal any from him.

Augustus has more than 4k culture in the four empty tiles between your borders but they lie outside the fat cross of any of his cities. If this is the same turn you used the artist, you cannot claim them for your own until the subsequent turn. This is a deliberate side effect of the culture bomb that is supposed to prevent some sort of Bad Thing (TM) happening. I'm not sure what the excuse was, it's been a while since I read about it and at the time I was very unconvinced that it was worth coding this strange behavior to prevent. If you let the game run a bit longer, you should get those 4 remaning tiles provided Augustus doesn't get them in the fat cross of a newly founded city. If they don't become yours by the time you get to the 5k culture pop then there might be a bug somewhere. A final thought- make sure the city is not producing zero culture. As long as you can get 1/turn in there I wouldn't expect any problems claiming those tiles.

 

[malekithe]

In addition to what Eqqman said, this is a typical example that demonstrates how great artist culture is added in a different manner from normal culture. If your city had actually taken the time to accumulate 4000 culture, it would dominate the area, easily pushing back the borders of nearby cities. Instead, because great artist culture is all added simultaneously, your hold on the surrounding terrain is considerably weaker. Note how, despite just having dumped over 4000 culture into the city, next turn the tile is still only 46% yours.

EDIT: Also note, those four tiles that would not flip to your side till the next turn are all within the cultural radius of Rome's city to the north. Border disputes can only be worked out between turns. The tiles that did already flip, no other person can lay claim. It is only those four floodplains which require a calculation to determine ownership.

 

[wioneo]

Well then, I suppose that it was foolish to whip away four pop. I could have waited a turn and only lost one, oh well. it will regrow quickly, and Rome shall burn for this... Anywho, I'll have to play this out tomorrow, I have to wake up at 5

 

[curtadams]

Culture bombs work great in low-culture areas but they're useless in high-culture ones. IMO it's a bug - getting 4000 culture should have at least roughly the effect of accumulating 4000 culture. If it doesn't, it should at least be consistent.

Settling the artist normally works better. You get the whole fat cross in two turns, and the border pressure is tangible forever. Although I've gotten burned by well-timed AI culture bombs directed at newly conquered cities of mine. In a recent game I grabbed Paris and settled an artist in it. I then made peace and allowed Louis to keep one last city as a pet (for research trading). I figured the cultural pressure from Paris would flip his last city peacefully in the late game. The *$%&$ dropped a culture bomb the turn after I made peace and Paris dropped to 5 workable land squares! (it was on the coast.) It took about 200 turns for Paris to establish cultural superiority, and I never flipped that last city.

 

[wioneo]

You guys were right about the the tiles. the empty ones got filled in, but that was all. Maybe I should have let the city come out of revolt. Would that have made a difference? By library I meant temple, a temple which i accidently moved to the bottom of the que after whipping and forgot about for 2 turns...

 

[Welnic]

There is also a time factor involved in square ownership. Each square accumulates the culture that affects it from turn to turn. As someone said, if that city had grown to 4000 over many turns then it would dominate the area. But that is because then the culture would have been affecting the area around the city for all of that time also. Dropping a culture bomb is the quickest way to grab the land that you want, but it will still take some time for it to dominate the culture that has been accumulating for many years.

 

[malekithe]

Maybe I should have let the city come out of revolt. Would that have made a difference?

No. However, you will begin to put quite a bit of cultural pressure on the surrounding tiles from this point forward. In the tiles immediately to your west, for instance, you're dumping the equivalent of 60 culture per turn. Given that rate, you should be able to take them in about 15-20 turns (of course, if you just went and conquered Hannibal's city, you'd take that territory immediately). The tiles further north are more problematic, as both you and Rome are putting ~40 CPT into them.

 

[wioneo]

No. However, you will begin to put quite a bit of cultural pressure on the surrounding tiles from this point forward. In the tiles immediately to your west, for instance, you're dumping the equivalent of 60 culture per turn. Given that rate, you should be able to take them in about 15-20 turns (of course, if you just went and conquered Hannibal's city, you'd take that territory immediately). The tiles further north are more problematic, as both you and Rome are putting ~40 CPT into them.

I was building up a stack of my newly aquired berserkers to take out the first Caesar. He is dangerously close to caravels, and did you notice that my continet includes BOTH of the polar caps!?! That is amazing. The four other Civilizations must be stuck pretty close together. I'll have to adopt their religion...

 

[Thomas G.]

The delayed border popping was put in to prevent abuse in multiplayer games, primarily.

 

[malekithe]

The delayed border popping was put in to prevent abuse in multiplayer games, primarily.

Would you mind clarifying this abusive behavior that would be possible in multiplayer? I havent been able to think of anything that strikes me as worth the current price being paid.

 

[Eqqman]

The delayed border popping was put in to prevent abuse in multiplayer games, primarily.

That is sort of tickling my memory... I think maybe it was explained in Sulla's walkthrough thread.

 

[malekithe]

That is sort of tickling my memory... I think maybe it was explained in Sulla's walkthrough thread.

He did, indeed, mention it. He said..."By the way, there is a "delay" of several turns before borders will expand fully, which is why there is some open cultural space between Delhi and Gao. This was done to prevent some abuses in MP."

I couldn't find any specific mention of these "abuses".

 

[Eqqman]

I couldn't find any specific mention of these "abuses".

LOL... I guess that's why I only remembered that his 'arguments' seemed unconvincing at the time.

 

[cabert]

yeah, culture bombing is cool, but not life saving.
I tend to settle the great artist because you get the tiles almost as soon if there is cultural pressure around, and you gain the benefits of the specialist (+3 gpt for a superartist, +3 beakers under representation, +2 culture if you have the sistin chapel).
It would take more than 300 turns to have the culture level you gain from the bomb, but the side benefits are not that bad (representation is and i often need money).

 

[Phrederick]

I believe someone once explained that a great artist only increases the squares where your culture reaches, but it doesn't actually add to your culture in those squares. That means that it makes no difference in the ownership calculations on it's own, it just lets the culture per turn of the city be added to more squares. I really wish it was changed in some manner so that a culture bomb can be marginally effective later in the game. When none of their cities have more than a few thousand culture, it should really be able to steal more than a handful of squares.

 

[babypacman]

I just finished up a game last night (on prince) that I think illustrated the difference between culture bomb cultural growth and 'organic' cultural growth well.

In my game I was on the western edge of the map, and Frederick was to my NE. He cut me off from further contiguous eastward expansion, but i had my heart set on a nice lcoation further east. So I made a Frederick sandwich. Nottingham was founded so that its fat cross ended just SE of Berlin's fat cross, and it overlapped signifcantly with Munich which was built SW of it. My goal was to turn Munich. I focused on cultural improvements.

But then one turn I realized that Nottingham was starving! Berlin had started to eat into my fat cross, and slowly but surely the 50% german became 51, 52, 53% and a second tile fell. It was weird, one tile to the south of my at risk tiles I was eating Germany's cultural lunch and had almost penetrated westward to the rest of my empire culturally. At some point I had a GA around again so I decided to culture bomb Nottingham again. It got me my tiles back; 54% English! But slowly the German influence crept back in and I lost the tiles in my fat cross again. So I culture bombed, again! At this point I was pretty sure that nottingham was the most cultured city in the world. But the culture bombs only had the effect of temporarily giving me a higher % ownership of the tiles. The higher total culture did not prevent future loss of cultural penetration. By the end of the game Nottingham had again lost 2 squares in its fat cross, but its culture had also caused Munich to revolt and join my empire.

 

[Eqqman]

...but its culture had also caused Munich to revolt and join my empire.

I'm not sure I quite buy the 'only extends your influence' theory for this reason. If that's all it did, you wouldn't be able to use GAs to quickly flip culturally weak cities like you tried to do to Munich. If most of your culture output in this city was just from GAs, then it's possible for Berlin to erode your influence quite easily. An AI capital shouldn't have too much trouble overcoming 8k culture.