Cultural Influence

[Sweetchuck]

What affects cultural influence - the space that surrounds your city? Population? Culture?

Here's what I'm getting at. I sometimes build cities right up against the AI. Sometimes they do the same to me. What determines the overlap from my city to theirs or vice versa?

Take it a step further - if I have a city that is being encroached upon by an AI city with more cultural influence than mine, can I reduce their influence by, say bombarding them and killing citizens and/or destroying culture creating buildings like temples?

It's funny - when I get a close city with the AI, it always seems like a race to build culture in that overlap and they seem to build wonders in these cities - quickly at that, and I'm not sure how they're doing it.

 

[Vidar]

Population has nothing to do with it. Some buildings give a certain amount of culture each turn (temples and libraries give 1, cathedrals give 2 etc). Those culture points are added to the city's culture each turn. The city's cultural influence will grow at 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000 culture.

 

[ecuwins]

I use CivAssist to look at the number of units I need to prevent a flip. As long as the number isn't ginormously high, I will garrison the troops needed. Otherwise, that AI city needs to die. Prepare for war and raze or capture the city. In this situation though, I usually raze.

 

[Sweetchuck]

Population has nothing to do with it. Some buildings give a certain amount of culture each turn (temples and libraries give 1, cathedrals give 2 etc). Those culture points are added to the city's culture each turn. The city's cultural influence will grow at 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000 culture.

Let me put it another way.

If the AI city has more culture and their CI overlaps mine so I can't work tiles I normally could have worked except they're encroaching culturally on me and say I bombard their city and destroy a temple which gives me more culture (by taking theirs away) - would I gain the overlap?

Or, say we're equal in culture but they have more pop than my city - doesn't that give them the overlap advantage?

Make sense? It's kind of hard to describe the question I'm asking.

 

[Turner]

You have to have more accrued culture than them to take over any tile that may overlap. The exception to this (and it works both ways) is that if the tile you're wanting to overtake is next to their city tile, and not next to yours, you can't take it over.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

It is fairly simple. If there is a tile which two cities from two different civs can culturally claim there are three factors to decide to whom the tile goes.

1. Distance
This is the first deciding factor. The distances are always rounded down to the next integer, which means that 1 and 1.5 for example are treated the same. A lower distance (after rounding) will get the tile - always. To determine the distance of a given tile from a city or so count 1 in SE-NW & SW-NE directions and 1.5 in N-S & E-W directions. As a hint, the cultural expansions of a city correspond to the distances. So, the original 3x3 box of a city (0-9 culture) has the city center and the tiles at distance 1/1.5, the first expansion (10-99 culture) takes in the tiles at 2/2.5, the second expansion (100-999) the tiles at 3/3.5 and so on.

2. Local culture
If the distance from the cities to the contentious tiles is the same, local culture comes as the first tie breaker. Local culture the is the amount of cultural points accumulated. Cultural points per turn are irrelevant, so that a city that has an amount of 500 cultural points and makes 0cpt has the edge over a city that has 200 points and 5cpt.

3. Fouding date of the city
If both distance and local culture are the same (a good example is a city that you founded at CxC from an AI city) then the founding dates come as the second and final tie breaker.

 

[Sweetchuck]

So if I bombard the AI city and destroy say a temple, I would have to wait x number of turns until I accrue more culture assuming I'm then accruing it at a greater margin?

 

[eldar]

Yep. Destroying the temple only stops the temple from adding more culture. The culture already gained from the temple remains in the city.

 

[Taras Bulba]

by my understanding (note I have not actually tested this in game or checked this out) the amount of culture per square determines whether or not you get that square or not.

that is the rule of thumb for most cities. If a city is placed 4 tiles away (with 3 tiles in between) the nation that reaches the cultural expansion first (and after that the nation that has the higher culture per tile) gets those tiles. Lets put it this way. City 1 has 200 culture with 20 tiles. That is 10 culture per tile. City 2 has a culture of 400 with 20 tiles. That is 20 culture per tile, therefore they get the tiles. (note this is the way I always assumed it was, I haven't actually looked)

As for close together cities, its pretty much the same way. The city that is built first gets to keep its original cultural boundaries if a new city is placed as close as possible. However, if you build say, a library (and the city founded first has no culture or culture producing wonders) after the library produces culture, you steal the tiles, as you have more culture per tile (1/3 culture per tile) As you fight to even out who has more culture, and when it gets to be close/the same, that is where you get really really funky looking boundaries.


PS-Most cities, even if they have no culture, get to keep the 8 tile boundary, even when culture gets massive and surrounds it, simply to be fair.

DISCLAIMER: if you'd like to check it, its fine with me, just know I haven't and its only what I assumed was the process, as it made sense

 

[Padma]

I haven't checked to see if your reasoning is correct, but I have had, in my games, instances where I have culturally surrounded a foreign city, and eventually taken *all* their tiles via culture. (The only reason I never flipped the city is they kept building and moving troops into it. Finally I just declared and took it.)

 

[eldar]

If you surround a city thus:

CxCxC
xxxxx
CxCxC
xxxxx
CxCxC

and all of the surrounding cities have more culture than the one in the middle, the one in the middle doesn't get any tiles.