Cultural observations and questions

[Rezca]

I've got a few questions about how culture works in AND, specifically in the more recent revisions.

I cannot remember exactly when I noticed it, but in all of the recent revisions cities will always maintain a border of one tile minimum regardless of how much cultural pressure is being applied to the city from rivals, nor how new or old the city is.
I posted an observation about this with a screenshot in an earlier thread of mine some time ago actually... In the game, I had a city in the tundra region that was making by with several farms and watermills. The Incans ferried over a settler and planted it at the minimum distance between my city and stole two farms from it immediately upon founding, despite there being *ninety-nine percent* of my culture in the tile.

Their city never produced any culture of note, and never grew much. Despite that, even after over 40 turns, and the former Incan capitol (Having been under my control since BC years) a short distance away having reached Legendary culture, I had gotten absolutely no revolts in the junk city Huyana founded, nor did any of the tiles he stole ever return to my control.


Since I had vassalized him, there was nothing I could do about that city he placed, so I finally just opened up the World Builder and deleted it. He never attempted to plant another one there, but I was pretty ticked off that he had stole two farms and a health/food resource from me with a city that never amounted to anything despite me having two culture monsters nearby


I've played a number of games since then, but ever since upgrading from 1.75c I've never once gotten a culture revolt, nor flipped a city to my control. The absolute “One tile minimum” on cities regardless of how deep they are in rival territory or flooded by culture is quite annoying to me, but I figure it's something that was implemented on purpose. Is there any way to disable that feature? *Edit* Never mind, I just read this http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12421688&postcount=19
"You will certainly never be able to claim the base 8 surrounding tiles of an enemy city via culture even if it is completely surrounded and overwhelmed by your culture as it was confirmed that this has been hardcoded into the mod on a very deep level that would be difficult to change. Very sad, to say the least, but that's the way it was done when the mod was made." Well drat...
Also read in the same thread that working on culture flips and border stealing isn't a priority right now, so I'll just hafta be patient and drop my usual cultural domination play and go out warmongering instead

I can't recall borders being shifted much by culture either, but with so much action going on in AND games I don't really pay much attention to that, but it just seems like they don't move as much as they did in BTS.

Finally, with the info on the Creative trait... Can the “Faster construction of...” text be summarized to just “Monasteries, Temples, Cathedrals” as opposed to listing every single variation of the aforementioned buildings? Merely a question here, and not a suggestion

 

[JosEPh_II]

I've played a number of games since then, but ever since upgrading from 1.75c I've never once gotten a culture revolt, nor flipped a city to my control. The absolute “One tile minimum” on cities regardless of how deep they are in rival territory or flooded by culture is quite annoying to me, but I figure it's something that was implemented on purpose. Is there any way to disable that feature?

From what I know of how this developed in C2C and brought into AND it may be quite difficult to reverse. I do not believe it's a simple xml change but involves python and/or the DLL. Iirc it was developed in response to Realistic Culture Spread and Fixed Borders Options (which I'm not fond of). I miss city flipping too and culturally sniping tiles from a bordering AI Civ. But Fixed Borders, Realistic Culture Spread and one other option destroyed the old RoM way. Which both you and I like but is no more.

Culture borders do shift but much more slowly. Once you have a city shrunk down to the main 9 tiles to get it to flip requires it to be completely surrounded by your cultural influence. And one of your bordering cities must be getting close to legendary status. It requires real effort now to push a Culture border around, not impossible just harder.

JosEPh

 

[Rezca]

I don't like Fixed Borders either, and have it disabled every game I play ^^;
I can see why some people like it though, but I don't much care for it personally.

City Flipping and stealing tiles away from rivals (Especially ones at Friendly status) was one of my favorite hobbies when playing BTS, second only to warmongering. To me, one of the most amusing things would be seeing some workers improving a marble or iron resource, and then having my culture snipe it from them and then they just run off - all their work having been for naught. Also amusing when there's an army or group of units belonging to a Civ you don't have open borders with and they get teleported out of the one tile they used to own.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/pahatty_1.html This was probably what started my love of Culturally dominating the AI ^^


I have noticed borders shifting yes, and as you said quite slowly and usually only by a tile or two. Harder, but not impossible - I'll have to keep that in mind the next time I wonder why the Sistine Chapel is doing next to nothing to help with my neighbor's aggressive city placements next to my borders (And THEY then have the nerve to complain about close borders sparking tensions )

I miss seeing things like this screenie... I really do. And yup. Those are Bismark's last cities

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I don't know what I am doing wrong then, but I still get territory and cities flipping due to culture even with the fixed borders and realistic culture options on. The only difference is that I am taking the whole city and block of plots around at the same time rather than taking the plots around the city first and then the city at a later stage after it has starved for a few turns. Spreading your culture to the city helps, iirc spies and in C2C story tellers do this.

 

[Rezca]

I don't know what I am doing wrong then, but I still get territory and cities flipping due to culture even with the fixed borders and realistic culture options on. The only difference is that I am taking the whole city and block of plots around at the same time rather than taking the plots around the city first and then the city at a later stage after it has starved for a few turns. Spreading your culture to the city helps, iirc spies and in C2C story tellers do this.

More like I don't know what I'm doing wrong XD


I went through an entire game and I took at most a few tiles through the course of history. No revolts, no flips. Not even this pathetically useless English city that got planted the minimum three tiles from one of my other cities. The Influential status I had there wasn't enough to take away the tiles it had nor produce a revolt - despite the zero culture per turn the rival city was producing.

Sixty turns later on Normal speed it had a little under 100 culture, still no tiles stolen or revolts - despite me being Creative and owning the Sistine Chapel. I built the National Epic in that city to try and remove the English's size-2 city, but it never happened. It just stuck there - unmoving until the game's end 500 turns later ><
Never grew past size six, and I never wrested control over the base 9 tiles cities start with

I never used spies to spread culture in AND since culture in general seemed only useful for boosting city defense so far. I've been playing with both Fixed Borders and Culture Spread disabled since I prefer the old method over these ^^

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't know what I am doing wrong then, but I still get territory and cities flipping due to culture even with the fixed borders and realistic culture options on. The only difference is that I am taking the whole city and block of plots around at the same time rather than taking the plots around the city first and then the city at a later stage after it has starved for a few turns. Spreading your culture to the city helps, iirc spies and in C2C story tellers do this.

Like Rezca said, more like what are we doing wrong if you can and we can't. I can't do it in AND or C2C for sometime now and I don't use REV, FB, or Realistic Culture Spread options.

JosEPh

 

[Rezca]

I can't remember anything different happening culture-wise with the Revolutions mod personally. I've stopped paying attention to culture lately because of it not doing much of note.

Perhaps Culture functions normally with FB and Culture Spread enabled (Tile stealing by culture powerhouses, revolts and culture flips, etc) but doesn't work as expected with it disabled?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

It's some time that I don't play a full game and I plan to do so in the next days, so I'll check this thing about culture and borders. I always play with Fixed Borders, Realistic Culture and Revolutions. And I remember not too long ago I was getting cities revolting and asking to join my (or someone else's) empire. Could it be that it's only possible with revolutions? That would explain why Joseph is never seeing it.
But let's make it clear: those 8 tiles around a city will NEVER change owner, no matter your options. But as DH explained, when a city revolts, it happens for all those 9 tiles. I'm actually thinking about making it an option (if I'm able to), to have those 8 tiles around a city always assigned to the city owner. It's ok with me but other people don't like this feature, so I hope I can do something about it.

 

[flitz]

In my recent game (started as r645) I conquered a city from an opponent which was very strong, culturally.

The good this was that it immediately retained its 8 adjacent tiles but the bad thing is that it is extremely hard to push its borders back out again over the tiles which the original civ has no increasing influence on, anymore.

I mean, there are tiles left which retain their cultural value but the former civ is not adding any new culture to them. Still, since centuries the city does a +300 culture/turn production and barely reclaimed 2 of those tiles outside the usual 8. This is quite 'improvable', to be honest

I also play with realistic culture spread and fixed borders (really like both) and revolutions (can't play without them) but I have rarely been able to apply real cultural pressure to any opposing city - that actually lead to a city flip or even a revolt on their part.

This is a bit disappointing as culture becomes less of a value aspect of play again.

 

[Rezca]

Hm... Even with those options you haven't had much luck?

Well I guess I can hold off on trying to get the Sistine before the AI for the time being ^^

 

[JosEPh_II]

I'd get it anyway Rezca.

Culture was changed dramatically when Afforess made Fixed Borders and Realistic Culture Spread. But the changes were not just those two modmods he made. The core culture accumulation and goal process he also changed. In Rom to help Culture we had Entertainer units that could spread culture but they were removed because they were like mini Great Artists and you could use them to culture "bomb" a border city to increase it's cultural range and influence. Even the GA's Great Work culture level was changed as was the levels to reach Influential/Legendary for a City. RoM changed the base BtS culture, but AND and then C2C bent it and it's never been the same.

JosEPh

 

[aggri1]

I've never managed to culture-flip a city in RoM AND either.

I had an AI plant a city three squares from my capital, and eventually that AI city was totally surrounded by my culture, but the eight squares around the city remained in the AI's control even though they were 90-something percent mine. I thought that that one really SHOULD have flipped to me, my capital had around 400,000-something culture...

I might try with no fixed borders next time, but... do forts still create cultural zones without no-fixed-borders activated? I really like claiming land with forts.

 

[Rezca]

I've never managed to culture-flip a city in RoM AND either.

I had an AI plant a city three squares from my capital, and eventually that AI city was totally surrounded by my culture, but the eight squares around the city remained in the AI's control even though they were 90-something percent mine. I thought that that one really SHOULD have flipped to me, my capital had around 400,000-something culture...

I might try with no fixed borders next time, but... do forts still create cultural zones without no-fixed-borders activated? I really like claiming land with forts.

I've never once played with Fixed Borders enabled (Can't stand it personally) so I can't answer your question about the forts, but I have experienced the cities that refuse to culture-flip in every single AND revision. Is truly a pity since I love waging passive-aggressive wars in the early game ^^