culture bonuses or bugs?

[gdwitt]

I found that if I do ceremonial rites after philosophy, I get both a temple and monument instantly. Nice, though I doubt I will ever wait that long to get a monument. It didn't build me any free monasteries however.

I also found that the piety track was enhanced. NOw, instead of getting 1/2 culture per excess happiness, I get 1 culture. This would be great as long as the AI doesn't figure it out. How do they manage to rack up happiness of 50 to 100 with few to no luxuries?

The piety track is very weak in my view, so I would keep this.

Addtionally, I would recommend ways to weaken spamming civs. On emperor, I find that if the ottomans or persia spam all over the map they get a huge science lead on me. They also lead with culture oddly. The happiness penalties for their huge puppet empires needs to be increased while retaining bonuses for buildings that give happiness.

 

[Seek]

I found that if I do ceremonial rites after philosophy, I get both a temple and monument instantly. Nice, though I doubt I will ever wait that long to get a monument. It didn't build me any free monasteries however.

Not sure what you mean here: you were getting two buildings in one city? If so, that would indeed be a bug.

I also found that the piety track was enhanced. NOw, instead of getting 1/2 culture per excess happiness, I get 1 culture. This would be great as long as the AI doesn't figure it out. How do they manage to rack up happiness of 50 to 100 with few to no luxuries?

This is working as intended. Looking at the Policy mod's text file, it does appear that the tooltip wasn't updated to reflect this change (I can't check in-game right now).

 

[Dunkah]

In my current game (King, Standard), I just hit the modern era. Siam has a 5 tech lead on me, Ghandi has 4 policy trees filled in.
Doesn't seem to me that simply making my mind up to go for say Science or Culture is ever enough... I still need to beat down the top two or three Civs to prevent them from winning before me. Usually after those beatings it doesn't really matter how I choose to win as I am usually the dominant player in all respects.

 

[Txurce]

In my current game (King, Standard), I just hit the modern era. Siam has a 5 tech lead on me, Ghandi has 4 policy trees filled in.
Doesn't seem to me that simply making my mind up to go for say Science or Culture is ever enough... I still need to beat down the top two or three Civs to prevent them from winning before me. Usually after those beatings it doesn't really matter how I choose to win as I am usually the dominant player in all respects.

You're saying that you can't win a Culture Victory except by going to war? If so, it would seem that you're not getting the most out of your civ.

 

[Dunkah]

Well, as I think about it. I have won culture victories without doing a ton of warmongering. But yes I don't seem to be able to win a science victory without Conquering the Science and Culture based Civs above me.

So yes I most likely am not getting the best out of my Civ but hell that's why I am playing King.

 

[Txurce]

I usually play tall, and then play a fairly rigid NC start, figuring on as few as four cities, making them as big as possible. That's usually enough on on Emperor. Do you take a different basic approach, or does something go wrong en route?