QES
Court Jester
The primary purpose of revamping culture is to make it less focused on empire size. I don't think we're really planning on de-linking it from policies too much.
Oh, my mistake. I sorta love the policies, and i think they have greater potential than did civics, but as it stands, i miss civics. I never "switched" civics - so for me they're sorta similar at the moment, but civics seemed to have more power to them. I'd like policies to have that kind of bite - which should mean that non-culture-focused civs should have some access too. I really like the idea of giving freebies at era progression. It's not "too much" and it's not something that can be "sought." Progression happens naturally, and only tech changes it, which is pursued anyway.
However, if social policies are no longer the pervue of culture-whores exclusively (everybody get's a flavor), then culture should have other additional utiliy. Sure the culture-monger is going to have MORE social policies, but it takes away the exclusivity (which i like) from culture mongers. To pay culture-mongers for this, giving them some other utility to culture seems appropriate, hence my "boarders and attrition" idea.
Frankly, even my idea bores me a bit. While nice, it'd still be combat centric, when ideally culture would be another function entirely.
Perhaps part of the problem is the fact that the core of CIV is resource management, and the only way to apply those resources "against" opponents is to use military force. Economic and cultural starvation do not really work - since every civilization is self-sufficient. Creating economic, productive and cultural dependencies would change the dynamics of power.
Ideally, things should change around the late renaissance and into the industrial ages, when nation dependency becomes more crucially obvious.
Perhaps it's possible to have culture influence city-states and civilizations in some way? Give it a diplomatic facet? Another option is to revamp the renaissance and late-game policy tree's entirely, making them all about inter-dependence between states, and giving muscle to manipulate societies based on possession or lack there of of those policies.
If we want culture to have utility outside of pure resource manipulation (which in turn only becomes about military manipulation and technological dominance (which is itself, in turn, about military influence). We'd have to create forces that exist within empires that cannot be solved by the sword.
One answer is happiness. Happiness cannot (save one middling honor policy) be solved by soldiers. If happiness had differing and varied consequences, then the adverse and external manipulation of happiness would be a very viable tactic.
I said that I missed "Schism" in another thread somewhere. But I do genuinely miss the internal turmoil of older civ games. I think revolution and schism could be brought back, and culture could be a buffer against that possibility, or indeed, a weapon to encourage it in less refined lands.
The Culture-wars of Civ IV were amazing and dynamic, however culture itself was not a very precise tool. Since the core mechanics of CIV V err on the side of not reproducing those effects (the way tiles are gained prevents any kind of "culture-flipping") I wonder what other pursuits might be taken which would be as fun instead.
One subtle possibility, which I have no idea of the merits or possibility, is to give individual populations an "identity." This is, each citizen would identify themselves with either a nation, or city-state. This identity could change dependant on geographical proximity, trade and culture (mostly culture). High culture civs would have citizen of mostly their own people, and other civs might have many of their own citizens identifying themselves as outsiders.
Outsiders/Outlanders could produce more unhappiness - and possibly represent the need for courthouses or not. Courthouses could remove the penalty for having outlanders in a city. "Puppeting" could also remove the same penalty. (Thus maintaining that mechanic). Cities could be manually turned into puppets, if possible, so that outside cultural influence could be mitigated and unhappiness controlled.
This would be complex to implement, I think - but if possible, would make the game much more dynamic, and give cultural powerhouses a much more insidious means to influence the world.
EDIT/ADD: Oh and yes, take whatever ideas you want and disregard the others. Credit is unnecessary unless you desire to give it. You are doing much of the work, and I am just hopeful to get to play some of the ideas (and only then if they are fun.) So please do as you like.
