Culture modding: what's hardcoded?

[Zotmeister]

Because culture is that important in the mod I'm working on, there are a number of elements of how C3C does culture that I'd like to tweak, but I don't know if they can be. I tried searching the forum here for this kind of thing, but failed, so these may be previously unasked questions. Given the existence of four "unknown" fields in the RULE tab of Steph's Enhanced Editor, these may be previously unanswered as well, but I figured I'd ask before I spend hours testing and screwing around with Things Civ Players Were Not Meant To Know:

1) Is the "1000 years" it takes for a culture-generating Improvement to double its culture output hardcoded? If not, how is it changed? Either way, does that number actually take the time scale into account, or is it just some set number of turns? If the former, does it adjust for the base unit?

2) Is the "1000 years" it takes for an eligible Wonder to become a tourist attraction hardcoded? The exact same followups the previous question has apply here, and then some... (Note the help file for the Firaxis editor says that this is a set number of turns...)

3) Is the "no other civ at half your culture" requirement for a full-civ Culture Victory hardcoded? Can that fraction be adjusted/eliminated? If not, then why the hell doesn't the Civilopedia say anything about it?

What I'd like to do for my scenario is make it so that the time scale is about a thousand years in all, but the culture-doubling occurs after fifty turns. I'm undecided exactly how I want to handle tourism, as it were, but I'm pretty sure that how it works now is not what I want (unless how it actually works isn't how it says it actually works). And as for the victory condition, well, it isn't the only error in the Firaxis Civilopedia I've taken the time to correct for my mod , but I'd prefer to correct it by eliminating that horrendous condition in the first place. Those unknown fields - especially the '2' and '1000' - lead me to believe that perhaps these things aren't set in stone, and I was wondering if anyone else wondered the same thing before I try to mess with it (or would like to join me on this venture into the depths of the Unspoken Variables). - ZM

 

[Steph]

Because culture is that important in the mod I'm working on, there are a number of elements of how C3C does culture that I'd like to tweak, but I don't know if they can be. I tried searching the forum here for this kind of thing, but failed, so these may be previously unasked questions. Given the existence of four "unknown" fields in the RULE tab of Steph's Enhanced Editor, these may be previously unanswered as well, but I figured I'd ask before I spend hours testing and screwing around with Things Civ Players Were Not Meant To Know:

All the parameters that exist in the regular editor have been identified. We sill have no idea if the "unkown" parts serve any purpose.

1) Is the "1000 years" it takes for a culture-generating Improvement to double its culture output hardcoded? If not, how is it changed? Either way, does that number actually take the time scale into account, or is it just some set number of turns? If the former, does it adjust for the base unit?

You can change it in the general settings, or rule, page. You can tweak the level multiplier, and the border factor.

3) Is the "no other civ at half your culture" requirement for a full-civ Culture Victory hardcoded? Can that fraction be adjusted/eliminated? If not, then why the hell doesn't the Civilopedia say anything about it?

I don't think there is a parameter for that in the editor. You can change the % of population or terrain for domination victory, I think it is hard coded for culture.

 

[Zotmeister]

You can change it in the general settings, or rule, page. You can tweak the level multiplier, and the border factor.

What I'm talking about is neither of those.

The level multiplier is what that "Cultural Levels" list right next to it keys into - it just decides what adjective the game uses to describe certain nations at certain times, based on what their total accumulated culture is ("We have defeated the Fledgling..."). As far as I know, this affects nothing else.

The border factor has a rather dramatic effect on the city border expansion rate. In my scenario, I have it set to seven, so instead of city borders expanding at 10, 100, 1000, and so on, they do so at 7, 49, 343, and so on. I definitely know what this does; I've tested it quite a bit, and it's important to my scenario.

What I was asking about - and, surprisingly, this bit is in the Firaxis Civilopedia, but you have to dig to find it - is that any Improvement that generates culture per turn which stands for "1000 years" will provide double the culture per turn from then on. This is easy to verify in the standard game: build a Library, play on, and eventually in City View you'll see six notes instead of three. Or just look at your Palace at the start of the game, and then again later on (theoretically at 3000 BC). It's this doubling behavior I want to tweak - I want it to be a set number of turns without having to screw with the time scale to make it happen. I'm not even sure it uses the time scale to determine this... I guess I'll be testing it. - ZM

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

If you look at the editor "help" screen on tourist attractions, it states:

"A Great Wonder can become a Tourist Attraction once it has "stood the test of time" for over 100 turns. A Tourist Attraction then begins to attract commerce to the city in which it is constructed, which steadily increases as time passes and its fame spreads. An attraction that has been built for over 100 turns but less than 201 turns produces two gold for its owning city; one that's been around for over 200 turns but less than 301 produces four gold, etc."

and in the civilopedia, it states:

"The amount of culture each Wonder or improvement contributes doubles after 1000 years."

The reason I've pulled the "tourist attraction" quote out is that AFAIK, it was touted originally as 1000 years - and that seems to have been translated as 100 turns - so it's probably the same timescale for the culture generation increase. Either way, it's untweakably hard-coded.