Culture

[Thalassicus]

The one thing I am confused about is that it looks like at least gold tile acquisition costs work on an empire basis? So purchasing some tiles in one city increases the cost in other cities too?

Basically, the cost to expand with gold is: national cost + terrain cost + city-distance cost

The national cost goes up with each tile purchased with gold. Average national costs are higher in Cep than the unmodded game, while the other things do not change (terrain and city-distance costs).

 

[mystikx21]

Put another way, if the problem is generating more culture, and the specialists are incidental, then the question would be how to generate more culture from the existing buildings. There'd still be no reason to get rid of these specialised guild buildings and move their benefits elsewhere.

I don't think adding specialist slots to culture buildings is the answer, because that could snow ball in the guild cities and unbalance tourism by packing in more great works, and 2-6 specialists in every city would generate a lot of culture, imbalancing policies (and tourism for that matter). I think the solution here is much more modest, since the problem is much more limited to one specific element of culture's value. Fixing or balancing tourism and culture rates is relatively simple to do if it isn't radically adjusted by changing how easily they are acquired.

Fixing border rates already has a separated mechanism. So we can look at adjusting that, so that it increases such that you will want later culture buildings to keep pushing borders out as well as for their other benefits in GWs and social policies.

 

[Ahriman]

Let's say they just split "scientific" GP costs from "cultural" GP costs. If this is true, and we built guilds in every city, most cities would never produce a great person. This means building guilds everywhere would not affect great person creation rate.

Not quite. You might get 3-4 in some cities and 1-2 in every other city. In G&K, if I put 2 scientists in every city, when I hit Education and get universities, it's still likely that by the end of the game each will produce at least one great scientist, and I will produce more great scientists than if I just put the two scientists in one single city. It's not very hard to show this.

But yes, let's find out precisely how the costs work.

Tile purchase costs are shared nation-wide

But just gold purchase costs? Or gold and culture?

 

[Thalassicus]

Gold expansion depends on both the city and nation, while culture expansion depends only on the city.

There'd still be no reason to get rid of these specialised guild buildings and move their benefits elsewhere.

One of the main project goals is:

We set a high bar for adding new things to the game, and instead improve or replace existing objects when possible.

It's why we merged the Marine embarkation bonus and Amphibious promotion. It's better to have 1 desirable promotion than 2 mediocre things. I've emphasized this goal recently to focus the project on the most essential features.

 

[griffer13524]

It should be easy to test. After we create a Great Writer in one city, the cost to produce the next Great Writer should go up in all other cities. Does this happen? Do all cities share the same cost? It shouldn't be hard to find out.

Just tested it. After getting a great writer, the GP point price jumped from 200 to 300. However, there's no way to know if cities share costs or not--the only way to get great writer points is from the writer's guild, and you can only build one, so that's a moot point.

 

[Thalassicus]

You might get 3-4 [great people] in some cities and 1-2 in every other city. In G&K, if I put 2 scientists in every city, when I hit Education and get universities, it's still likely that by the end of the game each will produce at least one great scientist, and I will produce more great scientists than if I just put the two scientists in one single city.

You're right, so how can we balance it?

The musician's guild normally gives 3 free points and 2 specialist slots. Say we normally earn 5 musicians. If we merge with opera houses, we could reduce the free GP points, so we still earn only 5 musicians.

 

[mystikx21]

Right, but the Marine served a very limited purpose of being a highly specialist infantry unit that could be accomplished with a promotion. Removing it and making the promotion better is an example of how that does work. But this looks different to me.

If the Opera House is the supply point for all specialist slots on culture instead
a) it removes buildings that were functional already in order to fix a problem on one building that wasn't quite balanced. Removing or consolidating spy buildings is a separate matter because those buildings were mostly to entirely useless. These did something important already (generate GW for tourism and/or culture).
b) How would the slots be divided? There are 6 right now, on three separate buildings only built in one city a piece. Would Opera Houses get 2? Would they be music or by choice? If they are music, why is that favorable over others to be able to generate anywhere versus art or writing?
c) If they accumulate at 2 per, then it is quite possible to generate more artists/musicians/writers if you have many sources of them than if you have one at 6 per. It also generates more culture than was previously the case, imbalancing policy cost and tourism victories to resolve a question over one building and border costs.

We would be breaking several mechanics instead of fixing one and one building to make that change. That's a different kind of change than Marines getting nixed.

I think it might be simpler to do something like this
Change the music slot in the opera house to 3/2 (same tourism, more culture).
Add a small per pop bonus or make opera houses 3-4 raw culture.
Theaters, monuments, museums, and towers should remain unaffected. As should guilds and culture specialists. (I think theaters are fine at 2+resources+slot over monuments, I build a lot of them, opera houses are the only one that stuck out as marginal to me).
Remove the tier requirements for later buildings (including amphitheater).

We could change the base rate on guilds to balance those, but they seem okay as is.

 

[mystikx21]

Basically I'm having a hard time understanding why this is important to make a significant change. Border policy cost is a pretty marginal mechanic to me. I think it scales well enough to encourage building more culture buildings already, for the simple fact that social policies also scale up to encourage building more culture buildings.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

@Gothic_Empire
Was ICS a problem in Gem? Here's a comparison of the average culture each building created:


Gem
3 Monument
4 Theater
7 Opera
13 Museum
16 Tower
> Higher policy costs than BNW

BNW (in most cities)
2 Monument - useful for borders
1 Theater
1 Opera
5 Museum - useful for tourism
4 Tower - useful for ideology bonuses

Proposal
2 Monument - useful for borders
4 Theater - useful for borders
1 Opera - useful for specialists
5 Museum - useful for tourism
5 Tower - useful for ideology bonuses
> remove tier requirements for opera, museum, and tower.

This keeps us close to BNW while giving purpose to the theater and opera house.

Is any style of play a problem? I just meant that I see limiting the cultural guilds as one of the chokes on ICS cultural intake.

 

[Stalker0]

You're right, so how can we balance it?

By leaving it alone!

Couldn't we simply adjust the border expansion formula to make early expansion a little harder, and later expansion easier?

 

[mitsho]

guys, don't spam post on a national holiday, I can't keep up with that while out

Interesting discussion, as far as I can tell, but: the guilds names have always seemed strange to me... is there sone way we can decouple it from buildings?

 

[Thalassicus]

I'm focusing on the opera house now, which seems to be the only culture building with a problem. The theater's useful in Cep because of the resource bonuses.

@mystikx21
Some people want more tourism. Great Musicians give tourism. Merging the musician's guild with the opera house lets us get a few more musicians, increasing tourism (as Ahriman wants), and makes the opera house useful. I think this will solve all our problems.

@Stalker0
That wouldn't work, because the later ones are weaker than earlier ones. However, I changed my mind earlier, and decided it's not important for culture expansion to require late culture buildings. They just need some useful role. I think the opera house is the only one with an issue now.

 

[mystikx21]

More tourism can be created by boosting it on great works as well rather than gettin rid of a building and spreading it out. If you want more musicians, focus on the music guild city (and garden available more freely). The only reason for more tourism is because there are most source of culture in CEP right now, which takes a little more tourism to overcome.

I would agree with renaming them. Not eliminating or consolidating them.

It seem like the problem is culture border and the opera house. We can make the opera house a little better at culture easily enough and then smooth the culture borders formula to encourage building the later building rather than just monuments and the tradition opener. I don't agree that's a huge problem, but it is basically changing the math equation for borders to fit the lower scale (on average).

 

[Gothic_Empire]

@mystikx21
Some people want more tourism. Great Musicians give tourism. It's a perfect fit!

Merging the musician's guild with the opera house lets us get a few more musicians, increasing tourism, and makes the opera house useful.

Ack! Now we're talking about tourism in two places! Nooooooo!

Tourism should be renamed "Pretty Victory Points That Never Do Anything."

 

[Ahriman]

You're right, so how can we balance it?

I don't think the current mechanic is unbalanced. What is the problem we are trying to solve?

The musician's guild normally gives 3 free points and 2 specialist slots. Say we normally earn 5 musicians. If we merge with opera houses, we could reduce the free GP points, so we still earn only 5 musicians.

Even if somehow we could make things the same on average, they would not be the same away from that average.

It is much more fun to have a single city generating 5 musicians than to have 5 cities that can each produce 1 musician but not more than that. In the latter case, you end up with a bunch of dead great person points that will never be useful and so stop using musician specialists as soon as you achieve your 1 musician. Whereas in the former case, it's much clearer and more likely that your extra musician GPPs will still be useful and help you generate another. With a single city, you can concentrate modifiers like the national epic and garden (or hanging harden), you get real city specialization, with 5

With a single city, it's much easier to determine the overall number of musicians you can get from any given game turn where it is available. With opera houses that you can build in every city, it is much harder to prevent too many musicians being generated unless you set down punitively high great person costs at some point.

With a single city for each guild type, you only need to dedicate 6 specialists towards them, and so the amount of culture you can generate is also bounded. If you can get them in every city, then you can get vastly higher amounts of culture making it overly difficult to get a tourism win.

The current system works pretty well. Why mess with it?

Change the music slot in the opera house to 3/2 (same tourism, more culture).
Add a small per pop bonus or make opera houses 3-4 raw culture.
Theaters, monuments, museums, and towers should remain unaffected. As should guilds and culture specialists. (I think theaters are fine at 2+resources+slot over monuments, I build a lot of them, opera houses are the only one that stuck out as marginal to me).
Remove the tier requirements for later buildings (including amphitheater).

Agreed.

increasing tourism (as Ahriman wants),

To be clear: I think the BNW balance of culture/tourism is pretty good. I only want to increase tourism if necessary to counteract increases in culture.

I just meant that I see limiting the cultural guilds as one of the chokes on ICS cultural intake

Yes, I agree.

 

[Gothic_Empire]

It's also pretty fun to game the current GP system. You *can* have two cities working on the same GP, and if you're good with arithmatic, get faster GP spawning. The city that doesn't spawn a GP does not lose all of its points; they remain, effectively allowing you to have two or three cities alternately producing great scientists or great merchants or what have you. I can see this being incredibly broken with great musicians. Having to refill the cultural GP pool from scratch every time helps prevent runaways.

 

[griffer13524]

It's also pretty fun to game the current GP system. You *can* have two cities working on the same GP, and if you're good with arithmatic, get faster GP spawning. The city that doesn't spawn a GP does not lose all of its points; they remain, effectively allowing you to have two or three cities alternately producing great scientists or great merchants or what have you. I can see this being incredibly broken with great musicians. Having to refill the cultural GP pool from scratch every time helps prevent runaways.

I'm going to second this. I don't see any good reason to have great musicians produced in multiple cities, especially when the other two great culture types are still being produced the vanilla way! At the very least, have artists, writers and musicians be the same, or all different. Giving the Opera house GP specialists seems like we're fixing a small game play bug by breaking an entire mechanic.

I'd rather just see the opera either left the same with a lowered production cost, or give it a greater culture impact, either raw, or scaled to population.

Also, please can we have temples with a slot for great works of art? Pretty please?

 

[Seek]

Some people want more tourism.

I haven't noticed a call for this (here or in the more general forums). There's more than enough Tourism once you get Hotels/Airports, Ntl Visitor's Center, Internet, etc. etc. etc.

Culture is balanced very nicely in BNW; there really isn't any need for change imo. The best part about it is how flexible it is! You can stop working the WAM specialists and start again once you reach the Ideologies, you can move GWs around to maximize output in a city that has modifiers, themeing, use the GWAM's abilities when you need them. I wish more mechanics were like this in Civ5 - it feels more like Gold than Food (ie, less like filling up a bucket over and over again). Love it.

Not naming names, but the lack of knowledge by many people in this thread about how the culture system works now makes me extremely leery about many of the suggestions here.

Let's please put this conversation off for six months, and come back to it when folks are comfortable with how the new culture game plays.

 

[ExpiredReign]

The way is generated now is primarily by Great Works.

What is the distinction between Music, Writings and Art?
The answer is surprisingly clear. If you go to concert where is your focus?
Do you say: "Man the ceiling is fantastic." No. You are there for the 'Great Music'.
Likewise with art galleries. Though some architectural students might admire the building, you want to see 'Great Works of Art'.
One possible change might be to give GPPs from these types of buildings. This could be to model the way some artists/musicians produce pieces specifically because of a great building. (think music for the acoustics of the Sydney Opera House)

Basically I am saying "leave the buildings alone". It is not broken.

The suggestions about other non-culture related buildings housing 'Great Works' sounds alright if they don't produce themselves, with or without a 'Great Work' in them. They are just temporary placeholders.

This means our focus ingame should be shifting from buildings like 'Amphitheaters, Museums etc., automatically providing .
To them simply being places to house our .

That way when the Huns come and trash our cities we can squirrel our cultural history away for when we rebuild.

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I have to say regarding border expansion that any attempt to make early border expansion easier is counter-intuitive.

In a small city your borders should expand slowly and being able to 'buy' extra tiles easily should if anything be penalized.
With the limited resources available the 'expense' of claiming a new tile would be enormous.

That's why the Shoshone are special with their UA.

The concept that border expansion is related is weird. Just what influence does my 'Monument' have over the 'Grassland/Hill' to my east? If it had some influence on the growth of the city then perhaps the argument might be made it is attacting people to your empire. If it were a neighbours territory then a link might be made, but even then it is only weak.

So my suggestion related to border expansion is that it must be intrinsically linked to the size and productivity of the city.
It makes no sense for a city sized 5 and not producing enough for it's s to be able to buy tiles out to the 3rd ring. Just how are they supposed to care for all that territory?
There would be a massive , or hit.

Border expansion should be difficult. Making expansion easy at any stage is wrong.
(I'm not sure if this is possible but the ability to buy a tile that is not contiguous might be helpful.)

What this means is. If the mechanic of border expansion is inextricably tied to , then we could somehow formulate it to reflect the attraction of unaffiliated people to join our empire. Perhaps modifying the growth of the city. That way the itself is not generating expansion but rather it draws people that, in turn, then demands expansion.

 

[stackpointer]

If you increase the methods in which we can generate great artist/writer/musician points then you may want to consider that the number of great works has a hard cap.