Does anybody use the culture slider extensively?

[I EAT CRAYONS]

Besides cultural wins and wars, of course. Is it worth funneling commerce into culture for extra happiness?
I tend to delay Drama for as long as possible (which is a long time) and even after I get it, I only touch the culture slider during wars.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

It's good for a specialist economy when running caste system to run max specialists everywhere to lightbulb towrds liberalism, take nationalism from liberalism after teching gunpowder yourself, then draft muskets everywhere while teching for cavalry, then go on a big rampage. This was pre BTS cavalry pushback though.

 

[Tennyson]

I used to, before Espionage, but now my extra money goes there.

 

[DarkFyre99]

When I'm running a specialist economy, it makes sense to use the culture slider for happiness, as opposed to investing hammers in happiness producing buildings. A SE produces little commerce, so very little is lost to support very large cities where health, not happiness, is the barrier to growth.

 

[I EAT CRAYONS]

I will keep that in mind when I next play an SE game (which will be pretty soon).
However, does it help to use the slider in a CE?

 

[oyzar]

Since most of the CE's reaserch and income comes from commerce using the slider would give you directly 10% etc less reaserch. You have to figure out if the extra happiness in all cities is worth the 10% drop in reaserch/income. Most of the time it is not even close considering that adding a pop also add some slight expenses. You are better off using stuff like military police for happiness in a CE.

 

[Pinstar]

I couldn't see myself delaying drama. I actually always b-line to music to nab the free artist? The free artist combined with using the culture slider and cathedrals comes right at the time when all of the free land has been taken and it gets down to the cultural borders bumpling and pushing. Often the cities on the edge of my borders have been freshly founded and don't have much culture. This is where a little on the culture slider and a culture bomb from the artist can nab me some extra turf and possibly an extra city before the borders become mature enough to resist culture bombing and sliding.

 

[ShunNakamura]

Normally I only use the slider as the Byzantines extensively. With the Hippodrome there is little reason not to use it. In my opinion working two more squares/specialists is worth a 10% decrease in research from commerce. Of course this is assuming you have enough food to break your regular happy cap anyways.

 

[I EAT CRAYONS]

Do you need Drama for Music? I remember lightbulbing the GA from Music for Drama...

 

[ShunNakamura]

Do you need Drama for Music? I remember lightbulbing the GA from Music for Drama...

Literature also leads to music. So after taking Aesthetics you can either take literature or Drama in order to get Music.

 

[oyzar]

Pinstar you ever heard of the way of the sword/axe/mace/lobbed rock?

 

[Perugia]

I couldn't see myself delaying drama. I actually always b-line to music to nab the free artist? The free artist combined with using the culture slider and cathedrals comes right at the time when all of the free land has been taken and it gets down to the cultural borders bumpling and pushing. Often the cities on the edge of my borders have been freshly founded and don't have much culture. This is where a little on the culture slider and a culture bomb from the artist can nab me some extra turf and possibly an extra city before the borders become mature enough to resist culture bombing and sliding.

Whenever I get a Great Artist, decide to culture bomb and have Drama I always set the culture slider to 100% just before releasing the bomb as this creates more culture from the bomb. Then I return the slider to where it was.

 

[Percy]

Whenever I get a Great Artist, decide to culture bomb and have Drama I always set the culture slider to 100% just before releasing the bomb as this creates more culture from the bomb. Then I return the slider to where it was.

How so? I was under the impression that a Great Work produced a fixed 4000 culture points (at normal speed).

 

[DarkFyre99]

How so? I was under the impression that a Great Work produced a fixed 4000 culture points (at normal speed).

IIRC, there are two types of culture: the city's culture, and the tile's culture. The city's culture determines the range of its borders. The tile's culture determine's what % of the tile a civlization owns, and thus who controls the tile. The Great Work installs 4000 culture points to the city only.

However

It doesn't add it in one 4000 culture block. It instead breaks it down into like 20 different portions, and adds each portion seperately. The city's radius of control is then recalculated, and then adds each portion to the tiles within the city's border, with tiles farther from the border getting bonus culture.

Supposedly it doesn't add just the portion of culture to the tile, but the city's culture/turn as well. Thus, a cultural powerhouse would benefit more from a Great Work than a tiny little fishing port. So if it is true that culture/turn is added to tiles as well as the Great Work's culture, then it makes sense to max out the city's culture/turn right before the Great Work.

Something to test out on worldbuilder some day, I guess...

 

[Percy]

Thanks DarkFyre99.

It seems quite messy, and if it is indeed the behaviour of the game, it qualifies as an exploit to me.

 

[carl corey]

The teams that played the 'cultural conquest' succession games looked into the code for the culture bomb and it's quite messy indeed.

As for the original question, I used the culture slider in SE games, even with other civs than the Byzantines. The problem is that at some point there will be no health buildings/resources to get your health cap higher, so you'd effectively need 3 food per citizen, and that's pretty hard to do. I guess civs that have health related unique buildings are good candidates for the slider: Babylonian Gardens (colosseum) with +1 health and Persian Apothecary (grocer) +2 health. Expansive civs have a health boost that would allow them to build bigger cities and Industrious for the Hanging Gardens can be interesting too.

 

[tempuraki]

I use the cultural slider all the time after I get the cristo redentor:

1. set to 100% culture
2. switch out of emacipation and into slavery/tribalism
3. crach the whip/influence AI civic
4. switch back to emacipation
5. set the sliders back to what it was

I do this so that non of my cities get any unhappy citizens when not in emacipation, this way the governors can't reassign the specialists or tiles worked when I switch back.

 

[CivDude86]

Some map scripts don't give you all the resources so in those cases its useful to be able to grow your cities bigger without having to keep X units in each city.

 

[zienth]

I've used the slider to get a quick border pop on newly captured/settled cities. It's using a civ-wide culture push to benefit one or two cities, so it's not something to do on a regular basis, but there have been a few situations where I thought it was appropriate. Like when you're 1 or 2 percent short of the land percentage you need for domination and there aren't any more enemy cities available without starting a naval invasion. I could either wait for the borders to slowly pop, which would have taken dozens of turns, or crank up the culture and get the win in just a few turns.

Zienth