Doing more with culture...

[Noriad2]

I think that the concept of culture is under-used in Civ 4. Culture points are being produced (by buildings or by spending commerce, competing with money, science, and espionage points) but it is only used to push out borders. In real life, culture is so much more than that. My ideas on this matter have not fully crystallized yet, but I'd like to throw up what I came up with so far into the community, for brainstorming.

I have been thinking about virtues being an intricate part of culture. Virtues make for better quality people, that's why religions push virtues so much. Better quality people achieve more.

Virtues can be described in a way to be somewhat contradictory: Traditionalism vs Progressiveness, Faith vs Reason, Family Values vs Macho-ism. Collectivism vs. individualism. Risk-taking vs Conservatism. Duty vs Freedom. Tolerant vs intolerant. Self-reliance vs. Community Responsibility. Adventurism vs Safety. Ambition vs Conformity. Egalitarian vs Hierarchic.

This would allow the player to fine-tune his civ with choices and give it a unique character. Each virtue would give benefits: Family values would lower crime while macho-ism would give military benefits.

However, I don't like the system as used in civ 5. In civ 5 you collect culture points, then you make a choice and get a permanent benefit for the rest of the game. I'd like it to be much more dynamic than that. Compare the old vikings vs the modern Swedes. Or any modern Northwestern European country today. Afraid to criticise foreign immigration and foreign criminals for fear of being "racist" or "politically incorrect". Tolerance to the point of being suicidal as a society. The old Northwestern Europeans and the new Northwestern Europeans are complete opposites. Cultures can change a lot over the centuries.

Thus I'd like a more dynamic system. You make a choice and then you produce culture points each round to build up your virtues, much like the city properties.

It should reward clear choices more than choosing a bit of both. For example, if you choose either family values or macho-ism your culture points get multiplied by 5, if you choose a bit of both (no clear choice) your culture points don't get multiplied. Great People can found bodies of ideas (traditions) that make it easier to teach virtues, so you get a bonus on spending culture.

These choices could be made civ-wide, much like how you choose how to divide up your espionage points in the espionage screen, but the effects would be per-city, based on how much culture that specific city is producing. As you produce points, you build up virtues, and as virtue levels go higher these slowly decay towards zero, much like the current city properties. So you need to continually produce culture (as is indeed currently done in the game). If you switch a choice, you benefit from the old virtues for a while, but as older generations die out, these old virtues die out too while new virtues get build up.

As your virtue levels get higher in each city, you get levels that convey various benefits, much like how Tourism works.

However, as you get more and more ways to produce culture (i.e. more buildings available, more commerce) there should be a penalty too. The amount of culture points produced should be divided by the population size before turned into virtue points. And these virtue points could then be multiplied by a factor I'd like to call "community cohesion". Multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious cities would have a lower community cohesion, making it harder to lead everybody in the same direction: "a nation that prays together stays together". This would provide a penalty against the current exploit of mass religion stacking.

It could also be tied in with civic choices. For example, state welfare (either the modern welfare state or the old Roman "panem et circenses" i.e. Bread and Plays) would make happier citizens but also make people more complacent (aside from costing more money) thus lowering virtues.

It also makes for new espionage actions: undermine virtues in your opponents cities. Much like the KGB did in Western countries during the Cold War (check out the various lectures by Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB officer, on youtube on demoralization and undermining Western societies). Promote perversity, drug use, anarchism etc.

 

[Thunderbrd]

You just invented Developing Leaders (sorta). Or rather you walked down the same road to the same concept but tweaked it a little... in ways I had thought I may eventually circle back around to later by introducing local city traits at some point.

I'm still in the process of working on the full on Leader traits, the first step in this system, and I have been thinking that with all the projects on the plate, I cannot be sure if I'll ever find the bandwidth of time to take it to the next level of a more local trait system (Virtues explains my concept of traits pretty accurately - down to comments about how there are mixed effects and so on.) But I'd heavily support someone who was primarily doing the legwork to design and implement. We could pretty quickly develop this out codewise and then design the planned xml structure through spreadsheets first (you don't want to just muddle through this - a master plan shows what needs done and what needs to be made possible) then the coding to support the plan, then the implementation of it in the xml becomes a sail through it process and voilla you have a masterpiece.

I think I'd want you to really take some time to study the trait system I'm soon to be putting into action in the xml here first. I would want you to grasp the similarity in design concepts and to highlight for yourself the differences as well before we take steps forward. We had a proposed and partially designed concept a while back of traits that represented the thinking of the public, not just the leadership, heritage traits, that would be earned by completing goals but I think the realization that the manner in which these heritage traits would be assigned was too design laborious swept the process under the rug. What you have just suggested is its next evolution of concept. The idea was always valid. But this proposal would instead mimic the Leader trait progression quite a bit closer but on a more localized level. City traits that follow the same earning rules as the Leader traits basically, but apply only to local culture earned. This could lead to some really REALLY cool stuff that would help to specialize cities.

Then again, maybe you ARE talking more on a national basis and we're talking more about the NATION'S heritage traits (the game influences from how the people think and behave) but that may conflict and collide with the Ideas system that's planned, or perhaps it may become a part of the fabric of that system.

There's a number of ways we could move forward with the thoughts you've surfaced here.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Noriad2, you have also described something similar to what I would like to do in evolving religions. Eventually I want religions to grow and die out and maybe revive. As they grow they can build more things that strengthen the religion. It will mean fewer religions in your nation but a better feel overall. My current ideas are heavily based on the "Total War" and "Faces of Gods" mods.

I like this idea much more than I do the idea presented earlier for specialalising cities, although that has some merit also. (Aside: if I had my way you would not be able to have city specialists nor specialised cities until you had the Specialsiation tech (the letter after y does not work on this key board ). After all that is the point of that tech.)

I would like to see Developing Leaders completely replace the existing Leader stuff in v38. It would be nice if there were only 2 or 3 options available also as we moved towards just one with perhaps one option.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Eventually I want religions to grow and die out and maybe revive. As they grow they can build more things that strengthen the religion. It will mean fewer religions in your nation but a better feel overall. My current ideas are heavily based on the "Total War" and "Faces of Gods" mods.

You've read the thread I started on the Ideas project right? I have this heavily on my agenda for v38 but to make any headway, I need some help with some mathematical process design suggestions. AKA, what would make an idea grow or contract? What are the forces we need to define? Ideas can easily be made to be evolutionary but we need to define what makes them wax and wane. In many cases its newer ideas that eventually overcome older ones but how we define the strength of the popularity of an idea is still needing some determination.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Yes I have read the ideas thread and ideas will contribute to religions but they are not exactly the same. I am looking for a word similar to maturity but not exactly that. A religion may start as an idea but it is more than that. Sorry, I think the heat is getting to me, back latter.