Fixed border and culture spreading units

[NikG]

Okay some of you have seen other screenies by me, I think "WHAT THE HELL is he up to", right now I am modding the game extremely much to my own taste, when finished I may release it.

However here it goes. The city with the lion have extremely much culture, while the other one just east, is have low culture. You can see that the cultural stronger city, does not take land from the weaker... And far east is a test of units spreading culture. This is all just tests so far, but I think it looks promising.

 

[abman]

Fascinating. I'm not sure what sort of scenario culture-spreading units would be ideal for, but it would definately change the way the game is played!
Keeping borders defined would be good for historical earth scenarios. You could have the countries exactly outlined and have the entire country flip to you if you capture its capital!

 

[woodelf]

I really, really want to see this when you release it.

 

[NikG]

A little teaser picture... What you see is two normal cities... BUT you can also see a "town improvemnt" on a tile with borders! What is this??? It is a colony.... Still just testing around, but this can end up very nice, and I am doing a lot of progress...

 

[woodelf]

Sweet. This is a major breakthrough --- providing the AI is smart enough to use them.

Keep us updated!

 

[NikG]

Sweet. This is a major breakthrough --- providing the AI is smart enough to use them.

Keep us updated!

Well, right now, I use just settlers. An algorithm determines if the new founded city is a city or a colony. However I were think to add an additional found function or something, I dont have made any decisions on how the actual function will work in the end. Just testing around. However programming the AI to understand a new kind a "city type" is not so hard, as it may seem.

 

[mjs0]

This is really interesting, I have been thinking for some time about creating a mod that introduces some new twists to cultural spread and I really like what you are trying to do here.

One of my ideas is a new ability for forts. Specifically I would like forts to inhibit the accumulation of foreign culture in the fort's square and those immediately surrounding it.
Along similar lines, it would seem to me to be sensible if the rate of spread of culture from neighbouring civilization was affected by whether you have open or closed borders.

Would anyone have any idea how difficult these might be to do?

(I am pretty proficient in C++ and have looked at and debugged through a lot of the SDK without finding any nasty surprises, I just haven't got around to looking into this yet)

The rationale behind culture suppression by forts.
The idea would be that forts could not expand your borders but they could hold off the encroachment of others.
The growth of culture is all very well but repression of cultural heretics is also a time honored tradition, in fact the suppression of foreign culture is just as important historically as the generation of culture of your own,

I have seen suggestions on here that forts should spread culture, but if one looks at remote forts/castles historically, they had two primary purposes defending the border/region and controlling the local population. Having a fort spread culture just doesn't seem to fit.

However I do think it would make perfect sense for a fort to inhibit slightly the spread of foreign culture. This would represent well their roll in subduing the peasants and reminding the locals of the power of the current leader. It would also add an interesting twist to gameplay and give a very solid reason to build forts along contested borders. The biggest problem would be getting the AI to use them effectively.

Perhaps by providing forts with this ability we could simulate (as Monty Python put it)..."the violence inherent in the system"
Peasant: Help I'm being repressed...
Arthur: Bloody peasant!

 

[NikG]

Another picture... Look closely at the mountains. The borders go around them. It is still just some random testing, but I want to include it for rivers etc. to make a more natural growth of the borders, so we in the end get more realistic borders.

 

[The Great Apple]

I do like the idea of culture being blocked by terrain - it should not spread so easily through terrain with high movement costs (I assume this is how you are determining it?). Personally I think mountains should be able to gain culture eventually to prevent silly looking gaps in your empire... maybe when they are surrounded by your culture on three sides they should be able to gain their own culture?

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

 

[NikG]

I do like the idea of culture being blocked by terrain - it should not spread so easily through terrain with high movement costs (I assume this is how you are determining it?). Personally I think mountains should be able to gain culture eventually to prevent silly looking gaps in your empire... maybe when they are surrounded by your culture on three sides they should be able to gain their own culture?

I will find a nice way, so it will look good.

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

No, I think you misunderstood something here. The problem with the system now is you can lose precious resources because of a city expanding, without even starting a war, which is unrealistic, and it doesnt add anything to the gameplay and is certainly not fun either. So my idea were:

When founding a city, the city will get it initial 8 surrounding squars, unless some of them already are owned by others, if so, then to bad you wont get them. Cities still build up culture. When a city expands its borders, it will expand on unowned land (unclaim so to say), but it will not expand and take over owned land. So if you claim a plot of land, you will have it forever, unless the city were it belongs want to switch to another civilization and you grant it permission to do so OR you lose the city through war.

 

[The Great Apple]

Aaah. That makes more sence, though I'm still not sure I like it.

 

[Jouda]

About fixed borders - from what I can tell you're reverting it back to the way it was in Civ 3. Personally, I'm against this, as there is nothing more annoying then somebody plonking a city down on their border, and using it's fixed borders to steal your resources.

I don't think this is the situation - in Civ 3 a newly built city gained culture around it regardless of an enemy territory, thus stealing it. From what I've seen on NikG's pictures, culture spreads only to unoccupied tiles.

 

[woodelf]

I kind of like it as it makes it tougher for the human player to "steal" resources simply by adding a city near another civ's large cultural city. Maybe there could be a pop-up asking if you'd like to start a war to get the full 8 tiles? And if you're willing then the other side would get an option to start one to not allow you to get the 8 tiles?

 

[NikG]

Jouda-> you are absolutely right...
woodelf->that is an interesting idea. I will look in to it, wouldnt be to hard.

 

[Jouda]

So if you claim a plot of land, you will have it forever, unless the city were it belongs want to switch to another civilization and you grant it permission to do so OR you lose the city through war..

Do you think you could make it so that a civ could claim even a single tile (without capturing the nearby city)? That would be even better! For example military units could have this ability. What do you think of this?

 

[NikG]

Jouda yes I could, and I have had the same thoughts... However I think it could ruin the game a bit, I am not sure. Because if so you could claim everything in a war, without attacking cities, and in the end take over the world in a rather "peaceful" manner. But I not really sure yet, if we could find a nice way to do it, I will certainly implement it.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

So I suppose then that the "our close borders spark tensions" factor should be lessened since the real reason behind that is that the borders in the standard game are rather fluid. If they don't change, there's no reason for there to be so much hostility.

That said, I'd like it if one could lay claim to tracts of land and demand the AI cede those plots rather than surrendering only cities. So if the AI has some resource I want and they have a bunch of and its just one tile next to my border and I'm a lot bigger and meaner than they are I could just bully them into surrendering that tile

Also, what happens when you conquer cities during war? Do captured cities retain their original borders? Or do they drop to just 1 plot of culture and then are unable to expand at all so long as the enemy's borders are around it? Or do they get a standard 8 tiles right off the bat?

 

[NikG]

Hey Dom Pedro II,
The close border tension needs of course to be change along with this, however I intent to alter the whole memory thing too, to a more realistic approach, so a war 200 turns ago, dont effect the relations now.

The idea with claiming land and bullly the owner to cease them, would certainly be very cool, and I would like to try to implement this.

Regarind conquest of cities, the idea is that the borders are tied to the cities, so when you conquer a city the culture of that city would of course decrease to the level you have in that city, but the border will be retained.

So in the end: borders dont shift because of greater culture, the owner is who first claim it, and you can conquer land by conquering cities. Cities can still shift owner with their corresponding borders, becuase of greater culture. Look at my signature to get an idea of it, in the "more city options".

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hmmm, perhaps you could have a system whereby a unit or fort can 'Annex' territory IF said territory is either (a) unclaimed or (b) is claimed by a city with very weak culture. Annexed squares could then be traded like resources during negotiations.

Aussie_Lurker.

 

[mjs0]

Hmmm, perhaps you could have a system whereby a unit or fort can 'Annex' territory IF said territory is either (a) unclaimed or (b) is claimed by a city with very weak culture. Annexed squares could then be traded like resources during negotiations.

Aussie_Lurker.

That is actually an intriguing idea, although the intricacies of getting the AI to correctly value squares during trading would be...well...intricate. I had an idea similar to this for units claiming territory during war as follows:

I'm not sure if in NikGs system culture continues to accumulate in squares outside your borders or not. If it does (as I would hope) then those squares effectively have two owners, a cultural owner and a physical owner. It would make sense that limited border wars/engagements could be fought over those dual ownership squares in order to bring the borders in line with the cultural spread. I suspect this would be much more in keeping with historical realities than the existing culture flipping of squares.
Under such a system the cultural owner of a square could claim that square by occupying it with a millitary unit at any time during a war. This would represent nicely the shifting of borders due to military action. More drastic shifting of borders (to take ownership of squares from their cultural owner) would still require the taking of cities.