Gamedesign logic: Culture

[Aussie_Lurker]

Culture bombs in Civ 4 and Civ 5 are very different. They have different effect and different purposes.

Now you see, the fact that you've made this INCORRECT assertion leads me to believe that you haven't really bothered to think these issues through, but are just taking the claims made by the designers as "articles of faith". By contrast, I've actually been following what people have been saying-very closely-which is why I still say that the entire "logic" of your argument is deeply flawed. Namely that, redesign or not, there was nothing about the Culture War system of Civ4 that couldn't have been adapted to work in Civ5, yet instead they chose to retain the most BROKEN element of the entire culture system-namely Culture Bombs. This decision makes alone makes me *Seriously* question their judgment!

Aussie.

 

[stealth_nsk]

In Civ 4 culture bomb was one of the methods of gaining city culture. It gave nothing what can't be acquired with other methods. So to make this feature worth a special status of GP, it was made strong.

In Civ 5, in contrast, culture bomb does the thing, what no other system could make. It's not that strong (6 tiles maximum), but:
- You could set the tiles precisely to make strategic decisions about using culture bomb.
- With individual GP counters you could specially build GA if needed.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

In Civ 4 culture bomb was one of the methods of gaining city culture. It gave nothing what can't be acquired with other methods. So to make this feature worth a special status of GP, it was made strong.

In Civ 5, in contrast, culture bomb does the thing, what no other system could make. It's not that strong (6 tiles maximum), but:
- You could set the tiles precisely to make strategic decisions about using culture bomb.
- With individual GP counters you could specially build GA if needed.

So you've actually successfully described all the reasons why retaining the Culture Bomb, instead of using a more nuanced system, is SUCH A BAD IDEA. You're giving a single unit the ability to take something that you otherwise would not be able to take SHORT OF FULL-SCALE WAR, & there is no defense that I can see against it. No matter how you contort your "logic" to defend it, retaining such a game-breaker is BAD GAME DESIGN-it was BAD in Civ4, it is even WORSE in Civ5.

Aussie.

 

[stealth_nsk]

So you've actually successfully described all the reasons why retaining the Culture Bomb, instead of using a more nuanced system, is SUCH A BAD IDEA. You're giving a single unit the ability to take something that you otherwise would not be able to take SHORT OF FULL-SCALE WAR, & there is no defense that I can see against it. No matter how you contort your "logic" to defend it, retaining such a game-breaker is BAD GAME DESIGN-it was BAD in Civ4, it is even WORSE in Civ5.

The cultural bomb in Civ 5 is MINOR feature.

The only reason for sacrificing GP in exchange for a couple of tiles is to gather disputable resource on a border. You actually could take the resource in another way - by trading.

And since building GP is more controllable you could defense in exactly the same way - by building and using GA.

 

[Tomice]

I needed some time to find a real-life counterpart to the GA effect. Finally, I imagine it as a skilled diplomat talking some regional leaders into joining your empire. It is not really an artists job to do it, but in reality a culturally bright empire would probably be more capable of pulling this of (more culture - more GAs). SO it's somewhat ok from a realism point of view.

What should definitively be in the game is a diplomatic penalty for doing it. While it is no war, it is an aggressive act that would not really improve the relations.

I can't find any situation in history when something similar happened, however. Not without significant additional factors. Maybe you could take the eastern european countries that left the Soviet Union and joined the EU as an example. The western culture was more appealing to them in some sense. But those were a bunch of countries, not a single region.



In civ 4, we had a system of aquiring tiles or even entire cities by culture or diplomacy. The problem was that it was hardly ever worth it (culture) or possible (diplomacy). It might be desirable to implement a more pointed, clear and effective system. Cities were far more often aquired peacefully in reality than in civ 4.



In conclusion, I would find it good if cultural players had more (and clearer) chances to expand. But I would really love to see other ways to acquire territory without war. If there's only the GA, then it's a fail. I also hope city trading will not always be grayed out any more in the diplomacy dialogue.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The cultural bomb in Civ 5 is MINOR feature.

The only reason for sacrificing GP in exchange for a couple of tiles is to gather disputable resource on a border. You actually could take the resource in another way - by trading.

And since building GP is more controllable you could defense in exactly the same way - by building and using GA.

No it is *not* a minor feature-saying it often doesn't make it so. Now that you can GUIDE the construction of your Great People, & given the GA's ability to literally STEAL 6 tiles from an opponent (at no additional cost, I'm guessing), then there is really nothing MINOR about that at all-it is GAME BREAKING. Although its true that you need to have the specialists assigned to build the Great Artist, there is nothing I've seen to suggest that the Culture Bomb can't be used against someone with a much higher culture than you-which also makes it a non-minor feature. Maybe if it had a culture cost I'd be more accepting of it; maybe if it caused a diplomatic penalty-as Tomice suggested-I'd be more accepting of it; maybe if it could only be used against those of a weaker culture than you-I'd be more accepting of it. Yet as it currently stands, I still say that the Culture Bomb is an example of AWFUL GAME DESIGN, & should have been dropped first in the transition from Civ4 to Civ5.

Aussie.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Surely AI will hate you for this. And human players will do too.

 

[Mercade]

In relation to this, has it been confirmed how many tiles of a city you get when you conquer it? Do you get all the tiles that the city bought (with money or culture) or do you only get the core 6 tiles around the city with the culture vanishing?

 

[Polobo]

Agree that a culture bomb should cause a diplomatic issue.

I also agree that they should have just done away with capturing tiles outright or done a more nuanced system; leaving in the culture-bomb makes little sense. Whether they could and should have adapted the CIV culture war system is debateable - the main use of culture is to acquire tiles and the culture-war system is an extension of that - since the tile aqusition system is significantly changed (individual tiles versus entire rings) and the old system relied on the applying culture to entire rings.

All that said; I'd rather see a military/diplomatic method to flip tiles and not even have a peaceful method at all.

I also see that they are simplying the game (as well as making some significant structural changes) but cannot really fault them for it. I figure they are likley to add in additional complexity with the expansions (as every game developer does) and the fundamental gameplay aspects are still present. And yes, most of the changes have tweaked the combat system but lets be honest and say that many people who would/are drawn to Civ enjoy engaging in combat - and even will be required to do so.

I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy but on the whole I've found very few decisions Firaxis has made to be superfluous. Mostly they are trimming stuff while focusing on propery implementing those items that they did include. Culture-Bomb is probably one of the few items.

I guess I am also fairly adaptable when it comes to my entertainment and have a fairly large window where I can enjoy the game for what it is and not get all upset because A works one way or B was not included. Differences of opinion are great but I find trying to put myself in the other person's shoes and understand more fully why they hold their opinion makes living with conflicts easier. That is really all we are trying to do. And, you can pick apart such an opinion but unless you show us a better way it won't do much good. In this case, since culture mechanics changed, something different needed to be done. You dislike the choices made, and claim CiV style mechanics could remain, but never attempt to describe how you would adapt/implement them in CIV.

 

[Polobo]

In relation to this, has it been confirmed how many tiles of a city you get when you conquer it? Do you get all the tiles that the city bought (with money or culture) or do you only get the core 6 tiles around the city with the culture vanishing?

No link but I do recall that you get the same owned tiles that the city had prior to capturing. The unknown is how "shareable" tiles are handled. It is probably similar to CIV where a tile you be associated with only 1 city at a time and that city gets the tile. Leads to some micro if you are going to lose a city that you swap tiles. It would probably be easier just to leave the tiles in the original culture if possible otherwise the tile goes over to the conquerer.

 

[Szpilman]

I tend to agree with Aussie that they should have worked on a more nuanced (and yet one over which you had control too) system for culture wars. As of now the only way to counter a culture bomb is.. with another culture bomb. And if it goes back and forth it's gonna be a continuous waste of Great Artists for both sides (in which case whoever generates them more easily is taking the least damage and keeping the disputed tiles for longer, which does say something about having better culture/happiness).

Culture wars could have been made into a fun and multi-faceted mechanism, yet they went for something gamey, as Aussie puts it. I really profoundly hope they'll expand culture wars with expansions. I actually expect an expansion pack all centered around the concept of culture.

 

[Psycedilla]

whats wrong with a game beeing "gamey" ?

 

[Tomice]

In relation to this, has it been confirmed how many tiles of a city you get when you conquer it? Do you get all the tiles that the city bought (with money or culture) or do you only get the core 6 tiles around the city with the culture vanishing?

I thought about it recently, and I believe the switchable tiles still "belong" to the city that generated the culture to acquire it. Since you buy tiles from the city screen, also tiles acquired by gold have a city they belong to. The city working the tile at a given moment might well be irrelevant.

This avoids the strange need to switch tiles to safe cities before a city is captured.

Also, big old cities in the center of your empire would still "hold" a lot of tiles when your young border towns fall, which is perfectly realistic and desirable gameplaywise.

I believe they made borders (also proviancial borders) permanent after the early game, not shifting back and forth every few turns (which was very strange in modern times). The GA might be the only way to change this, making it very valuable and border changes without war a rare event, which seems fine with me (*).

I never liked how tiles were left without owner after a war, maybe even ending up with an uninvolved nation. I doubt they will leave this in the game now that they can avoid it. So I can't believe in the "back to the inner ring" solution.




Overall, I have a strong feeling that borders will finally be very realistic (except maybe for the GA) and well-implemented. Shifting borders were weird. It was always whole regions who revolted at once, not every village on it's own.



(*) I haven't heard anything about how and if whole cities can change their nationality, I hope there is a cool and realistic way, but I'm sceptic. Cities revolting to another civ should happen more often than in Civ4, and more often than culture bombing.

 

[Elenhil]

I see absolutely no problem with either lots of tiles aquired by a city through old-style ring expansion or simply making culture spread over the tiles fater to accomodate for larger distances between cities.

To elaborate on both points. First, once again, why 3-hex city radius=too many tiles? By what standard too many? Was having a lot of unused tiles in a BFC ever a negative thing? Did Creative civs ever have problems with low-yield high-culture cities because they had their second border pop earlier than they could grow enough citizens to work all these newly acquired tiles?

Second, the whole transition to 1UPT ended up simply scaling up the gamespace. 1 Civ V hex is simply smaller than 1 Civ IV tile. This must naturally have produced faster culture spread speeds for borders to catch up with increased distances, just as it was with extra unit movement points. And that would have been all. There is nothing in it that might have required scrapping the mechanism altogether.

 

[Lyoncet]

I'd just like to say that I'm really disappointed with you, Aussie Lurker. You used to be a fun and interesting guy to chat with on the forums, but in the last few days suddenly you're twisting words, making unwarranted attacks, and just plain being rude to people. Just here you're capslock-yelling at people for stating their opinion (which I see as no less valid than yours).

Also, you're either not thinking very well or just plain not caring about whether or not your arguments make sense. You started ranting earlier on how CIV was great because it was the first time you could win without UCS, and that CiV is going to be a huge step backwards in that department, when Schaffer (I think it was him) has repeatedly stated in interviews that his favorite strategy is to bunker down in three cities and use the small-empire advantages, and that they went out of their way to make that a viable strategy, and when there's an entire social policy tree that's pretty much dedicated to improving the play of small empires. And the thing is, someone who's as active on the forums as you knows that.

The worst part is that when someone mentions that they don't think your ideas are consistent with what we know so far, you twist that into a "so you disagree with me so you say I'm lying" defense, which is patently false. For example:

I resurrected my CivFanatics account because I found it hard to take Aussie_Lurkers comment at face value. I also played Civ4 a lot, and I regularly observed that newly conquered border cities wouldn't be of much use as long as the surrounding territory was flooded by the culture of remaining core enemy cities. In case a third civilization had settled nearby, the newly conquered cities were also prone to flip to this third party.

lockstep

So you're accusing me of lying then are you? You might notice that I *also* said that, whatever faults existed in the Civ4 culture system, I believe it worked far *better* than the system they've gone with for Civ5-which effectively makes your culture USELESS outside your own borders (except on unowned tiles)! To me that, & an inability to buy owned tiles, is going to make the game way too dull for words!

Sorry, that's just ridiculous. (And no, I didn't crop anything out of either of those.) He's obviously not saying you're lying, and your attempting to inflame the situation to such an absurd degree just makes it look like you're either mean-spirited or desperate. Plus, if no organic tile-flipping is the thing that's going to make the game "way too dull for words!" I question both your judgment and your sincerity. Especially since you constantly say "I know CiV is going to be a good game, but I don't know if it's going to be a great game," you obviously changed your opinion really, really fast or just say whatever seems convenient at the time.

To top it all off, every time someone's countered your "culture bombs are way too good!" argument with "yeah, but all GPs are supposed to be good, and everyone can get GPs, so if there's an issue it's that nobody's going to want anything other than artists, not that someone's going to be able to steal the game since everyone else will be building them if they're that good," you ignore them, typically with lots of exaggeration and capslock-screaming at them and doing a patented "no matter how many times you say your opinion it's still going to be wrong and mine's going to be right!" I'm not making that up.

No it is *not* a minor feature-saying it often doesn't make it so.

I don't know what it was that made you go off the deep end and go from one of the most polite, agreeable people on the forums to what you are now, which is anything but, but it's quite disappointing. And I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks that. (And that will be true no matter how many times you say its not!)

I know this will probably get deleted and I'll get infracted for talking about someone's forum etiquette rather than the subject at hand, but in my opinion this is the subject at hand. When someone's behaving this, frankly, destructively, you can't get anything else done. So sorry mods.

 

[King Jason]

No it is *not* a minor feature-saying it often doesn't make it so. Now that you can GUIDE the construction of your Great People, & given the GA's ability to literally STEAL 6 tiles from an opponent (at no additional cost, I'm guessing), then there is really nothing MINOR about that at all-it is GAME BREAKING. Although its true that you need to have the specialists assigned to build the Great Artist, there is nothing I've seen to suggest that the Culture Bomb can't be used against someone with a much higher culture than you-which also makes it a non-minor feature. Maybe if it had a culture cost I'd be more accepting of it; maybe if it caused a diplomatic penalty-as Tomice suggested-I'd be more accepting of it; maybe if it could only be used against those of a weaker culture than you-I'd be more accepting of it. Yet as it currently stands, I still say that the Culture Bomb is an example of AWFUL GAME DESIGN, & should have been dropped first in the transition from Civ4 to Civ5.

Aussie.

And if I'd rather have a golden age for my empire instead?

You make it sound like people will be building their cities in such a way to pop Great artists at the rate civ4 SE's popped great scientists in an effort to bombard the world with culture bombs. As if this is the flat-out best benefit of the Artist, period.

Additionally, your argument is flat out silly. The Artist GP has options to do several things; one of which is to instantly grant the player the rewards of massive culture accumulation, E.g. Territory. The only other reward of an Artist would be to grant a social policy which would likely be insanely overpowered. This is no different than the bonuses other GPs can offer

Look at some other GPs;

Scientists - Instantly learn a technology
Engineers - Instantly complete a building.

In fact that's the trend really; GPs can either:

Create a golden age
Increase your accumulation of their associated resource (gold, science, culture, production) Over time.
Give you the reward of accumulating said resource instantly.

There is nothing gamebreaking about the Great Artist, and if it is, it's no more gamebreaking than saving an engineer to rush a wonder that another empire clearly could've built faster than you. Not even Egypt can compete with that. It's no more gamebreaking than using a scientist to rush a tech that gives you an advantage over your enemy.

As a side note; I agree with Lyoncet ~ Auss, you used to be someone who's arguments I enjoyed reading. Regardless whether I was for or against it. Now, on damn near every issue of civ5 you seem to be banging pots and pans just to make noise. I don't get it.

 

[Tomice]

Do we even know our culture has no effect in foreign lands? Are we sure there is no city flipping because of cultural pressure? It might still happen, just not tile per tile.

Arioch? Have your all-seeing eyes spotted something?

 

[Venereus]

Arioch? Have your all-seeing eyes spotted something?

His half-naked hot neighbour. Hopefully he'll post some pics at his site.

 

[Polobo]

I'd actually rather get the free SP (probably with investment limitations just like technology has in CIV) than the culture-bomb. I don't see, initially, how it would really overpowered; and it would be available to all civs to should even out to some degree.

Edit: The game trailer in the video section of the forums shows this clearly.

 

[SuperSmash5]

I don't understand why someone would get so butthurt over the changes in how you acquire tiles. So they removed cultural pressure? Big deal. Culture wars were never a huge part of the game except when you conquered cities and then they starved down to size 4 because of all the foreign culture. And that mechanic was pretty annoying. I like the new discrete method. It's more intuitive. And it lets you actually claim land when you conquer a city. Sure, the culture bomb is a little cheesy, but all things considered culture is much improved. Heck, culture has its own tech-tree equivalent and is just as important to manage as science, gold, or production.