Just HOW BAD were Great Works nerfed?!

[TheMeInTeam]

So, accidental artist. Damn. Well, we have a use right? Just slam a great work near a rival city that's quite new, so I can flip it. Not a total waste...it'll even get me some wine! Cool!

Or not.

So let's analyze what happened here. That city had JUST hit 20% culture, when I bombed my city back in the BC's. At the time of bombing, my culture in that city was 77%. 77%! Knowing that cpt matters too, I also kept 3 artists there too.

OK. So why, considering the approximate time I bombed this city, did I NOT EVEN GET ONE REVOLT? I later bombed a 2nd guy to get it up to 80% culture city ----> now I'm getting bonus tile culture on top of the base cpt.

There is literally no way he could have been outproducing me in culture in that city. Zero. 3 artists there would easily outdo anything he could do and not starve. But frustratingly, the city culture went back to japan bit by frustrating bit. And no, he didn't have more units in that city at any point until then.

So, just how broken is this mechanic, since it used to be overpowered and was nerfed? All the strategy articles on it are old, but I'll tell you this: the AI has done this to me in reverse, and flipped my cities.

Do high level AIs just get a hidden culture bonus or something? I would have thought having the city more my culture than his for 100+ turns (eventually) would be enough for ONE REVOLT.

 

[Yared]

fail spam spies increase ur espionage point output n spread culture!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

None of that answers how a city could go 50+ turns with minimal garrison and a different civ's dominant culture and not revolt even once.

 

[Yared]

Japanese isolationism coupled with Japanese nationalism? Is it possible for some civs to be harder to revolt than other?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Japanese isolationism coupled with Japanese nationalism? Is it possible for some civs to be harder to revolt than other?

It is not.

Edit: aside from the basic culture bonuses some get ---> CRE and things like the madrassa make it less likely to overwhelm culture, they're more likely to overwhelm you.

But, once you have a culture advantage civ doesn't matter.

 

[DanF5771]

Toku's present troops provide a pretty solid total culture garrison value (CGV) for this small city that early in the game:

Axe, Spear, Cat each have a CGV of 4, the Sword's CGV is 5 --> sum of units' CGV = 17
add + 1 base --> total CGV = 18

Your culture pressure is a function of

• the highest population the city has had until now
• the number of adjacent tiles that are owned by you scaled for the game era ( = average era of all players)
• your domination of the plot culture of the city tile.

The REVOLT_OFFENSE_STATE_RELIGION_MODIFIER and REVOLT_DEFENSE_STATE_RELIGION_MODIFIER cancel each other out here, since both of you have Confucianism as SR.

Looking at your screen shot and assuming:

• highestPop = 2
• 4 adjacent tiles, average era = 1 (Classical)
• plot culture 63% / 36%

CultureStrength = ( 1(base) + 2*highestPop + 4*(era+1) ) * ( 1 + (63-36)/63 ) = 13 * 1.43 = 18.

--> CultureStrength is not greater than CGV --> chance of revolt = 0.

If you still have a save I could provide some exact numbers but all in all IMHO no bug here.

 

[Yared]

Wow I didn't know you could prevent a revolt by spamming units

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Wow I didn't know you could prevent a revolt by spamming units

I do it all the time but usually it take *alot* more units. Of course, that's to keep former vassal cities out of revolt even if they're dead center of the guy's empire. A good city can be worth it though.

Did I just get really unlucky? He had a similar garrison when I bombed it and with a 77% value it should have been more likely to revolt than 0.

This just goes to show why I hate culture as a priority in this game. It's better than space for me, but the AI is much faster with it than space forcing faster military force and now this nonsense .

 

[DanF5771]

Did I just get really unlucky? He had a similar garrison when I bombed it and with a 77% value it should have been more likely to revolt than 0.

For 77% culture and everything else equal:

CultureStrength = ( 1(base) + 2*highestPop + 4*(era+1) ) * ( 1 + (77-22)/77 ) = 13 * 1.71 = 22.

There is a flat 10% chance (REVOLT_TEST_PROB = 10) each turn that the game performs a revolt test for a city under culture pressure (but not under occupation).
During such a test the RNG decides whether there is a revolt or not via a RNG(CultureStrength) > CGV check. With CultureStrength = 22 and CGV = 18 the odds for passing a revolt test are 3/22 = 13.6% (RNG(22) rolls numbers from 0...21), so the overall revolt chance amounts to "not so overwhelming" 1.36% per turn.

As yared94 mentioned, the insert culture espionage mission *can* be helpful in such situations, as it is not only capable of ramping up your plot culture in the city tile, but might also help flipping more adjacent tiles to further increase your CultureStrength (other cities of yours can contribute too). Just don't bother running that mission if the amount of culture to insert is < 20 (game speed normal, 30 for epic, 60 for marathon), otherwise plot culture will remain unaltered due to the peculiarities of the culture mechanics and only city culture will be increased cheapening future missions a bit.

So @ normal a total city culture of >= 400 is required to mess with plot culture via espionage, but then the impact is quite strong. But in your example Nagasaki is pretty far away from that point (still < 100 city culture).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Oh yeah. I forgot 3.19 fixed up culture a bit . Good call.