Losing ground to more cultured cites?

[TylerDurden9]

Hi,

I've been Googling for an hour and cant find an answer to this although there must be one.

I'm beset on all sides by 3 empires on a pangea map and I think I'm losing ground by culture. I've attached a screenshot. (I've recently taken cities from green in the top right)

When I hover over tiles in the affected area I can see the % of each culture but how do I tell if I'm dominating them or the other way round?

How can I see the rate its occurring and how much culture is needed to correct or swing things the other way?

Many thanks.

 

[Trapper439]

When I hover over tiles in the affected area I can see the % of each culture but how do I tell if I'm dominating them or the other way round?

Watch what is happening over a few turns.

If you have, say, 31% culture on that tile and then when you check again five turns later you have only 29% then you're losing the culture battle.

I don't think that there is any way to judge it more quickly than that.

 

[Tlalynet]

Barring mods, the only way to tell is check every few turns and see if your % is getting higher or lower.

 

[TylerDurden9]

Barring mods, the only way to tell is check every few turns and see if your % is getting higher or lower.

I have BUG BULL Installed but don't see any options for border culture. Is their no way to tell how much culture would be needed?

This doesn't seem like strategy just guessing build culture as much as you can and pray. None of the other game mechanics seem so fuzzy. This seems like a terrible mechanic and as its still in the game after so much modding and 2 expansions I must be missing something vital here or do good players just turn this off?

 

[TylerDurden9]

Yep I losing significant ground, quickly skipping turns things get pretty ugly especially around some cities I've taken from war.

Someone please tell me there is some way to analyse this more than remembering % on tiles and then guessing how much culture I should build in a city. I havent seen any warning message do I just have to keep scrolling out to world view to check this?

Does the option "No city flipping from culture" in a custom game stop culture from merging / expanding on tiles? i.e you don't lose or gain ground.

Was really enjoying the analytical side to Civ 4. You can see how everything is going, keep an eye on everything and judge how your actions are going to pan out over time and now a mechanic I just have to guess at?

This has totally ruined the game for me. Seriously I must be missing something because this seems so stupid I cant believe it wasnt removed from the game in V1.000001

 

[vandermerwe]

"No city flipping..." only prevents cities from switching allegiance, not shifting borders. And there's no way of monitoring this in BUG afaik. A slightly easier way to remember would be to use ALT-S to place a flag on a tile under threat, and enter the amount of your own culture that turn. Then check back every few turns.

Culture obviously varies over time, as cities grow, religions spread, buildings / wonders are constructed, and specialists assigned. So there's no single answer to how much you should build. Clearly, though, your borders are going to be more under threat from capitals, holy cities, cities containing culture-producing wonders and CRE-trait civs. Counter that in nearby cities with culture-producing buildings / wonders, specialists, or if really stuck a great artist or 'spread culture' spy mission. Sometimes, though, it's not worth holding on to a small city under serious culture pressure, esp. if you'd get a useful diplo bonus from gifting or trading it to the civ pressuring it.

 

[God-Emperor]

Assuming you are not still at war, you probably either should not have stopped the war with the green civ, or you should start it again (after a suitable military buildup). The green capital has wonders (and the Palace). It is producing a lot of culture. Overcoming that may be impossible, especially given the culture they already had in their cities you took. You could end up spending all Edirne's production on culture buildings (which it is not currently doing - a courthouse produces no culture) until it has them all and still never have it be able to use half of the nearby land. On the other hand, if you take the 3 green cities you will no longer have a green culture issue. On the other other hand, if you lose the war it is not an issue either...

Unless you picked the option to change it, a city will never flip back to the player you took it from in a war due to culture. It may revolt over and over, it will never flip ownership. The "no city flipping" option refers to cities not taken militarily unless it is due to some 3rd party: if player A takes city X from player B that is near a city owned by player C, player C can flip city X to them via culture but player B can't get it back that way (unless the option allowing it is turned on).

Since you can see what the green cities are producing, you can also see exactly how much culture they are producing per turn. Just double click on them and open up their city screens and you can see everything about them. Exactly how that culture flows out to the nearby plots is not shown in the user interface. In general, closer plots to the city get culture at a faster rate than farther plots but that is about it for the obvious functioning of culture spread.

 

[Tlalynet]

I don't know of a mod that shows you border culture over time either, though it is possible to make such a mod, and such a mod may exist for all I know.



Sadly, you actually could have found out how much culture you needed on the green side. I looked at the screenshot and you have enough EP to 'investigate city'. You just need more culture output on a tile than the combined output of all opposing cities on that tile. You could have opened their city screens and look at how much culture each of their cities was producing.

There is nothing else you could have done against grey though.

Its possible that placing a spy in the grey cities till they got -50% would have given you enough EP on that city to investigate and do the same on that side I suppose.

Espionage can do what you need. Considering how much espionage I play I'm sorry I didn't tell you that last post.

* Nevermind, God King already said it.

 

[DroopyTofu]

There's no exact way to tell. It depends on how much culture the other civ produces. That can change by turn. Just produce culture until you're happy with the amount of land you get bad. Hope that the civ doesn't start producing more culture than you. Just keep checking in on it often. It's too unpredictable to make an exact stat about it.

 

[MeatUnit2]

If you look at the "Info Screen" (F9) you can click "Culture" at the top of the chart to see a chart of all the known empire's culture production. It doesn't give you any numbers but does give you an idea about which empires are pumping out culture and if you're ahead or behind.
If you're up against an opponent that's pumping out lots of culture they are not spending as much on military. Your best bet is to take all of their cities to prevent future revolts.