On the Dileniations of Culture

[QES]

This Thread is about culture and its impacts for various Civs in game of FFH

I was wondering if there are different ways to use the culture phenominon? IT's cleaver that Fellowship can make ancient forests out of regular forests in their cultural influence.

I was wondering if it is possible to prevent come civs from conquering cities culturally?

Some more sinister nations could expand their culture, but only shrink territories of other rival nations, instead of actually (owning it)

Undead, Deamonic, or other vile and abnormal cultures, wouldnt gain favor in other peoples lands, but instead "oppress" them, and dominate the landscape.

I see deamonic or necromantic civs being able to have MASSIVE culture bonuses (lots of buildings to spread their culture). Giving them free reign to run around in what was "once" opposing territory. They'll never gain cities, but they can squeeze civilizations. Shadows of doom...etc.

Also, i think it'd be cool to couple that with buildings that would harm the landscape. Either have a little thing like the elves, where land turns into Blight/Fallout (blight sounds better). Then there could be a building, that crushes a cities culture, but provides some boon, and bane. LIke, Landbane - a building that is destroyed after creation (for repetition), it immediately grants the city -500 culture (or more), but will randomly produce something good, like undead/deamonic units. OR, the farthest spaces of THAT particular cities culture (and only that city) randomly turn into blight/wasteland. Then -500 culture. In this, the boarder would retreat, but it'd leave nasty lands in its wake.

IF anyone else has cool ideas on how to use the culture mechanic, post it here.
-Qes

 

[Silverkiss]

Man, you have some good ideas. You should PM Kael whit most of them so they dont loose thenselves (f** my english) in threads.

 

[QES]

Man, you have some good ideas. You should PM Kael whit most of them so they dont loose thenselves (f** my english) in threads.

Back in feburary i also innundated the FFH threads with ideas. It seems my role is to act as a sort of IDea hurricane. I come in, blow a lot of hot air, pick up small animals and hurl them at innocent bistanders, then retreat away for another season. (I go through phases my interenet/gaming hobby, and im either REALLY into it, or could care less, every few months it switches. Its also notibly timed with when my fiancee is in country....hm....
-Qes

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I've always liked the idea of having Veil Civs have some "blight" type effect in their lands, but I'm wondering why they'd want this. Also, the sacrificing culture to summon some sort of demon or something sounds cool. It would probably cause unhappiness or something, though. Maybe the corruption would only take place outside of a city's workable radius?

 

[Kael]

Man, you have some good ideas. You should PM Kael whit most of them so they dont loose thenselves (f** my english) in threads.

Eeee . No PM's please unless its really important. I'd rather they were posted here for everyone to see. Even though I dont respond to as many as I would like I read all the posts here.

 

[Kael]

This Thread is about culture and its impacts for various Civs in game of FFH

I was wondering if there are different ways to use the culture phenominon? IT's cleaver that Fellowship can make ancient forests out of regular forests in their cultural influence.

I was wondering if it is possible to prevent come civs from conquering cities culturally?

Some more sinister nations could expand their culture, but only shrink territories of other rival nations, instead of actually (owning it)

Undead, Deamonic, or other vile and abnormal cultures, wouldnt gain favor in other peoples lands, but instead "oppress" them, and dominate the landscape.

I see deamonic or necromantic civs being able to have MASSIVE culture bonuses (lots of buildings to spread their culture). Giving them free reign to run around in what was "once" opposing territory. They'll never gain cities, but they can squeeze civilizations. Shadows of doom...etc.

Also, i think it'd be cool to couple that with buildings that would harm the landscape. Either have a little thing like the elves, where land turns into Blight/Fallout (blight sounds better). Then there could be a building, that crushes a cities culture, but provides some boon, and bane. LIke, Landbane - a building that is destroyed after creation (for repetition), it immediately grants the city -500 culture (or more), but will randomly produce something good, like undead/deamonic units. OR, the farthest spaces of THAT particular cities culture (and only that city) randomly turn into blight/wasteland. Then -500 culture. In this, the boarder would retreat, but it'd leave nasty lands in its wake.

IF anyone else has cool ideas on how to use the culture mechanic, post it here.
-Qes

This is possible, though I don't know that I would tie it to specific civs. Remember that evil civs can become good as part of the game. A mechanic truer to your point may be to make cities more liekly to culturally flip to good civs and less likely to flip to evil civs. Is that along the lines you were suggesting?

 

[Bad Player]

The problem I think with good civs more likely to get city flips is good civs already have the advantage!!! The good civics (public healers) are better than bad civics (more health and happiness). Also if you make bad civs more warlike (discussed in another thread) this probably will make them weaker??

It might be interesting to give evil civs more cultural border expansion but less likely to city flip (which crowds out good civ cities)...

 

[QES]

This is possible, though I don't know that I would tie it to specific civs. Remember that evil civs can become good as part of the game. A mechanic truer to your point may be to make cities more liekly to culturally flip to good civs and less likely to flip to evil civs. Is that along the lines you were suggesting?

Not really. I was suggesting a whole other function for culture outside of boarders and city flipping.

I was suggesting that evil civs....(or maybe evil relgions?) could/would have a different use out of their cultural boarders. I'm not sure how probable it is since, as you said civs can switch alignment, but if it was possible to tie in alignment to function, this would be cool. The idea, specifically, is that cultural expansion by evil civs dont function as a method of "hey, you should join us, were great" but instead more of a "we are the doom here to envolope the world" feeling. It would ONLY shrink your neighbors boarders (if your evil), not actually induce cities to join you. Pumping your culture, would then shrink your enemies territory (I also imagined giving evil civs more culture bonuses, or some way to compete very viciously with good and neutral civs, whom can actually convert cities.) These bonuses would only apply so long as one remained evil.

The "cultural implosion" idea, was to benifit from the cultural expanse, and actually add a strategy to maxing ones culture. (As evil). As your dark and evil culture starts to suround enemy territories, it becomes less useful to you, and more painful for them. To revert it to "use" and thereby relinquish the damage done to opponents, some benefit would be gained...free unit construction..maybe topography changes, maybe it could be used as a sort of weapon against cities. I could see the OO using their evil cultural expanse to drive foregn cities insane...(Is it possible for the OO to turn foriegn cities into barbarian cities instead of OO cities? through cultural expanse?)

The idea of this thread is to come up with other uses for the Cultural expansion we find in CIV IV, that is outside of merely boarder control and cultural conversion. Domination is still important, but perhaps a few civs could use culture as a weapon, not merely a tool.

-Qes

PS. I dont think it SHOULD be tied into civs, but instead alignment. Good cities dont join evil cities out of a love of evil, they do it out of coercment, guile, deciet and trechery. Perhaps evil civs could have access to a unit that would manually give evil nations that ability to manipulate cities. But In general i think that culture should be tied in someway to alignment. Evil could convert evil, neutral could convert anyone, good could convert anyone. But evil shouldnt be able to convert good, or possibly even neutral. Instead give evil culture another function, or use.

 

[QES]

Could culture be bartered? Like could a nation voluntarily (in the diplomacy screen) take a culture hit? It would be sort of like giving up land - right? Moving boarders back, so that other nations could grow? It'd be great to see -% culture options in the screen, and notice that an AI is demanding it of you (i would think only boarder nations should demand it).
-Qes

EDIT: It could function in the same way as when a civ wants one of your cities. Only it'd be less valuable. Where as a city may change the whole dynamic of the game, moving the boarder line might be a method of appeasement.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

It would be funny to see a bunch of AI cities only able to work the tile they are on.But it would lead to wars real quick.

 

[QES]

It would be funny to see a bunch of AI cities only able to work the tile they are on.But it would lead to wars real quick.

Exactly. THose blasted so an sos are invading our lands! We must push back the evil! Etc..
-Qes

 

[QES]

IS there a way to make improvements on the land produce culture?

It'd be nice if fortifications (generic or FFH modified) produced small amounts of culture. This would have 2 effects. 1- it would help establish control over an area that's being pressured by outside influences (such as a city that will take forever to finish its culture building). And 2 - it would create the natural consequence of puting fortifications along boarders with rivals. (The AI would understand that right?)
-Qes

EDIT: IT would also be cool if foritifications (or whatever) could be built OUTSIDE of one's territory with this little culture ability. Then one could begin to claim territory before you've cities to get there.
Also, maybe put a maximum on how much culture a fort could build up. If i gets 2 a turn, maybe it can only grow out to a maximum of two squares away - whatever the "Max" of this winds up being. I see them primiarily as offering simply the 8 squre ring around them in culture preservation and strenghtening.

 

[evanb]

This reminds me of the castles or whatever they were called in Rise of Nations.

 

[QES]

This reminds me of the castles or whatever they were called in Rise of Nations.

Thats exactly where i got the idea from.
-Qes

 

[vorshlumpf]

I like the idea of improved fortresses (I tried one mod that was pretty neat), but I don't think I like the idea of it growing culture.

One thought I had was to make a pioneer unit. It is produced like workers and settlers (with food) and has one purpose - to prepare a wild tile for work or control. Basically you would sacrific the pioneer to create culture in a single tile. This would allow you to build forts or access resources outside your city's cultural borders. The pioneer's culture wouldn't grow though, and would be dispersed by valid culture from another civ or by a single enemy unit passing through (which would make it unwise to have an unprotected pioneer square).

- Niilo

 

[QES]

I like the idea of improved fortresses (I tried one mod that was pretty near), but I don't think I like the idea of it growing culture).

One thought I had was to make a pioneer unit. It is produced like workers and settlers (with food) and has one purpose - to prepare a wild tile for work or control. Basically you would sacrific the pioneer to create culture in a single tile. This would allow you to build forts or access resources outside your city's cultural borders. The pioneer's culture wouldn't grow though, and would be dispersed by valid culture from another civ or by a single enemy unit passing through (which would make it unwise to have an unprotected pioneer square).

- Niilo

The pioneer would have to be really cheap to legitimise not building an actual settler and just haveing a tiny city (whose culture would/could grow) and getting the same resources.

It'd have to be so easy its a pain NOT to do it, OR it'd have to have more utility than a one squre growth of culture.
-Qes

 

[Sureshot]

Building settlers is cheap a lot of the time, the real problem is that you wouldn't build a settler because of the rising maintenance costs (I usually play on deity though, where having more than 3 cities is crippling lol).

 

[vorshlumpf]

Exactly. There are many instances where I've wanted a resource, or to put a fortress on a prime spot, but creating a new city for it is overkill. Note that I typically play on the largest maps (and Fantasy Realm, to boot, which has little water), so there's always a place to put a new city if you have no worries about maintenance.

Another case is when the resource in question is in a spot between two or more cities, but will not get wrapped in culture until on of the cities has extremely high culture. Putting a city there, which will only have ~6 tiles to work, is typically a waste.

Yet another case is when I'm waiting for my culture to claim a resource. Perhaps you have a non-creative leader and just plopped down a city that will be stuck at 0 culture for a while, yet there is a nice wheat resource in that second ring. A pioneer built in another city would take care of that problem.

This pioneer would also put a new twist to single city challenges.

- Niilo

P.S.: Kael and Co. are tweaking the affects of culture-affecting units, such as the inquisitor, so maybe they have something neat-o to throw into the mix.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

This could be civ specific too--sounds kinda like the Elohim.

 

[QES]

This could be civ specific too--sounds kinda like the Elohim.

I think it'd more likely be used (even by the AI) if it was civ specific. Frankly, id still rather build a city......because unless im playing a VERY sparse map, im going to grab every bit of land i can........even horrible maintenance can be rectified over time, and the production capabilities of more cities (even if individually weaker) becomes more and more potent.
-Qes