Patch Update by Greg @ 2K

[lschnarch]

Well, actually LAnkou was not that wrong.

The idea which I developed isn't that far away from the current system, as I have to admit.
I developed this idea while shopping within 20 minutes or so, and as he correctly points out, there isn't much difference from the current implementation.

Well, *I* will take his input and try to develop my idea a bit more. Would've been nice if the developers would have done so, too.

 

[YoHo]

AS a comment on the cost of SP not dropping with city reduction, That kind of makes sense.
If you've become a globe spanning empire and then someone else comes in and smacks you around, it doesn't suddenly become easier to advance culturally, it logically becomes harder.

The civilization has become accustomed to and reacted as a large empire and suddenly, they are a small(er) one. That imposes a hit to pride and thus culture.
For example, it was much harder for the Roman Empire to advance Culturally once the western Empire fell. That was a major loss. The Byzantines were a shadow of that empire.

Now, having said that, I don't think it should be so dramatic as to be unrecoverable. Perhaps rather than never adjusting down, the price should adjust down slowly. Like, maybe wait 10-20 turns to recalculate down. This would mimic the impact a dramatic loss of population and size would have on an empire without making it impossible to recover.

 

[GenericPlayer]

AS a comment on the cost of SP not dropping with city reduction, That kind of makes sense.
If you've become a globe spanning empire and then someone else comes in and smacks you around, it doesn't suddenly become easier to advance culturally, it logically becomes harder.

The civilization has become accustomed to and reacted as a large empire and suddenly, they are a small(er) one. That imposes a hit to pride and thus culture.
For example, it was much harder for the Roman Empire to advance Culturally once the western Empire fell. That was a major loss. The Byzantines were a shadow of that empire.

Now, having said that, I don't think it should be so dramatic as to be unrecoverable. Perhaps rather than never adjusting down, the price should adjust down slowly. Like, maybe wait 10-20 turns to recalculate down. This would mimic the impact a dramatic loss of population and size would have on an empire without making it impossible to recover.

No one is arguing the real world merit of the idea, but the fact is that this game does so many things out of 'balance' rather than real world analogies (science as a function of population is a simple example).

The devs at 2k saw some sort of French ICS & cultural victory exploit. Even though I think the build time on the Utopia project balances this out, I can concede this could be seen as an exploit. The problem is that their fix for it affects very popular aspects of the game play unrelated to the exploit. Under this change, I cannot raze cities without taking a permanent culture hit, because razing first annexes the city to you. So if they want to implement this change, they should first remove annexation from the razing process. Or you can give me a real world example where burning a city to the ground hampered the cultural progress of a society.

 

[Horizons]

Or you can give me a real world example where burning a city to the ground hampered the cultural progress of a society.

Razing a city to the ground is an act of monstrous barbarism that surely retards the 'culture' of any society that commits such an atrocity. Modern Mongolia arguably has no culture whatever even although it is a large country, and I blame it all on the fact that their cultural claim to fame is an infamous mass murderer. (No offence to Mongolians)

 

[MadRat]

Modern Mongolia arguably has no culture whatever even although it is a large country, and I blame it all on the fact that their cultural claim to fame is an infamous mass murderer. (No offence to Mongolians)

Now that is incredibly offensive and your little disclaimer makes it worse. Just because YOU don't know anything about mongolia or mongolian culture doesn't mean there is none.

Rat

 

[LegionSteve]

Razing a city to the ground is an act of monstrous barbarism that surely retards the 'culture' of any society that commits such an atrocity. Modern Mongolia arguably has no culture whatever even although it is a large country, and I blame it all on the fact that their cultural claim to fame is an infamous mass murderer. (No offence to Mongolians)

I never heard anything about Roman culture being ******** after they razed Carthage.

 

[Zydor]

.... Or you can give me a real world example where burning a city to the ground hampered the cultural progress of a society.

In terms of the strict words of the question, we are all living examples of such a move. The Dark Ages that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire resulted in the wholesale destruction of Western Culture. Only very small aspects of it survived in what became fortified Monasteries. That situation remained for 300-400 years.

The salvation was the Arab Cultures. They had preserved the learnings from Greek and Roman times in their notable massive libraries, usually watched over by local Iman's. In the Arab Culture of the post Dark Ages times, where Arab influence had extended into Western Europe, particularly Spain, through force of arms, there surfaced the fact that they had preseved the cultural and scientific aspects that were originally thought lost to Barbarian destruction.

There followed 100+ years of endless quests/caravans/journeys back and forth to Spain and the Muslim Libraries where they found a veritable Gold Mine of lost scientific knowledge, preserved out of the hands of the Barbarians. The Arabs at that time had no real ties to it, they were culture orientated, not scientific, and gladly gave open access to it. All the civic structures, western culture and scientific knowledge came from that source - without exception - when you trace back western discoveries post dark ages. We all owe a huge debt to the Arabs of that time, as unpalitable to some that maybe with the antics of modern muslim extremists.

Whats that got to do with the game - probably squat - but you did ask ...

(A very good Historian/ Broadcaster did a series on this - its really well worth a watch - get a couple of pots of coffee and watch all parts of "James Burke : The Day The Universe Changed" - search on that in YouTube to list all parts of the series. Its acknowledged as a very good, factual account of what occured, and he got many many plaudits for it. I guarantee it will blow apart many popular myths - its fascinating stuff - This link is just a taster )

Regards
Zy

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Spain certainly blew up the entire South-American (as in Aztecs or Mayans) potential (be it cultural only or not, btw) out of existence at the time. In some extent, the whole European conquest of the new world had huge consequences over numerous "Tribes". English, French, name it.

One only has to think about the (allllmmmoooossstttt lost) Dresden Codex to realize how significantly (not to say astronomically!) advanced the Mayan or the Inca were, for example.

Ya know, Pyramids in Egypt & Yucatan peninsulae -- sort of.

 

[GenericPlayer]

Thanks for the examples, but I was referring to razing an enemy city during a time of war. Rome razed Carthage, the Mongols razed Baghdad, and more recently the Americans razed Dresden. Can any one of these events be seen as pulling back the cultural advancement of the victor?

I applaud the devs for trying to address the issue with ICS culture exploits, but creating a solution that affects people who just want to raze a city is wrong. I hope they re-think this change.

If razing does permanently increase the culture threshold, then I will simply have to nuke every city I want to raze until it is gone off the map.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Yep, but the realism analogy still stands as a pretty good gameplay source for proper design or more precisely, a reason to the means.

Taking a whopping cultural blast for having "too much" influence over certain ruleset loopholes might not be elegant in as much as it would possibly strike off the probabilities right off the ICS' legitimate path to some results.

Considering the alternatives, i doubt fine-tuning further in some other key areas (such as SP patterns or pace, btw) would provide *THE* final solution to ICS strategies & alikes. To the contrary, any attempts to extensively modify whatever happens to be on any devs' agenda for slaughtering can only lead to some weird balance issues.
When worst becomes hell, one has to definitely stop fiddling with the basic framework of the ruleset.

Otherwise, we're sooooooo screwed.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

Now that is incredibly offensive and your little disclaimer makes it worse. Just because YOU don't know anything about mongolia or mongolian culture doesn't mean there is none.

Rat

Wow. Thank you. I can't believe somebody is that ludicrous. Actually, Mongolian influences on China is so profound, much of what we today associate with "Chinese culture" is indeed, heavily influenced from both the Yuan (Mongol) and Qing (Manchu) dynasties. China prior to this would be unrecognizable to the modern eye.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

In terms of the strict words of the question, we are all living examples of such a move. The Dark Ages that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire resulted in the wholesale destruction of Western Culture. Only very small aspects of it survived in what became fortified Monasteries. That situation remained for 300-400 years.

Zy

This argument wouldn't fly in any modern medieval studies. Since the 80s and 90s, contemporary historians have been increasingly challenging this notion. "Dark Ages" is certainly an outdated historical perspective, as it came from historical revisionists in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The good news is, we're finally realizing the dramatic and progressive cultural and technological shift that began in the Early Middle Ages (not the 'Dark Ages') and marked the end of the regressive and bureaucratic late Roman Empire that had hindered European progress for 200 years. The argument is, that the Middle Ages is actually Europe finally beginning to "catch up" to the Middle East after so many years of Roman failure.

After all, since when have imperial, bureaucratic, militaristic, aristocratic and despotic empires been a good thing?

(EDIT: P.S., don't get me wrong, I love Rome.)

 

[Zydor]

Watch the James Burke series ..... its an eye opener ..... and devoid of many catch phrases used by many in the historian establishment to over generalise lack of facts. I've known few who have watched it, not to revise their own views, at least in part, if not radically

Regards
Zy

 

[Louis XXIV]

What's the James Burke series?

Yeah, I realize google could answer my question, but I'm lazy

 

[Zydor]

A quick cut & paste:

"...(A very good Historian/ Broadcaster did a series on this - its really well worth a watch - get a couple of pots of coffee and watch all parts of "James Burke : The Day The Universe Changed" - search on that in YouTube to list all parts of the series. Its acknowledged as a very good, factual account of what occured, and he got many many plaudits for it. I guarantee it will blow apart many popular myths - its fascinating stuff - This link is just a taster)..."

To hopefully answer your question:

James Burke : The Day The Universe Changed, was a TV series in several parts - each part with several episodes. To get the best from them view each part from episode one - you'll get the idea when you search on "James Burke : The Day The Universe Changed" over there.

It is controversial in parts as it does challenge some in the Historical Establishment who have their ideas wedded to future careers, but it blows away many myths and is hard to refute. It basicly deals with what happened to us all after the Roman Empire collapsed, and how "Western Civilisation" owes a lot to many factors, the biggest of them all being the Arab Cultures - particularly the latter where he shows the huge debt we have to them. The latter is a clue to the angst it raises in some people.

However, for all the background and alledged controversey from some, just view it as a very very good History programme - few do not leave thinking "ow ....."

Regards
Zy

 

[bryanw1995]

What's the James Burke series?

Yeah, I realize google could answer my question, but I'm lazy

the link listed a page or two back, the series is about the "christian" reconquest of spain from the moors. I just watched the 10 minute clip that was linked, it was very good.


edit: looks like zydor beat me to it. well put zydor!

 

[Louis XXIV]

Already, I'll have to give it a look after finals are done. I'm all for changed perceptions, so this sounds interesting (in undergrad, I had a professor who refused to let you say the word "feudalism" in class).

 

[Zydor]

The best way to grasp it all is start from "james burke's web channel"

Regards
Zy

 

[bonafide11]

Is there anything in this patch, or do you think there will be anything in a future patch, to better optimize the game so the late game turns don't take so long? My computer exceeds the recommended settings and it's still about 15 seconds of waiting between turns in the late game. It gets incredibly boring.

 

[PawelS]

Is there anything in this patch, or do you think there will be anything in a future patch, to better optimize the game so the late game turns don't take so long? My computer exceeds the recommended settings and it's still about 15 seconds of waiting between turns in the late game. It gets incredibly boring.

They asked for late game saves some time ago, so I hope they are working on it...