Rival civs absorbing my land at the borders

[Hans Lemurson]

First of all, you don't need to open a new thread - there was one thread exactly on this subject, but sadly I couldn't find it (it was about a month ago).

I think that might have been mine. I was trying to make sense of the culture system, but didn't quite do it. I guess I may just have to take a bunch of data and attempt to analyze the trends.

I tested the theory of "Culture gets added to all tiles equally once they are accessable" but found it didn't quite hold. Unfortunately, it only failed as badly as my "total culture*distance modifier" theory. Perhaps it could be a mixture?

But basicly it's what Atreas said: Cultural Control of a tile is based on the total culture level in the city, and whoever has more culture wins the control. The farther away a tile is from a city, the less influence the city has over it.

10 culture at radius-2 has about the same influence as 100 culture at radius-3. Influence does not however follow a simple 1/10 evey radius level though, what it is I have not yet figured out.

When a city is captured, all of its cultural influence remains, but cannot act to claim territory unless it is within a cultural-radius of that civ. It may degrade with time though.

 

[kmleong]

After reading thro' all the posts I still think no one really can understand culture,
For me collesium & theatres do help culture rating.
But Ultimately, I find war is the easiest though I DO try my best not to start one. It take the funs out of cities management.
For me, Civ4 is a very complicated game so much to learn But that the fun of it

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Speculation only:

If you take a city from a civ that stil exists, there is a 99% "other civ' in the nationality bar. This makes me suspect that the culture built up from the city before you took it is still in effect. As you build culture, you are not only contending with the culture from the neighboring city, but also the culture the conquered civ previously produced in the city.

Your influence may actually be only the percentage of your culture produced that is yours compared to the total enemy culture that was generated from that city. The most of the enemy culture is centered in your city because that's where it was generated, so it doesn't see the four tile distance modifier, but rather the inner ring bonus from when it was owned previously. And if the neighboring city four tiles away is the same civ you took it from, you have all the culture that was generated from the captured city before you took it to overcome, in addition to the culture from the neighboring city. All that culture will add to the equation. That's also why, if you have two or more cities throwing culture at a nearby enemy city, you will flip it much faster than having only one city working to flip it.

That is probably why, even at almost legendary status, you can't move the borders. Add a couple close cities on your side to the culture war and watch the borders move back faster.

How long the city has existed may or may not have an effect as well.

edit - I guess tiles on one of the inner rings of the city border sees a multiplier effect (apparently a +20 bonus per layer per turn as you move toward the center) on the culture value of the individual tile, but not one time culture bombs, so a city that contributes culture over time has the advantage over the one-time artists, and the city that started earlier generally wins, per the following posts. - endedit

 

[KrikkitTwo]

After reading thro' all the posts I still think no one really can understand culture,
For me collesium & theatres do help culture rating.
But Ultimately, I find war is the easiest though I DO try my best not to start one. It take the funs out of cities management.
For me, Civ4 is a very complicated game so much to learn But that the fun of it

Colosseums do NOT help Culture in any way, they help Happiness.


Also the 87% enemy 13% yours is the Culture of the City Tile, the culture that you produce is 100% yours

To Hans, supposedly if you put in cheat code=chipotle you can tell what the Actual culture is on a tile (not just %)

 

[malekithe]

I tested the theory of "Culture gets added to all tiles equally once they are accessable" but found it didn't quite hold. Unfortunately, it only failed as badly as my "total culture*distance modifier" theory. Perhaps it could be a mixture?

I did some tests a while back and came to some conclusions (very heavily flavored by that article of yours a while back). Culture does get added to tiles every turn. At the farthest distance you can currently influence, you apply your full culture value. (ie. a city with 20 culture and 2 CPT will add 2 culture to every tile 2 tiles away.) For tiles closer than the farthest distance away, you apply a bonus to your culture and add that instead. I stopped short of figuring out what that bonus was. But, if I remember correctly, a level 2 city (10-99 total culture) that was only getting 1 CPT was still applying somewhere around 20 CPT to the immediate ring of tiles. A level 3 city, again with just 1 CPT was applying something close to 50 CPT to that same ring.

What I found was that the effects of the world editor are not the same as what goes on in the game. If, in the world editor, you assign a city a certain cultural value, it will add that value (less the previous value) to every tile in the city's new radius (with no proximity bonuses). In my experience, Great Artists have the same effect, the culture is applied without most of the bonuses applied. That is why a city with 5000 culture mostly from a Great Artist can be losing the land battle to another city that spent the time growing its culture.

In my testing, I mostly stuck to low CPT cities with fairly low total culture values. I'm not sure if the proximity bonuses are strictly additive or if they're multiplicative. At the time, I was fairly certain they were additive. The effect of the additive bonus is somewhat diminished in high CPT cities, but it does allow low CPT cities to have a fighting chance of keeping their nearby tiles when faced with distant high CPT cities.

Also, keep in mind that a single tile can be influenced by multiple cities of the same civ. So, if your high-culture border city is having trouble holding its own, it could be that there are two opponent cities competing with it. That's a tough fight to win, as the additive proximity bonuses will be applied to both opposing cities' CPT.

 

[InFlux5]

even if i am one level short of legendary, the borders will be next to my city

It's very simple. The city influences its surrounding tiles through its culture every turn. The highest culture wins. What you don't seem to get is that if a city began influencing a tile earlier, then it will have more culture "built up" on that tile. Thus, the city which took over a tile sooner always has an advantage.

You seem to think just because your city has a high culture it should automatically get the surrounding tiles. How do you know the other city doesn't have a higher culture? I'm willing to bet that that city was founded before yours, meaning that even if the culture was the same for both, the first city would have an advantage.

If your city comes later, you have a culture "deficit" to make up. It's not easy to do, especially if your neighbor is also big on culture. If there's a World Wonder or two in that city, you are going to have a hard time gaining influence.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I poked aroind the SDK a bit and I think I found the formula
The culture a tile in range gets each turn is

City Culture per turn +20 for every level the city is beyond it(Bonus Culture)

City Levelistance: Bonus Tile Culture per turn (Distance here is measured in tems of Level..rings of culture ie if you could get it at level 1, it is Distance 1)

1:1:0

2:1:20
2:2:0

3:1:40
3:2:20
3:3:0

4:1:60
4:2:40
4:3:20
4:4:0

5:1:80
5:2:60
5:3:40
5:4:20
5:5:0

Lengendary City
6:1:100
6:2:80
6:3:60
6:4:40
6:5:20
6:6:0



So unless you have very High Culture per turn, the Bonus Culture matters more. So basically whoever had it longest is likely to keep it.

 

[Stickler]

Yeah when invading the enemies motherland, it's better to nuke the place from high orbit. Bring along extra troops or settlers to hold the ground you've taken and move to the next city. Settlers are important as the other civs will move in since you've done the heavy lifting. Attacking the high population cities should be a number one priority.

 

[DSChapin]

Well I poked aroind the SDK a bit and I think I found the formula
The culture a tile in range gets each turn is

City Culture per turn +20 for every level the city is beyond it(Bonus Culture)

Good work! Thanks for finding that. I have to say, I'm not too enamored of that formula - it should be possible to move borders, even later in the game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well Later in the game the best way to move borders is to take cities... even if they have the most culture on a tile, if it isn't within reach of any of their cities, they can't claim it.

 

[UncleJJ]

Krikkitone, excellent work

So if your cities are in a culture border battle it seems that it is very important to expand your borders to obtain the higher bonus for the next level even if you have a low basic cpt. To do this you could either move the cultural slider (although that might waste commerce in other cities) or add a few artists to accelerate the expansion and then after the border moves reverse the change to allow the cpt and the now higher bonus to work on the squares. This will modify my tactics

 

[Petrucci]

Would two cities of the same civ add their culture to each others tiles? Hence the "tag team effect" of two lesser cultured cities out doing one higher cultured city of the rival civ? I have my suspicions that yes, this is the case, but would love an experts view.

 

[T-hawk]

Petrucci, yes that is the case.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how Great Artist culture bombs figure in. It expands the city instantly to level 4 or 5, so all future culture applied to the city's surrounding tiles will accumulate with those increased bonus values. But does the culture bomb itself add any influence to either the "before" or "after" set of tiles?