SVN 11502 Culture "Overhaul" Feedback

[Blazenclaw]

The most recent SVN (changelog here) has some significant changes to the culture-on-tile mechanics, and feedback (plus bug reports) would be greatly appreciated. If it breaks your game somehow or you can't stand something, remember you can go back to SVN 11501 if I can't fix it fast enough, see:

Spoiler Update to Revision :

The following information would be useful for finding bugs, and necessary for balance, so please use this format when providing feedback if you could. Savefile also reasonable to include if it's not obvious how to recreate:
Gamespeed: uwu
Difficulty: owo
Realistic Culture Spread: oya
1-Tile-Start: ono
IDW: Y/N
Game started on SVN ver before overhaul?: N/Y

Positive encouragement also appreciated! This took a few weeks of work, and was in large part absolutely necessary to fix some of the bugs that were probably decade-old, and introduced with realistic culture spread.

 

[Somebody613]

Not sure it will be as good (or as bad) as it sounds, but I like that the mod is getting updates like this.

 

[Maltazard]

My immediate feedback is that with these changes I'm happy to use realistic culture spread and emergency draft again, I had stopped using both of them lately due to all the issues. So, cool! Realistic culture and one tile city start definitely sounds like a challenge and should impact settling locations and deforestation choices I reckon.

Are there any culture spread advantages to settling on hills/mountains towards flat tiles?

Never been a fan of fixed borders on the other hand, because I don't understand how the option intersects with civics, some civics "have" fixed borders, some don't, but if the option is enabled, shouldn't you always have fixed borders? It's still unclear. Maybe it should say in the civics, "causes fixed borders if the option is enabled" - if that's how it works anyway.

So if I understand culture decay correctly, essentially foreign cultures will disappear over time instead of remaining at the same level and shrinking proportionally as your own culture grows? Pretty cool mechanic!

How does it relate to city flipping after conquest option? Any specific culture level threshold? I.e. you better take your city back before it goes below 30% of your own culture or face resistance.

 

[raxo2222]

I wonder how much it kills @Pit2015 strategy of conquering all cities you see ASAP including barbarian cities.

 

[Somebody613]

I wonder how much it kills @Pit2015 strategy of conquering all cities you see ASAP including barbarian cities.

Why?
Unless I'm missing something, culture spread is mostly unrelated to conquest strategy, dunno.
Or do you mean something else?

 

[Maltazard]

Why?

It should be harder to mantain control of conquered cities right away, but then over time culture decay should make it even easier. The amount of culture in prehistoric era is so low anyway, I reckon early conquest is better than mid-late game when you have millions of culture accumulated.

Unless I'm missing something, culture spread is mostly unrelated to conquest strategy, dunno.

The combat influence culture is changed, so now it should be more consistent but have shorter duration (?). It is optional though.

 

[Somebody613]

It should be harder to mantain control of conquered cities right away, but then over time culture decay should make it even easier. The amount of culture in prehistoric era is so low anyway, I reckon early conquest is better than mid-late game when you have millions of culture accumulated.

The combat influence culture is changed, so now it should be more consistent but have shorter duration (?). It is optional though.

Ah, just another iteration of my recent play of "city juggler: how to feed cities to other civs without them making any sense of it", loool.

 

[Blazenclaw]

Are there any culture spread advantages to settling on hills/mountains towards flat tiles?

Technically there is an advantage to settling in rough terrain in that your first border expansion ignores terrain costs. So settling next to a mountain will get you the mountain (and thus tiles on the other side of it) much sooner than if you settled two tiles away.

Never been a fan of fixed borders on the other hand, because I don't understand how the option intersects with civics, some civics "have" fixed borders, some don't, but if the option is enabled, shouldn't you always have fixed borders? It's still unclear. Maybe it should say in the civics, "causes fixed borders if the option is enabled" - if that's how it works anyway.

Likewise, thought the implementation was murky, and turns out it rather was. You are correct, gameoption does nothing on its own, civics also needed. Will add to tooltip if not already.
I think the (new/clarified) mechanics are described adequately in the svn changelog, yes/no?

So if I understand culture decay correctly, essentially foreign cultures will disappear over time instead of remaining at the same level and shrinking proportionally as your own culture grows?

Yup! Foreign influence will disappear fairly quickly if there are no active sources. Perhaps too quickly; needs more gameplay testing than I can do myself.

How does it relate to city flipping after conquest option? Any specific culture level threshold? I.e. you better take your city back before it goes below 30% of your own culture or face resistance.

With IDW and emergency draft, you'll conquer cities at minimum 30% culture but probably more (unless city is pop 5 or less). And yeah, with the option you'll want to bring units to quell the population if it is surrounded by enemy territory, and if it is deep enough there's basically no way you're keeping it thru culture. No random islands inside another players borders.

 

[Somebody613]

Ahem...
Literally after updating and recalculating - each turn does this.

 

[Blazenclaw]

Ahem...
Literally after updating and recalculating - each turn does this.

Do you have revolutions on?

Can fix regardless, just narrowing it down. The, ahem, report form from the original post at the top with gamespeed, game options etc would be helpful as well. Can get from save, but loading is often v slow and would prefer to avoid if I can.

In the meantime you can hide python exceptions in civilization4.ini to ignore it.

 

[Pit2015]

I wonder how much it kills @Pit2015 strategy of conquering all cities you see ASAP including barbarian cities.

UEM - Ultimate Earth Map is running now with always raze cities option, so no effect, as you can only destroy cities and you have to build them by yourself.

 

[raxo2222]

UEM - Ultimate Earth Map is running now with always raze cities option, so no effect, as you can only destroy cities and you have to build them by yourself.

He could change those game options

 

[Somebody613]

Do you have revolutions on?

Can fix regardless, just narrowing it down. The, ahem, report form from the original post at the top with gamespeed, game options etc would be helpful as well. Can get from save, but loading is odten v slow and would prefer to avoid if I can.

In the meantime you can hide python exceptions in civilization4.ini to ignore it.

Sorry, forgot to screenshot (and too lazy to reload the game now just for that).
It's Nightmare Eternity with Revolutions and Realistic Culture Spread, but not One Tile Start or One City Limit.
Nor am I allowing Always Raze, or any Raze at all, lol.
Anyways, here's the save - and there's a NEW problem, which MIGHT be related to the above messages, mind you.
Namely, my culture only spreads HORIZONTALLY, never VERTICALLY.
You can see it very clearly in the screenshot, duh.
I'd really like to see such bugs fixed, please.

 

[Blazenclaw]

Huh, I never saw odd behavior like Alexandria's in testing. I have no idea how that could happen. This may take some investigation to figure out.

Possibly something with revolutions option or scenario start, neither were extensively tested, hm.

 

[Somebody613]

Huh, I never saw odd behavior like Alexandria's in testing. I have no idea how that could happen. This may take some investigation to figure out.

Possibly something with revolutions option or scenario start, neither were extensively tested, hm.

Or recalculations during a running game.
I previously had some weird results coming from changing certain game options via Worldbuilder on an already ongoing game.
I'm also pretty sure that the message errors and the bad culture behavior are related.
I potentially could run a fast game to check whether this repeats itself on another scenario, but... you can guess it: I'm too lazy, loool.

 

[Pit2015]

He could change those game options

He modded some stuff so that can cause problems. No israeli civ in UEM, he used civ packs and so on.

 

[Blazenclaw]

SVN 11503 out. Should fix every issue noted so far (ty @Somebody613 ), plus some not mentioned; let me know what else y'all find.

For reference, the error that caused cities not spreading vertically? It was because
#define HASH_RELATIVE_CLOSE_DIST(x,y) ((x) + 100 * (y))
and
#define HASH_RELATIVE_CLOSE_DIST(x,y) (x + 100 * y)
are not the same. Everyrhing else was pretty straightforward to fix, but that one took me several hours to track down

 

[Somebody613]

He modded some stuff so that can cause problems. No israeli civ in UEM, he used civ packs and so on.

Wasn't talking about me, lol.
Also, I only edited the civ placement, pretty much just renaming it and moving the starting location elsewhere.
That's not even modding much.
On the other hand, I do use different game options from what you suggest (and some have big impacts) - but then you can say that's me using your MAP for my SCENARIO, so to speak.

 

[Somebody613]

SVN 11503 out. Should fix every issue noted so far (ty @Somebody613 ), plus some not mentioned; let me know what else y'all find.

For reference, the error that caused cities not spreading vertically? It was because
#define HASH_RELATIVE_CLOSE_DIST(x,y) ((x) + 100 * (y))
and
#define HASH_RELATIVE_CLOSE_DIST(x,y) (x + 100 * y)
are not the same. Took me several hours to track that down

THANKS!!!
Let's see, whether this will automatically recalculate the plots as well, hopefully.

 

[Somebody613]

Um...
1. I had to [Ctrl-Shift-T] recalculate manually, because it didn't ask for it.
2. Vertical culture seemingly works fine, thanks.
3. Errors still persist, though.