Tall city culture expansion

[Zaldron]

I'm just in the middle of my first game with 132 with the AutoTips from 131.56. I'm playing a tall empire with four cities on turn 166 currently. My first two cities have expanded moderately, but my third and fourth cities have expanded 6 tiles and 3 tiles respectively. I had to declare war on Siam because we brought a settler between my capital and fourth city and plopped a city right between. I think if you're playing tall you shouldn't be penalized or forced to place your cities really close together to prevent the AI from putting down suboptimal cities in the gap.

Just as a first thought, we could try un-nerfing the tradition policy and see if that helps things along. Note that I *have* liberally been buying tiles but I'm at the point where the cheapest tile I can buy is about 100g and more expensive ones are up to 300g.

 

[mitsho]

A good idea is to place your units in these gaps. If you have a unit there, he can't settle. And if you didn't have enough units to do that, you would probably have been screwed against someone more prone to military interventions than Rama.

Tradition seems still quite strong imho, maybe one could put a modifier on culture expansion on a culture building or the walls so that you can rush that building if you want to to help expansion, but not culture...

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree Zaldron, the costs were a little too steep. In v136 I slightly reduced the expansion costs of culture (early) and gold (late).

 

[Zaldron]

A good idea is to place your units in these gaps. If you have a unit there, he can't settle. And if you didn't have enough units to do that, you would probably have been screwed against someone more prone to military interventions than Rama.

Tradition seems still quite strong imho, maybe one could put a modifier on culture expansion on a culture building or the walls so that you can rush that building if you want to to help expansion, but not culture...

I'm talking about tall cities 5-7 tiles apart with 8-15 empty tiles in between. There's no way I could put units in all those open tiles. And for a *very* long time I was able to do exactly what you said to prevent his settler from disembarking with my units, but he finally sneaked onto the land.

 

[Pep]

I agree Zaldron, the costs were a little too steep. In v136 I slightly reduced the expansion costs of culture (early) and gold (late).

I'm playing a game with v136 and IMHO culture expansion is very slow in the middle game. Yes, I agree you have more gold to buy tiles but the main problem is that you can only do so in the 3 tile radius. Adquiring tiles in the 4 and 5 tiles radius is very hard now.

 

[Thalassicus]

I changed the purchase range to 4, but there's a bug in the vanilla game where the CanBuyPlotAt function does not read the purchase range variable. This bug is in the game core so I cannot fix it directly. I'm in the process of reverse-engineering the function, and you should be able to purchase to a range of 4 in the next version.

 

[Pep]

I changed the purchase range to 4, but there's a bug in the vanilla game where the CanBuyPlotAt function does not read the purchase range variable. This bug is in the game core so I cannot fix it directly. I'm in the process of reverse-engineering the function, and you should be able to purchase to a range of 4 in the next version.

Anyway, can you tell me what XML or LUA files of your mod can I modify to make culture expansion more quickly (like in the vanilla version)?.

 

[Txurce]

What do you mean by 4- and 5-tile radius?

I thought we could only buy up to 3. Did this change, and if so, why?

 

[wobuffet]

Yes, the current tile-buying max radius is 3 tiles away. I think Thal meant he intends to expand this to 4, presumably to increase strategic options.

Personally, since I sign Open Borders with pretty much everyone, I don't really see why I'd ever want to buy a 4th-ring tile. Anyone want to fill me in?

 

[MortalD]

It may be abused by players. But then again, if anyone is happy "cheating" then its hes/her problem...

 

[wobuffet]

How could it be abused, MortalD?

 

[Babri]

Instead of declaring war, simply culture bomb them & everything will be fine. I culture bombed multiple times as India to reduce the capital of China to 1 pop.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Pep
Would long-distance purchasing solve your problem?

The culture variable is "PlotCultureExponentModifier" located in this file:

/VEM/Policies/Trees/VEP_Tradition.xml

It may be abused by players.

I was thinking about this too, but the fourth ring of tiles are very expensive to purchase since cost depends on range from the city. If long distance purchasing is too powerful I can adjust that distance modifier.

 

[Zaldron]

Yes, the current tile-buying max radius is 3 tiles away. I think Thal meant he intends to expand this to 4, presumably to increase strategic options.

Personally, since I sign Open Borders with pretty much everyone, I don't really see why I'd ever want to buy a 4th-ring tile. Anyone want to fill me in?

If you're playing tall it's not at all unusual that you might have cities 7-8 tiles apart, where you'd need that fourth tile to fill in the gap so that you don't have to worry about an AI putting down a city to block your trade route.

 

[Zaldron]

I was thinking about this too, but the fourth ring of tiles are very expensive to purchase since cost depends on range from the city. If long distance purchasing is too powerful I can adjust that distance modifier.

I'd almost rather see them a little easier to acquire with culture. I don't think I've seen a non-capital get a fourth ring tile since the expansion nerf (I can't confirm for sure of course so this is totally anecdotal).

 

[Pep]

@Pep
Would long-distance purchasing solve your problem?

The culture variable is "PlotCultureExponentModifier" located in this file:

/VEM/Policies/Trees/VEP_Tradition.xml



I was thinking about this too, but the fourth ring of tiles are very expensive to purchase since cost depends on range from the city. If long distance purchasing is too powerful I can adjust that distance modifier.

Thank you! I'm going to change PlotCultureExponentModifier to speed up culture expansion. With this change, the need of long-distance purchasing diminishes.

One thing I don't understand: why the default values for culture expansion in VEM are lower than in vanilla?. Is it a balance issue?.

 

[Thalassicus]

Border expansion is equally from and in vem, instead of mainly culture. This makes gold much more valuable. Production/science/culture outweigh gold in importance in vanilla, but in vem all the yields are approximately equal. Border expansion speed is the same overall because the gold cost of expansion is much lower than vanilla.

Something to point out is the cost to expand borders depends on distance from the city, and the cost does not. This means if you want to reach the outer rings, the best way to do so is use while costs are low (near the city), then let culture take over later.

 

[Seek]

One thing I don't understand: why the default values for culture expansion in VEM are lower than in vanilla?. Is it a balance issue?.

In addition to what Thal said, for a long time cultural expansion was in fact much faster than vanilla, which lead to more gold-balancing problems because players were gaining many luxury and strategic resources to sell very quickly and easily. It was a part of the balance overhaul that was undertaken in the betas between v131 and v132.

 

[Pep]

Finally, I've located the cultural expansion variables and I've set them to the following values:
CULTURE_COST_FIRST_PLOT=40
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_MULTIPLIER=27
CULTURE_COST_LATER_PLOT_EXPONENT=1.1

I've maintained vanilla's exponent of 1.1 and VEM's initial cost of 40. The multiplier I've chosen is about 2/3 of 40, just the ratio of vanilla.

I prefer to play this way. I'll see if it's unbalanced, though.

 

[Txurce]

It may be abused by players. But then again, if anyone is happy "cheating" then its hes/her problem...

If you're playing tall it's not at all unusual that you might have cities 7-8 tiles apart, where you'd need that fourth tile to fill in the gap so that you don't have to worry about an AI putting down a city to block your trade route.

I'd almost rather see them a little easier to acquire with culture. I don't think I've seen a non-capital get a fourth ring tile since the expansion nerf (I can't confirm for sure of course so this is totally anecdotal).

I would much, much rather have faster cultural expansion than being able to buy past the third tile. (I never saw what's better about slower expansion.) If you can buy a fourth, why not a fifth and so on? It's too much of an asset to a player who can plan his cities accordingly (that is, reach out and snag the fourth-ring luxuries quickly).

If it's not going to go away, then at least make the prices for the fourth ring exorbitant. That way you have to pay dearly for a luxury or contiguous borders in a civ that is otherwise stretched too thin by conventional standards.