The Culture-Spreading Model

[mhIdA]

dh_epic
No problem to me if the game has some anachronisms, or if it rewrite history completly or in part.It's just a game.

Kayak
Several clans gives us a tribe. When several tribes (tribalism) come together they became a nation (nationalism).

Even repeating myself, but anyway.
What is culture and how implement it in the game.
Defining culture as 4 simple things: language (latins, germanics, slavics), religion (and someones distinguish these 2 aspects), seeking luxuries and seeking food.
Not every civs likes every luxuries, and not every civs like pigs (Israel) or cattle (India).
So we have the similarities and differences to implement the spread-culture model.
Other thing is if 80% at least are catholic, they have latin language and they like wine this give us an idea of similarities of portugueses, spanish and french civs.
Another thing is changes in a civ culture: Korea became catholica, China became muslim, Aztecs became spanish speakers, and in the meanwhile, not every koreans became catholics - multicultural cities.
Ethnicity can be change, but only in a static view, dinamically and along time a city could change their ethnicity and so far their culture brought by new(s) ethnicity(ies).
And of course by other factors: cultural units or cultural improvments, included the cross-borders improvments (sattelite TVs).

 

[Kayak]

@Suki. I was just being quick on the representation side. Your visuization (and graphics) are better indeed.

@mhIdA. I do indeed know this well. The idea of a nation state is a modern invention.
Also I don't think ethnicity matters as much as hoe a person percieves his/her ethnicity. If I think that English ancestry is important, I will feel more inclined to favor others of English ancestry. If I don't care about my ancestry, I will see myself more as part of my current nation. People from the same ethnic backgrounds can have very different cultural backgrounds. I understand your thought though and I agree with it in the main

 

[dh_epic]

In abstract:

Ethnicity: the national origin of those population heads. Minorities can grow within your borders if they're welcome there and if they reproduce. Minorities would be more likely to go to your country if you are closer and if you have a higher quality of life. I would see this kind of population movement as happening naturally depending on your government policies. Hopefully government will be flexible enough to let you have an anti-immigrant or pro-immigrant policy.

Culture: Those points that fill up in the top right hand corner of a city. These points don't represent people, but "memes". Memes can be any idea or value -- it can be love of a certain kind of food, it can be love of a certain kind of hairstyle, or it can be love of a certain god, or so forth. In Civ, the only culture that was in your cities was your own. In Civ 4, I would hope that other cultures can infiltrate your cities, for better or for worse.

Culture Change without Ethnicity Change: A philosopher makes his way over to China from Greece. He teaches China about "clapping" -- that putting your hands together makes a sound, and it's a great way to celebrate something. It catches on in China. China embraces a Greek cultural norm. But Chinese people still look Chinese, and Greek people still look Greek. The point being that China develops one ethnicity, but multiple cultures.

Ethnicity Change without Culture Change: America takes on an open refugee policy -- give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free. Some people fleeing a crappy situation in Japan make their way to California. They still look Japanese, but they are assimilated into American culture: wearing American clothes, listening to American music, and so on. The point being that America still has one culture, but includes multiple ethnicities.

The Relationship between Ethnicity and Culture: The above examples are hyper simplified. But even Civ can handle a bit more fuzziness and complexity.

Introducing a new "meme" (culture) into a society will never change ethnicity. Just because Chinese people start clapping doesn't mean that they'll suddenly turn olive-skinned and wide-eyed.

But introducing a new ethnicity into a society can change culture. Obviously some Japanese refugees headed to America would bring some of their old lifestyle with them, and thus add Japanese culture to some of America's cities. Those Japanese refugees like American music, but a few Americans start wearing kimonos. Now America has Japanese and American people (ethnicities), and Japanese and American memes (culture).

Back to culture's effect on ethnicity. Even though the mere trasmission of an idea can't change what someone looks like... if there's enough Greek ideas floating around in China, then Greek people start to feel more and more welcome in China. More Greek people emmigrate to China, thus leading to a "population invasion".

Ultimately, culture and ethnicity are seperate, but related. They impact one another, but they are not the same.

-------------

As a final thought, I ask what a culture point is. I ask what it means to calculate fashion points and art points, as opposed to an all encompassing culture point.

In Civ 3, a culture point seemed to represent pride -- the longer a building was around, the more your people were proud of your nation. In Civ 4, I want a culture point to represent a "meme" -- a single idea or value, or societal norm that has made it into the mainstream. Culture should now come to represent the flow of ideas. Winning culturally means getting your ideas to spread across the world, not just making your people at home proud..

Why would you seperate culture points into food points, philosophy points, fashion points, art points, and so forth? I don't know yet. And even if I did know, I know it would be way too much to ask of Civ 4. (Maybe later?)

As it stands now, there is NO model of "similarity" in Civ 3 except those hardwired groups like "Asian" and "European". For Civ 4, I know you could calculate 95% of what it means to be similar if you just let culture points flow across borders in certain ways. You don't need fashion points and art points. If you combine those culture points with picking a government and a religion, you can calculate the similarity between two nations to great effect.

No need to seperate fashion points and language points. We assume all culture is equally valuable. It may not be realistic, but for gameplay's sake, you will accomplish everything you need with just culture points.

 

[Kayak]

In abstract:As a final thought, I ask what a culture point is. I ask what it means to calculate fashion points and art points, as opposed to an all encompassing culture point.

In Civ 3, a culture point seemed to represent pride -- the longer a building was around, the more your people were proud of your nation. In Civ 4, I want a culture point to represent a "meme" -- a single idea or value, or societal norm that has made it into the mainstream. Culture should now come to represent the flow of ideas. Winning culturally means getting your ideas to spread across the world, not just making your people at home proud..

Why would you seperate culture points into food points, philosophy points, fashion points, art points, and so forth? I don't know yet. And even if I did know, I know it would be way too much to ask of Civ 4. (Maybe later?

I think this is good sumation of the whole culture point idea.
The only reason to break down culture points would be to allow you map out the flow of culture better and see similarities and differences between cultures rather than the rather clunky cultural groups used in Civ 3. I think that this would allow an more realistic approximantion of real life (if thats important ).

 

[dh_epic]

It's true, the user would have more information to look at if you could say "hey, America and Japan have almost no language overlap. But their music is becoming more similar." That would be interesting to look at. But it doesn't change the game, because there's no unique effect of language, or music.

But we do know the effect of culture is (with language, music, and everything else under the cultural umbrella):
--> Culture points make you win games.
--> And, with this model, culture points push some Civs together and others apart.
--> Culture points help you flip cities -- although it might be slightly different in this model.

To shift topics slightly we can ask more about what else can culture do. It doesn't necessarily have to be realistic. For example, every time you get 100 culture into a neighbors city, you have a chance of producing a cultural great leader. Just a thought.

 

[Kayak]

That would be interesting to look at. But it doesn't change the game, because there's no unique effect of language, or music.

...

To shift topics slightly we can ask more about what else can culture do. It doesn't necessarily have to be realistic. For example, every time you get 100 culture into a neighbors city, you have a chance of producing a cultural great leader. Just a thought.

Only in the diplomatic interaction between two or more civs and, perhapse, the chance of flipping a city I think.

CGL! I'm wait'in for Elvis! ... Now what would his benefit be?

 

[sir_schwick]

Currently indigenous populations seem very open to complete strangers settling their land. Maybe culture, especially in more ancient times, should make territory safe for troops and settlers to pass through. Otherwise you face constant attacks that wear down on your HP.

Also, culture in enemy cities would increase Commerce(something that should have been carried over from SMAC). It is not necessarily intuitive, but they want your cultural products so they buy more.

 

[dh_epic]

Cultural Great Leader: if you accumulate enough trade in an enemy city, you have a chance of producing a cultural great leader. Take cues from a Scientific Great Leader. You can either use a cultural great leader to boost your cultural output in ALL (domestic and international) cities by 25% for 20 turns, or you can use him to rush a building/wonder. Maybe even increase the chance for emmigration to other cities, too.

Culture-Inspired Trade Bonuses: Brilliant notion, Schwick. I could see trade bonuses happening two ways.

One way is that more cultural similarity makes people more open to trading with you, period. This doesn't have to be symmetrical: they could really like a lot about your culture, but you don't really like a lot about their culture. This leads to trade bonuses for your civ.

The other way is maybe that there's an OPTIMUM level of cultural similarity that boosts trade.

No Similarity: Hostile or indifferent to your goods. No bonus.
Some Similarity: Finds your goods exotically appealing. Small bonus.
Medium Similarity: In love with your goods. Huge bonus.
High Similarity: Bored with your goods. Small bonus.
The Same: By now, they're probably a part of your nation anyway.

And Sir Schwick, I like that last concept of improving safe expansion/exploration because of your cultural enlightenment. Maybe high culture would improve the operational range of your settlers and such? Or maybe high culture would improve how barbarians and goodie huts receive you?

 

[Suki]

i see the difference between ethnicity and culture but I'm not sure I see and reason for seperating them in the game.. seems like it would double the amount of calculations without doing anything you can't with them mixed

is it important to know wether the greek-chinese city is that way because it's greek people with some chinese culture, chinese people with some greek culture, or mixed people and mixed culture.

I think you could treat culture & ethnicity with one blanket, hybrid concept. with culture points representing memes & ethnicity.

but if i wanted to seperate them... i'd put the different ethnicities on different directions, and allow them to grow steadily, but slowly with time getting more and more missaligned if isolated, but have them mix prety quickly when brought into contact... of course you'd also have to keep track of the mixing level- again wether you have a city of greek & chinese people, or a city of greek-chinese people

i also don't think it's important to try to keep track of where the differences or similarities are coming from exactly. I think it's enough to say that one city is becoming a little more greek or a little more russian, insted of that their fasion or music is becoming a littel more Iroquois.
now I think it's fine to have culture coming from these sources but that it's not worth it to remember what source caused it . This is what I was sating about culture stamping the techs you invent.. who was it who told me to start giving examples with my ideas? Here you go.

lets say russia developes the Fermentation & Food Storage tech, lets say the tech does two things 1) lets you store food with less waste (drying, smoking, pickling, fermenting) 2) lets you build artificial luxuries (brewery->alchool). In other words a global use and a city improovment.
lets call the russian version Vodka just to keep things simple.
If the russians give the secret of Vodka to Mexico
all mexican cities will get a little russian culture every turn for using this russian tech for food storage. Any city that builds a vodka brewery gets a little more. If it was a library it would still produce Mexican culture, mostly, but just a little russian at the same tile if it's being built from a russian tech.
mexico then teaches the secret of vodka to the japanese
now when mexico learnt Vodka from russia they were working on their own version of the tech, we'll call it Tequeila. Now trying to keep a strong local culture Mexico decide to switch from using the russian version of the Tech to using their own, so they no longer have that global income of russian culture, but it does have a cost ascociated with the switchover. Cities which built Russian style breweries of course still have them, they can be updated to the new mexican version for a price and in the future any new breweries can be of either type, in fact i think buildings shouldn't be limited to one per city but should have an optimum number depending on population...

Meanwhile back in japan, although they do like the vodka, they've invented their own version of fermentation, Sake. they trade the tech to mexico. mexico looks at it's cultural distribution and finds two cities notably misaligned with it's average culture, they're across a small sea from mainland mexico and so aren't getting any japanese culture. although there's no danger of succession or revoloution efficiency there suffers for having a different overall culture than mainland mexico, so they buils a sake brewery in each of those cities to even things out a little.

there's no need for giving civ spesific names to the techs, i was just trying to get the point across

but see what I mean?
besically each tech would have a background cultural value, but you know, would also produce more culture the more you use it. I don't expect the culture from techs to be as strong as improvements but still it can addup to something significant. I guess for buildings that produce culture you could set how much is from the civ that invented it and how much is from the civ that built it..

some techs would also effect the efficiency of the interaction between civs, having the same version of a tech would help,

France and Italy"we've each developed our language (italian vs. french), but we share a language root (latin), an phonetic alphabet (roman), decimal math system (arabic), calender(Roman), and measurment system (SI), so cooperation between us should be very easy"
or US-China "language (English vs. Chinese), language root (latin vs. tonal asian), phonetic alphabet (roman vs. none), decimal math system (arabic), calender (Roman), measurment system (Imperial vs. SI), so coperation could be prety complicated"

Of course switching which version of a tech is in general usewill depend on the tech and on the size of the civ, sometimes it's near impossible to counter the psychological momentum...

for cooperative efforts it might be useful sometimes to develope together a hybrid tech, with a hybrid culture stamp so neither side has the upper hand, this is haw you get the SI measurment system and NATO standard infantry..

if i wanted to be really realistic about this i'd have to also attach an efficiency value to each tech (based on a slight random factor and how much extra work was put into the tech before releasing it, and how much experience you have with that particular tech allready) like the 13 month calender (every month has 28days, exactly 4 weeks, every mopnth starts on a monday, ends on a sunday, you have one day left over for your new years party, just takes a little more thought than the one we have and would be slightly more efficient, but would probably never be worth the cost of switching over) or that base 23 (!!) decimal counting system (more efficient then additive counting but not as efficient s base 10, which some say isn't quite as efficient as base 12) or a truly phonetic alphabet: one letter per sound... there are many other examples (imperial vs. SI)

i don't know haw to make languages dilectize.. unless you have foregine culture stamps slowly erode with time........

 

[dh_epic]

Oh man, to me that's absolutely necessary. The idea that culture and ethnicity are seperate. I gave a couple examples of how the dynamic could be different if they're seperate.

For example, India embraces clapping from Greece (a meme) but does not produce Greek or mixed-Greek citizens (ethnicity remains the same). On the other hand -- cuban refugees (ethnicity) move to America, but get largely assimilated into American culture, and culture stays the same.

I would imagine that immigration of foreign citizens happens if your nation is doing well, while emmigration to foreign countries happens if your nation is doing poorly.

Culture is totally different. Adding foreign culture happens if your neighbors are doing well, and assimilating foreign culture happens if your neighbors are doing poorly. More foreign culture infiltrates your Civ if your people like them, and foreign culture disappears if your people hate them. Not to mention that you can actually promote your culture abroad by sending philosophers and missionaries out. You can't directly promote emmigration abroad (nor would you really want to), although you could sabotage your own country so everyone wants to leave.

They're two seperate forces entirely that happen in completely different contexts. They can be related, but they are not the same.

But I do agree with your initial thoughts of culture-stamping various technical secrets, so they generate some foreign culture if you received it from a foreign source. The "stamp" wouldn't have to be blatantly obvious as in "Russian construction" versus "American construction". It would just be construction -- although I'm sure nitpickers could look at "advanced properties" if they really wanted to know where they learned it from. It wouldn't have any salient properties in being American other than that it would generate American culture. (Either a flat American cultural bonus to each foreign city, or generating a certain amount of American culture in each city per turn for 20 turns, or so on.)

Man, I think it's great that you're exploring the actual interactions between two people with two different versions of the same tech. I'm not entirely sure this is necessary, though. Kind of like one of those convenient things -- you just assume that two civilizations will be able to talk with one another, despite a language barrier. You just assume that Japanese spearmen are the same as American spearmen. I imagine people might get annoyed if two Civs couldn't talk to one another for the first 3000 years of the game or something. (Although it would certainly have an element of realism.)

 

[sir_schwick]

In SMAX the non-human factions could not talk to human factions without Human Psych and humans could not talk to non-humans without Alien Psych.

 

[Suki]

"They're two seperate forces entirely that happen in completely different contexts. They can be related, but they are not the same."

well I never said they were the same, I asked is as far as the game is concerned dose it change anything to have them seperate? I know it would be more complete and realistic but is it worth the effort? would it add more fun and interest than complexity and extra calculations?

"I imagine people might get annoyed if two Civs couldn't talk to one another for the first 3000 years of the game or something. (Although it would certainly have an element of realism.)"

well i didn't mean that, and in the version i just described the first thing you'd probably do is teach the other civ your language, even if they don't use it as their primary it might be good for them to have around...
what I meant for effecincies was that the EU has something like 100M$ per year budjeted for translating between the, what is it, 12, official languages, don't you think it would be more efficient if they all spoke european? well that efficiency won't make up for the loss of culture points from no longer having their own language for most countries, or the cost to switch..

 

[sir_schwick]

I think asking any of the EU members to change their language would be the same as asking Americans to change their language to Russian. I could never see an Englishman happy about having to speak anything remotely French and vice versa.

 

[dh_epic]

Sorry to overgeneralize your statement. But the difference between ethnicity and culture is a bigger and more important gap than the difference between music-culture and language-culture. Even Civ 3 has these two seperated -- and I wouldn't call Civ 3's model of culture or ethnicity all that complex. It's as simple as the population heads doing one thing while the culture meter doing another thing.

I'm sure it would be pretty easy to calculate the efficiency thing you're talking about. As of now, I anticipated the model calculating the peoples' opinion of their neighbors. If you're more similar, you're more forgiving, and more willing to help out. That's the impact of similarity on happiness / weariness and so forth.

Maybe rather than having an efficiency penalty for trading/dealing with somebody different, there could be an efficiency bonus for trading/dealing with somebody more similar? I know it's a subtle re-framing of the original idea, but this way culture is seen more as a new incentive than a new obstacle. Spread your culture, and see gains in efficiency. You wouldn't need to calculate this seperately for every single tech, but judge it as an overall efficiency factor.

I presume efficiency would impact the value generated by trading goods? The price to pay to learn a tech?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, DH_Epic, I just want to see if I understand this correctly:

1) You have an Ethnicity, which is essentially a mix of your 'Culture Group' and your 'Nationality'.

2) Your Nationality is the source of your culture-though it will also have an element of your culture group to it as well.

3) As culture spreads to other, neighbouring civs, this represents them picking up on things you do, the way in which you speak (though NOT, neccessarily, the actual language) and so forth.

4) The other way for culture to spread is for it to 'come with' migrants entering your city. As their population grows, so does the culture they brought with them.

5) If the indigenous culture and foreign culture in a city reach a certain, critical ratio, then there is a chance for a Culture Crunch, which will result in a new, regional culture being born-but with each individual member of the new culture still retaining the 'Culture Group' component of their former nationality.

So, does that seem right to you?

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Hey Aussie. There are many things to discuss, but taking a look at all 5, that looks basically right.

1) Ethnicity is kind of like culture-groups in Civ 3. But I hate using that term. Ethnicity is more the genetic makeup of your people that distinguishes them from all others. It's hardwired from the start of the game. In Civ 3, your population heads are brown or pink or tan #2, and that's just the way it is. Ethnicity, for lack of a better term, is genetic.

As a side note, I imagine you should be able to turn on/off hardwired "races" or "ethnic groups". If it's on, then Greece will already slightly favor dealing with Rome, and slightly disfavor dealing with China.

If you turn this off, then similarity will be determined completely dynamically by the culture model. For example, if China and France grew up close together right from the start, we can imagine that they'd become very similar by the middle ages when they start to encounter the Turks. They'd probably even share the same religion, and feel threatened by the same outsiders.

2) Your culture is also unique. But it's not the genetic makeup of your people, but the idiosyncracies that come to define their ideas. We assume that every nation understands and describes color, but my culture might have a different word system to describe the gradient of colors. Culture is memetic.

3) That's exactly it. Culture is another nation picking up on your way of life -- language, music, art, ideas, values. They don't change color or size. It is 100% mental.

4) Think of the individual population heads start to become like miniature cities. Even though that population head is ethnically chinese, he gets 25% of his ideas from the Greek tradition (thoughts on religion, on democracy, and so forth). This is because he lives in a Chinese city, but that chinese city has anywhere from 10% to 40% greek culture. I figure this value would be randomly generated to give the game some spice.

When he finally emmigrates (because he hates his home country, for example) he brings his chinese and greek culture with him. This is true.

But I'd also see extreme ratios resulting in assimilation. For example, if he moved to an urban American city with 6000 culture, and he brought 10 greek points and 80 chinese points with him, those greek points would start to fade away. The chinese points might linger. I would see certain critical ratios as resulting in assimilation.

I also see certain critical thresholds resulting in natural growth, even without buildings and so forth. If he moved to an American city with 6000 culture, but it already had 1000 greek culture, his culture would be added to that pool and increase the snowball effect of greek culture.

All this math is automatic. And no one would really work out the individual numbers. But they'd have a general sense of what's going on: you hope that if your people decide to migrate, that they generally converge on a place where their culture is strong enough to crystalize instead of gradually eroding.

5) Every once in a while, culture would combine in a culture crunch. Just like how every once in a while you defragment your harddrive to conserve space, every once in a while it looks for culture patterns. For example, it realizes that there are a lot of cities with greek-chinese ideas. It decides to convert some or most of these points into a new culture. So now the greek-chinese cities have greek-chinese and grinese (chreek?) culture.

And if a population head from one of these cities happens to migrate, they'd take greek, chinese, and grinese components with them. But there's no guarantee that some of those greek, chinese, or grinese components would endure assimilation. They'd need to move to a place where there's a small cultural contingent there already.

Anyway, sorry to be really elaborate. I think that's the longest "yes" answer in the history of questions. But just wanted to put the nuance in there, in case there was any confusion.

 

[mhIdA]

I think we could have some and magnificient ideas, but at end we do ask ourselves: that ideas could be implemented? If a good idea couldn't be implement or is to complex and generate complex calculations, so they nust stand out.

In begin culture for every civ are unique, independently the similarities or differences to others civs, and that sim/dif is given by a ratio btw 0 and 1, no matter way we calculate it by memes or by factors.
If S is ratio similarity and we have 5 cultural factors (A, B, C, D, E) and a, b, c, d, e is the similarities in each factors then the model is like that, :
If c is the weight of cultural factors then S is given by:

S= c(a+b+c+d+e)

or calculated with memes and Mn, n =1, 2, 3, ..., 20, then

If c is the weight of each meme then S is given by:

S = c(M1+M2+ M3+ ... +M20)

If S = 0.8 btw civ A and civ B then their are culaturally similares in 80% and be part of same cultural group and in all that means.
If S = 0.3 btw civ A and civ B then their are culaturally imilares in 30% and part of distinct cultural group and in all that means.

The memes could increase during the game and beeing 25 or 30.

With the game we could increse this factors or memes (new techs) and/or each turn recalculating S.
Other thing is the spread-culture and cross-culture.

But what memes or given factors we assign to each civ at the begining and so the cultural group at civs belongs?
Culture of a civ evolves by itself or in contact with others civs, so S tend to change.

 

[dh_epic]

There are two sets of calculations.

Culture Spreading

One is the factors that lead to culture spreading. I love math, but don't think you need to use mathematical jargon to prove something is possible.

(Note: You don't need to track every individual meme, because they're all considered the same, for simplicity's sake. It doesn't matter if the meme is rock music or pink dresses. Culture is culture. You're looking at abstractions like "20 French culture, 15 American Culture, 8 Hybrid Ameri-French Culture".)

What would lead to culture spreading? It would be a lot like calculating osmosis. Examine culture A in two adjacent cities. If City 1 has more of culture A than City 2, then culture A should spread slightly into City 2. Do this for all adjacent cities (City 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and so on). Do this for all cultures (culture A, B, C, D...).

Adding weights is no problem. How much should spread at one time? Factors include the distance between the cities, the cultural difference between the cities, the favorability ratings between the citizens of the cities, and other bonuses from buildings and governments and so forth.

Similarity

Similarity = A(W - W') + B(X - X') C(Y - Y') + D(Z-Z') + ...

X and X' could be the sets of all the culture memes. Subtracting reveals the difference.

Y and Y' could be religion. Y - Y' means it's 0 if the same, and 1 if different.

Z could be political ideology. You could define the Z and Z' values on a case by case basis -- where the difference between Fascism and Democracy is bigger than the difference between Despotism and Democracy.

W and W' could be "hardwired continental origin" (e.g.: culture group). The difference is 0 if they're the same, and 1 if different. If you turn off hardwired origins from Civ 3 off, then you'd make culture completely dynamic with no hardwired factor at all.

ABCD are all weights. They can be constant. Or they can vary with other factors like what government you have, or your level of nationalism, and so forth.

And that's exactly the point. The Similarity factor changes. Changing your government changes who you're similar or different to, not to mention how your government handldes these differences. Changing your religion too.

The spread of culture means that at the begining of the game everyone is completely different -- they have only their own unique culture! As culture spreads, neighbors become more similar. By the modern age, with global trade and imperialism, many nations become much more similar.

It's Possible

To me it's trivially obvious that this can be implemented. And complexity is not an issue since it's calculated 100% automatically. The user doesn't have to understand anything more than generating and spreading more culture is generally good for you.

The most challenging thing for the developers will be coming up with weights that make the game run smoothly and fairly. How much does distance matter in culture spreading? How much does government matter? And when you're calculating differences between Civs, does culture matter more than government or religion? That's something that will come out in play testing.

 

[Huxley Hobbes]

Wow, long thread! Yeah, I followed that link from the other thread =D Apologies, but I only read the first 5 pages and the most recent 2. So if anything I say here has cropped up before, please forgive.

First, I think it vitally important to distinguish between culture and ethnicity unless one wishes to entirely remove one factor. (IE, either there is only a demarcation based on one's nation of birth, or there is only a demarcation based on one's idealogues, beliefs, etc.) I don't see the removal of culture as being very wise, and though ethnicity could be removed with arguably less trouble, I still don't think it such a good idea (Despite my anti-national attitudes to the real world.).

Why should both be included, though? Well, consider: An American who moves to Great Britain may well come to love the British culture, and in time even consider themselves culturally British. But they're not likely to forget their American heritage and upbringing, and I'm sure American Brits felt as injured on 9/11 as Americans living Stateside. Second; Let's say you're playing as Korea, and you adopt a completely isolationist policy. No immigration, as little emigration as possible, no trading, the works. What about the Indian migrants who came into the country before the policy was adopted? They might identify with their Korean lifestyle, but they would always remember being Indian. I see two possible answers to this: have ever citizen/group of citizens remember their cultural history, or have both ethnicity and culture included as a halfway between there being no distinction, and the absolute distinction but also memory drain that the former model provides. I think it just allows for more scope and will require more consideration from the player regarding their actions. If you can simply say everyone in your country is French, and be done with it, then you have no conflict within your nation with regards to culture - I want to see a massive expansion of the cultural system used in Civ3, not a reduction.

Hope that made sufficient sense!

Next: What benefits does culture have? and, as Trip was asking way back when, Why let foreign culture in??

Well, the two are closely linked. (And I'm sure this has been addressed before, probably better than I shall address it now, but nonetheless... I type. xD) Let's say that at an arbitrary point, every 150cp, a city gets another point to it's science research. This stands to reason: If you bring up a generation in a city full of foreign influences, that generation will be more open to new ideas and will inherently possess new ideas. See the difference between St. Louis, a city which recieves little in the way of immigration, and San Francisco, which has far, far more. St. Louis is more conservative, has more people who would be objecting to gay marriage and be more against abortion. This isn't necessarily due to the absence of the outside factors which exist in New York, LA, San Francisco and so on, but I will say it plays a large part. Therefore, allowing another culture to have a place within your empire would at some point increase science, and very likely entertainment as well - more ideas, and more choice.

On the other hand allowing too much foreign influence, or simply having a weak culture of one's own, would open up your nation to various dangers. Example: There are a lot of people living in the UK of Indian/Pakistani descent. That's a lot of people who would have to be monitored if there was a conflict between the UK and India - it would be hard to find the right people. Yes, I'm talking espionage. Consider a city which is 85% Zulu, 10% Iroquois, and 5% spread among other nations. And say the Iroquois want to start some trouble. Well with 10% being of Iroquois descent, there are probably Iroquois in almost every sector of life in that city. Of course, if the Zulu have a strong culture the Iroquois may have no wish to betray them, but it would still make it easier for the Iroquois to insert various agents. This makes it seem like Trip was right about there being no obvious benefits to letting in foreign cultures, but consider an increase in science and entertainment, stronger relationships with allies (Refer to my post in here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=109937&page=3 ), and the possibility of a cultural victory.

Also, maybe closely linked cultures would trade techs more easily, or even automatically? If ten million Americans upped sticks and moved to Kenya, you can bet they'd take their AC and cable TV with them. Wouldn't be long before the Kenyas had it themselves. At least, I think it should work with non-military techs, which would obviously be easier to implement with a SMAC-style categorisation of each tech.

 

[sir_schwick]

The reason you let culture in is because it increases culture ovverall. Even if your French creation is not 100% French, it is still more powerful with 5 other nations than with only French origin. Also, nationality should still be a factor too, making espionage with naturalized immigrants harder. In the age of nationalism nationality often transcends other categorizers in external conflicts.