The Culture-Spreading Model

[sir_schwick]

If we take the exact analogy of how trade is distributed, here is what I come up with.

Evolution(research),Growth(gold),Benefits(luxuries)

Evolution refers to how quickly concepts and culture convergence occur.
Growth refers to how much culture increases and grows outward.
Benefits refers to how having culture will actually help you.

Obviously you weigh current benfits agianst the other two.

Growth and evolution could be compared along a biological chain.
Lots of growth but little evolution would be like bacteria, hard to get rid of, but not very developed and easily overtaken.
Little growth and lots of evolution would be like humans, who are easy to extinct, but very developed.

These ideas would need more relevancy, but I would expect no less of the CFC forum posters.

 

[dh_epic]

It's a neat idea, to spend your "cultural capital". (Not capital as in a city, but capital as in money.) There would be many ways to divvy it up. The one that comes to mind for me is:

1. Growth: Raising this slider results in the generation of new "cultural memes", and thus new culture points. If there's a threshold to reach before you can generate "interest" off of culture (e.g.: at 50 culture you can generate 1 culture point in interest per turn), then pushing growth would actually lower that threshold / raise that interest. Your cities start producing more culture faster.

2. Transmission Raising this slider would improve the ability of culture to cross between cities. It works by playing with thresholds again: if you need to achieve a certain cultural threshold in a city before it can start to trickle down to nearby cities, this would lower the threshold so that the trickle starts sooner.

3. Assimilation Again, raise this slider to lower the threshold for assimilation. If assimilation starts to happen at 100 culture in a city, at 1 point per turn, then this could erode that to 90, even 80, to make assimilation happen sooner / faster.

Be that as it may, I'm a big fan of Sir Schwick's ideas. Particularly the idea of spending your "cultural capital" on benefits. To me, this is a very key element in culture that can also be expanded in Civ 4, to make the idea of investing in culture more valuable. Right now, culture only defines borders and gives you a flip. What if passing certain cultural thresholds, particularly in enemy cities, causes new buildings to be created? If you pass 100 culture in an enemy city, you get a Cultural Community Center built over there. If you pass 500 culture in an enemy city, you get a free Spy Hideout. These kinds of things. As well as your culture having an influence on a rival's amount of war weariness.

(This whole "spend your culture wisely" model would all be gravy though. What's most important is to create this culture flow model, and let it have an impact on the way your citizens feel about other civilizations. If you're at war with a rival, would some citizens want you to stop? If you're at peace, would some citizens demand you start or join a war against a rival? Will they demand that you trade for foreign luxuries, because they're all the rage right now?)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

In principle, DH and Suki, I reckon your idea is EXCELLENT. The only thing I can foresee being a problem (not with me, mind, but with other players ) Is that this gives the players more sliders to control and, therefore, more possible areas for Micromanagement (something I am sure we ALL want to minimize!) However, despair not, as I see two possible solutions to this problem. The first is to incorporate my idea for 'carrot and stick' into your culture sliders as well-namely that the amount of 'interest' you gain from a setting improves over time, the longer you leave that setting in place. At the same time, moving your settings within a 5 turn period actually causes you to lose x% of the culture you have accumulated-with x being based on how soon before the 5 turn limit you move it. This would actively discourage those who use MM techniques to win the game, whilst still allowing discerning players to move their settings according to need.

Option 2 is NOT to have seperate culture sliders, but build the concept into existing concepts of Civics. As I have stated before, Nationalism and Spiritualism could be the one which boosts your culture accumulation and internal spread. Transmission could be a factor of your Libertarianism and Sufferage values (as your free and democratic culture becomes a beacon for other nations) and your Assimilation rating could be a factor of both your Nationalism and the INVERSE of your Libertarianism (as you deny foreigners the right to practice their culture!)

Thus if you wish to transmit your culture to other nations you increase your peoples sufferage and libertarianism. This not only makes your nations culture more attractive to others, but also means that your people are more free to emigrate to other nations, taking their culture with them. It also increases your opportunities for trade, thus making it easier for you to transmit your culture via trade. OTOH, increasing your nationalism reduces the transmission of your culture to other nations, but makes your nations culture more resistant to 'infection' from other states! If your nation is already culturally heterogeneous, then reducing Libertarianism, and increasing your Nationalism, is a good way to increase the rate at which foreigners are assimilated into your culture (thus losing the x% of the culture that they contribute to your nation) and also reduces the chance of cultural 'regionalism'.
Of course, with all of these civics settings, some are 'mutually exclusive', where increasing one automatically decreases another. They are also often tied into government types and your social 'tech level'. Also, for the 'benefits' they confer, they can also confer penalties (like increasing sufferage reduces your direct control over your nation, and increased Libertarianism makes you more susceptible to espionage and sabotage, and at certain levels can reduce productivity).

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Khan Quest]

These ideas are excellent suggestions that would make the game more enjoyable and challenging. But rather than sliders, I'd rather have play style as a way generating Evolution,Growth & Benefits or Growth, Transmission, & Assimilation or whatever.

Building a library first or a temple first, or more of one than the other could make difference about what culture is exported and imported.

I also like the "cultural" unit idea presented in another post (was that dh or aussie?)that you could send to another civ; and theirs that you accept or reject at your border.

 

[dh_epic]

Aussie, I'm definitely more of a fan of integrating some of the cultural settings into broader settings for government. If you push a high level of nationalism and domestic propaganda, of course your culture grows a little faster, but cultural differences are more likely to result in unhappiness and even violence. This would keep things pretty manageable.

Khan Quest, the culture-unit was part of the original idea, and it's been met with mixed reviews. It's not central to the culture-flow concept, but it's definitely a nice bonus if you can make it work. Some of the questions involved are what units would be available, and if they'd have any abilities to differentiate each other. But the basic idea is that you should tolerate some foreign culture in your cities, because you'd hope that your neighbor would do the same -- and if you can cooperate and share culture at a equal level, you both benefit by having a better culture than other pairs of neighbors who are hostile to one another.

 

[thesmith]

Speaking of cultural units, which I think should be handled with care but in individual cases might be interesting, I wouldn't mind seeing the "refugee": when wars occur on your borders, and cities are destroyed, they appear in your territory. You can add them to a city and it increases the population, each one increases the science output of the city because of the new ideas they bring (which fades after, say, 20 turns), but they change the cultural profile of the city, which might be a long-term risk.

 

[dh_epic]

thesmith, it wouldn't even necessarily need to be a unit but some kind of event that you handle on the spot. "Refugees from ____ are requesting assylum in our borders! Will you receive them? (All of them! / Choose from among the most skilled! / None of them!)

This also makes world issues a domestic issue. Many times a nation will start to watch the influx of refugees with horror, and how it threatens their own domestic stability. Thus, they begin to intervene in foreign affairs, trying to end a war, or providing aid to a country in order to keep from more refugees coming. That's the case with the tsunami, for example, with Australia expecting a large influx of refugees, it's in their best interest to provide millions (even a billion?) dollars of aid so they don't have to spend it trying to integrate these refugees at home.

 

[Kayak]

thesmith, it wouldn't even necessarily need to be a unit but some kind of event that you handle on the spot. "Refugees from ____ are requesting assylum in our borders! Will you receive them? (All of them! / Choose from among the most skilled! / None of them!)

This is a good idea. I way thinking as I read the prior posts on the thread that the exchange of culture has much to do with the movement of peoples. In the ages where most people did not travel, a city a few days journey away could have a diferent slightly culture and a totaly different language. As more communication, trade, and (above all) immigration took place, the cultural lines begin to blur.

It should also be noted that civs that rise in the same geographic area tend to have similar culture anyway for obvious reasons.

 

[dh_epic]

I think that's one of my favorite part about this culture flow model. The fact that it pretty naturally creates that sense of similarity and difference based on geography. It's much more powerful than simply hardwiring facts into the game, like "Rome and France = Similar, Arab and Ottoman = Similar, etc." By having a natural amount of flow of culture, even flow of people (immigration), you allow that similarity to happen naturally.

 

[sir_schwick]

I support less hardwired associations anyway. Civ2 felt more natural in terms of progression because of that.

 

[mhIdA]

In the ancients times peoples from diferent tribes or nations are more propense to make war against each other due they share the same territory. Think of the wars in Africa, between the Amerindians in North America, Papua-New Guinea, or the major part of Europe History.
By time with the cross-flow of people, ideas, peoples and the exausted of that wars among centuries and the faces to another civs the peace is more quite possibly.
And then start the conflicts to others civs more far away. this i don´t see in Civ3 where a civ declare war to other civ in other side of the world.

 

[mhIdA]

The Divided or Multicultural City:
- A city must have 2 or more ethnics citizens.
- A city with 50% of 2 civ belongs to civ who found city.
- A city only flip from native civ to foreign civ if the foreign citizens became 2/3 or 3/4 of their population.
- A city whre no civ have at least 50% of their population became a no civ city.
- A civ who try conquer a divided city by military units caused a international incident with the other civs wich the citizens city belong.
- A divided city could cap the snowball effect.

A regional block of cities:
There are 6 or 7 city each one belong to a diferent civ in a landmass like Australia.
- They are far away of the capital of they one civ.
- By time with roads, harbours they development ties and conexions.
- They start to viewing of have more in common that each one with the original civ.
This becames a condition to a new civ appears or the civ more powerfull and with more city assimilate the others by no military actions.
- Introducing the concept of minor civs they could think that have more in common with that minor civ that with the original civ. A good reason for that is the capital of the minor civ wich became a major civ is in the neighborhood.
Extended a city flip and or a new civ entity or a minor civ cames a major occurs occurs when a multicultural city are 10% of a map far from they capital or other side the ocean and there are several nationality in city and a capital city even of a minor civ nearby.

 

[dh_epic]

mhIdA, you're a man after my own heart. This kind of similarity makes peace possible. It's these kinds of differences that bring out the worst fear and hatred known of humanity.

If they could implement this cross-flow of culture (along with some abilities to manipulate culture-flow through buildings, units, and government), and make your people responsive to it (more forgiving towards those similar to them, more grudging towards those different from them), then people would be forced to respond to cultural similarity/difference when they decide who to war with and who to befriend.

Heck, make the people respond to cultural, religious, geographical, even ideological (communist versus democratic) similarities/differences.

 

[mhIdA]

Whell Dh-Epic one of main features of your model as I seen is the similarities and differences of cultures of the civs. Let me give u 3 examples.
Jews and Arabics:
- Differences are the religion and Jews are having more cross-flow with Babylons, Egiptions and with other Western civs. Democracy values are other until now
But the more important difference is the religion.
- Similarities are the ethnicity, they have the some ancestor Abraham, both are semits.

India and Pakistan
The main difference is also the religion.

Mongols and Chinese.
The Chinese became sedentary and farmers while mongols remain nomads. Another one is the religion, budists the mongols and confucionists the chinese.

So, religion is a key element of culture, others are language, the gastronomy, family values, the way how they faces authority.

So we must having several cultureal features to determine the differences and similarities to implement the The Culture-Spreading Model as I see it.

 

[brinko]

one thing that definatley needs to be improved on culture is that for instances...

i capture a city, i gain culture around that city, not much at first, but fair enough my borders expand. after the war, i decide that it is not worth keeping, that the captured city infringes on one of my original city limits. so i raze it. yet because i have done so, my borders are reduced. to me it doesnt make sence that after reclaiming land and spilling blood that my borders shrink after razing a few border liberated towns. its my territory either way, city or no city.

this should be fixed.

 

[Kayak]

Whell Dh-Epic one of main features of your model as I seen is the similarities and differences of cultures of the civs. Let me give u 3 examples.
Jews and Arabics:
- Differences are the religion and Jews are having more cross-flow with Babylons, Egiptions and with other Western civs. Democracy values are other until now
But the more important difference is the religion.
- Similarities are the ethnicity, they have the some ancestor Abraham, both are semits.

India and Pakistan
The main difference is also the religion.

Mongols and Chinese.
The Chinese became sedentary and farmers while mongols remain nomads. Another one is the religion, budists the mongols and confucionists the chinese.

So, religion is a key element of culture, others are language, the gastronomy, family values, the way how they faces authority.

So we must having several cultureal features to determine the differences and similarities to implement the The Culture-Spreading Model as I see it.

You are thinking along my lines as well here. To implement this model we have to quantify the elements of "culture" and be able to measure these elements in a city or civ.
Here is my list:
Values
Customs
Religion
Cuisine
Language

This list could work to measure where each culture point would come from and how similar/differend two civs are from each other.
If you assign a scale of, oh, 1 to 10 let say for each culture element and place each civ on that scale those civs with numbers closest together would tend to be similar and to get along better.
A quick example: (numbers were just assigned to show similarities and diffs here)
US UK Iran
Values 1 2 8
Customs 2 1 10
Religion 3 1 10
Cuisine 4 1 8
Language 1 1 9
This model would show that civs like the US and UK would feel similar and to undestand, trust each other and work together. Civ such as the US and Iran are very different culturally and would tend to distrust each other and be in opposition to each other.
Thoughts anyone?

 

[dh_epic]

No need on getting too complex too fast, although I don't think you guys are wrong about any of this stuff. You're right, culture is a lot of different things. Whether you need to represent that in the game to still get most of the effect is a whole other discussion, though.

The only reason I brought up differing politics, differing geography, and differing religion is because they will all probably be in Civ 4. They're already represented. Actually representing new features such as "values" or "cuisine", you'd have to ask yourself if it was possible to implement into a game as complex as civ already is... and you'd have to ask yourself what those even mean, what they would do.

I think there are answers to those questions, but I don't think they are achievable enough for Civ 4. Civ 5 maybe, and only if Civ 4 has simple culture flow in there.

And simple culture flow could still be multiplied by geographical factors and political factors... even religious factors.

 

[Kayak]

@dh_epic
You mistake me, I think. I don't think these have to show up so that the player has to manipulate them. They just have to modeled into a civs particular specs, so to speak. Then the interaction beween the different civ cultures can be modeled as mhIdA's post suggests. I do think you can't look at Culture as a single homogenous thing. It must be made up of different factors for some to more similar to some and different from ohters.

 

[dh_epic]

I'm saying that those factors are already in there, and giving them seperate names doesn't do much unless they can be used to accomplish seperate things. It would be neat if a nation who builds more libraries ends up getting along with a nation who builds more libraries, as opposed to one who generated their culture through temples...

but it's not that important to model them as seperate forms of culture if you really want to make them factors. If two nations exchanged a lot of all kinds of culture, you could still exacerbate differences between them by multiplying that by their technological differences. Certainly nations that are more technologically advanced than another feel a lack of kinship -- almost a duty to conquer them and civilize them. Here's your Mongolia versus China.

And certainly the differences between Israel and Egypt can be described by culture flow of refugees who were "homeless" for 2000 years, only to come "home" because of aid from superpowers. And you can describe the differences between Pakistan and India with culture flow from the Near East reaching Pakistan more than India. But certainly with the implementation of religion in Civ 4, they could multiply that into the differences. The model would basically work.

Again, not that I'm opposed to 5 sets of numbers, but why bother if you can basically get 95% of the realism with 20% of the complexity?

 

[mhIdA]

Kayak.
I can´t see how does be implemented assign numbers to cultural features. as dh_epic says make it more complex.
We can have a more simple quality model and with few changes.
Cultural features:
- religion: christians (catholics, protestants, orthodoxs), muslims (xiits, sunits), hindus, budists, xintoists, animists, totemists, tauists, confucionists??, etc)
- language/ethnicity:
- indo-europeans: romanic (hispanic, luso); germanic (anglo-saxon); slavic; scandinavian; hindu; parsi; turkish; semit;
- others: sinics (chinese, mongol, korean, japanese); native american; bantus
- gastronomy/cuisine/food: seafaring (fish); agricultural (cereal), continental Cattle)
- consumption goods/luxuries:
- tea: china, japan, india, england;
- fish: portugal, england, japan
- rice: portugal, china, japan, korea
- wine: french, rome,
- etc
I hope this give you an idea.
But the point is this are pre-assumption features or is the result of the cross-flow of culture? Some must be assumption at begin, others after a tech research, or by cross-flow.
How europeans country we´ll be christianized and romanized. How implemented a model to implement this. Otherwise we could be the chinese embrace the hebraism, aztecs been the first budists, and other anacrhonisms. A way to solve that is china discover confucionism and are sinic; jewes are semits and discover the prophets and monoteism, arabics are also semits but discover the islam and are beduins, etc.
The aztec, chinese and egiptians changed their religion, the aztecs and egiptians also the language. But the europeans civs like spanish and portugal already appear with their own religion and language.
In later stage of the game we could have phone, radio, movies, TV, mass flight, tourism, sport and pop art events, pop music, fast-food, computers, sattelites, internet, wich change the intensity of cultural flow, etc.
Is the issue of changes in culture from exterior - the culture-spread model - or inner from the civ itself, wich is more dicukt to implement.

dh_epic.
As culture as now you build improvements and wonders to not have city flips, or put military units.
Another thing is if you conquered a city the ethnicity of it is important to your governor not been deposed, miltary units.
The consequence is like a cultural bunker without cross-flow of culture.
To implement spread culture dh-epic mainly refers the cultural units (philosophers, artists and missioners). I agree and join refugees and migrants (who might join to others civ cities).
Another way is trade. I agree but I think is less important than cultural units.
In borders civs are more receptive to be mutual influenced. But I think ethnicity, specially in borders, are a key point of the question and therefore the importance of cultural units and improvements that cross borders (radio, TV, sattelites, etc). So the distance from own capital, borders and other capital civ nearby is other main issue.
In conclusion a culture civ is determine by religion, language, luxuries, food. The contacts between civs (units, trade, technolgy, borders) changed it and this is more easy to made right now.