The one use of offensive culture bombs.

vicawoo

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 12, 2007
Messages
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I've been trying to figure out clever ways of using culture bombs for probably around 5 years now, since they nerfed the mechanic.

The problem is it provides very little tile culture, giving it little chance of dealing with 20/40 tile culture per turn from border pops. That combined with how late will get them, thanks to parthenon being switched to aesthetics, means you can't get them early enough to be effective.

Except for barbarian cities. Barbarian cities flip immediately after their first revolt (not when they first are exposed to foeign culture), rarely build culture buildings. And do you really want to build 6-10 swordsmen with a barracks to take a stupid barbarian city? Especially on hills and you have to compete with AIs.

So the conditions of usefulness: 2+ barbarian cities within a potential great work. Good value barb cities/decent blocking value. You are philosophical, and get code of laws fast. So 17 artist specialist turns (the equivalent of 17 plains/mines turns, or 68 hammers vs 200+), which with caste system is you could get in 5 or 6 turns.

Screenshots of how bombable barbarian positions

Enemies all around us:


Remember that this is the maximum range. 2 barbarian cities within 8 tiles of each other are a good target. Surprisingly, 3 diagonals away are also valid targets.



It takes a few turns to revolt. Closer cities would revolt faster, due to more tiles enveloped.



Maybe it will be helpful in <5% of games, but it's a useful skill to have.
 
Interesting, never used that on a barb city but that's cool.

I sometimes use a culture bomb in recently captured enemy cities just to get the culture ball rolling and get tiles worked faster, and it seems to work well. I also use one on a shared border with a longtime ally, if I think I'm close to flipping one of his cities and wasn't planning to DoW him anytime soon. Is this considered a waste of the GA?
 
I use culture bombs as a means to block the AI from seizing extra land. It's useful for cutting down on the maintenance that I would have to pay to build another city a good ways from my capital. I can always get another city up when I can afford it or have the techs to properly develop the tiles/terrain.
 
It seems to be kind of a wasted tactic if you're simply going to disband the Cities.

Or, were they auto-razed from being Size 1? If that fact is true, then the timing of applying this tactic will matter.

I'm also curious--what would have happened had you decided to keep the City that was built on the Lake?


Further, what are the effects on the Barb units in the Cities? We see that you have some Warriors--did they come for free with the Cities? We also see some Barb Archers to the north--do the Barb units that were previously in the City stick around nearby? Are they simply expelled a square or two from your Cultural border, potentially allowing them to attack and reclaim the City within a couple of turns?
 
They join your empire, so they're not razed. I razed them so we could see the proper culture dimensions without the new city culture.

You get a free garrison unit, depending on your tech. The archer moved out on its own, because I worldbuildered 4 in, and they didn't retain the garrison city AI.
 
You get a free garrison unit, depending on your tech. The archer moved out on its own, because I worldbuildered 4 in, and they didn't retain the garrison city AI.
So does that mean that the normal Barb garrison gets destroyed when you Culture-flip their City?

I'm pretty sure that if you Culture-flip an AI's City, the AI will still keep its units--that is why I am asking--it sounds like they handled Barbs differently. Which, if true, would be fair, since you normally can't Culture-flip an AI's City when you are at war with them, while you are technically always "at war" with the Barbs, and it would suck to have the garrisoned units come for you immediately Culture-flipping a City.
 
All barbs destroyed if they don't flee earlier. In real games, they shouldn't move out unless they see some target of opportunity.
 
This strategy could be useful on a map like continents or New World, where you have an entire land mass, with no AIs, and Barbs, spawn there until someone reached Astronomy to go after them.
With the free GA from Music, or GPP, one could have a GA ready for this tactic.

Looks cool.
I noticed you Gold dropped, due to the increased number of units. Later in the game, this won't be too much of an issue, and there isn't a likelyhood to have that many Barb cities, but, again, it looks cool. :)
 
The best offensive use of culture bombing that I have found involves intercontinental warfare post flight. If you bring a GA with your offensive stack you can culture bomb the first city you cap across the ocean and rush buy an airport into it. From there you can airlift an essentially limitless supply (limited only by the number of cities you have that support airports) of troops accross to enemy territory on the second turn of the war without worrying about enemy navies, or dealing with the hassles of moving troops on and off transports.
 
And, of course, if you c-bomb a city that you capture

A) it comes out of resistance and
B) you can restrict the flow of the enemy reinforcements, especially as you take more cities.
 
rush buy an airport into it. From there you can airlift an essentially limitless supply (limited only by the number of cities you have that support airports) of troops accross to enemy territory on the second turn of the war without worrying about enemy navies, or dealing with the hassles of moving troops on and off transports.
Is that how Airports work? I seem to recall having the interface limit me to only 1 arriving passenger per destination City per turn. Is my memory wrong? Is there something that I could have done to cause this problem (like no Airport in the destination City but only in the departure City)?
 
Interesting idea, I would guess the unit you get is you current draft unit? I wonder if the number changes as city size increases.
Is that how Airports work? I seem to recall having the interface limit me to only 1 arriving passenger per destination City per turn. Is my memory wrong? Is there something that I could have done to cause this problem (like no Airport in the destination City but only in the departure City)?
A city without an Airport can receive one airlifted unit per turn, a city with an Airport can receive any number per turn.
 
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