The Spread Culture Espionage Mission revealed

Interesting post.

Is there any way to tell what your CC in an enemy city is, or do you just shuttle spies deeper into enemy territory and see if the mission is still available?

Good question...I'd hate to have to do the math to figure it out based on AI culture and mission cost :(.
 
Nice information, thanks for sharing, UncleJJ!

:)

There are 2 implications here that I thing are wrong:

- Motherland. Motherland doesn't depend on TC. It does only depend on CC. Since one mission gives 5% of culture in the city (or is it 4.8% since you get 5% of the initial culture and then city total is 105% and you have 5% out of it?), one mission saves you 1 twentieth of the unhappy faces caused by motherland.
Sorry this wrong. Motherland does depend only on TC. It is essentially the ratio of your TC in the city versus the TC of one or more other civs.

- Your cultural preassure. Once you capture a city and have (for example) 500c in it, you start putting TC in the tiles around. Now, since the city is doing 0cpt, it will be injecting 0TC in the outer ring, causing not cultural preassure at all. On the inner rings it will start injecting some TC, but since the city has been owned by the other civ for centuries, it will be very difficult to flip even the closest tile, as long as another of his cities is still putting TC on the tile.

Let's consider an enemy city that has been owned for a long time. It has over 500 CC (we can see this since it has 60% defence) Let's consider two situations, one where we just capture the city (case A) and another where we run several spy missions and raise our CC in the city to 500 (case B). The city already has our state religion.

In case A when the city comes out of revolt it it will have 0 CC and a Cpt of 1 due to the religion. There are no border pops. We start building a theatre and whip it in immediately, it will complete next turn. For TC; the city is putting 1 culture into its city tile and the surrounding zone.

In case B when the city comes out of revolt it it will have 500 CC and a Cpt of 1 due to the religion. There are 3 border pops. We start building a theatre and whip it in immediately, it will complete next turn.
For TC case B:
The city tile will get 1 Cpt plus 3 zone bonuses of 20 culture = 61 TC
The zone 1 tiles also get 61 TC
Zone 2 tiles get 41 TC
Zone 3 tiles get 21 TC
Zone 4 tiles get 1 TC

--------------
The Next Turn. The theatre completes and we run 2 artists and start building a library.

Case A (turn 2)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13 (so border will pop next turn)
City Tile TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13
Zone 1 TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13
Zone 2 TC = 0

Case B (turn 2)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 501 (last turn) + Cpt = 513
City Tile TC = 61 (last turn) + Cpt + 3 zone bonuses = 61 + 72 = 133 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 41 (last turn) + Cpt + 2 zone bonuses = 41 + 52 = 93 TC
Zone 3 TC = 21 (last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 21 + 32 = 53 TC
Zone 4 TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 1 + 12 = 13 TC

--------------
The next turn. The library is still building in bothe cases. The two artists are still being used. Case A has its first border pop.

Case A (turn 3)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 13 (last turn) + Cpt = 25 (Border popped this turn)
City Tile TC = 13 (total last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 13+12+20 = 45 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 0 (last turn) + Cpt = 12 TC

Case B (turn 3)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 513 (last turn) + Cpt = 513 +12 = 525
City Tile TC = 133 (last turn) + Cpt + 3 zone bonuses = 133 + 72 = 205 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 93 (last turn) + Cpt + 2 zone bonuses = 93 + 52 = 145 TC
Zone 3 TC = 53 (last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 53 + 32 = 85 TC
Zone 4 TC = 13 (last turn) + Cpt = 13 + 12 = 25 TC

--------------
We can see that case B gets a much stronger start both in removing the Motherland in its city tile and in spreading TC over a wider area. Tile culture in the city tiles after 3 turns is 45 (case A) versus 205 (case B) and it is going to get the extra zone bonusses for a long time. Any neighbouring cities in Zone 3 or 4 is going to get an immediate benefit in case B but has to wait for the CC to increase in case A.

Lots of mental arithmetic there ;) I'll leave it for someone else to check it for mistakes.
 
Interesting post.

Is there any way to tell what your CC in an enemy city is, or do you just shuttle spies deeper into enemy territory and see if the mission is still available?

Thanks :).

You can't tell the value of your CC directly. You could keep a record of the culture of all your missions on a notepad. It is the only way your CC can be increased in his city, so it is the sum of all your missions.

But if you know the CC of the city owner you can calculate your CC from the amount of culture your next mission will add. If you have enough EPs invested against the other civ you can see the city screen and that has his CC and Cpt.

So say the enemy city had 1000 CC and your next mission will add 300 culture we can calculate what your CC is. His CC will add 5% of 1000 = 50 culture, therefore our CC is adding 250 culture. Our CC is 20 times that = 5000, in this case.

Another way to calculate our CC:
Our mission adds 300 culture,
Our CC and his CC is 20 times that = 6000,
We know his CC is 1000,
Therefore our CC is 5000

Surely that is simple enough even for TheMeInTeam :p
 
If you have enough EPs for investigate city, does your culture (from missions) show in his population percentages?
 
What this tells me is at my level, I can safely ignore all of this with no discernible loss of playing power... :)
 
If you have enough EPs for investigate city, does your culture (from missions) show in his population percentages?

No, the Spread Culture mission adds to your CC in that city. The culture showing as your population in his city screen (before you capture the city) is due to TC coming from one of your cities.
 
Interesting thread. Would anyone be interested in a SG based on this principle? Say 2 of 3 legendary cities must be captured after a spread culture mission, and 1 of 3 must've gotten to the 5th cultural level before capture?
 
Good post.

How much are mission costs reduced by your city culture? I know you say it offsets it, but by how much?

Second, if this is true, the best way to do espionage is to take one of your border cities with a reasonable amount of city culture, gift it, then steal techs from it.
 
No, the Spread Culture mission adds to your CC in that city. The culture showing as your population in his city screen (before you capture the city) is due to TC coming from one of your cities.
Given that these two attributes are different, does the CC have any bearing on the probability of a revolt, or is that solely down to TC?

I ask because I'm assuming that revolts and AP assigning a city to its "rightful" owner are controlled by the same variable. If the AP takes CC into account, then you could run spread culture missions and wait for the vote to assign the city to you, getting it for free with all the culture buildings intact.

If the AP only takes visible TC percentages into account, then that idea's a bust.

==========

Assuming a rival city is at 80% (5000:culture: in the "visible" sense), then would your CC increase by > 250:culture: for the first mission and then incrementally after that as the total CC on the plot increases? If so, this opens up some very interesting ideas for cultural land-grabs after acquiring the city, especially on crowded maps where 500-5000:culture: is probably enough to start converting the next ring of enemy cities.
 
Good post.

How much are mission costs reduced by your city culture? I know you say it offsets it, but by how much?
I'm not sure exactly how this is determined so I have to answer based on my experiences. I would appreciate someone able to read the code giving us a definitive answer. There is this thread The "spread culture" spy mission , that I've just found today, but it doesn't answer all the questions. There was some debate in that thread over whether TC is affected by the Spread Culture mission but that seemed to be unresolved. Maybe it is affected but the effect is certainly small.

The first mission under normal circumstances seems to get a 2% discount. The next missions would then each add about 2%. After many missions I've built the discount up to about 37% in a city, which more than offset the +12% distance penalty. At the same time I had a 35% spending discount modifier as well, so they can give comparable discounts.

Then there was a strange situation that occured in my game. Mansa had owned Timbuktu since the beginning of the game. I started to run Spread Culture missions against it and built up my CC. My discount was maybe 15%, IIRC. Then Saladin declared war on Mansa and took the city. I ran another mission and the discount was 49% :eek: So obviously something strange can happen if you run missions against a city that has recently been captured. This type of situation needs further investigation as it could lead to very advantageous circumstances.

Second, if this is true, the best way to do espionage is to take one of your border cities with a reasonable amount of city culture, gift it, then steal techs from it.

I'm not sure what happens to culture when a city is gifted, it might be altered. Here is anecdotal evidence. I was surprised in one game when I managed to extract a city from Shaka as part of a peace settlement. The city had been established for a long time and had high culture for Shaka, both CC and TC. But after the gift the TC in the city tile and zone 1 was reduced to zero, whereas the TC in zone 2 and further was left unaltered. Also of course the gift meant I had a working library, theatre and other cultural buildings (I forget the exact details) but obviously my CC was zero.

There are several ways cities can change hands, capture, gift, revolt and AP resolution and maybe more. The effects on culture, both CC and TC, could be different in each of those cases so until we've run some tests I can't answer ... but I'd appreciate you (or someone else) doing some tests and posting the results.

To answer your question, assuming that you did gift a border city to the enemy, and if your CC is retained, then you should get a very advantageous CCM discount for a while. If you don't run some Spread Culture missions the enemy CC will gradually build up and the discount will reduce.
 
Given that these two attributes are different, does the CC have any bearing on the probability of a revolt, or is that solely down to TC?
I don't think CC has any direct bearing on the chance of revolt. As far as I can tell the chance of revolt only occurs when the TC is less than 50% of the total of all the TCs, or maybe it is only if your TC is less than the TC of the civ causing the cultural pressure. One sure way to avoid a revolt is to raise your TC above 50% and using the Spread Culture missions can help a lot with that by giving a captured city a headstart. Many factors affect the chance of revolt like the number of tiles in the BFC you control.

I ask because I'm assuming that revolts and AP assigning a city to its "rightful" owner are controlled by the same variable. If the AP takes CC into account, then you could run spread culture missions and wait for the vote to assign the city to you, getting it for free with all the culture buildings intact.

If the AP only takes visible TC percentages into account, then that idea's a bust.
I think it might be unwise to make any assumptions about what happens with regard to culture (either CC or TC) with the various ways a city can change hands. See my anecdote above in answer to vicawoo. A gifted city (as part of cease fire) definitely gets its tile culture affected in a way that's different from a captured city. We need to investigate each case separately.

I'm fairly sure that the AP resolution depends only on TC. Once you get it above 50% in your favour there is no danger of a resolution concerning the city, as I know from painful experience ;). On the otherhand if you can get another city to 50% TC there's a good chance it will be offered to you.

Assuming a rival city is at 80% (5000:culture: in the "visible" sense), then would your CC increase by > 250:culture: for the first mission and then incrementally after that as the total CC on the plot increases? If so, this opens up some very interesting ideas for cultural land-grabs after acquiring the city, especially on crowded maps where 500-5000:culture: is probably enough to start converting the next ring of enemy cities.

Correct, a city with 80% defence implies more than 5000 CC and so your missions will be > 250 :culture: and will increase from there on. However, if an enemy city has grown to 5000 CC organically then it will have done so over a long period of time and the surrounding cities will also have been there for a long time. That implies very high amounts of TC in all the other cities in range even if their CCs are low. The time factor and overlapping borders builds up high TCs everywhere. So don't expect to start flipping long established cities quickly, it takes a long time and huge cultural superiority to overcome engrained TC.

There is a special circumstance when what you suggest might work and that is when these other cities have recently been captured from another civ who is still in the game (perhaps as a vassal). Then running a few missions before you capture the 80% city you posited above could have a devastating effect on another player who might be your ally or limited by the AP resolutions. Your new culture will rapidly overwhelm his new culture and his cities will become untenable. If he's friendly he will often gift them to you or AP resolutions will do it for him.
 
:)


Sorry this wrong. Motherland does depend only on TC. It is essentially the ratio of your TC in the city versus the TC of one or more other civs.



Let's consider an enemy city that has been owned for a long time. It has over 500 CC (we can see this since it has 60% defence) Let's consider two situations, one where we just capture the city (case A) and another where we run several spy missions and raise our CC in the city to 500 (case B). The city already has our state religion.

In case A when the city comes out of revolt it it will have 0 CC and a Cpt of 1 due to the religion. There are no border pops. We start building a theatre and whip it in immediately, it will complete next turn. For TC; the city is putting 1 culture into its city tile and the surrounding zone.

In case B when the city comes out of revolt it it will have 500 CC and a Cpt of 1 due to the religion. There are 3 border pops. We start building a theatre and whip it in immediately, it will complete next turn.
For TC case B:
The city tile will get 1 Cpt plus 3 zone bonuses of 20 culture = 61 TC
The zone 1 tiles also get 61 TC
Zone 2 tiles get 41 TC
Zone 3 tiles get 21 TC
Zone 4 tiles get 1 TC

--------------
The Next Turn. The theatre completes and we run 2 artists and start building a library.

Case A (turn 2)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13 (so border will pop next turn)
City Tile TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13
Zone 1 TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 13
Zone 2 TC = 0

Case B (turn 2)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 501 (last turn) + Cpt = 513
City Tile TC = 61 (last turn) + Cpt + 3 zone bonuses = 61 + 72 = 133 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 41 (last turn) + Cpt + 2 zone bonuses = 41 + 52 = 93 TC
Zone 3 TC = 21 (last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 21 + 32 = 53 TC
Zone 4 TC = 1 (last turn) + Cpt = 1 + 12 = 13 TC

--------------
The next turn. The library is still building in bothe cases. The two artists are still being used. Case A has its first border pop.

Case A (turn 3)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 13 (last turn) + Cpt = 25 (Border popped this turn)
City Tile TC = 13 (total last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 13+12+20 = 45 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 0 (last turn) + Cpt = 12 TC

Case B (turn 3)
Cpt = 1 (religion) + 3 (theatre) + 8 (2 artists) = 12
CC = 513 (last turn) + Cpt = 513 +12 = 525
City Tile TC = 133 (last turn) + Cpt + 3 zone bonuses = 133 + 72 = 205 TC
Zone 1 TC = same as city tile
Zone 2 TC = 93 (last turn) + Cpt + 2 zone bonuses = 93 + 52 = 145 TC
Zone 3 TC = 53 (last turn) + Cpt + 1 zone bonus = 53 + 32 = 85 TC
Zone 4 TC = 13 (last turn) + Cpt = 13 + 12 = 25 TC

--------------
We can see that case B gets a much stronger start both in removing the Motherland in its city tile and in spreading TC over a wider area. Tile culture in the city tiles after 3 turns is 45 (case A) versus 205 (case B) and it is going to get the extra zone bonusses for a long time. Any neighbouring cities in Zone 3 or 4 is going to get an immediate benefit in case B but has to wait for the CC to increase in case A.

Lots of mental arithmetic there ;) I'll leave it for someone else to check it for mistakes.

So even just by running 3 artist turns then stopping, you will get 20 culture per turn for the tile. And great works, if they manage to grab a lot of tiles, will continually generate a lot of tile pressure from the tile bonus alone.

And all that disappears if you lose the city and no other cities influence those squares. I can't think of many ways to use this, but maybe there's a way to plan conquests.

5% each mission for a 2% discount. Let's say enemy city has culture C, so the nth mission costs 3*(k-0.02*n)*C*5%, where k is the initial espionage cost fraction, and n is the number of espionage missions already completed. Then performed 18 times it is 3*(k-0.18)*C*0.90. The cost reduction for tech stealing is 0.36*full espionage mission cost, so you compare the two.
 
I could be wrong, but I tried this today with the new patch and I did not get the expected return. I ran 23 such missions against the Japanese (over 20ish turns). The amount of culture I added was tracked for each successful OP by keeping a running total. City was a recent conquest (maybe 70 turns), previous owner was killed by me.

Results (cumulative total after each mission):
1 - 41
2 - 83
3 - 28
4 - 184
5 - 232
6 - 284
7 - 338
8 - 394
9 - 449
10 - 511
11 - 574
12 - 607
13 - 671
14 - 735
15 - 801
16 - 867
17 - 934
18 - 1001
19 - 1070
20 - 1139
22 - 1210
23 - 1285
24 - 1360


If I'm understanding you correctly. For sequential missions (ignoring addional Japanese culture) I should see my total culture grow with the function CC0*1.05^n.

Which by my numbers gives me expecting that my cumulative culture should have handily exceeded 2k (2518 - assuming no additional Japanese culture each game). This suggests that the mission actually returns < 4.4% of the CC, that there is some type of culture decay function, or that I screwed up the records.

Anyone else run the numbers for the new patch?


Regarding the viability of this as a strat, only if you play towards it for a LONG time or have a huge empire. Assuming a 5% return per mission, we require ~70 missions for a city starting near 5k culture (assuming a 5% return, ~80 with my experimental data) and a whopping 122 (138) if you start at 1k. With a modest empire generating spy you are limited to one per turn. You will actually need more spies than listed above as the net attrition from being found while waiting results in likely a 1 in 2 spy loss rate.
 
Doesn't it work based on total culture in the target city, meaning you actually get more culture by spreading in a culturally strong city for the AI? I'm still trying to grasp this. It might be better just as a future capture tactic.
 
I could be wrong, but I tried this today with the new patch and I did not get the expected return. I ran 23 such missions against the Japanese (over 20ish turns). The amount of culture I added was tracked for each successful OP by keeping a running total. City was a recent conquest (maybe 70 turns), previous owner was killed by me.
I'm a little unsure of the exact situation you're describing. Were there 3 civs involved? You captured some cities and another civ captured some? Then you ran missions against the newly captured city?

It is generally a good idea to leave a weak third party civ alive as killing them removes all their culture. That's their CCs in any cities they owned as well as all the TC. Or at least run a few spy missions against the cities before wiping them out. That lets you benefit from their CC and reduces the number of missions. Once you've built up a decent CC of your own in the target city then the third party can be eliminated.

Results (cumulative total after each mission):
1 - 41
2 - 83
3 - 28
4 - 184
5 - 232
6 - 284
7 - 338
8 - 394
9 - 449
10 - 511
11 - 574
12 - 607
13 - 671
14 - 735
15 - 801
16 - 867
17 - 934
18 - 1001
19 - 1070
20 - 1139
22 - 1210
23 - 1285
24 - 1360


If I'm understanding you correctly. For sequential missions (ignoring addional Japanese culture) I should see my total culture grow with the function CC0*1.05^n.

Which by my numbers gives me expecting that my cumulative culture should have handily exceeded 2k (2518 - assuming no additional Japanese culture each game). This suggests that the mission actually returns < 4.4% of the CC, that there is some type of culture decay function, or that I screwed up the records.

Anyone else run the numbers for the new patch?
I suspect the game rounds down, so the notional 5% is actually 1 culture spread for every 20 already present for the target's CC and your CC, with both numbers rounded down and then added together. So with small numbers I'd expect to see a lower return. Your rate of increase between missions also depends on how quickly the target city is growing its culture and how long you waited for this. The function CC0*1.05^n would be the upper limit for your own missions. Rounding down would tend to decrease it and rapid cultural growth in the CC by the target city would increase it.


Regarding the viability of this as a strat, only if you play towards it for a LONG time or have a huge empire. Assuming a 5% return per mission, we require ~70 missions for a city starting near 5k culture (assuming a 5% return, ~80 with my experimental data) and a whopping 122 (138) if you start at 1k. With a modest empire generating spy you are limited to one per turn. You will actually need more spies than listed above as the net attrition from being found while waiting results in likely a 1 in 2 spy loss rate.

This is not really one strategy but rather there are several different strategies you could have based on the ideas in the OP. There is a conquest oriented use of this mission. There is a tech stealing use. There is a making a legendary city as part of a cultural victory use. There is a deep territory sabotage use. The Spread Culture mission can have an impact on all these and they can be combined in different ways as part of an overall game strategy based on heavy use of espionage.

Running 70 missions (or even 122) is not a problem to a late game empire. I use 5 spies stacked together and if your capital is next to the target then spies can be recycled very rapidly.

Sorry this won't work well with a modest empire. You need a large empire and probably twice as many cities as your opponents, but some of them can be junk cities, the more you have the better. Each city with the full suite of espionage buildings will generate 49.5 EPs under Nationhood plus 9 EPs for each spy specialist they can run and 1 commerce will be converted to 2.25 EPs using the espionage slider. Spare hammers can be used to build spies or to build wealth. It pays to select an opponent who has very few cities as he won't be able to match your EP spending.

You do need a big espionage spending advantage for any of these strategies to work efficiently, just as you do for any espionage strategies. The chances of a spy being detected is strongly affected by the spending advantage. The cost of missions is also strongly affected by this discount. What was the spending discount you had for your spy missions? I typically have 35% in the late game.
 
First column is the accumulated self-culture numbers I think some of them are wrong, like the 28, I assumed that was 128, although 126 would make sense.
Second column is the change in culture, that is your culture that has been added each mission.
Third column is the estimated total city culture, calculated by change in culture x 20.
4th is change in the estimated city culture.

Here's my guess. The city generates at least 20 culture per turn, so the city culture slowly creeps up. There are variations in the 4th column, which should be (rounded to the nearest 20th) the increase in city culture per turn. Sometimes the change is 0, sometimes 20, sometimes 40, so I'm guessing sometimes you run 2 missions per turn, sometimes once every two turns., or it could be rounding.

Note that the predicted city culture numbers don't increase by 40 or more each turn, which we would expect since our missions generate at least 40 culture per turn.

So, I'm guessing that our missions are NOT affected by our own culture, but by either the enemy culture or everyone's culture but our own. We assumed that our missions were affecting it because the numbers kept increasing, but that was just from the natural city tile culture increase.

41 41 820
83 42 840 20
128 45 900 60
184 56 1120 220
232 48 960 -160
284 52 1040 80
338 54 1080 40
394 56 1120 40
449 55 1100 -20
511 62 1240 140
574 63 1260 20
607 33 660 -600
671 64 1280 620
735 64 1280 0
801 66 1320 40
867 66 1320 0
934 67 1340 20
1001 67 1340 0
1070 69 1380 40
1139 69 1380 0
1210 71 1420 40
1285 75 1500 80
1360 75 1500 0
 
vicawo:


I had banked 55,000 EP against the Japanese; my capital was 5 tiles away, and they had my state religion which I had founded via the oracle. Obviously, borders were closed and the AI would not trade with me.

The city was a former English city that they had taken; I skewered the English to take London and all points west; killing them completely. City ownership was English (founding) -> Japanese (maybe 20 turns) -> still Japanese but English dead.

All spies were left for 5 turns, if 2 came due the same turn, then they were used the same turn. If no spies survived that turn, none were run. I had relatively few spies as I was hustling to get my other two cities to legendary and needed all slider to culture and several cities hammering gold; I also had to direct spies towards anti-space work and maintaining AI mutual hatred. When I had strings of bad luck against space ship denial I had to rush redirect many spies towards the other AIs (I tried to maintain an alumium and copper monopoly as well as more traditional methods).
 
does the data seem similar to your guesses? that is, you had double missions every other turn for the latter half of the experiment?
 
I typically was running at least one mission per turn, but the failures often meant 2 per turn and none on others. I can recall launching 4 on one turn, but cannot recall how many made it through.

The problem is that I was running so many other spy missions, I cannot recall how many succeeded per turn against each target.
 
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