In defense of culture

[PhoenixPhlame73]

I think that culture has some merit, both as an idea and as a playable feature.

Somewhere her on apolyton, I found a list of things that we had asked for from firaxis. One of them was that we basically wanted the border system to be more interactive, founding land and such. The culture system is far more interactive than SMACs or CTP2s was. It allows you to take land from your enemies (and allies) by peaceful means.

I think that it also helps when you are fighting one of the most annoying AI tendencies. Who hasn't been playing a game of any Civ type where the AI hasn't just gone right smac into the middle of your empire and founded a city??? Or just thrown one onto the edge between you and the ocean??? The culture system allows you to take that city without going to war (because you probably were not at war and didn't want to go to war if you let that settler waltz right into the middle of your empire).I have personally taken four AI cities that were creatied in this same manner by 1500 in the game I am currently playing.

The culture system is a vast improvment over many border systems, in my humble opinion.

[notyoueither]

It also adds a way to win as a pure builder. More options. Good.

[Captain]

culture good!
hardcoded "culture in one city" victory conditions bad.
I want to add LOTS more culture bldgs incl. some pure culture-only bldgs (musuem/gallery) but don't want 20k cp victory too easy!
otherwise, culture good!

[nato]

I like culture. I think it is overall successful. You are right about how the borders make land yours and prevent AI settlement ... that is sooo nice once you get the borders established.

One thing I never liked is losing units to culture flips ... that is an issue with me. I think better solutions could have been come up with than that.

One thing I really do like is the idea of adding buildings whose sole purpose is culture. I think that is great, because it forces you to decide whether to make culture buildings or happiness or science buildings. As it is, I was going to build temples and libraries anyway!

[Captain]

Since my mod will probably never get finished, I thought I'd share this idea with you fellow culture lovers.

I have an early culture-only bldg (makes 2 culture) at a cost of 20 shields and 3 gold a turn. I call it "Shrine". Easy as pie to make, you get it before temples (no tech rereq), but as an expensive bldg that does only culture, in an era where gold is likely at a premium, you don't want to keep too many of these around (very costly) or for very long.

But it is a useful tool to expand borders rapidly when you just can't wait to close the gaps or get the full working radius (5 turns to 1st border expansion = 10 g + 20 shields). I don't know about others, but in my games thus far, I definitely can't afford to sustain the shrines, so I swap them for temples (higher capital cost, req'd tech, but lower maintenance plus happy bonus). While multi.sav was still working, I checked the AI, and they seemed to use it quite well.

The explanation is that the Shrine represents an early form of organized worship or ritual, and as communication skills were more primitive, spreading the "culture" to the sparsely populated lands has 'missionary' costs. Later, your people naturally carry the religion/culture with them as they settle (work the tiles) the land. Also, the lack of organized religion (no orthodoxy or priestly caste, think lack of specialization) means the costs are much higher to maintain the sacred rites, especially the ritual sacrifices.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

Shrine sounds good, solid ideas there.

nato, do you mean losing the units in a city when it flips??? I've never had one of my cities flip, so do you lose the units? All i know is that I usually get a spearman when i get a city....

[Bleyn]

I also like the culture aspects of the game, though I would agree it still needs some twiddling.

More late game cultural buildings does sort of come to mind, though I'm not sure they would really help, unless they had a fairly high culture/cost ratio.

Actually, what I'd like to see for late games is a cultural building that acts as a cultural magnifier, sort of like the Observatory/Newton's College/SETI trio do for Science, or Iron Works does for production. Would probably have to be a Wonder, but unless you can manage to build every single cultural building and Wonder in one city, it would be good way of boosting a city's cultural production.

Something else I'd still like to see adjusted is the affects of culture on isolated cities. (By isolated, I mean a city completely surrounded by another civ, with no connection to their parent civ except through the other civ) I find that the amount of time it takes for culture to overwhealm isolated cities to be a bit long, especially when they are new villages planted by the AI in a hole in the middle of your territory. Often times when I think to check on one of those little monsters its been 50 turns or so since their founding, and my spy reports they have no culture built up, one troop fortified in the city, and aren't even trying to build a temple. Yet, it ends up being at least as much time longer with still no changes before my culture overwhealms theirs. If a city is completely surrounded and isn't even trying to produce culture, I feel they really should convert much quicker than they do.

[Akka]

Culture is a MAJOR improvement of the game.
Not only it allows strong and clear borders (something I was praying for since the very first day of Civ1), but it also add the idea that a civilization is not just an army and a bunch of city. It gives a "soul" to the civilization. On this principle alone it's a worth addition.

[Zoid]

Culture and the new unit support system is what I like best about Civ3 I don´t know why some people keep bashing it...

[Inverse Icarus]

the fact that a library can move borders back more effectievly than a panzer division is crap.

units / fortresses should push back borders.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by PhoenixPhlame73
nato, do you mean losing the units in a city when it flips??? I've never had one of my cities flip, so do you lose the units? All i know is that I usually get a spearman when i get a city....

Any forces you have in the city are vaporized when it flips. In 1.16 I saw three rifleman armies 20 knights, and a dozen assorted knights, spearmen, etc vaporize with a culture flip to Persia in a city with 5 Zulu citizens (reload and launch the attack I had planned for the next turn). Yes, it was in a salient and surrounded by Persia, but that's just plain ridiculous. 1.17 toned culture flips down a bit, making it possible to completely suppress a flip with the presence of enough troops.

[Thrawn05]

The concept of borders is a very much welcome addition IMHO. It lets me say: "Get off of me land! [Shotgun Blast]"

[nato]

Like dawidge said, units vanish in a city that flips, and the AI gets the one free defensive unit, just like you get. You must be doing things right, Phoenix, to never have it happen! That or you're not very warlike maybe.

Captain, your shrine idea sounds really cool. Actually, with a low shield cost, but a high gold maintanence cost, it is almost like a way to turn gold into culture ... so it is almost like a way to split gold into luxuries, science, taxes, and culture ... a 4th slider. Maybe that is how culture should have been originally, but your shrine is a really clever way to get a very similar effect. Good work!

Another cool thing would have been to have a 4th specialist who made culture (someone else suggested this). That would really simulate artists ... they don't produce anything physically useful, but create culture. Ah well, I don't use specialists in Civ3 anyway!

One thing that to me is not optimal about culture is that high culture basically boils down to having lots of cities. This is because culture comes from culture buildings, and the only way to have lots of culture buildings is to have lots of cities. This is another reason I really like culture only buildings ... it gives better possibility that culture is less determined by number of cities, because large empires might not have bothered to build the the culture only buildings (like they would temples and libraries).

I guess like Captain points out though, a lot of extra culture generating buildings messes up the cultural victory condition... hmmm. Might put you in the position of having to turn that condition off and having culture around solely for border/culture flip determination.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by nato
Another cool thing would have been to have a 4th specialist who made culture (someone else suggested this). That would really simulate artists ... they don't produce anything physically useful, but create culture. Ah well, I don't use specialists in Civ3 anyway!

I like the idea, but I feel that the AI and others in MP might abbuse this power. I feer it will all break down into having all your border cities having Culture Specialists as the only specialist.

Not to mention, people who might have 100s of workers join a city, all of which become Culture Specialists and get a quick culture win.

Perhaps, there should be a limit to how many Culture Specialists you can have in a city. Say, no more then 3. Of course, that can be changed in the editor.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by UberKruX
the fact that a library can move borders back more effectievly than a panzer division is crap.

units / fortresses should push back borders.

mmm, you know, I really like that idea. It would give more meaning for me to build forts. I would like to give that a spin.

[dawidge]

Originally posted by nato
Another cool thing would have been to have a 4th specialist who made culture (someone else suggested this). That would really simulate artists ... they don't produce anything physically useful, but create culture. Ah well, I don't use specialists in Civ3 anyway!

I love this idea, but it might skew the early game. I like the specialists from SMAC, which appeared only after certain techs were discovered. Perhaps make artists available only after discovering some otherwise dead-end tech, like Free Artistry. Alternatively, grant the ability for an idle worker sitting in a city to generate culture for that city. This would simulate all those people who do seasonal construction work, but make velvet Elvis paintings and Led Zeppelin hook rugs in the off season.

I guess like Captain points out though, a lot of extra culture generating buildings messes up the cultural victory condition... hmmm. Might put you in the position of having to turn that condition off and having culture around solely for border/culture flip determination.

One thing I dislike about the cultural victory condition is that it is based on hard limits and does not consider the relative prominence of your culture. it doesn't matter if the next highest culture to yours is 95,000, if you hit that 100,000 mark (or 20,000 in one city), you've won. It should be a cultural dominance based on the same rules as territorial dominance. You can win by culture if you have exceeded 100,000 culture points (or 20,000 in one city) if you also hold 2/3rds of the world's *total* culture.

[nato]

I think to win culturally, your culture already has to be so-much ahead of the second highest culture ... not sure because I go for domination victories, though I have stumbled into culture victories.

[Akka]

I think to win culturally, your culture already has to be so-much ahead of the second highest culture ... not sure because I go for domination victories, though I have stumbled into culture victories.

To win culturally, you have either having a single city with 20 000+ culture points, either your whole country having BOTH 100 000+ culture points AND at least twice the size of the second highest culture.

the fact that a library can move borders back more effectievly than a panzer division is crap.

Not at all. Military can conquer a land, and hold a land. But as soon as they are gone, so is the domination over the land and people that inhabit here.
Culture, on the other hand, give people the feeling that they're part of a society, hence giving them more loyalty. The cultural borders in the game are a very good idea I think they reflect how a more civilized civilization does not have to resort on weapons to dominate people.

Though I admit that fortress could emit a border, allowing the pure brute force territory keeping.

[Spiffor]

As a builder, I love the culture concept.
There is nothing like a culture flip in favour of the player

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nato
I guess like Captain points out though, a lot of extra culture generating buildings messes up the cultural victory condition... hmmm.

Not necessarily. You just have to reduce or remove culture creation of some of the science/happiness buildings. It needs delicate playbalancing (like every good mod does), but it can be done.

[PhoenixPhlame73]

or just change the condition to needing a large amount of RELATIVE culture....

[lockstep]

Unlike tweaking culture creation, this is NOT possible with the current editor.

[nato]

Phoenix's solution would be fine, if only it could be done.

Lockstep, you have a really good idea too, and it can be done. Reduce or remove culture from happiness and science buildings... very interesting. That would really make culture its own completely seperate thing ... you would really have to choose between culture and other areas.

That would also lower the value of those original buildings, and lower the value of being a scientific or religious civ. Not necesarily a bad thing, just a factor to consider.

Also, the big question is: can the AI adapt to the change?

I like the idea though ... maybe set Temples and Libraries to zero culture, and let Cahtedrals and Universities still make 1 per turn maybe, since they are such big buildings. Or whatever.

Captain, you added shrines and things ... have you changed the cultural values of the original buildings while you were at it?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by nato
Lockstep, you have a really good idea too, and it can be done. Reduce or remove culture from happiness and science buildings... very interesting. That would really make culture its own completely seperate thing ... you would really have to choose between culture and other areas.

Actually, this is already incorporated in korn's blitz mod, but still subject to tweaking (with a little assistance of me). A possible solution would be

- reduced culture for temples, cathedrals, libraries and universities (10-12 total culture points),
- no culture at all for colloseums and science labs,
- three new 'culture-only'-buildings (theater, opera, museum) with a total of 16-20 culture points.

As soon as korn has v1.06/beta8 of his mod ready (which should be in a few days), I recommend everyone to give it a try.

[lockstep]

Two additional comments:

- The reason not to remove culture at all from temples and libraries is to maintain contiguous empire borders for civs that don't choose a 'cultural' strategy.
- In korn's blitz mod, some of the AI's are definitely building theaters etc.

[Heffalump]

Some good ideas here.

I'm a very big fan of the culture concept although i feel it could have been implemented better. As nato says, it boils down to having a lot of cities. Buildings generate culture pts and for buildings you need cities.

Ok, that's fine to a point. You don't exactly see small countries like Belgium overwhelming the world with their culture. But it's too simple and just encourages the already immense pressures to expand, expand, expand.

Probably more than anything else i've played around a lot with culture in the editor. Ideally, in my view, wonders should be more important to culture than improvements. I've done this to some extent, upping wonder culture pts and reducing improvement culture pts. It helps and made wonders a lot more important in my games. But you can only go so far. To many culture pts for wonders and you'll hit the victory ceiling .... too few for improvements and your city borders expand painfully slow.

But i think a nice "fix" is going to involve some combination of being able to set the culture victory condition in the editor (patch idea?), upping the culture generation of wonders, and adding new culture producing wonders in the editor.

I think adding culture producing "wonders" is better than improvements because this approach lessens the dependence on the number of cities. But new wonders need not necessarily cost so much as normal wonders, or have special affects. I classify them as wonders because they're once per civ, or once per game, rather than once per city.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Heffalump
I think adding culture producing "wonders" is better than improvements because this approach lessens the dependence on the number of cities. But new wonders need not necessarily cost so much as normal wonders, or have special affects. I classify them as wonders because they're once per civ, or once per game, rather than once per city.

A different, yet very interesting approach. I agree that some additional 'culture-only'-wonders or small wonders would make a cultural strategy easier to follow for small civs. However, IMO there are also good reasons for 'culture-only'-buildings:

• They provide the opportunity of 'cultural combat' - aiming for or preventing a cultural flip of specific cities.
• Provided they are costly in construction and maintenance, they make it impossible to go out for conquest and be a major cultural power at the same time.

[Inverse Icarus]

if i'm at war, and i have a panzer sitting on top of an oil square in enemy territory, i should be able to use that oil

[lockstep]

Even if you're surrounded by enemy territory?

Generally, the concept of supply would enrich Civ-type games IMO (and was implemented in the EU series). But I guess it's too late for Civ3.

(At least, the enemy won't be able to use that oil, too.)

[notyoueither]

Actually, in that sense supply is in civ3. You can plop a worker down on the oil and pump away, just as soon as you roll back his cultural borders far enough.

You can't trace any resource route, be it from trade or colonies through a civ you are at war with, but you can anytime you are at peace with them.