Patch and culture... whaaaat?

[Moraelin]

Instead of just tweaking whether the AI will be culturally strong or not, why not actually make it BUILD culture stuff?

I mean, really. At some point I decide to help my English friends with a steady stream of cash per turn. Plus I send my own workers to clear the jungles and build railroads in their lands. You'd figure they'd now use that money for something useful, right?

Nope. Try using the embassy and "investigate city". The ONLY improvements their cities had were Aqueduct and Marketplace. Not a single bleedin' city had any culture generating building, except for the palace in London. They have almost 10000 of my money accumulated in the treasury, and they can't afford a bleedin' temple anywhere. Instead they build tons of Archers and Spearmen to fight the Greeks and Germans, which are all the way across the continent, on the other side of my lands. (Not that I mind it too much, since they keep the Germans and Greeks off my back.)

If you wondered why you never find anything but barracks in the conquered cities (and even barracks only if YOU had Sun Tzu's wonder), now you know.

BUT those cities had a culture radius of more than 1. Where did that culture come from? In fact, one of their cities seems to have a radius of 3. And it's cut off from their other cities, in the middle of my lands, so I actually see its own culture radius. Where did that come from? Do they simply go to that marketplace and buy some more culture?

Or did someone forget a piece of SMAC code in, and the AI's cities get a radius based on population instead?

I know it's already been established that the AI pulls money and units out of its rear end, as needed, but I would have hoped that at least the culture actually needs a temple there.

[Raleigh]

I find most civilizations build enormous cultural improvements. It probably depends on the nation. The Iroquoi, a religious civ, is FILLED with the stuff, temples, cathedrals, etc.

[Moraelin]

It probably does depend on the civilization and difficulty level. In fact, I know it does. In the editor there are some checkboxes for what each civilization should build often. (Which is why some civs kept building hordes of settlers even when there wasn't any free square on the map any more.)

BUT... what I'm trying to say is that even without ANY culture building, an AI city can have a whole 3 square culture radius. Where does that culture come from?

It looks to me like the games' rules don't even apply to the AI at all. It will pull ANYTHING -- including culture, resources, money and units -- out of its rear end, if needed. If there's a number in there that says "on this difficulty level, an AI city should produce this many culture over time", it WILL produce that much culture no matter what.

I.e., probably your Iroquois with their lots of cathedrals didn't have more culture than the English who built only marketplaces.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Moraelin
BUT those cities had a culture radius of more than 1. Where did that culture come from? In fact, one of their cities seems to have a radius of 3. And it's cut off from their other cities, in the middle of my lands, so I actually see its own culture radius. Where did that come from? Do they simply go to that marketplace and buy some more culture?

I bet they start selling buildings left and right when they go broke (as they often do). Im sure they need the 10 or 20 gold so bad that they sell all those 4 culture producing ancient temples. Seems clever enough to me. I think they would be better off if they just never sold buildings rather than do so in such a self defeating way.

[Moraelin]

I seriously doubt that they had any in the first place, but either way. Shouldn't they rebuild them when they do have lots of cash? I mean, really, a temple costs like 160 gold to rush, and they had almost 10000 of my gold already. That is just the final balance, not including what they had spent in the meantime. I had pumped a steady stream of 100 gold per turn, and later 200 gold per turn into England, for at least a total 200 turns or so spread over a 300 turn interval. They were never anywhere NEAR broke in that long time, and the last 100 turns or so of it they also had their whole land irigated, cleared of jungle, and with mines built on every single hill, thanks to my army of workers. Yet I haven't seen anything but marketplaces built in those cities.

[rjpageuk]

As it says in the manual (somewhere), when you conquer a city and take it over, all culture generating improvements are destroyed.

[Trifna]

I would have thought that we could logically take over cities that had some buildings, infrastructures, SOMETHING! Now I know that:

1- We can't really help someone else economically. Only militarily.

2- For some "mysterious reasons", they never have any building in their cities when we take over them. It would be soooo much better to be able to take a city with some infrastructures when we didn't used a mass bombing...

[Asmodeus]

Well that isn't universally the case.

Playing the English at Warlord level I was engaged in a bloody war with the French (no surprise there ). I sent one of my Man-o-War to bombard a French city on an island some distance from the French capital. Over several rounds I destroyed their Temple, Library and Collesium as well as some civilians and the town erupted into Anarchy. It certainly made it easier for me to capture although there was precious little left of it!

I'm sure this is Difficulty Level related, perhaps on the easiest level this is a handicap to reduce the chances of a Cultural victory for the AI? Or perhaps the AI population was sufficiently happy that it decided military units were a far higher priority?

[rjpageuk]

The reason the culture generating improvements disapear when you take over another civs city is pretty obvious.

The culture of an improvement is directly related to the civ itself. If germany had of won the world war, germany would not have been thought of as a culturally ricer civ because of big ben/houses of parliament and the like.

They would still be english achievements, so the answer within the context of the game is just to destroy the improvement.

You can look at it another way: an indian temple is hardly going to keep americans happy. Although the same doesnt really apply to libraries and the like.

[Moraelin]

rjpageuk, thing is... I didn't take over the city, just investigated it. London still belonged to the English, and had never been conquered by anyone, so noone had any reason to demolish the Big Ben

IF they actually had some culture buildings, but somehow they don't show on "investigate city", I'd say that's a pretty major bug. I have an embassy in that city, I probably have an ambassador there, too. He doesn't even need to do any undercover work, just take a stroll down the street and do some sightseeing. (I'd assume most historical buildings tend to be around the city centre anyway.) Plus at least the famous places (e.g., a 1000 year old cathedral that produces mondo culture) shouldn't be that hard to find. Just go to the nearest travel agency, and you should have no problem finding some historical monuments tours.

Plus, they've been my allies for over 1000 years, so I'd assume they have no real reason to hide their historical buildings from my ambassador

It still doesn't explain, though, why nothing else than the marketplace showed up, either. I tend to believe that they just didn't exist, but I couuld be wrong.

[Comrade Tribune]

I have investigated them often:

At least in the Ancient Era, AI cities don´t build any improvements, no marketplaces, no granaries, no temples, nothing. (Except for the occasional wonder.) They only expand, and totally ignore infrastructure. Pretty idiotic strategy, if you ask me.

[Arrian]

Yeah, the AI ramps up its culture later in the game. Early on, it's too busy pumping out those ubiquitous spearmen/settler teams to deal with silly things like temples and libraries... which is why I usually end up with several AI-built border towns. In most of my games, the culture histograph shows me having 1/2 the world's culture early on, but later that goes down, even though I continue to build culture improvements in all of my cities. My culture isn't getting any worse, it's the AI finally building libraries and such.

This does seem to be difficulty level dependent, because I remember my chieftan games being just SILLY, in terms of my culture vis-a-vis the AI. Keep in mind that the AI is under all sorts of penalties on cheiftan and warlord. CIV III cheats FOR YOU on those levels. It's even on Regent, and cheats for the AI on Monarch and up. Even on the higher levels, the AI places less emphasis on culture early on than I do, but then again, the Babylonians are my favorite civ, so I damn well better have better culture than the AI!

-Arrian