Culture

[paulmagusnet]

Culture, or my city the petri dish.

I have a shirt button that has this pithy little remark:

"Encourage Bacteria, it's the only Culture most people have".

The bacteria of ICS (infinite cities of sleeze) is certainly encouraged by the culture system as implimented in CIV III. The program has been designed for the AI to build lots of cheap cities and faster than the player. Lots faster. Basically, if you sit and try to build decent cities you will be quickly overwhelmed by the AI opponants.

Why is this? The addition of a cultural value should make the game more interesting and to an extent it does. It gives me a pretty graph to watch and occasionally one of the AI cities will 'pop' join my civ. But the way it is implemented what it really does it promote a 'rat race' in cheap city building. Lots of cities with a temple and a library produces a lot of culture. It really doesn't pay to try and make highly developed cities when, which is where culture should originating from.

Let me say that I really like the idea of adding a culture value, but I don't think it was thought out beyond extending boarders, attracting vulnerable cities and being a numerical victory condition.

One problem is the focus on buildings as the generators of culture. Build a temple and a library and you don't need much else. Your city can have a population of one or a population of 30 and it will produce the same amount of culture.

Another problem is that 'culture' is not tied to anything else beyond a few city builds
and where your borders are. Infact it is your primary tool to expand your territory and it serves no other purpose.

Because of the narrow and simplistic role of culture in the game, it makes the game less interesting than it could be and forces play to be more of a rat race than it was.

What to do?

First, what is culture and where does it really come from? Culture is a product of people devoting time to activities of the intellect and entertainment. If everyone is plowing the field or building your next trinket they aren't doing 'culture' no matter how many nice building you have. Therefor, in the real world, it takes a serious level city with a lot of infrastructure to consistantly produce 'culture'. Additionally, when these people aren't arround, culture starts to disappear.

So, based on real world experience, a possible solution to the problem presents itself.

Wonders should be the only building that intrinsicly produce culture. Some wonder or improvement could have a negative value, which could be interesting.

All other buildings such as libraries, temples etc should be 'force multipliers' to specialists that produce culture, science or happy faces. Entertainers and scientists should produce a culture value in addition to their happy or research value. A new specialist, call him a philosopher, would produce a culture value of two. You get him when you get the philosophy tech. Infact there should be a seperate culture tree to advance in that only at certain points interacts with the 'tech' tech tree.

Basically, you can only advance your culture if you have a city sophisticated enough to maintain specialists devoted to that effort. Thus, building a lot of cheap cities, even with a few buildings, doesn't buy you the results you need. Even poping up a specialist for a few turns to 'expand' doesn't help because of culture 'rot'. ie, unless there is a positive cultural input to the city, its culture score will deteriorate at a particular rate.

Occasionally, these specialist could produce a cultural artifact that produces a certain amount of culture, or even happy. Something like a Mona Lisa, Rodin's Thinker, Michalangelo's David, Andy Whorhal's Camble soup can or Elvis. This would be a portable item that could be based (like an airplane) in a city, moved, traded, sold (to a private buyer, which takes it out of the game until auctioned or captured), captured or destroyed (deliberatly or by accident).

Performing specific actions should have positive or negative cultural effects. Again, culture should not be the only determinant of borders, the Nazi's and others like them expanded quite effectively while destroying most culture around them.

[TrainWreck20]

Similar thoughts about culture have crossed my mind. My first thought was to tie culture to city size (which specialists requirements would essentially do).

I don't really have a problem with the buildings adding to culture, but it seems it could use a broader definition, as you have suggested, or even some 'civ-wide' considerations. Maybe a total 'culture value' that is spread out somehow among the cities yet not based only on city dependent factors.

Total cities might be a factor, but maybe having wonders in different cities would add culture (encourage travel?). Also, large cities would have a culture that may spread to smaller ones. It seems to be that way historically, anyway.

Just random ramblings, but I agree that culture does not 'feel' quite right currently.

[paulmagusnet]

Traditionally, guys who are spending all their time digging ditches don't have a lot of opportunity to write operas, paint ceilings or carve large statues. I think it is very important that culture generation be tied to the activities of specialists. This makes infrastuctre important to building your civilization, not just cranking out cities full of Homers (simpson, not the greek).

[TrainWreck20]

Agreed, which is why I do not think size 1 cities should add any culture under the current system. However, I do think that in large cities there would be an element of spontaneous culture regardless of what specialist where chosen.

I do like the specialist-culture idea, although it would take some tweaking to prevent exploitation. Would like to see a more complicated culture model in general, and that would be an interesting part of the model.

[Code Monkey]

I like the idea about tying culture to population. Specialists could do it, but I think something along the lines of 1 culture point for every 3 or 4 specialists might be a better idea than trying to devise new kinds of specialists. This would also help justify the crappy 1 science/1 gold the scientist and taxmen produce.

Other possibilities would be a culture multiplier. For example a city at size 6 or below only produces normal culture, from 7-12 it produces 50% more culture, and at size 13 and above it produces 100% more culture than its base value. This would not only give it more oomph in the game but reflect the situation it's supposed to be representing - the stage at the Kennedy Center is much more impressive than the theatre at some community center in a small Iowa town.

I disagree, though, that a temple and library are all you need, as well as that it stunts development of good cities and promotes a ratrace. Good culture not only does the obvious of expanding your borders but also influences trade and diplomacy. If you're going milartistic then it doesn't come into play much, but it makes a huge difference when you're playing peacefully. Much of your initial observations are really the effect of your playing skill and style - I not only outbuild the AI but outculture their sorry butts as well.