Culture Shock questions

The Rusty Gamer · May 17, 2001, 23:51

Ok, here are some questions about culture:

1. If a spy is sent into a city and he sabotages (say) the library, does this mean that all the cultural points accumulated from aforementioned building are lost just like that and thus immediately shrinking the city borders? Could the effect of sabotage be that powerful?

2. Once a city is taken over through war, shouldn't that have a detrimental effect on culture, thus immediately shrinking the borders?

3. Will different governments have different effects on culture?
a. Should a change of government have an initial, perhaps temporary detrimental effect on culture? Or perhaps the temporary reign of anarchy (assuming that's kept in Civ 3) will lower culture?
b. Depending on the government type, will this affect the rate at which culture grows?
c. Depending on the government type, will this affect the implementation of culture? eg: Communism - cultural points are evenly spread thoughout the empire regardless of which cities they originate from thus the borders for every city are the same size

The Rusty Gamer · May 19, 2001, 02:56

Ok, for those of you who missed it the first time, here again are some questions about culture:

1. If a spy is sent into a city and he sabotages (say) the library, does this mean that all the cultural points accumulated from aforementioned building are lost just like that and thus immediately shrinking the city borders? Could the effect of sabotage be that powerful?

2. Once a city is taken over through war, shouldn't that have a detrimental effect on culture, thus immediately shrinking the borders?

3. Will different governments have different effects on culture?
a. Should a change of government have an initial, perhaps temporary detrimental effect on culture? Or perhaps the temporary reign of anarchy (assuming that's kept in Civ 3) will lower culture?
b. Depending on the government type, will this affect the rate at which culture grows?
c. Depending on the government type, will this affect the implementation of culture? eg: Communism - cultural points are evenly spread thoughout the empire regardless of which cities they originate from thus the borders for every city are the same size.

------------------
"If you post something often enough, people will start to read it"

Ben_19 · May 19, 2001, 16:57

quote:

Originally posted by Russell on 05-19-2001 02:56 AM
Ok, for those of you who missed it the first time, here again are some questions about culture:

1. If a spy is sent into a city and he sabotages (say) the library, does this mean that all the cultural points accumulated from aforementioned building are lost just like that and thus immediately shrinking the city borders? Could the effect of sabotage be that powerful?

2. Once a city is taken over through war, shouldn't that have a detrimental effect on culture, thus immediately shrinking the borders?

If the answer to 1. is that the cultural points are lost, then a city taken over through war (2.) would lose its cultural points as when a city is taken over a number of the buildings in the city are destroyed. It would be necessary to rebuild these buildings in order to build back up the culture of that city.

The Rusty Gamer · May 19, 2001, 21:15

quote:

Originally posted by Ben_19 on 05-19-2001 04:57 PM
If the answer to 1. is that the cultural points are lost, then a city taken over through war (2.) would lose its cultural points as when a city is taken over a number of the buildings in the city are destroyed. It would be necessary to rebuild these buildings in order to build back up the culture of that city.

Thanks for replying Ben. Won't that give spys too much power however? It's not just a matter of rebuilding, the culture points for a building accumulate the older it gets, so replacing the buildings won't bring all the culture points back.

Also, does anyone have an answer to (3.)?

------------------
"If you post something often enough, people will start to read it"

ancient · May 19, 2001, 22:01

spys have always had too much power..

The Rusty Gamer · May 20, 2001, 10:10

quote:

Originally posted by ancient on 05-19-2001 10:01 PM
spys have always had too much power..

Yes, and I think that one way to hold them back might be that they need resource support just like other units which leads me to another question.

4. How will unit support be done in CIV 3? Will it be global like in the CTP games, or will it be from each city like in the earlier CIVs?

Ben_19 · May 20, 2001, 10:16

quote:

Originally posted by Russell on 05-19-2001 09:15 PM
It's not just a matter of rebuilding, the culture points for a building accumulate the older it gets, so replacing the buildings won't bring all the culture points back.

Russell,
That sounds correct to me. One way of it working is for the culture points of the city to be reduced by some amount due to change of ownership and then culture is only accumulated by the buildings that survived the attack on the city.
Going back to your original question. I am not sure if the culture points of a city (1) are held in a pool, ie. the city's points increase each turn, or (2) the total points for the city are made up of the total culture points of the buildings in the city.

Under 1) destroying a library would prevent further culture points from that library, but the number of culture points for the city would not be affected.

Under 2) the points accumulated by the library over time would be lost and therefore the border could be reduced.

I would think option 1 would be used as option 2 seems unfair and would give too much power to spys.

The Rusty Gamer · May 20, 2001, 10:37

quote:

From PC.IGN's latest Civ 3 preview:
But you can't obtain any cultural benefits from existing structures in conquered cities.

Does this mean that if some buildings are still standing in the conquered city, since we can receive no cultural benefits from them, that the cultural points in that city will always be less than those of the cities we built ourselves. Might we have to tear down all the buildings and then rebuild them in order to get the cultural points to the same level?

What about being able to benefit from other civilizations cultures in some unique way that we couldn't obtain on our own?

Theben · May 21, 2001, 02:55

Hopefully Firaxis has thoroughly playtested culture. It seems that there are a lot of possible loopholes.

Grumbold · May 21, 2001, 06:20

Once your "culture" has had time to develop then loss if a physical building should not have a negative impact. European history is full of examples of cathedrals and other important buildings which have been destroyed many times down the centuries but always been rebuilt. I would hope that their cultural effect would be frozen or gradually degrade if destroyed but restored immediately to the new building if rebuilt by the same player. If an occupier destroyed the building then built their own it should start producing occupier culture points but still not instantly eradicate the "native" culture IMO.