New culture system

[Hooahguy]

From what I can figure out, the culture point buildings are no pointless, they are actually vital to tipping the balance. CA didnt word their explanation well. From what I can understand, culture will never be 100% one way or another. Rather it will be like a scale: you can put more weight to your side of the scale with your own culture buildings, but that wont completely remove the other side. So basically the other culture will always be there, it wont just be as much as yours. Now they just have to reduce the public order penalty for different cultures so its not a death knell if there are other cultures there.

[Slaists]

The culture buildings are more important than ever (on VH, legendary difficulties at least). Without those: you'd be stuck with PO penalty +20 or so from "foreign culture" just from the local traditions. Culture buildings + the tech is what tips the scale in your favor.

and the equilibrium state is easy to work out from the province overview screen.

Example: I am hellenic. I own the all the regions in the province, but it has +2 local desert tradition. Let's assume I have +8 as my cultural influence (from traditions, tech and some temple). In this case, without any characters present, the equilibrium would be 80% hellenic, 20% desert culture.

8 + 2 = 10 (total culture influence); out of that 80% = 8/10 (hellenic); 20% = 2/10 (desert).

let's add another temple giving +4 to cultural influence. In this case, the total cultural influence in the province:

12 + 2 = 14

out of this

12/14 = 86% equilibrium hellenic
2/14 = 14% equilibrium desert

So, culture buildings do have an effect.

And you really have to watch out for generals developing liking to other cultures. They can easily mess up a balanced province if left unchecked :)

[Sp4]

Okay, so I've played around with it a little longer and you're right and ignore what I said in my first post. It is in fact so bad that unless you want to spam temples everywhere, you pretty much have to build the one with most conversion thingy bonus now. This gets worse the further you go away from your home regions which makes sense I guess but Jesus, it is annoying and can the AI even deal with it, provided it now actually get big?

[Hooahguy]

The general consensus seems to be that this was a great idea, just poorly implemented.

[Mhantra]

I have one thing to add.

Dignitaries.

Dignitaries dignitaries dignitaries!

I have one with +12 conversion. I send him into a province I will be attacking in the near future and it starts to convert the province before I even get there. This makes transition easier. They can also cause a ruckus through action. Use them to convert provinces quickly and move them on.

Oh, and the culture conversion research. Do it. Early.

[Mhantra]

Ok, I have more to add.

I am playing Legendary Galatia. The flow of the game changed drasitically with this new culture system.

First of all, Galatia itself is a difficult faction, being the only Celtic culture in the area. Secondly, Selucid will destroy your arse if you don't do something about them. I had to restart 6 times until I went ahead and paid my starting 4000 units of money to them just for a non-aggression pact...hahahahahah(jerks)hahahaha!

So I took out the neighboring Cappadocia, trespassing on Pontus to get the second settlement. I chose Pontus over Selucid because Potus is also as war with Cappadocia so the negative diplomacy can be made up easier when I take out Cappadocia.

After that is when it hit me. Converting culture takes forever when you are the only Celtric tribe in the area. I mean, wow. Maybe 20-30 turns converting culture before I could even remove one of my armies? And the conflict is between food and public order/culture. You see, even if you have food for growth, you don't actually get growth because your public order is so low that any growth you have from surplus food will be taken away.

So go public order first. Any you can get. General. Spy. Oh, and definitely don't put your champion in an army yet, have him outside using his skill that raises public order. Dignitary. Build as many cultural conversion temples as you can to start. Build your armies and keep them in town. You must raise the public order into green to start pulling public order out of the negative so you get yor growth back. Oh, and by the way, for each of the Cappadocian settlements I took, I got that -30 penalty. So yeah, you WILL be in the red. I stabilized at -95! That is when I finally got that beautiful green +1...lol!!!

So yeah, I turtled for a long, long time. Once my culture had converted enough that it was stable, I finally was able to start expanding. I befriended everyone around me to stay alive, so all I could attack realistically was Armenia. And then things exploded.

First, I was quite able to keep my cultural conversion going with the permanent conversion from research, as well as a very studly dignitary. I could even remove the two of the three cultural conversion temples in the province and replace them with other things, namaely food, one of which was a stable. I researched the two growth technologies (in the blue section, far right tab) and started to grow my settlements, which opened up new slots, which allowed for expansion of income and military.

It was about then that I reazlied that I wasn't so bound by this cultural change and actually found it quite well implemented. But you have to use all your systems, not_just_buildings. Agents, research and troops are all part of the strategy, and it was excellent to have to actually think and plan deeply and on two levels, short term and long term. Really, I can't say it enough, this system will challenge you to plan. Dignitary getting old? Better make sure you either have another leveled up or some other way to stabilize it when you lost your +12 conversion rating.


Incidentally, the other amazing thing (I am on 81. beta patch) is that the larger cultures are building large, integrated empires. I ended up getting into bed with Selucid, a full military alliance. And they were HUGE. I thought surely this will be an easy mode game because they will just dominate to my south. Nope.

Egypt is gigantic and tearing them up from the south. Persia and a bunch of Selucids ex-satropies are eating them up on their eastern flank. In fact, the Selucids started to fall so fast I had to divert a full army into their territory to keep them from collapsing. The AI allies (the ex-satrapies) are attacking together, a stack or two from each faction, and they are relentless. I helped Selucid turn back its satropies, but they were in such bad shape I gave them my last 5000 gold just to keep them alive, because the way things are, if they fall, I fall. I mean, really? I have to give an ally money just for me to survive? This is epic!

I have not done an AAR before, but I wish I had been doing one on this. It would open some eyes as to the growth of the game. It is challenging and making me think about all levels of the game. I mean, we all know economy and military is important, but now we actually have to consider ALL of the research tree.

You can ignore the cultural conversion and public order branches of the tech tree, but you would have to use more buildings and/or agents to compensate. Or you can focus highly on those "blue techs" with just a smattering of "red techs" to get better troops. Then you have a lot more freedom to let the conversion and public order become more automatic, due to the faction-wide bonuses to those items. But of course, my military suffers.

Oh, and by the way, I am fairly weak in military tech because of my choices to stabilize my empire with blue techs. This has its own challenges, no doubt, but if I survive long enough to weather this horrific takedown-attempt on Selucid, I will be ready to go full monty on my mliitary, and I expect things to turn around quickly. And as I take territory the fundamentals of my expansion, public order and cultural conversion, will happen more quickly with much less micro-managing. I built this consciously, over a long period of time. I feel like I accomplished something.

I can't say it enough, I find this to be an incredibly positive change for the game.

[Slaists]

Yeah, I tried playing as Galatia as well. Abandoned that campaign when I realized I had to click "end turn" for a long stretch of time just to get the unrest down :)

I went for Pontus right away though (to get their port). Made things a bit easier and no problem with seleucids for about 30 end-turn-clicks...