Current culture spread rate makes culture worthless

from Sins Forums
To illustrate my point: play any single player map with all the speed settings on slow, and culture on fast. Build a broadcast center. What happens?

Let's analyse what happens in detail:

You spend 900 credits, 100 metal, and 150 crystal on a culture building. You also use 4 logistical slots.

Immediately, the planet you build the culture center on starts gaining income from increased alligence to a maximum of +10% income / alligence.

After a VERY, VERY, VERY, VERY long time, your culture might reach another planet and help it gain alligence. With how capital ships repel enemy culture, don't ever expect your culture to reach an enemy planet, unless you're heavily invested in culture (and if you are, you're going to die from the other guy's fleet in no time).


The problem here is that culture spreads through phase lanes far too slowly. Why build a culture center to harrass my opponent's income when I can simply bomb his planet with 1 bomber (which doesn't take up precious logistical slots) for a much quicker effect?

Culture needs to spread through phase lanes *FAR* quicker...perhaps 10x to 30x the current speed. The current speed of adding alliance / removing opponent alliance, however, is slow enough to allow the opponent to counter the culture if needed.
19,543 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
The culture spread rate is fine, IMO. Well it could use a slight increase in speed, or better yet the upgrades increase the spread rate at +10% or +15% per level, not +5%.

What's the biggest issue IMO is how easily culture is pushed back by other culture buildings(of a much lesser amount) and cap ships.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
ugh no edit when i just posted...


Anyways:

Also basically how culture SHOULD work in my opinion is a "weapon" that forces people to scuttle logistics buildings in order to build their own culture. IF they don't, well they'd lose that planet and those logistics buildings are worthless.
You shouldn't need a 1:1 ratio of broadcasts.. but it shouldn't just take having a cap there and 1 or 2 of them to "fight" a planet with 8.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I think reply #2 shows exactly how culture should work. I would add though, that it would also help if a planet could lose a certain amount of allegiance if lightly influenced by hostile culture, instead of either losing nothing, or going to 0 after a while.

Because otherwise it would be rather hard to balance, it is either to weak because it doesen't affect enemy planets at all, or to strong, because it turns enemy planets completely if you have the cultural advantage.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
A little off topic, but just an interesting mechanic that I just thought of: wouldn't it be neat if missionary vessels (maybe the other colony frigates too, but come on, it's called a missionary vessel for gods' sakes :P) could generate culture like a mini-deliverance impact? It could give them an interesting combat role, providing mitigation bonuses where your culture can't reach, or somewhere too far away to perform a tactical deliverance shot.

As to culture itself, I would enjoy some other effects as well, such as allegiance also affecting planet HP (an unruly/rebelling population would be easier to subjugate under the guise of "freeing" them from their former oppressors, no?).

How about spawning rebels? (I know, they're pretty much useless, but it would be a nice touch)

What if orbital structures had a chance to flip after allegiance has hit zero? Or maybe very low allegiance could lead to crew/popular rebellions which could disable or destroy orbital structures or garrison ships? This wouldn't be as drastic as planet flipping (which I presume was removed from the beta because it didn't work well?), but would certainly give more credence to a culture-oriented strategy.
Wasn't there a bug related to this that once a planet was neutralized, the extractors would produce at 100% even if the max allegiance there was lower? I can't remember specifically...

One thing that I think absolutely has to be added is an easier way to monitor culture than allegiance and the colour of the phase lines. I think there should be a small chart in the info card for each planet which displays what percentage of the population is loyal to whom. It's just annoyingly hard to tell whether your culture is actually having an affect, or exactly when a planet will flip to neutral.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Of course culture can be used on the offensive, but think about it. You can only create culture from an established territory. There are no ships to push your culture out, and caps only suppress enemy culture so that you can claim territory. Yes, the Advent have the culture cannon, but that's their specialty.

It's my opinion that culture is meant to be defensive in nature. You gain bonuses that are most likely going to be used on your turf. The mechanic for spreading culture favors planets that are in the middle of your broadcast borders. Culture also limits the rate that the enemy can dive into your territory. There's no way you can have a planet conquered in the center of your culture, because it would take too long. You'd have too much time to respond, and reclaim your land. It's not brought up as a reason for culture, but the reason is because culture makes it a non viable strategy.

The way that culture is established, it naturally is easy to defend against. You can't change the way culture is defended, if you don't change the way it spreads. If you could create ships to produce culture on the front line, then I would agree that culture is meant to be a deadly weapon. Otherwise, I only see it as a nifty tool if you're caught unaware.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
The only time I've *ever* seen culture used successfully as a defensive device is if someone owns an entire system in a multi-giant system game. Otherwise, all you do is destroy their media hub and sit on their planet while you laugh at how quickly their culture is retreating.


As I said, the biggest problem with culture is that it takes far too long to spread in the phase lanes. Essentially, your culture is doing nothing for 10-15 minutes, then it ever-so-slowly starts to build your alliance or erode your opponents.


I mean, imagine if your bombers had a 10 - 15 minute phase jump time? Nobody would use bombers to bomb planets. (Oh wait, they still don't, but that's a whole 'nother issue).

I guess what I'm saying is: If a single bomber is not only cheaper and faster than a culture center at getting the job done, but also that bombers are rarely used, how badly does culture need to be tweaked? Seriously.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I REALLY hate it when people start posting things as absolutes, reading the title I will obviously not be able to convince you rationally otherwise but here is my attempt.

First: different playstyles
For you it may really be useless but Ive found that it helps to keep the ai from grabbing the same planets that I kicked them off of by placing them in my culture giving me some measure of security. I also find the ten percent boost in extraction/credits extremely useful despite the cost. Once again this is all IMHO and is not meant to be an absolute.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
As I said, the biggest problem with culture is that it takes far too long to spread in the phase lanes. Essentially, your culture is doing nothing for 10-15 minutes, then it ever-so-slowly starts to build your alliance or erode your opponents.
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Culture starts working as soon as it starts moving towards your planet. If you have extra culture around you'll be fine. Otherwise the closer it gets, the faster you lose allegience (up to a cap).
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
ugh no edit when i just posted...Anyways:Also basically how culture SHOULD work in my opinion is a "weapon" that forces people to scuttle logistics buildings in order to build their own culture. IF they don't, well they'd lose that planet and those logistics buildings are worthless.You shouldn't need a 1:1 ratio of broadcasts.. but it shouldn't just take having a cap there and 1 or 2 of them to "fight" a planet with 8.
End of quote


This is EXACTLY it. If a player invests in culture then the enemy being hit by it should have to invest in their own culture to combat it. If a player invests heavily into culture, like the who Psitech tree against someone who invested in Military. Then their planets should be assimilated by culture. Right now it doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter how much I invest into culture, the result is the same. Which is the enemy building one culture center and placing a cap ship to push it back.

I don't have a problem with culture speeds, they could use a slight boost. But the problem is exactly what you stated. Its just to simple to fight off culture without investing to do so.