Culture Basics

yes,

yes,

yes,

and yes.

ok, basicly, if culture is enveloping your planet, your allegiance climbes to +10% of what it would have been normally. THis means, for your homeworld, your allegiance goes up to 110%... or you get a 10% boost on extractor and tax income... now, for a planet far from home, the allegiance change is from 25 to 35%... which means a relitive 40% increase on your extractor and tax income! (aka, broadcast centers are more important for large empires than small ones.

here is a quick calculation of the respective boosts on extractor and tax income for your planets.... allure of unity, and advent starbases change this, but its the same for vasari and tec.

HW- 10%

1 hop- 11.1%

2 hops- 12.5%

3 hops 14.3%

4 hops 18.2%

5 hops 25%

6 hops or more (or no hw) 40%

culture ALSO (after appropriate research) gives combat bonuses... antimatter regen for TEC, shield mitigation for advent, and damage bonus for VAS. see the appropriate research for the quantity of those bonuses.

that should answer questions one and two.

yes, having enemy culture can have negitive effects. The advent can see planets where thier culture is dominating, and the TEC can severly reduce production rates on planets where they are dominating. (I was playing a game... and it took twice as long to build a colony ship thanks to tec culture than it would have normally) Vasari culture has no negitive effects, (beyond that they get thier damage bonus) ALSO, enemy culture surrounding your planet means that its allegiance is decreasining... so LONG before you lose your planet you will be losing significant quantities of tax and extractor income.  If you manage to save your planet at 1% allegiance... and get it to stop losing allegiance... your still losing 99% of that planets income,

4 has preety much already been answered, take a look at the different race's tech trees to get a better understanding of the differencs.

thanks

And the Advent Deliverence Engine also gives a 25% damage bonus (15% in basic sins) to allied ships at the target planet, though this isn't directly linked to culture.

Also note that pretty much all effects of culture besides the allegiance change must be researched first. (like slow production and vision)

It might also be worth noting that capital ships help resist enemy culture in the gravity well that the ship is located in...if you attack any enemy planet, your capital ships can sometimes drive their culture back and out of that gravity well...likewise, your capital ships can help prevent culture from spreading into one of your own gravity wells...usually if culture starts hurtling in one direction along a phaselane, it is a good indication that someone has just moved capital ships in or out of a gravity well...

Oh, and Starbases repel culture too, so if you have the economy you can send your capitals somewhere else and put a SB at the contested planet to push away the enemy culture (which might be a good idea anyway, as a big red button will deter "normal" invasions more effectively than a Kol or two)

how do you spread your culture to more distant planets? like, those that are more than 1 phase jump away

In entrenchment, starbases dont repel culture.

You can spread culture by simply waiting for the culture line to spread to that planet. You can speed it up by building more broadcast centers, or by researching more broadcast strength.

aaa11, it is very difficult to spread culture beyond more than 1 phase jump unless the gravity wells are uncolonizables...for TEC and Vasari, you can only put culture in a gravity well that is colonized by you...if there is enemy culture in a neighboring gravity well, it will be difficult to run through it without a massive amount of neighboring friendly culture centers...ultimately, unless the AI is just being retarded, planets are much easier to "defend" culturally than to flip culturally...

The only faction that really can project culture is the Advent...Advent starbases can support massive amounts of culture AND can be built in any gravity (in theory, even an enemy planet), so this allows you to amass a lot of culture or project culture from an uncolonizable gravity well...however, culture upgrades come at the sacrifice of more military upgrades, and starbases are very expensive...in most situations, the extra culture will force your enemy to build more culture facilities themselves, but won't take the planet unless its the AI...often you are better investing those resources into technology or military units instead of a starbase that is built solely for the purpose of projecting culture...

The deliverance engine, the advent superweapon, can project culture at any gravity well of your choosing...however, it is only temporary, and one deliverance engine is not likely to culturally flip an enemy planet unless it was already close to flipping in the first place...

A single culture facility will spread your culture several phase lanes out if it is completely unopposed, but it is rare that there wouldn't be at least some enemy culture in the area...

If you are really keen on using culture and you are playing against the AI, you may consider building 4 starbases on the sun (suns allow 4 per player, all other gravity wells allow only 1 SB per player) and putting culture on all four of them, but this is very expensive, time-consuming, and usually only affects planets one jump away from the sun...

This is correct...who ever was under the impression that starbases repel culture probably was looking at an advent starbase with culture...any other situation, and the starbase says culture repel rate is 0, so unless its hidden somewhere in the game mechanics SBs don't repel culture...

My HW Allegiance Change is at Negative 0.07% / sec. It has one starbase and a broadcast station. Building another broadcast station at the HW and the adjacent planet does not seem to improve the Allegiance Change.

What am I missing out? Appreciate any advice, thanks... (HW is in danger of losing to cultural revoluation!)

Well, first off, did it get hit by a deliverance engine?  If you are playing against the AI, this is HIGHLY unlikely, but I suppose possible...if this is the case, that culture loss will only be temporary, so no worries...

More likely the enemy just has a lot of culture on your HW...there are three things you can do about this...one, bring your capital ship(s) to your HW, caps help to resist enemy culture....two, build more culture facilities, which might suck if you have to scuttle things, but you may not have a choice...three, research culture techs...this may take a while but it is a much better long term solution...

A thing to keep in mind...culture kind of has a delay...you don't see the effects of culture until a little while after the broadcast centers are built, so whatever you do, remember the effect might not be instantaneous...don't assume something doesn't work just because that -.07% isn't instantly changed, culture takes time to work...

If you have the fleet for it, you can also attack a neighboring enemy world and destroy their culture facilities...thats the root of the problem, and it will buy you time...

do culture projection upgrades affect a advent starbase with the culture mechanism installed?

Yes