Plz make new (Confluence) Culture Spread Noticeable!

If you mouse over a planet that's generating culture, the info card that pops up shows the culture amount. It should go up as you add techs or more culture buildings.

I think he means visually noticeable I could be wrong. As for sages post I agree, if this upgrade was a TEC upgrade it would have some ridiculous percentage at a really cheap cost.

I guess they could make the culture lines glow more if you had stronger culture...

Advent's culture is already plenty strong. And the culture moves fast enough when you play with all settings on 'faster'.

Am I alone in never seeing this? If I build a culture center on my home world ASAP, even after I've researched everything the info card still says its producing the same culture. If I scuttle it and rebuilt it sometimes I see a difference, but it doesn't seem to update dynamically.

I never really notice it unless its on a neutral planet.

Yeah, I know about that.  BUT it does NOT go up as you add techs!  Never has.

One culture tower provides "20" culture, which is divided by the number of lanes leaving a planet.   Thus a homeworld with a media tower and 3 lanes, will show 6.7 culture on its info card.  As Goa confirms, that number won't change, (unless you add more towers). 

There is no way to determine culture's 'spread rate' that I know of.    

I feel like Culture in general is broken. But the problems seem to be centered in problems with transparency.

Modifiers of culture boosting tech don't seem to effect culture generated in the planet info card and the "pushback resistance" of Wall of Faith isn't visible in any way either.

I was excited when I saw that they added colored rings around the planets but disappointed when I figured out what they do. The ring around a planet, it seems, is only the color of the controlling player and doesn't denote all of the cultures in play in that gravity well. It seems redundant given the faction symbol that is always over the planet.

Allegiance can also be a bit muddy because it is impossible to see if allegiance is changing, which way, or how fast.

Additionally, the effects on ships in culture can't be seen on your fleet (a very important feature given Advent's new phase missile block), so there is no way to know if these modifiers are in effect when you attack a gravity well.

Finally, culture spreading abilities, most importantly the Deliverance Engine, don't give you the amount of culture that is generated and leaves the player to guess if it is even worth using given a nebulous calculation of culture spread both of the abilities and of the planets and their culture structures.

With all of this going on behind the scenes, it really is impossible to tell if some of these abilities are even working at all, much less if they are having an effect that is worth the cost.

What colors are you using for the players, and more importantly I have found that depending on the color of the skybox it can really change how well you can see your own culture vs another person's.

Well I find culture to very simple. If you have like 1 tower, the chances of you spreading to a planet with 3 culture center is low is quite understandable for me.

Although for me, the time it takes for enemy culture to disappear is a mystery for me. I capture a planet and the culture centers are gone, and the planet isn't up for grabs is completely nuts.

Really? I never noticed that. Learn something new every day!

I wonder if it's just a UI display problem, or if the amount of culture being generated is actually not going up for already built culture buildings when you do the research?

Select the planet then in the bottom middle there's 3 numbers. One of those is the allegiance, and if you mouse over that you can see the rate/direction of change, as well as the maximum for the planet.

The weird thing with it is that it takes some time to change after culture does. If it's going down and you build a culture building that counteracts the enemy one, it'll gradually slow down it's decrease until stopping, then start going back up.

Yeah, the loyalist 2-lab culture tech is really strong, imo. You don't have to spend alot of money to get good culture tech, and you can then use the remaining logistic slots for military. It also means your getting more money from your planets, and delays the need for tradeports.

It seems culture in general spreads faster than in diplomacy, but it really doesn't take much time at all with this this new tech. I was amazed that it kicks you up 30%, which is the equivalent of the tier 6 tech an all the others in between.

@ sithlordAJ

The advent rebels can just as easily tech up a strong early game culture, and if it comes to an all out culture war they can spam cheaper buildings.  Long term they are at a disadvantage, which isn't necessarily a bad thing considering their faction's other strengths.

  The loyalists pretty much have early strong culture and thats about it... Oh they can also take over opposing MINES.  The early culture attack isn't that strong if the opponent has a capital ship stationed at the world of interest, and there are really high loyalty % to bring down.  So even with the "strong culture" in the early game, its only a gradual edge that can be quickly recovered from once your opponent gets their own culture up and running. 

In my experience the corvette spam rushes of the early game don't allow for much room to even tech any more culture then the basic tech for the building and one building.  Anything more and you are gimping yourself for that all important first battle.

As for fighting the TEC, culture is your best bet to remain competative.

well, the advantage in my opinion isn't so much the loyalty drop on a specific enemy planet. The benefit is that with a small cost, your worlds increase their resource generation, neutral worlds are blocked from enemy colonization and, as a side benefit, any enemy planets in range have the reverse resource affect. Flipping planets through culture is and always has been a time consuming process.

In any game, you're going to have to capture some ice and/or volcanic worlds. And that means Civil labs. The common thing to do is also go for trade ports.

It is my opinion that, while Loyalist culture does not make up for trade ports, it does enough that you can get by with out it and doesn't cost as much to invest in, early game. This frees up your time, logistic slots, and resources up to invest in military technologies. I probably should have emphasized my advocation of Loyalist culture as being an early game importance. And you don't need more than 1 or 2 culture centers in my experience. And to top it off, when you do go to tradeports, you can grab that other loyalist tech that increases swing on enemy worlds... by now your culture is at their doorstep and this should make going to tradeports have a bigger economic swing.

It should be noted that I do not have any multiplayer experience, so I don't know how my tactics pan out on that stage. It works extremely well for single player though. But I would hope that if the current MP strat is spam Corvettes, that something changes to mellow them out. In summary, I'm saying Tier0 spam + culture->titan & trade ports->proper fleet makeup->culture war if necessary, seems to be the most efficient strat to me.

Also, I am not happy with the loyalist late-game tech. I think it should be stuff in the military tree, and the 5% buff that is in the military tree is too high tier (ignoring mines tech mentioned. think it works good, but is fairly useless). Give a reason to fear Dominas, make Illuminators powerful again, or how about a passive that you do 2% more damage while any capital ship ability is active? I would like a Loyalist 'theme' tech or across the board military improvement techs. The loyalists are supposed to be the ones hellbent on TEC destruction and yet all their faction tech is civil tech... that makes no sense.

SithLordAJ, Please try testing it, with and with out the techs to enhance culture.  I know you are reasonable person.  I've just been testing it, and the hard facts show no improvement!!  Culture does not spread any faster, or any farther with or without the 30% tech!

[EDIT:  Apparently my initial tests weren't accurate or precise enough, and over too long of periods of time to reflect the actual improvements.]

How dare you!?

Alright, so I tested it... I used a stop watch to time the spread from the moment a culture center went online to the time it took to spread to 2 planets. I was initially going to test the second hop, but I didn't have the patience to wait it out and so hit the speed up button and then realize that wasn't going to work. Anyhow, results:

1. Planet 1 took 1:32.22 sec with no research, 1:28.18 sec with zealous worship, and 120.5 sec with confluence
2. Planet 2 took 2:41.12 sec with no research, 2:32.25 sec with zealous worship, and 2:18.71 sec with confluence

There was a moment where I hit the lap button and it didn't take, but I got it working again, so I estimate my error at +/- 1 sec.

We'll see who's 'reasonable' when I reanimate your corpse just to destroy you again!

Yeah, so... I was wrong. It's not a big difference. The numbers sure make it look that way though. I still think culture is great for the early game because it seems to spread a lot faster than in diplomacy. Although, I should see if I can do a comparison directly between the 2 before I get myself into more trouble. I don't know if I'll bother investing in the upgrades early game now though. There is, however, some improvement.

Hmmm.  I let my first tests run for a half hour to an hour long, and my first measurement wasn't till 5 minutes, and then every 5 minutes thereafter.  And I just used the end game stats.  It seems the that spread speed peeters out after 5 minutes.  And the greater 'spread speed' rates don't result in culture spreading any farther than normal.

But, yes your stopwatch method does show some improvement.  Thanks for doing those tests.  I got out my stopwatch too.  And got similar results to yours.  Confuence is about 14% faster in reaching the second planet.  After that, the improvement starts to drop off.  I don't know if its worth investing in the upgrades as they stand now?  I still believe there's room, and good reason for buffing the tech. 

I even went as far as checking to see if unupgraded Rebellion culture is faster than Diplomacy's.  It isn't, it gave near identical results.

Yes, Faust, I would agree with your whole post.  Very eloquently put.

I spend quite a bit of time today testing each of the Advent Loyalist's new abilities, (and the Deliverance engine).  I feel I have a much better understanding of culture's mechanics, but consistantly saw unexplainable inconsistancies on the planet info cards!  All we can do is hope for some improvements.

Here's a test for you (or possibly me): The spreadrate bonus given by confluence is huge compared to the standard advent culture techs.

I'm wondering whether confluence is working as intended, and so I would like to see a comparison between the spreadrate of maxed-out standard culture (no wall of faith just to remove that variable) and the spreadrate of just maxed-out confluence. Then for kicks both maxed out standard +confluence.

I'm thinking it works as intended.  I'm guessing confluence doesn't stack.  After this testing, my gut feel is that NONE of the spreadrate improvements for ANY of the races have ever been worth it!  But no-one has ever examined them thoroughly, to my knowlegde.  (Maybe the bonus's are of more value).  When you buy those techs, most of your culture has already spread near its max, so they are too late to have any effect.  AND... 

I'm seeing that faster spread rates DO NOT make stronger culture (unless info cards are wrong?)!  And I may very well post about this elsewhere, along with some of your suggested testing.

[EDIT,  in 0.79, they fixed the planet info cards, as well as buffed Confluence spread rates!]

may i suggest not using a random map but a pre-generated one so that others can compare their results to yours... especially if there are changes eventually made

Fyi, if it's important to your data gather-athon, the world where the temple was placed for my tests had 3 lanes going out from it