GC3 influence was a mystery to me. So I'm delving into the numbers. This is my attempt at a "Culture 101" thread. I will break up my findings into (many) replies, and edit as I improve the upper and lower bounds.
My goal is to reverse-engineer the cultural influence equations. We did that for economy, so our collective players' knowledge on this forum exceeds the "Econ 101" thread. As a by-product, I plan to influence-flip many AI planets. I don't care about actually winning the game; I probably won't even get that far. eviator's Not Culture Flipping thread made me curious. Since then, I have been enthralled by the beauty in numbers
I debated whether to put this in the Early Feedback sub-forum, but I think this topic is more general than a Beta 1 issue. We regular users cannot post in Journals, which I guess is restricted to Stardock dev staff.
A. Test game parameters & methodology
Altarian, Large galaxy, Scattered, vs. 3 Godlike. Considerations:
I micro-manage (all queues, every turn). For Influence regression, I also jot down:
For my 1st test game, I also wrote simple Excel macros to double-check for consistency, and through 38 81 turns my predictions fit the data perfectly. I hope to use this data to tighten the bounds on the influence-to-radius function's staircase-like thresholds.
B. Nomenclature and Summary (so far)
Cultural influence (or Influence for short) has several parameters, which form a pipeline. These data are somewhat dispersed, so you must do the database join by click-drilling every turn.
Every planet has these parameters (in pipeline order). Below each, I list some of the things that affect them.
C. Confound: Starbases
The above is for planets only. Starbases add their own twist. Keep in mind that starbases are missing many planned features, e.g. the crew and module effects tabs on the Starbase Manage screen. Surely starbase influence UI will be part of a future Beta release.
A starbase affects igrowth and influence bonus for all friendly planets in starbase effect. (I'm already benefiting from it in my test game.)
That's what I test when I'm not trying to win
D. Influence-to-Radius: Function and Data
Math interval nomenclature:
From my notes, here's what I have so far. I'll edit as new data (and hypotheses) arrive. Update: Turn 111.
wow, that's a read for tomorrow, thanks for posting. I want to digest it fully, no can do while half asleep. I prefer never starting the fights. I love to win the hearts and minds.
D2. Influence-to-Radius: Notes and Comments
Raise your hand if you've noticed this! Else hie thee hence, Start Game, scrap your ships and click Turn
Corollaries:
Hypothesis:
E. Epiphanies
I was startled at some of these results. They're non-intuitive ... so we must retrain our intuition.
Let's doodle some numbers. Hypothesis: Enemy AI's homeworld H is its last surviving planet. You create a new planet Q next to it, and colonize that. (Maybe you have Extreme Colonization tech, and it didn't.) How do your Influences compare?
More as I learn it. Chime in with your (non-)war stories!
F. Influence-in-space (hexes), Voronoi diagrams, flip-duels
I lack data here. I'll edit this as I learn.
Your ZOC shows space hexes that are "within your influence" (or "sphere of control"). But ...
When two non-friendly planets are near enough, their ZOCs intersect. Let shared hexes denote the hexes in this intersection, i.e. in both ZOCs. As we've all seen, the GC3 engine somehow assigns a winner to every shared hex, and then draws a wavy ZOC-boundary between the two ZOCs.
Finally, there is a pipeline(?) to influence-flip a planet.
G. The Influence Gambit: Consulates before Growth/Research/Expansion
With this in mind, I pondered an Influence Gambit (which I'm following in my test game). The concept of current influence as clock has totally rearranged my priorities.
In a previous thread, I gave my Technological Capital Gambit list of 17 techs in 30 turns. (scroll to top of that page) That's fine for a mainstream conquest victory. Here, I'll present an analogous list, but of Influence parameters, especially turns at which I achieved radius benchmarks. All turns assume Approval +50% bonus tier.
Watching my ZOCs pop exactly when predicted is half the fun (so far). It feels totally different than my usual growth/tech/colony expansion style.
Thanks a lot! very impressive breakdown
This is great! I have some comments.
B.1. As you may recall, the approval production bonus is multiplicative, not additive. I believe for influence it is additive as you indicate in your formula (see C)
B.2. Here is a screenshot of my highest influence planet (turn 619). Note that my *current influence* is 1384.3, and my *influence bonuses* bring it up to 2491.7. I think you are right that there is no limit. Or rather, I haven't found it yet, it seems.
C. In my graphic above you can see 3 culture rings each adding a 10% *influence bonus*. I actually have 4 in the area, but only 3 cover my planet. So the initial "Culture Ring" starbase has that immediate effect.
The 3 starbases have been upgraded to Interstellar Embassies, each granting 100% *influence growth*. My planet has +10 gb (colony capital + 3 outreach centers). I have 100% approval (another 50%) and adjacency bonus gets me another 30% *influence growth*. So
10 gb * (1 + 3.00 + 0.5 + 0.3) = 48.0 *influence growth*
This is reflected in the map view:
Also you can see in the above screenshot the growth for the planet I'm hoping to flip. Since my growth per turn is over 7x the enemy's, assuming 4x is needed to flip and assuming starbases only affect *my* planet's influence, and assuming no decay penalty (lots of assumptions, some probably not sound), I would eventually flip this planet.
Culture Ring says it has "Influence Growth +1" in addition to the 10% planet bonus.
I also want to point out that while I have owned Embor II for a while, I only added the consulates within the last 100 to 200 turns. Embor III, however, has probably been colonized for around 500 turns, so it has built up a rather large bank of influence that I need to overcome.
F. The GC2 conjecture about planet flipping, I may be wrong but I believe the mechanics were once you hit 4x and maintained at least 4x for 10 turns, after that there is an independent non-zero probability of flipping on each subsequent turn.
Now here are some of my conclusions based upon your work and my experience:
* With the current available starbase modules it is neigh-impossible to culture flip using just starbases if I do not hold a nearby planet. I say that because starbases have, at best, very low base points, thus little for the starbase module *influence growth* bonuses to multiply. I could stack several around the nearest (but still far) planet, but because of decay I get diminishing returns.
* Even if starbase modules did give base points, it would have to be A LOT to culture flip in a reasonable amount of time.
* The larger the map, the less viable culture-flipping becomes, because the more distant planets will have built up influence for a long time.
* Based upon all this, I believe the "clock" idea is a bad one. At the very least the numbers are widely out of balance. The longer a game goes before you are able to start your culture bomb in a given area, the more time it takes to flip. This could make for some VERY long and boring games, which is out of balance with the other victory conditions.
Is there a Beta console command that will let us peek at a non-friendly planet's Manage screen?
Or, equivalently , flip a planet outright, so that I can just Manage it myself? (I promise to flip it back to enemy!)
Except that you don't have to flip a single planet to win a culture victory. The culture victory conditions are to have x% of the galaxy inside your ZoI and don't be at war with anyone.
Fair point. Perhaps that's just the completionist in me that I want all your planets are belong to me.
What you say?!
Am I interpreting this right, that a given civ's culture value can't decrease but the rate at which it increases can, for example by eliminating starbases and influence buildings? And it is possible to catch up to and overtake another civ's culture in a given area by spamming culture buildings, even if it's increasingly difficult the wider the gap gets?
Not quite. A given source of culture's influence can't decrease, but if that source is eliminated or conquered a civ's influence can be decreased or eliminated.
Example: The Terrans have built a bunch of consulates on Earth and it is pumping out culture. The culture being put out by Earth will only increase. If they replace those consulates with research buildings the rate of increase will drop, but the Terrans' culture in the area around Earth will keep increasing. However, if the Drengin pull up with their transports and conquer Earth, all of that Terran culture that had come from Earth is gone. I am not totally sure, but I think that all the Terran culture becomes Drengin culture. For this reason, military conquest of a high-influence planet will often lead to a few flips the next turn.
It is possible, but especially if you are trying to get to the 4x point to flip a planet a can take a loooong time. As long as you are putting out more culture in a given hex you are catching/pulling away from another civ, but because a civ's culture is always building, it isn't that hard to build up a lead that will take an impractically long time to overcome.
Ooh, so basically, you capture the palace and the less interested provincial governors just change the flags and get on with life? I like that
Do you know if there will eventually be a visible marker for a given tile/sector/planet's culture?
There will be for planets, but I'm not sure about other tiles.
Aloha,
OK, I'm probably going to get ripped, but I'm going to ask anyway...
Where the heck are Consulate, Cultural Center, and Outreach Center? I swear I have search the entire tech tree and the Ideology tree and I can't see where you get those. I have invaded planets with them, so I know they are in the game, but I have never seen them anywhere.
thanks
Thanks
I dunno about the Cultural and Outreach Centers (I haven't searched the entire tech and ideology trees lol), but I'm pretty sure consulates are available at turn 1?
Ahhhh, I started a new game and there was the consulate. The new game, I was Human... the old one I was Iridium. I didn't realize that the Iridium don't even have access to all that influence line. I think this makes them far less than ideal for the Influence Gambit.
So I guess an Iridium player, especially in multiplayer against human opponents who understand this game mechanic, would be forced to go on the military offensive early in order to prevent themselves from falling too far behind in influence
So,Build a Consulate,raise the planetary shield and lie back and watch the iridium fireworks!
The Iridium get their influence and economy together. It is gimped currently because the influence/economy buildings are 1/per planet and the top upgrade loses the influence bonus. They also have some influence buildings in the diplomacy tree that is currently locked.
Oh, ok I did think it was strange for the design of a faction that isn't typically portrayed as unusually militaristic would force it's players in practice to focus on militarism
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