Culture preventing colonising is Good. Dont change it pls!

I don't mind it in the game, but once the ENTIRE enemy's race is wiped out I'd like to take their planets without having to wait 10-15 min.

That should have been resolved in the last hotfix.

Nah, I have to strongly disagree.



This happens because the AI is unable to defend itself with the current build.

After you destroy the AIs main fleet, the AI is effectively defeated. As for a human player, she would be able to rebuild it's fleet in some minutes if she has planned correctly before.


Also, the example you've showed above is very one sided. Let's look at a bit different situation:

Player A has 15 colonies, while player B has 10 colonies, since A is a better colony rusher then B. Both of them have equal culture on their colonies. Now B is a better strategist then A so he manages to attack an enemy colony and destroy it. Now because of the culture there he's unable to claim it for himself.

Now A has still 14 colonies left, while B didn't gain anything. Because of that, A can replace his losses easier then B, which has a smaller resource base than A.

The effect your described system now has, is, that someone with a lower amount of colonies will have a very hard time to match up to someone with a larger amount, since he just can't conquer those enemy colonies. Subsequently it gives a good advantage to the player with more colonies while it penalizes one with less. This is just the opposite effect of what you've wanted to achieve.

So, as a conclusion, the current system is bad for someone, who is on the losing (less property) side.

In a sense, culture is way too strong as it is right now. I'm finding myself simply destroying a planet completely and leaving one scout unit there to keep watch on it until it 'loses' its culture. I do NOT try to colonize as it just results in the enemy getting the planet after I colonize it. Unfortunately, in the games I played, 90% of the planets I had destroyed never lost its culture 'lines'. I ended up simply destroying the enemy outright before the planets had lost its culture. There does not seem to be any noticeable 'decrease' in the enemies' culture even if they only have one planet left (and had, say, about 10 before). Mind you, I had broadcast stations on every planet/asteroid I had and maxed out its research.

Now, as this is what looks like the only post on someone liking the culture system, I thought of one advantage to the current system, and maybe that was some of the reasoning behind it: It seems to keep games 'interesting' for a longer period (i.e. forces a much longer game). If we didn't have culture at all, the player with the 'uber 'fleet wiping out planet by planet will only get stronger until the game isn't fun anymore because there's one guy with 90% of the resources and a fleet 10 times the size of another guy, who is almost 100% doomed.

With culture, at least it keeps the more powerful player on his/her heels and forces him/her to play with a constant worry that any of those planets could easily be retaken by the original owner.

Of course, I also agree with a lot of the criticism posted regarding the culture system (too strong, makes the game drag on too long, etc.). A big thing I really don't like is the fact that the enemy does not regain the planet as long as you just leave it 'neutral' and don't colonize it. But the second you colonize it, it flips, with full population and health. This is what I find irritating and makes not sense whatsoever

I have no problem with the concept -- the implementation currently leaves a bit to be desired, however, as there is little indication of when colonies will instantly flip. If, say, you couldn't colonize planets until they wouldn't insta-flip, or even if there was a 'Enemy propaganda in this system makes it highly likely this planet will quickly revolt -- do you wish to colonize anyway? Y/N?' message, it'd be useful.

Personally I feel that culter is way to strong as it is right now. I took over my own solar system with very little effect from culture (a planet next to there homeworld turned, so I killed the homeworld and came back for the turned planet). But when I got to the next solar system... well I quiet. The computor had the entire galaxy at the start but I quickly pushed them down to 1 planet. I started taking over the left over planets and they switched. Planets 4 jumps away switched. What makes even less sense is if you loose a planet and then kill it loose it kill it loose it kill it, well the people dont get smart and just say "Well F#$% I think we lost it, screw this culture". No they keep switching and keep getting killed.

I like the idea of culture, I think it works great on the micro scale (inner-solar system) but macro it sucks.

Other then that the game is great!

Yeah, it would be extremely nice if the people on the planets actually cared about what happened to themselves.

I agree, at the moment culture is far too powerful. It takes practically forever for those lines to disappear.
I also want to add that, I don't get the reason behind culture on a dead planet. My brand new colonists after colonizing a planet, immediately switch to my opponents side. Why? Culture? I just bombed that planet to oblivion and back, there are ZERO survivors. What kind of culture is left to cause a whole colonization to rebel the moment they set foot on the planet?

i need a meter or something to tell me when its safe to colonize so it doesn't immediately flip.

I think it is a good idea but still too persistent. It should drop away faster. If you've bombed every planet back to the stone age and built up a heap of nearby broadcast centres it can still take an eternity to flip. Shifting your empire capital right next door seems to help but that isn't all that logical a lot of the time.

I agree with much of what's been said. I like the idea of culture but it's too strong right now and too slow to dissipate.

My first experience with culture was frustrating cause I didn't realize what was happening right away. I had decimated the planet with a huge fleet, destroyed their colony. Next thing I see the planet's populate pop back up. Huh?! Must have sneaked in there. No problem. Do it again. Same thing. After the 3rd time I realized my colony ship was on auto. So each time the colony was wiped, my colony ship colonized it and the planet instantly flipped. There should at least be a message as to what happened.

Later understanding how this worked, I would turn off the auto-colonize feature on my ships. Well while clearing out a system of one race, down to a handful of planets, another race (friendly to me) had their colony ships sitting in the same system. Whenever I cleared out the planet, they colony ship would auto-colonize the planet, instantly giving it back to the other race (cause it had culture). This happened at least 5 times on the same planet. Luckily due to timing I managed to get it done without having to resort to declaring war to kill his colony ships. Didn't matter because at that point it was just the two of us and we were instantly at war anyways.

Same thing happend to me. I went to do something in another system and came back wondering why my ships were still bombing the same planet. I had to sit and stare at the planet before I figured out wtf was happening.

While we are on the topic of culture I was wondering what it takes to get culture to spread to other systems? I have one system culture locked and maxed culture research yet in the past 4hrs of game play the culture has not spread even a single pixel to another system, while 2 AI players that don't have a system culture locked have it spreading toward my system.

I despise the way culture can insta-turn new colonies. Aside from making no sense, it also makes multi-system games drag on needlessly.

I think the ideal solution would be for destroying a colony to push back culture lines away from the planet. This would nicely illustrate the collapse of the losing empire's culture as more and more planets fell, and give the conquerer some well-deserved breathing room to build his own broadcast centers before the enemy culture advanced again.

At the same time, if the planet is quickly retaken, the damage to the existing culture will be minimal as the lines are reconnected.

Another aspect of culture is how an empire is able to maintain it throughout a system when they've been reduced to a single planet without any broadcast centers. I would think it should degrade at some point.

Aside from another empire's culture, are there any other "resistances" to culture? I'm thinking that if distance were a resistance where broadcast platforms were the positive that overcame the distance resistance... then the removal of those platforms should allow for distance to become a negative factor once again causing the degradation of culture.

How about a propaganda ship w/ giant speakers blaring loud obnoxious music and leaflet cannons? Just being silly.

distance from the broadcast tower reduces culture...