Wow! Thanks! Let us know what else you find! This is fantastic....

Carthaginians - Romans have very little cultural penalties, actually.

50% cultural penalty not enough?

50% is pretty hefty. So, there was a 5% reduction in culture penalty when you constructed a carthaginian temple? Was that 5% found immediately after constructing a shrine? Was there anything additional after a few turns, or upgrading the shrine? If it gives 5% immediately, I wonder what it gives after a few years....

I think you posted your findings prematurely, and this will fuel further confusion about culture penalty. I have stated several times that you can reduce the culture penalty quickly (and that is a relative term) by destroying foreign temples AND replacing them with your own. Well of course the culture penalty only goes down by 5% when you put in a SHRINE of your own. Then it can co down by as much as 20%, two turns later if you build the right temple. Three turns more, and it can be cut down to very little with the build of a large temple. So, in 6 turns, you can cut that penalty at least in half through temple demolition/construction. Does anyone dispute this?

Old Celt, you are correct I did not take the time to test out the long term effects of new temples on the cultural penalty. Like most researchers, I rushed to publish in order to be the first . I'd be interested in seeing whether a higher shrine reduces the cultural penalty further and also whether demolishing other buildings and replacing them with your own will lead to a cultural penalty reduction. Interestingly enough, in my Gaul campaign, I conquered and exterminated Segesta early in the game. At the time, the population dwindled to just 400. Now after 20 years when my empire has spread well into Greece and Northwest Africa, the population of Segesta has grown to over 2000. But the cultural penalty is still the same at 45%! So the demographic change theory may not hold water. It may be just the replacement of the religious building and (possibly) other buildings as well. I'll check it out .

Does it seems strange/aggravating to anyone else that the game developer/publisher hasn't posted concise information/documentation on how they programmed this element of the game? I think all of these factors should be well publicized and widely available rather than forcing us to lose sleep trying various "tests" instead of actually playing (and enjoying) the game. Are the developers lazy or just sloppy - ???

[This message has been edited by chonaman (edited 03-21-2005 @ 11:39 AM).]

I think they took the tact that discovering how these things work is part of the fun. I've had no trouble keeping order in my cities through 5 full campaigns as different factions, so my conclusion is: It isn't really worth fixating too much on minor issues of city management. Squalor was the only problem that required real thought, and now with the 1.2 squalor ceiling, monkeys could be your governors and get pretty much the same results on the average.

Quote:

I tried doing a couple tests of my own a while back. I didn't take the time to do it properly, so I used a cheat to destroy the enemy's buildings and build my own. This had no effect until 10 turns later. Then, I tried doing the same thing, except I went by turns. Each time I constructed a building of my culture it went down 5-10%, usually within one turn.

Quote:

That's being extremely charitable. Being the sceptic that I am, I think they took the tact that properly explaining how these things work is part of their profit down the drain.

[This message has been edited by chonaman (edited 03-21-2005 @ 12:12 PM).]

I would agree with you Chonaman, but remember we are dealing with Brits here, and they do tend to look at things in a different way. I think we (the USA) and Britain are 2 peoples, separated by a common language

This is a good little theory you've got going here, ttnguyen. I'm going to see if Adder might make it news.

I appreciate all the feedback and the questions have fueled my exploration into the mechanics of cultural penalty. I have spent a couple of hours analyzing old campaigns, from the start, middle, and end and looked at how the cultural penalty was assessed over time. I made some remarkable discoveries concerning demolition/construction and cultural penalty. Using my example of Segesta in my Gaul campaign, the town was reduced to a mere 400 people after extermination. At the time, the cultural penalty was at 40%. When the city reached the next build level, it built the new center and the cultural penalty fell to 15%! This is before any of the newer buildings were constructed.

I tested this further by using Rome and Capua as my test subjects. In Rome, I demolished the stable, market, and barracks and erected the Gaulish equivalents and then waited 20 turns. In Capua, I demolished the level 3 temple to Saturn and then built up a new temple and upgraded it to level 3 over a period of 20 turns. The cultural penalties were 45% and 40% for Rome and Capua respectively. After the 20 turn period, I assessed the cultural penalties for both cities. In Rome, there was no impact on cultural penalty when you demolished and reconstructed new buildings. In Capua, I observed a 5% reduction in the cultural penalty (35% instead of 40%) but no further decreases after the level 1 temple.

The conclusion that I can draw from the experiments is that cultural penalty can be reduced in two ways: demolishing the current foreign temple and erecting your own ethnic temple and upgrading the center to a new city level. Advanced cities such as Rome or Memphis will exclude the second option (as oftentimes it will be at the 4th and final city level when you conquer it) so you will only have the religious temple construction option available. The reduction of cultural penalty is very large for the new city level option, so it would be wise to set the newly conquered city to a "Growth" auto-manage setting in order to expedite the process.

I ure penalty. In one of my towns in a territory adjacent to my capital, the ure penalty is around 25%. These people aren't happy.

Thanks for all this theorizing. Let's POSTULIZE IT ALL!

As a side question, what should you do about unique culture/faction buildings which still "apply" but also add to culture penalty. For instance I destroyed the Egyptions and some of their settlements have "Execution Squares" or something like that. When I demolished it, the Law rating went down - ie, it was doing it's job.
Should I leave buildings like that?

Also, I usually "occupy" enemy cities which seem close to the next level - judging from the number to be enslaved. Just means I can remove the culture penalty by upgrading buildings. Double benefits! (plus no rebuilding from scratch, temples excluded).

Dufflover, given my observations I would definitely keep buildings such as execution square. There is no upside to destroying it and keeping it will improve the law effect in the city. As for occupying a city if it's close to "leveling up", be mindful that this will only work at populations less than 6000. If you try to do the same at a city of 10000, the culture penalty percentage multipled by 10000 and then multiplied by the unrest effect will mean even a full stack will not be able to quell the rebellion! For large cities, I tend to exterminate and then put up my own temple. I will then fill the city with peasants for garrison over time until the next level up. The idea behind this is to allow you to keep the city content, eventually leading to the culture change and then reducing your garrison later rather than having your army holed in the city for several turns and losing men quelling the rebellions to boot.

First of all, it's 12,000 not 10,000. Actually, upgrading to a larger settlement size should help your culture penalty because the governmental building is of your own faction/culture. Also, your "culture penalty percentage" is NOT multiplied by the number of people. As i said earlier the only reason it's easier to control when you exterminate is the effect due to garrison being calculated based on it's size relative to the overall population. IF you have a culture penalty of 50% it is NOT going to go up because you advance to a higher city level.

[This message has been edited by Themistocles472 (edited 03-21-2005 @ 11:33 PM).]

Excellent observation, although I never implied that the newly upgraded city will have the same culture penalty, but the exact opposite. My protest was against a city greater than 10,000 but not quite 12,000 because a city that large will have an unrest value that will be enormous and will be hard to contain even with a full flag army until it reachs 12,000. A city at around 5000-5500 will be a better example of where occupation would be the ideal situation until you can upgrade. But even then, it should be really close to 6000 (5900?) because you do not want your army bogged down for too long. Consider that you not only have to camp in the city until it grows to 6000 but also sit as it upgrades to the larger city. Personally, I would not wait very long in a newly conquered city and will exterminate, erect new religious building, retrain my bloodied units, train some peasants and move onto the next target.

I would agree that temples of your own faction's gods help culture penalties, and upgrading the government building helps by a greater margin. The other thing I find is that demolishing the original temples immediately kicks up unrest by 5-10%.
From this, I would hypothesise that the people of the city do not like the new religion, but are gradually absorbed into it. This should tie in with Old Celt's view that temples give a gradual drop in culture penalties.
For an example of this, take the crusades. The Christians slaughtered Moslems, torched Mosques etc. As a result, many middle-eastern Moslems still despise Christians, hence the trouble that the coalition forces are having in Iraq. If CA modelled this, It's a fantastic achievement.

While I do agree that the Crusades consisted largely of the slaughter of Moslems, they really were much more like barbarian invasions with incredible sprees of killing, raping and looting which were visited upon Christian towns just as well if they happened to be in the Crusader's particular path to "glory".

I disagree that the Crusades are the reason so many people in that part of the world actively hate Chistians today. It is the teachings of radicals which cause belief that hatred is right against people for no other reason than that they have a different religion: i.e. they are "infidels". The Koran states quite plainly that infidels are to be killed without mercy, and that there will be all sorts of rewards to people who do such killing. With teachings like that being propagated through otherwise ignorant populations, it should come as no surprise that they wish to kill any outsiders.

Quoted from yakcamkir:

Might I imply that the reason for the increased unrest is because you razed a religious building that gave a 5-10% bonus to public order in the first place?

If you replace it with a shrine of your own you will again have the 5-10% bonus to order. The decrease in cultural penelty (i.e. 5% as ttnguyen05 writes) comes on top of that.

/Mormegill

nothing i didn't already know.. if the population is in the vicinity of 5000+ then you definately exterminate to give you time to replace those temples.

if you destroy ports and traders (or higher level) usually the one you replace it with has a better effect on public order as well (not army related buildings)

i typically destroy everything that i can.. depending on when the next govt building will be required.. as then you can just build your own to replace the old ones instead of wasting time destroying the old ones.

gotta love laying siege.. exterminating 10000+ people and getting to build your pantheon right away without having to do a thing.. that's always nice. also

[This message has been edited by Sleeper2 (edited 03-22-2005 @ 05:11 PM).]

Destroying ports and traders in a city WILL NOT reduce cultural penalty, even over the long run. The drop in cultural penalty will result from the upgrade of a settlement to a new city level, which is achievable with a growth plan after an invasion. What is also interesting is that Segesta went from 40% cultural penalty to 15% with the city upgrade and then to 0% to the third and last city upgrade. So as you increase your city size, the cultural penalty falls and falls.

I am a moron.

[This message has been edited by ninjalooter1701 (edited 03-23-2005 @ 01:35 AM).]

Quoted from Old Celt:

Yes it does. But why?
Mohammed preached peace and forgiveness, but the crusades were the root cause of the anti-Christian feeling. Maybe not remembered as such today, but that is the cause.

Quoted from Mormegill:

Yes it does, but that isn't what I'm referring to. Destroying ANY temple, even one that doesn't give public order bonuses kicks up unrest. I have done this several times to replace them with my own. I have always built my own temple on the same turn, so the unrest jump is then dropped back down again. I would theorise that this is due to religion making people happy, and you just stopped them partaking in it.
I agree that destroying a temple of law does increase unrest more than any other temple, but destroying any temple increases unrest.