Hi,

I am not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but i have found an error with the advent loyalist tech confluence of the unity. At max level it is supposed to provide 60% bonus to culture spread, and this was tested using starbase AND temple of communions, and it only gave half that (see edit below).

Additionally, while testing I found that existing temple of communions dont update your culture research unless you place or destroy/rebuild the temple. This will then update the culture for all planets culture wide and apply research bonuses to everything. I will reword that, culture research bonuses ARE NOT APPLIED until you place a new culture structure somewhere in your empire. Additionally, neutral planets DO NOT UPDATE FROM CULTURE RESEARCH AT ALL, with the only exception being if you can research another level of culture on your starbase.

An example:

You have a forward starbase, it puts out 10 culture with 1 level or research. You get the first culture upgrades and confluence of the unity to level 2 (+60% culture spread). Your starbase will now output only 10 culture still! You then research the next 2 upgrades of evangelization nodes, for a total of +30 unupgraded culture, but this change now applies the new upgrades to both the existing and new upgrades, so +30 becomes +39 culture because of the incorrect application of confluence of the unity (being 30% instead of 60%). Unfortunately, you have researched all the levels of evangelization nodes, so now no matter what you do, no additional research will bring the starbase beyond 39 culture/sec.

If this is not fixed, I would advise people to only research 2 upgrades on any forward culture spam bases until they are happy with their culture tech level.

I have a testing replay if you can tell me where to send it.

Please tell me if I am missing something or have this wrong!

Cheers,

DominiMagnus

EDIT:

There is a research bug for sure, unless this is intended 10% in research upgrades brings culture in a 2 phase lane well from 10 to 10.5, whereas a social upgrade which is +10% culture in the same well brings it from 10 to 11. This is compounded in multiphase lanes, where the bonus from research becomes tiny (+60% to culture from research? That brings your 6.7 culture to 8.7 culture, whoop de doo).

This means in a lot of cases your 10% first level culture upgrade is in fact TWICE as strong as your +60% confluence of the unity upgrade which cost a lot more. Cheaper to get social on all planets rather than ANY culture research whatsoever

I suspect the research is being applied to the wrong number and is being divided among the phase lanes. Devs, I would speculate believe the research is being applied to your per phase lane culture number and then divided again before being added (resulting in a bonus lower than the specified one by a factor of the number of phase lanes in a well). The social upgrades dont have this problem as they simply muliply the culture by the specified amount it seems.