The role of culture

from Sins Forums
So, what exactly is the planned role for culture. How in depth is the plan for the culture system? Are there plans for a cultural victory condition? In the course of thinking about culture, I had a few thoughts.

If you intend on allowing some sort of cultural victory conditions and cultural war, it would be great to see a support cruiser or even battleship that specializes in cultural warfare, allowing you to spread propoganda, deploy cultural beacons for a short period of time (something akin to a mini broadcast tower, for example that would "broadcast television/radio programs"/something like dropping propoganda fliers from a helicopter) to an enemy planet, would allow you to covertly take over a planet without having to necessarily engage in combat, or if nothing else it would demoralize the defenses of the planet and make it easier to take.

The battleship could even work like a sort of siege weapon, which would require time to set up, unable to move or attack while being set up, so it would require support from frigates and cruisers while it engaged in the psychological war.

Capturing a planet via culture would also allow the planet to carry over it's terraforming upgrades, although the logistics structures would not carry over, as they would be more trained to resist the effects of culture.

All in all, I am just curious as to what the long term goal is for culture.


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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
at the mo, culture doesn't seem to have any purpose, what I would like to see is that broadcast towers can send out ships that can take over planets using propaganda or by converting them through culture, and that higher the culture the more resistant a planet is by being taken over in this way, you cap planet should always be 100% culkture to stop it from being taken over unless you bomb it, but trade ports and trade between planets should raise culture a bit, I think this would allow for taking over planets in a different way then bombing it
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I think Arkon's post/idea are worth delving a bit deeper into for numerous reasons.

First and foremost because it's a solid idea. Second, because I think the more that is added to Sins to give players other things to think about other than "physical" combat just solidifies even further that this is a 4x RealTime Strategy Game. Influencing culture and the options this brings continues to help the game step forward in that direction.

On that note, I am guessing that the Advent may already have some of these ideas worked into their concepts as a race in general, which would be encouraging. But the idea of adding specific ships which function like "cultural siege machines" is quite good and extremely interesting to me.

I have been mulling over how important I would like to see the mechanic of culture play in this game since early beta1, and I am leaning toward the idea that it should be at least moderately important if not more. The concept of Influence in GalCiv II is one of the most interesting aspects of that particular game, to me. Influence suddenly thrusts the player into a different mindset other than conquest by war.

In short, I am also interested to hear some of Ironclad's ideas regarding culture, and how it will be used as development and refinement of the game continues.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Something else I have been considering in relation to culture. Planets with high culture could become a "cultural center" Just as we have the ability to declare a planet as the home planet for a star system, we could have a planetary upgrade which would allow one planet within a star system to act as the cultural capital for your empire. The cultural capital could have various benefits, and perhaps the cultural siege engines could only be built once you have a cultural capital, and the appropriate logistics in orbit at your cultural capital. It would need to be unlocked via research, the cultural capital would not be able to be the same planet as your home planet, and would be immune to the effects of enemy cultural attacks.

I would also like to see a form of Broadcast Centers that would be considered a defensive structure, demoralizing the troops of the enemy who are on the offensive against you, giving them a slight penalty.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Broadcast towers , could be a passive defence against vasari and advent. I reckon we need to have a look at broadcasts once we have seen what the other races do in terms of the "culture war".