Except that culture raises *all* of your planets' allegiance by 10%, not just the one (it does take a while to spread). Of course, this means there's no need for a broadcast center at every planet, leaving you free to stuff them with trade ports

Allegiance also affects your metal/crystal extraction rates.

Okay so the broadcast center doesn't even raise the allegiance cap, it just increases the rate at which you reach it? So basically unless you're specifically trying to flip planets or are getting owned by enemy culture this building isn't really worth building.

It does NOT raise the cap.
Planets start 10% below max and the growth without culture is zero, so every planet gains an economic boost by culture.

The economic benefit of culture is big, but you only need a few culture buildings for it.

Yeah, Advent can raise the cap by researching another technology that does raise the cap...

Culture itself does not raise the cap, only the allegiance growth rate.
Which is capped too.

Did you check what I was saying?

Every planet starts 10% below the cap (aka maximum allegiance).

Start a new game and look at your homeworld.
It starts with 100% allegiance. However, its maximum allegiance (aka the cap) is 110%.
Depending on the distance to the Homeworld planets have different caps for maximum allegiance, and they always start 10% below it.

Culture gives allegiance growth, which helps/allows getting to that maximum, but does not in any way directly effect the reachable maximum.

heh... perhaps we use the word differently...

"Cap" mean the highest attainable level for me.

The highest attainable level is influenced only by distance from the capital and by "max allegiance" increasing technologies.

You need culture to reach your maximum allegiance, since the base growth is zero.
The highest attainable level of allegiance is completely unrelated to having culture or not.

Culture does not raise the cap.

I guess it was implemented that way so culture does not "only" offset losses due to enemy culture, but gives a direct boost to income.

900k? I assume singleplayer then...

Depending on the size of your empire a single broadcast center might not be able to reach all your planets in your lifetime.

You will also need more then one if the enemy has any if you want to avoid economic losses (long term you can even lose planets to it).

Allegiance growth is diminished for planets it has to cross.

There also is a natural decay.
If you sell all broadcast centers you can see your culture shrink, even if the enemy has no culture.

So yes, in a larger empire a single broadcast center on one side will not be able to reach planets on the far end.

Yes, two broadcast centers on one planet will give double the culture production there, increase the "range" and the allegiance growth rate/loss for enemies in the affected systems (up to the respective growth rate caps).

Distance is important though.
Broadcast centers on one end of your empire will have much less effect on the other end because of the natural decay and the range penalty.

Massing broadcast centers can be useful on frontier worlds to either fight enemies with a culture push, or counter an enemy culture push.

Massed broadcast centers in the middle of a huge empire however have less of an effect
(Depends on the actual amount though).



There are other factors however.

If you look at the planet info card you will see that a single broadcast center gives a different amount of culture on different planets, I would assume based on population of the colony.
So a maxed desert or terran world one or two jumps away might be more effective than an asteroid as cultural nexus.

I use broadcasting stations alot once I began getting far away from my capital. Planet far out can only have so much allegiance, but havign strong culture helps get them as high as they can go.

Good thread. I got on here wondering what exactly those do and how to use them. Now I can add their abilities to my dominance!