What's the use of Culture versus AIs?

Depends on how you play I guess, my campaigns tend to have large battlefleets of capital ships jumping from planet to planet, then fortifying the captured planet before moving on.

They do Every planet under the effect of friendly (your own, or teammates') culture gains a 10% allegiance bonus, which means a 10% increase to credit/ore/crystal production.

The culture research paths also grant racial bonuses to fighting in friendly culture: antimatter recharge for TEC, damage for Vasari, shield mitigation for Advent - and since Advent can freely spread their culture anywhere with the Deliverance Engine, it makes for a great fleet support mechanic.

Also, another important consideration: if a system is fully inundated by your culture, nobody else can colonize it. so even if an attack fleet gets in and takes out the colony, they can't drop a forward outpost for a while, until your culture recedes, so you don't have to worry about enemy reinforcements being manufactured within your frontier.

1. Culture is a money modifier. If a planet has 56% culture that means you are getting 56% of the credits, metal, and crystal it produces. Get it up to 80% and you will get 80% of what it produces!
2. Culture gives bonuses. Extra damage for vasari, extra antimatter for tec, and extra something I forgot for advant. So by spreading culture you both give your fleets the bonus, AND deny it to the enemy.
3. Culture can overwhelm a planet making it neutral (aka, uncolonized).
4. Culture can prevent a planet from being colonized by an enemy. (for a little while).

capital ships demolish enemy culture in their immediate area... giant ships with big guns speak louder then words

Ok, I guess I didn't watch long enough, to see Allegiance rise...

Will more Media/Culture structures cause Allegiance to rise more? Or is it a max 10% in the system its in, regardless of how many?

:edit:

Wait a minute. Trading Ports and Refineries give a lot more than 10% to income and extraction. And I'm moving forward too fast to bother with overwhelming enemy planets near mine with culture. So, even given I missed all those points, they still don't seem useful - IF I'm moving forward fast through use of arms. Humans might sneak in and snatch planets, but if the AI does it, it's rare... I'd rather just set up defenses (and kill his ships) rather than try to prevent him from being able to make a colony. The AI rarely sneaks into the soft underbelly (although there often are exposed points as one advances - they're the places you make defenses ASAP).

Yes, the economic buildings give more of an economic bonus than the cultural buildings. No one should really be surprised of that.    Still, in closer games (it sounds like you are talking about games where you just steamroll the enemy) where the front lines are not receding quickly, one or two cultural buildings can give you a defensive advantage, and possibly help turn the tide offensively as well.

Also its worth noting that a single culture building can raise several surrounding planets' allegiance by 10%, not just one. So the benefit can be larger than one might expect. At the very least, it's worth building a culture building every few planets so you can make sure each of your worlds are benefitting from the 10% extra.

1 culture structure can usually spread to all teh nieghbouring systems and beyond if there is no culture there. So 4 logisitic for a 10% bonus to all the surrounding systems > trade/refinery spam.

As for more, it just increase your culture/s for the planet so it spreads faster, not sure about farther.

If it affects surrounding planets, yeah, it sounds like having a sprinkling of them would be worth it. And yes, in a slowly-moving slugfest I can see them being important. But the AI just isn't flexible enough for things to become a slugfest... yet. I'll be notching up the hardness in future games. But for now I just run around with a very few, very big fleets and knock the crap out of any fleet or system I come to. Still, there is a bit of chasing around in the early-mid game.

I picked up the game the same time my brother and my buddy did. My wife left us alone and we lan'd for about 24 hours strait. Later I started my first real AI game on a extra large random galaxy with a mix of hard and normal AI.

Just my luck I was sandwiched in with 2 of the hard AI's from the begining. My TEC strat is to planet grab; tech up key early economy; build up fleet and planets; tech up key military with the ocasional economy tech (ignoring culture the whole time); continue focus on military/economy tech while holding ground until I have enough momentum to start expanding again.

This game I was getting hosed by a pair of allied comps that kept me constantly on the defense. It was only when I started teching up my culture that I finaly broke the deadlock and have begun to tip the scales in my favor. There are little lines that creep out along the phase jump lanes that represent your culture spreading. 1-2 broadcasters on every border planet with 1 every 2-3 planets in your core will keep the AI from being able to get a foothold in your system and make it difficult for them to manage settlements on any border with you. The boost to my economy gave me a firm lead in this area and allowed me to affor the constant assaults on my systems. Not worried about loosing planets (they cant colonize due to culture) I was able to combine my defensive fleets and instead of jumping around and defending everywhere - I could take on (and take out) one fleet at a time and only have to rebuild 1 planet instead of 3.

My computer Ally is a sneaky SOB. He sees me attack a planet and 'helps me' by sending a fleet of umpteen colinization frigates and 2 light frigates. Guess who is able to colonize first every time? Well now this alliance has helped me out so I dont want to just attack and take the planets I deserve. So I stuck about 6 broadcasters on nearby planet and 1 by 1, I out 'civilized' my ally and took control of the planet enjoying the small fortune he already spent on defense platforms.

Think of them as a small but sure way to support your economy, support your ability to expand, and defend against invasion. Not super powerful in any way by itself... but still very useful to tip the scales in your favor.

I'm relatively new too, but I'm assuming a culture war has more of an impact on smaller maps which turn into a "dug in" type of war (using your term there).

Culture is, as noted, a subtle effect but that does not mean insignificant. It means very little on small maps where the game is over quickly but if you get on very large maps it has a tremendious impact, especially the economic swing (negative to opponents, positive to you/allies).

As far as the AI, even GC2's AI was a bit weak when it came out, give them time to continue tweaking it, you'll have a hard fight on your hands soon.

Thanks Doocc ... as I up the Hardness (or Ironclad improves the AI, Malekish), I can see how it would matter more. FWIW now that I am at least sprinkling them through my planets for the Allegiance bonus, every now and then this seems to help when I take an enemy planet (their loyalty dissolves faster).

I never knew what the color in the phase lines meant ... thanks Doocc!

Planets in friendly culture gain allegiance up to their max. Being in friendly culture increases allegiance max by 10%. Planets in enemy culture lose allegiance until they die and become uninhabited. Planets in no culture neither gain nor lose allegiance. That's basically it as far as culture is concerned. If you can push your culture over the enemy's planets, then it is only a matter of time before those colonies die. If this happens to you, you'd better start spamming more broadcast centers fast, or your colonies will die. It's basically a form of poison gas that seeps forth from your broadcast centers.

10%? hah! it gives much much more. Maybe it raises the MAX by 10% (don't know about that), but it raises the ACTUAL culture UP to the max on the planet it is on and on other planets up to their max.

Culture spreads across trade lanes. Every second, planets with culture structures generates culture, it raises the local planet culture up to max, when it maxes it then it starts spreading across trade lanes, where it starts raising the next planet culture to max, when it gets to max it starts spreading across the trade lanes from that planet, and so on.

A single culture structure would eventually cover the whole system if left unopposed (it is opposed by capital ships and by culture structures)...

Also, multiple structures multiple the amount of culture generated. Build 4 culture structures per planet on 10 planets and even their homeworld with its one culture structure will fall. It is easier to resist culture then to spread it, but it adds up and can win. Even if they resist your culture, you are making more money, they are making less money, you are getting damage/antimatter/shield bonus to your ships, etc... it adds up and can tilt the scale.

But it is absolutely needed to build at least 1 culture per 4 planets or so, since that one culture can raise the planets around it by over 100% total culture (25%+ each) more then doubling the income for one structure.

i was under the impression that a culture building can never extend its influence more than 2 grav wells distance. that is to say the culture it generates will reach the grave well it is built in, all adjacent grav wells, and all grav wells adjacent to those grav wells. this still results in the possibility of a single broadcast center covering a large number of grav wells (i've had up to a dozen covered by a single broadcast center) depending on the layout of the star system. you definitely can't just keep piling on more and more culture buildings at one location and have it reach every grav well in the system though.

Taltamir, allegiance can only be raised by 10% over the default, regardless of number of culture structures (CSs). However, adding more CSs will cause their allegiance to rise faster (to that +10% max). Where are you getting the +25% from, maybe I'm not following you.

So if one CS raises its system and 3 adjacent systems by 10%, it has caused a total of 10% absolute income increase for those 4 systems collectively. Not 100% (i.e., doubling it). (If it only applied to its home system, then it's only causing a 2.5% increase for the four systems taken together.)

Don't get me wrong ... it still makes a lot of sense to sprinkle in CSs every 3 or 4 planets. But it's just a modest aid, is all ... unless, of course, you're actually in a culture war. That's a whole nother story.

Also, if you play as Advent, they have an upgrade in the harmony section that raises the max allieence by 10% after two upgrades. It's awsome

on a huge map (one star) Advent culture is important. The 10% allegiance bonus really shines there. It makes minimum allegiance of a planet 45% (once its in culture) which is vastly superior over the 35% that all the other factions have. The more planets you get far from your capital, the more you notice this.

Another benefit of friendly culture that you guys forgot to mention is that it prevents enemy culture from choking the allegiance of your worlds. It sucks when your frontline worlds are producing 20% of the income that they should be because the AI built broadcast centers and you didn't.

Is it possible to win by way of cultural planet flipping? I have all of one game under my belt right now and it kind of bothers me that this seems to be a pure war game, given that im used to winning GC2 through diplomacy and alliances without firing a single shot.

Sort of. If you are advent and are pumping out culture with the maximum upgrades and nobody has any capital ships or culture of their own, then yes. I got every single planet off someone, bar one asteroid, last online game, without the deliverance engine. If you wait until you've researched almost all the culture upgrades and THEN start a culture fight (you'd be surprised how many people will only start up their own culture when someone else does it first), destroy all your trade/labs/factories on your terran and desert planets, and then build nothing but temples of communion, it's possible you could flip a good few planets from someone before they could even get started fighting back. But in an even match the capital ships would probably give someone enough time to at least fend you off from around the edges, if they tied up all their cap ships for culture defence.

The culture war will only flip planets to neutral and give a player a 'enemy culture is too strong to colonise here' message rather than turn the colony into one of yours.

You misunderstand something, the CS increases the MAX alligience in a planet by 10%. but it also raises the CURRENT alligent UP TO the max alligience over time. Your home planet will increase from 100% to 110%. But that planet two off to the right that had 20 out of 70 allgience when colonize will slowly rise up to the max of 70 (the max is determined by distance from home planet)

Ah, I see what you're saying, Talt. Raising it quickly can be important.

Also another thing to note is that although culture (and Allure of the Unity) "only" raise allegiance by a fixed 10%, this 10% is actually a 40% increase for planets that was at 25% allegiance (35/25=1.4). So on a huge map, you might see more like a 20% increase in total tax and resource income, not 10%. It can be huge... on huge maps.

oh, that is an excellent mathematical catch there nospam... by increasing it by a flat 10% you are actually getting 10-40% more resources per planet.

to those who think it can only spread to x gravwells, it works more like this:
ok, take a straw and blow through it
now take about 10 straws and blow through them all at once
the air still goes through the 10 straws, but the pressure is a lot less than blowing through one straw, the straws represent the jump lanes

culture is just the same, with similar dynamics
it can spread forever, but it gets lower "pressure" at every grav well and trade lane that it uses
this results in slower spread after each grav well, but im fairly sure that it never will actually stop, just become incredibly easy to be pushed back by the enemy (just one capships would probably be enough to push it back after 2 or 3 grav wells)

well thats my two cents anyway.... off to take the ohio graduation test at school *ew, so easy its boring*