Quoting GoaFan77, reply 63Exactly what these modifiers do and how culture works in general could be better explained and streamlined...
I seem to recall hearing that these modifiers do not make culture stronger, just make it spread faster....is this actually the case? IIRC, Pbhead or Volt did timed tests (though it could have been someone else, not sure) and some other things and found that it didn't make culture stronger...
Then there was the whole dividing your culture strength by number of phase lanes....
Honestly no one really knows for sure how the culture techs work- we just know they don't make anywhere near as large a difference as the numbers would have use believe.
Well do know the Entity Modifier for the Advent Rebel Expulsion buff is named differently then the boost given by all the culture techs- the former buffs "CultureSpread" whereas all the culture techs improve "CultureSpreadRateAdjustment".
But then that could have as much to do with one of those being a BuffEntityModifer and the other being a tech modifier. it very well could be that when the variables were named they weren't named in a perfectly consistant manner but actually do the same thing(only one as a buff, one as a tech upgrade).
Part of the problem is that there is no transparency unveiling the inner workings of Culture- no one outside of Stardock, as far as I've heard, seems to know exactly how it works under the hood. Which makes giving detailed feedback beyond "it's not viable" is prohibitively difficult.