Culture is just science 2 - please give loyalty pressure.

[frail cape]

At the moment Culture income is just a second 'science' stat with a comparable tech tree that is pretty indistinguishable from the science tech tree in terms of function and importance.

By itself there's nothing linking the culture stat to any real gameplay mechanic that makes it at all distinct from science. At the root of the 'culture' mechanic of prior civ games was the idea that it's a representation of cultural identity and development that was clearly distinct from science, and tied to territorial growth and ideological development.

In civ 7, culture is just 'also science'. Loyalty pressure, culture bombs, border expansion, and having some reflection of the choices you make for your civs development actually reflected in the game in a meaningful way.

At the same time, there's nothing to discourage the player or the AI from just planting settlemens wherever they want with no concern except military vulnerability. Loyalty pressure, culture bombs, and city flipping was a legitimate, interesting, and worthwhile mechanic in previous civ games, and it existed for a reason. Without it, it just feels like the play styles available to the player are just far more limited.

This is compounded by the age/reset system that further discourages cohesive strategic gameplay - and while it was ostensibly implemented to prevent snowballing or something, it does the opposite, by encouraging the player to further lean into wide rapid expansion and relentless aggression.

With no risk to forward settling other than military, just planting a settlement as a forward operating base as close to your enemy capital as you're comfortable with, there's no downside. Loyalty pressure was an elegant way to solve this problem and it is a glaring omission from Civ 7.

[surreal quest]

I'd change the relic mechanic in the exploration age so that it is more of a blind treasure hunt. Hide 12 relics for each religion round the map. 6 of them can be picked up by any civ and can be slotted in a GW slot but don't count towards other religions culture slot. 6 of them can only be picked up by your missionaries. You then have to diplomacy for them, capture them in war or buy them for gold (set price- huge), convert the city so that, you can steal a relic, or spy mission steal them.

That whole converting cities thing is just so dull and silly, it is way too hard to see which cities have alters or temples, and it is tedious and boring to do it. I just do enough to avoid a dark age. And it is less fun than cleaning someone else's bathroom!

Then in the last age I would have the culture mechanic from Civ5 where you can flip cities. You should have to flip 3 cities to trigger the final project VC.

[snow zinc]

I've really enjoyed the introduction of the civic tree as a 2nd tech tree compared to science. I think its one of the best changes in the recent civ games. Why don't you like it?

[deft cradle]

I don’t think it’s so much the civic tree, but the fact that it’s the only thing culture is good for anymore. It used to serve a lot of purposes, setting it apart from science, but now it’s just another thing to collect to get to the next civic. It feels dumbed down

[snow zinc]

Like capturing tiles? That never made any sense

[deft cradle]

The reach of your culture…I thought it made sense, but to each their own

[snow zinc]

But what does that mean in game mechanics?

[torpid quartz]

Civ 6 had Loyalty Pressure, whereby the Culture output of your cities influenced others, meaning that they had an "aura" of "ownership" if you settled in the "aura" of another civ it would make your city more unhappy until it eventually revolted and joined them. It meant that you couldn't just settle where you pleased when it came to other civs.

[snow zinc]

fairly certain culture had nothing to do with loyalty pressure in civ6

[torpid quartz]

You are correct, it's been too long since I seriously played Civ 6 so I assumed they were related given the above assertions.

[small briar]

Loyalty pressure was based on population, happiness, and the type of era you were in

[frail cape]

Science and Culture don't really serve distinct functions. A lot of civic and science techs are relatively interchangeable; the only difference, mechanically, is this aesthetic sense of "this feels sciencey" or "this seems like a civl thing"- in terms of what makes culture and science fundamentally different aspects of the game - its a blurry line.

Outside of the mechanical indistinctness, Civ 7 does a lot to divorce the player from the narrative and the idea of developing a cultural identity. Your chimerical, immortal leader proxy is more narratively important than the identity of your civilization. Transitioning civs between ages is a cool mechanic, but in terms of the overall experience: it cuts the narrative thread.

By seperating culture from cultural identity, and in fact removing all sense of cultural identity development from the game, it's not only dumbed down on a mechanical level, but also in the greater scope of the overall experience.

I'd suggest using Loyalty / cultural identity can as a +/- score that applies a modifier to growth, happiness, war support/war weariness.

The Radiant loyalty system from civ 6 rewards you from maintaining cohesion in your empire, and provides a balance against the overwhelming benefit of rapid expansion, and also, narratively, created the feel that the 'strength' of your culture was actually a metric that reflected your civic development. I don't see why that should change. You can use antiquity to develop your 'imperial core', focused on developing a stable and cohesive power base, that the Age of Exploration then 'tests' by forcing you into a colonial/expansionist game state. Strong cultural civs would have an easier time managing the loyalty issues, and civs that focus on other aspects of the game would have to make up the deficit.

This is a huge missed opportunity for creating interesting, dynamic gameplay that could directly feed into the age transition system.

[snow zinc]

In previous iterations of the game culture was far less important than science being means to a culture victory and that’s about it. Hence they gave the yield a use for expanding borders to make it more useful. But it was a bandaid fix really. The new implementations are really good and flavourful in my opinion. Culture tree isn’t just copy and paste it’s distinct giving the player agency to choose between science focus or culture focus.

I don’t know what to make of the next bit of your message - and I don’t think cultural identity is removed at all. Why do you say that?

I think culture has 2 distinct meanings here, being cultural (I.e the arts represented by the culture yield) and the people’s culture (basically which civ are you playing) and I don’t think conflating the two helps much.

Loyalty mechanic from 6 sucked. It was awfully unfun to play against and it also stopped outpost settlements from working (e.g Gibraltar for UK).

To be honest you’re saying a lot of words and phrases like ‘imperial core’ but I’m struggling to see a main point or suggestion.

[lapis lodge]

Agree. I also hated the loyalty system in 6.

[pale wolf]

Culture was a means to culture victory and that's it? Civ 4 border wars would beg to differ. not to mention Civ 5 border expansion rate. Civ 3 just didn't expand your borders at all until you built something culture related. Can be argued that border expansion isn't the best thing to tie culture to, but at least it was distinct from science, and took a bit of effort to implement. Culture being nothing but science 2 electric boogaloo is quite boring.

I think the main argument here is that culture is now lazy. It could be renamed to civil science and nothing about that would be incongruent with how it's implemented. I won't argue that Civ has ever really had much in the way of culture showing through the civs. Usually that happened because of some leader personality settings and a bit of player anthropomorphizing those leaders with real life culture.

It would be nice to see culture given something to do. I don't really mind the tech tree, but I'd rather leave that to science and give culture a role. Unfortunately with Civ 7 currently stripped of mechanics there isn't much culture could be attached to.

Examples of the sort of things; In modern we get one of the few almost options with ideologies, which effects diplomacy. Culture effecting how civs looks at each other is great! Maybe make that a thing in all eras? Tie it to governments and have different governments effect relations. Make missionaries something that must be purchased with culture, and coverting other civ cities effects relations. Heck have religion spread naturally again but instead of adding a faith resource, tie it to culture. Maybe have culture give bonuses to some luxuries, or give the ability to spend culture to buy such bonuses, like a separate civic tree. Our people really like using silver, so it gives us extra bonuses. So on, just anything other than science copy and paste.

[snow zinc]

Agree to disagree.

[pliant ruin]

I kind of see the point of the OP. In Civ VI you had a more general separation between science, which unlocks things you can build (units/buildings/etc), and the civics tree, which mainly made your government stronger by unlocking policy cards and the more powerful goverments.

So bascially culture/civics made your government more powerfull, while science/tech gave you more powerful things to build.

This distinction is somewhat more blurred in Civ VII. While you still unlock policy cards in the civics tree, the number of cards you can have active at any time is not increased by the civics themselves but by the celebrations based on the happiness.

And since you can increase happiness by unlocking buildings in the tech tree as well, science can also make your government more powerful.

And in the opposite direction, there seem to be a number of units and buildings unlocked in the civics trees, so culture can also help with getting more powerfull things to build.

Therefore, I see the point that there is more overlap between civics and techs than before

But since there are now uniqe civic trees available, as well as ideologies in the modern age, which are all based on culture, I do not think that culture is just another form of science. There are still clear distinctions between the stuff they unlock.

[winter burrow]

If loyalty were to be added back in Civ 7, I'd prefer it to depend on happiness, population, and proximity rather than culture.

I do agree that the culture legacies for Exploration and Modern could use rework though. Also it'd be cool if tourism returned in the future 4th age expansion.

While having culture as a second tech tree isn't my preference, it's already part of the game and I don't think there's anything changing that fundamentally in Civ 7. If culture were to have an extra effect like loyalty, it'd make science weaker in comparison and I don't know what other extra effect science could have that'd be balanced