#Culture values feedback

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

rugged moth
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Just wanted to leave a short feedback that Culture values for culture deeds feels...bleh. The way the softcap works means that the ideal way to get "culture value" out of paintings is to create a room that hangs a single painting, with some minimal support furniture, and then a high outdoors bonus and bathroom.

This naturally lends itself to a multi-deed super structure like the culture prison I created this cycle, which generates ~1150 culture. Not only that, but it's ideal to place it in the town with the least active playerbase, because paintings will be higher value if they're located there.

After making that kind of structure this cycle I feel that it feels crappy that this structure generates that much culture while all of the very beautiful structures that talented builders have made contribute significantly less to the "Culture value" number that is a part of victory conditions, and galleries that people make specifically to be galleries, which hold multiple paintings and show off the cool works people have made or printed, barely outcompete the little culture prison cell on the number value.

I would like to see something done where the softcap is not so limited or the victory condition target is changed so that it rewards people for building nice things and hanging good paintings, especially so that hanging multiple high culture paintings in a single deed is not so badly penalized. Something I would especially like to see is that reputation given to non culture deeds like the very nice housing and shop buildings people have made also contributes to whatever number is tracked for the victory. I don't know how hard that would be to change, but overall it definitely feels like making this specific number go up heavily encourages cheesing.

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A picture that shows one deed of the superstructure and all of the claims laid out, for reference

Screenshot_2025-08-09_150026.png
haughty panther
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To me the softcap provides a form of protection making it possible for more settlements to build up culture in a more equitable and natural way, its less important to have the best painting to get way ahead because everyone has an equal chance.
As a player I feel like culture should be a natural thing and not cheesed in such a way, I did struggle to find any paintings of worth this cycle as they seemed to have all been snapped up presumably for this project.

rugged moth
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Just add table, 1 ceiling light, and a participation trophy and you will already be at soft cap

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Part of the issue this cycle was also the easel bug, so only people that used printing presses made any art works. A lot less works got made this cycle, I would guess

glacial zealot
rugged moth
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They are all quite nice. But to be fair, I think with a 0 rep painting the deeds would still be worth 40ish culture

fervent bronze
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Seeing plots being abused for that makes me sad.

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Min-Max makes it seem harsh. I feel when people min-max, the goal is moved because its shown that it can get to that height but at the same time the goal is mean to be a server wide thing. Having one player do it, yes I know you are the MoC, takes away from a lot of other people contributing in their own way. I dont think it was intended for one single person to do the entire project. Like Elmeye stated, the softcaps help that but using the plots like that gets around the softcap :/.

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I do remember there being picture issues this cycle so it may not have been possible to achieve a victory without this cheese tho.

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I think having each settlement have a specific amount of culture needed can split up at least my concern with this "plot" having over 1k culture.

glacial zealot
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It may help having dynamic targets based on population at x day, similar issue to lasers being static number despite fluctuating population. Prior to this project we were at 4800 culture, some of which was temporary from dinner parties.

fervent bronze
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Maybe something like each town has to have a minimum of 150 Culture and States should have 300 culture. That way the settlements can get more involved in culture goals. Culture is better at the lower end anyways for getting that value so this could help spread it out instead of trying to focus it in one area.

glacial zealot
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And maybe adding cap (for cultural win) to the top 5 cultural deeds in a town?

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Also for the cultural win, perhaps the cultural deeds need to have somekind of irl resemblence and explanation 🙃 the monumental buildings do

haughty panther
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Most builds do, town hall, school house, art gallery, merry go round, ferris wheel and the lighthouse are just naming a few from this cycle.

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They all come from natural player driven builds with culture as a way of recognition from players.

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Which is a big part of white tiger, players building all these good things and players awarding there rep to them.

rugged moth
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Yeah, and to be fair those builds do contribute a lot of culture. We would currently be at 5K even without the culture prison, but I would just like to see a bigger weight on those buildings. Maybe paintings that are above the softcap can hard contribute at least the softcap to a culture building? It would prevent feeling like you need an individual deed for each piece of art

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I guess the things I would REALLY like to see are Residency deeds with high rating still contributing to the victory in some way, to acknowledge and reward the people who put a lot of effort into their shop/house, and a change to paintings to make it so they don't feel like they need a separate deed each.

fervent bronze
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That seems like a change that would be done at the base game if at all. Maybe wanna bring it up in #dev-hangout and the link in there.

cedar grove
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I barely sold any canvases

pulsar swan
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As mentioned elsewhere, the only way for us to fix this would be to limit the amount of cultural deeds back to the very low vanilla values which would take the agency away from towns to have more than 3 cultural projects. I'd prefer a gentlemen's agreement on just not doing that cheese and follow the organic spirit of the culture victory. There is options to minmax in painting trade and ratings already for those so inclined. Doing this again will effectively just mean what Katfish likes to say so often "Can't have nice stuff".

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I've redirected the general issue to an internal issue, though I do not expect that to be dealt with anytime soon as its not really a problem on default settings or vanilla servers at all given current priorities.

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So gentlemen's agreement or limiting of plots are the current solutions.

rugged moth
# pulsar swan So gentlemen's agreement or limiting of plots are the current solutions.

That makes sense, I just wish that paintings could contribute more than like 25, and I hate that you are actively punished for hanging multiple paintings from the same artist in a room, so you can't have like "The Groza exhibition" in the way a real life museum might do a Picasso exhibition.

Is there no way to change the victory condition goal away from the straight up number to something else? Maybe something like "there must be 10 structures with X architecture rating, and 5 galleries with 5 paintings that have 15+ rep each"? Or would that be too hard to track

pulsar swan
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This was discussed in #1403808669275258962, specifically here: #1403808669275258962 message

I agree it should have been here and if you want to answer it, probably do here, but I don't really have the time to just write it all again 😄

rugged moth
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No worries, I'll take a look there when I have a chance 😛

pulsar swan
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Having more building goals with less creative restrictions was also confirmed there - but yes, it is a problem for verification if its many and it also becomes a problem of cheese in other ways as noted in my linked post. But also: A high amount of separate buildings might be "scary" to governments to do, as it looks like a lot.

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Especially as we plan to have additional victories require a developed victory in the future where base goals are finished, e.g. global grid and highways.

fervent bronze
rugged moth
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The room caps it down hard. We have paintings that contribute very high amounts, but they get capped down by the room its in. I think there might be a few that contribute 50ish, but they're "worth" 200ish. I think after a certain point rep is worth more going to culture deeds than to paintings just because architecture culture is never capped in the way a room is capped

glacial zealot
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but one of the major changes is that 2nd culture room is 10% so in the past you can have 2-3 art rooms per deed

fervent bronze
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Well for culture you always want many rooms. The point was to have many settlements do culture so it would end up being several rooms. When I did St Louis about a year ago I have 4-5 buildings with 4ish rooms each that would hold the paintings. Also shouldnt be a hard cap unless they changed it?

glacial zealot
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well the general room stacking changed

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which also affected culture room

pulsar swan
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The only real issue with this project is the fact it's inorganic and (please don't hurt me) doesnt look like a culturally valuable build to me (where we are back to the "subjective" thing when we only ask for buildings). I get the creativity to figure this out, it just isn't really what is seeked or the goal of culture.

glacial zealot
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so your second room is only 10% and 3rd 1%

pulsar swan
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If all these deeds had been separate cultural buildings made by people all over the world, it would not have been a problem.

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It's precisely why towns have the higher limits, to do that.

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It wouldnt even have mattered if they were still all done by MoC intervention or similar like the statues hidden everywhere.

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It's really the precise blob of maximum efficiency in a hull that is not really that cool

fervent bronze
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Dennis could go back to some culture given to real creative builds by the GMs? I know that was a lot of effort in the past but maybe that new GM that’s did the Timelapse wouldn’t mind it? MoC suggest builds.

pulsar swan
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I had hoped for the architecture rating feature to replace that manual work. Then people made culture prisons 😄

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I mean it is still in effect, so GM's can still do that.

fervent bronze
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I think the architecture is very easy to cheese as I have noticed from towns and not really noticeable outside of a massive amount of rep given.

pulsar swan
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Well, anything rating based is always easy to cheese unfortunately. In the end GM point giving is "cheese" as well to some degree.

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Just legal one.

cedar grove
pulsar swan
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But I still see a difference between an organized attempt at maximized cheese or cheese that happens in between builds that developed somewhat organically.

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The average cheese happening was calculated in when adding systems that are easy to cheese. It really only becomes a problem when people take the mechanics and play mechanically in a system that isn't intended for it - which I had hoped the WT community to be one of the best examples of being capable to avoid it, despite some population part being minmaxing. Or TL;DR: I'd like the gentlemens agreement solution.

fervent bronze
pulsar swan
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I mean the end result will feel the same to someone that was not on the receiving end of prestige. Then complaints like "GM's didnt look at everything equally" (which we already had) or "why did this build get so much, but mine, clearly better, did not" (which we also had).

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Making a system that is inherently about aesthetics and simple server activity from collaboration in events or vanity builds fair is strictly impossible.

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However some rules can be formulated: Like organicness, keeping the spirit of doing things primarily for the things, not the points, etc.

fervent bronze
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I guess another suggestion, could there be a different formula for culture builds? Stan noted it changed with the new room formula so maybe having the old formula apply could also make it feel better to get higher culture values at the town level instead of feeling like cheesing it is the only way.

pulsar swan
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So wording it in a way that makes clear you are not supposed to figure out how the mechanics work and build exactly in the way its optimal should be possible, just really hard.

fervent bronze
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Not even sure if the formula can be changed on a per plot type.

pulsar swan
glacial zealot
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maybe each plot can have RP story

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so the creators can get crativew

cedar grove
# pulsar swan It's really the precise blob of maximum efficiency in a hull that is not really ...

I can see it being kinda limiting if you wanted to make a legitimate art museum like the Louvre, you’d need multiple deeds much like the culture prison, but if it blended together and worked as an actual museum - I’d be less inclined to call it inorganic even if it takes up the same min max philosophy in structure.

I agree that the room changes makes it more limiting to 1 picture per deed which doesn’t seem ideal

glacial zealot
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and we can publich those in a memoar

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and each cycle can have a cool memoar with RP and pics

fervent bronze
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I was afraid that was hard coded with no way to apply something different per plot type.

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Pretty sure given culture can bypass it tho so uh, any gms wanna be culture judges? 😛

pulsar swan
fervent bronze
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Now im wondering what it looked like in game

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Was it just a giant concrete cube?

pulsar swan
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Anyway, you can check Settlements.eco out yourself if you want. Formula is hardcoded, a few values to tweak culture exist but nothing appeared to me to be able to fix that. However when it comes to math, I don't tend to be the brightest candle on the cake.

glacial zealot
pulsar swan
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Also if someone wanted to make a National Art Museum that incorporates deeds for example for separated rooms with respective theme and decoration, I'm sure noone would say anything. It is also really helpful to just ask a GM. I have a strong feeling everyone participating in this build kinda knew what they were aiming for and checking back with a GM on if this will be considered fair and square or under what conditions wouldn't have caused anyone pain.

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But I'm regularly surprised how many people think that anything that mechanically goes is also fine, despite the long history especially on this server and the respective rules we have in regard to that. I'm not too sure why people that seemingly know something is likely fishy tend to usually defend doing that fishness knowing it is fishness instead of asking beforehands. That is not particularly applying to this build, but something i recognize in general.

fervent bronze
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Trying to take a break from eco so i cant really look at the file atm 🙁 Dang. Ill look into it in the future some time.

pulsar swan
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Yet however, whenever I look into a MMO or any other game people that exploit know they exploit and get that the ToS will kick their butts for it.

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That's one of the things I was first confronted with in Eco and where my believe in common sense got pretty hurt compared to other games.

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And I exploited a lot myself. In more clear ways, but sitting in the building of the first Strike at Karkand map was certainly not intended by the developers.

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Nor was jumping with a drop pod behind a street light in Battlefield 2142 intended ...

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I guess duplicating runes in Diablo II was not that intended either. Or abusing specific parameters the game had to ensure specific drops.

haughty panther
fervent bronze
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I dont wanna be mean but that is kinda gross :/. I mean im guilty of placing a statue on the roof but thats clearly over doing.You can tell each statue is a plot. Hopefully that is just because of the playtest playing within some broken systems.

haughty panther
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I think losing the second culture room and bathroom didn't help

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Probably wouldn't have been considered before that

fervent bronze
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Reminds me of Khrushchevkas, soviet era apartments, in how its just a copy with little to no difference.

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Bathroom got removed?

haughty panther
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second of each room

fervent bronze
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Thought culture plots were hard coded to max 25% of the culture value

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Ahh

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Always thought 1 bathroom was enough anyways

haughty panther
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could have 2 culture and 2 bathroom before

fervent bronze
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the second culture room does suck

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Its one of the balance things you would do with paintings to see which room would give you the best bang for your buck, along with the frame. Hope the culture plot formula can be adjusted in the future to allow the old method with them.

pulsar swan
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It reminds me of vertical hotel towers pre m³, the most ugly abominations on earth, just placed horizontally, tbh.

stiff summit
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And I was thinking about asking Dennis if I can be the culture fairy after it turned out paintings werent't working. But at that point I honestly didnt want to look at Eco anymore because I burned myself with the timelapse, so that idea went nowhere.

fervent bronze
stiff summit
abstract drift
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but then you had things like blizzard games where it seemed like they would slap the hell out of you for exploiting raid bosses in WoW, duping items in diablo X, and what have you... but ask any old school diablo 2 player and they definitely remember how badly duped SoJs were to the point they became currency, and certain WoW boss fights where the exploit became the normal strategy and yet nothing happened to you for doing it...

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or, god forbid, the mmos where it's an open secret the devs themselves are cheating so if you encounter them run/play public servers (not going to name names, but not eco)

pulsar swan
tacit swallow
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I think culture should benefit everyone equally that would quickly solve the fairness problem that prevents us from doing anything useful with it

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from reading this thread a lot of tradeoffs were made in the design of the feature in order to be more fair

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but if you treat culture as a server-wide thing that everyone contributes to and benefits from equally you could build a system that is simple