Overwhelming culture rate.

[malanthor]

I always play with normal culture, but ive noticed that in this mod pretty soon you get overwhelmed with hostile culture if you dont hurry uo and take alot of planets and build holonets all over. I must admit i like to take 2-3 planets and then turtle until i have a leveled up fleet of cap ships so you might not see much to the culture rate if you play early rush. Hovewer let me make an example: i just played at the recently added very small map with 12 planets. I took one extra planet and then started fortifying/researching. At the point where everything started to go wrong i had all the culture stuff researched and 4 lvl 8 cap ships with their culture repel stuff. I also had 2 holonets, i then suddenly started dropping rapidly in culture, so i built more holonets, 8 of them. And still i went down with 0.07% every second. Yeah i could have built more cap ships with their culture repellent, but there are only so much money to go around.

 

Ive never ever seen anything close to this culture rampage. And its not like its late game even, autosave 9 or so. I would like to shout out "this is broken! please fix it" and maybe it is or maybe its not. anyone got any pointers to me for how to deal with it? I would rather not be forced into taking half the map and spamming holonets every single time i play, it essentially means forcing me into the same playstyle every single game.

 

EDIT: i upped my cap ship number to 7 and they are now lvl 10 all, and lowered the number of holonets to 5 and i am keeping a neutral culture. The bar is a little higher than in normal sins or other mods but atleast its doable. I still think it could do to be nerfed a little bit though. I think part of the problem is the AI spamming the damm holonets, ive seen 5-6 on a single planet. And everywhere i go there are atleast 2-3.

[Lavo]

Do note, none of the "cruiser" capital ships have a culture bonus, only the more expensive "elite" ones do. So if you have say, a fleet of VSDs, they aren't giving you a culture bonus, though it seems you know this.

 

The reason this occurs is, when the AI gets a planet like any of the Tropical ones, or something else with a culture bonus like an Ecumen, they love to utterly spam HoloNet Broadcasters. Like, you can find planets with 16+ of those things on them.

 

While you might be overwhelmed with culture at times, I have been as well, culture itself hasn't been changed for years, not even when NU was introduced, it's the planets' changes that are allowing players to pull this off.

[malanthor]

Thanks for clearing that up. I guess its just a matter of adjusting.

[Lavo]

In truth, I'm not entirely sure how to change it, if at all. As until a player gets multiple planets that are well-suited for culture (spread bonuses, lots of logistic slots), it isn't much of a problem. Plus it makes culture a viable strategy for taking out, or at least annoying, other players. Perhaps the culture techs should be boosted?

[zoommooz]

In my games I always change the culture levels so as to make it a much more gradual effect. Conversely, once culture is well established, it can take a long time for it to disapate. Make the changes in the game constant files. I set mine to:

 

 

cultureSpeedData-Slow

cultureConnectionReferenceLength 60000

allegianceShiftRateScalar 0.10

 

Note, this is VERY slow which suits the way I mod for my individual tastes.