[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
Why don't you just say cultural world centers aren't meant to be built at all and leave it at that?

Good question. If I didn't mention that yet, I don't remember why. I've said it on several other threads in the past.

Sure, a homeworld that leaves all of its building to base space yards could maybe start turning a space port/resupply depot into a cultural world center from the second turn and it might actually see it done before the end game, but even then it would be pretty impracitcal as would take a huge number turns _after_ being built to make up for their huge cost through mineral production, research points, intel points, ect...

Yep. I guess I figured people would realize this as soon as they saw their homeworld reporting 100 years to build one, and colonies reporting "Never" to build one.

Even on ringworlds were conditions are always optimal and one really can drive a unmodified Honda (well, you'll still need paved roads) around, accomplishing such a task is nearly impossible.

Within a few decades, yes, as intended.

Thinking in purely game mechanics (which, in my opinion have more say that realism, because if I wanted realism I'd play more real life), Cultural world centers are wasteful to build. Starting off with a bunch is a nice bonus, but to build one would lock a good planet's production for 500 turns and require an insane amount of resources, thus making them unpractical.

Yes, quite so. Creating a new culture is not a practical path for the relatively short period of conflict and exploration represented by an SE4 game.

And, from another standpoint, consider that America was a colony some 300 years ago or so. People brought their culture with them and built rather quickly, about as much as population would allow. The two factors that limited America's growth were population and technology. Look how fast things grew when the railroads were built. Colonists don't loose their culture merely because they no longer are around their own culture, so if you bring along enough colonists then culture by itself is certain not a problem. The infrastructure (on the level of compactness as the colony world center) would be difficult, but you even noted how it can be done in 27 turns.

Sure, but again, what culture did they bring? European culture. They effectively destroyed the existing culture of the existing population, brought their own European culture, and developed it a bit, and built lots of housing and infrastructure, over the span of 300 years and with hundreds of millions of people and untold millions of tons of machinery and materials. They consumed many times their own mass in organic materials, massive amounts of energy and mineral resources, etc. The conditions were ideal.

I'm not sure I've clearly explained the difference between culture and industry. I don't think it can be directly modelled in SE4, but Proportions is my best shot at an abstraction of it within the limits of that game system.

I do allow building industry at a very generous rate (you can build the productive capacity of a cultural center on a colony world in well under 5 years, given enough population and facility slots). The reason I have this take up much more space is to represent the difficulty of building net-efficient infrastructure on inhospitable alien worlds. Cultural Centers offer much more concentrated (on a fac slot basis) production largely because of the native conditions, but also because of cultural, logistical, and infrastructure considerations.

In addition to all of that, however, cultural centers represent many necessary elements that are not physical and can't be physically mass-produced and duplicated for a multiplicative effect, the way the game program would do if I made the build costs less. As I've mentioned below at least twice, reasearch facilities really should not add their points together, and should not be shiftable every turn to concentrate on whatever project the Emperor wants. Also, the ability to get billions of intelligent and educated people to work towards a common goal requires an outstanding culture with very impressive social structures, government, religion, system of raising and educating children, economic systems, and all of the other human activities that make these things worthwhile and possible in the first place: arts, music, literature, philosophy, romance, entertainment, communities, toys, crafts, sports, fashion, cuisine, tradition, lore, and many others. It can't be duplicated by droids overnight. You may be able to duplicate the same stuff (see Wall-Mart, McDonalds, Safeway, pop music, Twinkies, pulp fiction, Hollywood spin-offs, "Next Generation" TV shows, etc...), but that's mostly just repeating existing cultural works. "You already have a similar quadrant-wide ability."

PvK