Pardon the blue language in the subject header, but I couldn't resist. It's what was going through my mind the entire time as I gnashed my teeth and shook my fists. My sad tale is as follows.

In a 2v2 game with locked teams, I had a single system as the bottleneck between my side and the enemy side. My teammate and I couldn't really coordinate who got which system, what with him being an AI, and he managed to beat me to the bottleneck system. No big deal, even if he was utterly retarded in building up its defenses. I just parked my fleet there to keep the other guys from getting through. Besides, I managed to get to the juicy terran planet before he did. Ha ha!

As the game goes on, like any evil Vasari overlord, I decided it would be worth spilling a bit of culture out towards the enemy systems on the other side of the bottleneck. After all, I get a damage bonus when fighting in my own culture. Sweet. So I tear down a few installations to make room for my media hubs and I sit back and watch the colored line advance.

Except that it doesn't. Every single phase line with my teammate's planet at the other end was entirely locked to culture. And it's not that his culture was holding me back either. I later discovered that uncouth lout didn't even have any culture! In fact, after maybe a half dozen games, I don't think I've seen so much as a bump on the culture graph for AI players. Does the AI use culture? I've only recently started playing the Hard AI, so maybe their culture will kick in during other games.

At any rate, it seems that culture will not push towards a friendly player. Now I understand the potential complications, but is this intentional? Because every race should have access to Vasari sitcoms such as Everyone Loves Zablar, UnHappy Planetary Rotational Cycles, and You Will Die With My Cold Wet Tentacle Around Whatever Tube You Breathe Through. But it seems like blocking culture is going to add a clunky new dynamic to culture wars in team games.

-Tom