I feel the town culture feature with a growing influence is forcing conflicts that should not exist. Towns can't agree on their respective border and can't choose to focus more on a specific area without the need of making additional cultural buildings.

For this I would propose to rework how town influence is done.

1) Town can choose what plots are part of their influence, similar as claiming land. This would allow towns to agree upon borders, like for example following a river or biome.

Before a person can join, all their plots need to be within the town influence

2) A Town can have unlimited plots (in theory) as long as you can afford the cultural upkeep. A town has a certain amount of free plots and after that each plot has a cultural upkeep based on distance towards the town claim.

3) This would also work for countries as they would have their own amount of free plots + modifier on cultural cost.

Countries could also directly gain the culture generated by the towns, meaning at .5 cultural cost compared to towns, they could greatly improve the land owned by the country

4) Cultural buildings would still be relevant as they would increase the town growth, but instead of being a random bubble, it would be chosen by the town itself. This also means that cultural buildings location is less important and can be looked at to fit more into the town esthetics and not where you would maximize the bubble

5) This will allow for more creative town shapes

6) This would still allow culture wars as town try to grow to claim their surroundings.

7) This shouldn't require elaborate work as the system of claiming land is already present in the game, it reuses the same mechanic.

8) Land claiming could be added on the town claim object or claim tool using the name of the town/country.