Culture Flipping....

[Darkchampion]

One of the things in this game that seems poorly built to me is culture flipping. It has no basis in history and creates a major hassle in the game causing many people to simply raze the cities as they go. I'm very happy with the ability to turn this off in C3C but I feel that they should have simply fixed this system, as it has some potential good ideas in it.

First of instead of having a newly conquered city simply decide to defect back to it's original civ without having to fight off the occupying garrison is rediculous. Instead you should get a 1 turn warning that the city is in severe resitance and that you need to reinforce the garrison to maintain control. Then if you dont reinfoce by the next turn it should create conscript troops flying the previously conquered civs colors to attack the city (and it should cancel any defensive bonuses based on the city for the defending occupiers. the combat should also destroy improvements and reduce the population). Although these troops would have virtually no chance against a powerful garrison (as in real life) they would force players to keep larger troop concentrations in conquered cities to keep the resistance down.

On the other hand cultural conversions of cities based solely on the fact that civ A has more culture than civ B should be booted out completely. Cultural dominance does not translate into direct control. Throughout history, physical control has nearly always changed via force of arms (revolution, war etc).

So instead of having simple "cultural conversions" of cities to your opponents which usually hurt the smaller empire and only reinforce the power of a large empire, there should be the possibility of revolutions/civil war. This should be based on the distance from the capital, # of unhappy citizens, garrison size, the number of foreign citizens, and government type (representative govs = less chance of revolution/civil war). These would help weaken larger empires and make the game a closer match.

Well even though they wont change it for civ3 i can always hope for it in civ4

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Darkchampion
First of instead of having a newly conquered city simply decide to defect back to it's original civ without having to fight off the occupying garrison is rediculous. Instead you should get a 1 turn warning that the city is in severe resitance and that you need to reinforce the garrison to maintain control.

A simple message that would make gameplay more enjoyable...Why Firaxis did not use this idea is beyond me.

Originally posted by Darkchampion
So instead of having simple "cultural conversions" of cities to your opponents which usually hurt the smaller empire and only reinforce the power of a large empire, there should be the possibility of revolutions/civil war...

Or a system that would syphon off production and commerce from your low culture city and give it to the culturally higher-ranked civ. You retain control of the city, but because your city is a cesspool, your rival still benefits.

[Rasputin]

havnet had any problems with culture flips since using c3c. i have it turne don but they obviously modded the formulae to make it happen less often... i havent lost one city to flipping at all. had lots in civ 3 and ptw

[Vince278]

Culture flipping is a poor idea that was poorly implemented. I'd rather see it go away. No historical basis that I can think of (sheesh, the US would own North and Central America by now).

[Rasputin]

why would any nation flip to join the USA.????

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Rasputin
why would any nation flip to join the USA.????

Why not?

(I was hoping that I wasn't risking changing the subject of the thread by throwing that example out there. )

[Rasputin]

its jsut a game people, not a relal ife simulation

[Vince278]

That doesn't make culture flipping any less stupid.

Why not add other stupid stuff? After all, its only a game.

[Rasputin]

there is lots of "stupid" stuff in game.... the whole borders with culture can be classed as stupid..

The random Combat Number generator can be caleld stupid.. lot sof things, it just there to make the game playable and make you think about what you doing, all the things in the game you can control to some extent...

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Rasputin
there is lots of "stupid" stuff in game.... the whole borders with culture can be classed as stupid..

Now you got it.

Originally posted by Rasputin
The random Combat Number generator can be caleld stupid..

Have any alternative ideas?

[CyberChrist]

How would you classify something like new states joining the USA as it has happened during the last 100 years or so? Sounds a bit like culture flipping to me.

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by Vince278


Now you got it.



Have any alternative ideas?

No i like the game just the way it is ....

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Rasputin
No i like the game just the way it is ....

Guess you won't be interested in Civ4 (or patches, updates, mods, using the editor, etc.) then. Change is good, better if you help make it happen.

[Rasputin]

i actually dont want too many change sfor civ4 except in the MP area, i want a better way of playing agaisnt humans,,,,

[Blademun]

You know Rasputin strikes a certain irony in me.

APolyton has always given that 'greek shrine' feel off to me. Now I understand why. Apolyton IS a shrine, to the Firaxis gods. However, just as many a evangelist could only WISH they trully talked to their god, so to it is the same for us. Perhaps if we begin having Ritual sacrifices the Firaxis gods will smile more favorably on our humble shrine...

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Blademun
APolyton has always given that 'greek shrine' feel off to me. Now I understand why. Apolyton IS a shrine, to the Firaxis gods. However, just as many a evangelist could only WISH they trully talked to their god, so to it is the same for us. Perhaps if we begin having Ritual sacrifices the Firaxis gods will smile more favorably on our humble shrine...

[Last Conformist]

@Blademum: Do we infer that Firaxians never post on 'Poly?

I actually think that the CF system works pretty well, given the game's level of abstraction. I'd like to have garrisonning the place have more of an effect, tho - losing half a dozen mechanized units to the revolting citizens of a town of 30k just feels wrong. I'd like to replace the current deduction for garrisonning units with a multiplication with max(0,(S-G)/S)), where S is the city size and G the number of units occupying it.

[Rasputin]

Originally posted by Blademun
You know Rasputin strikes a certain irony in me.

Ironic ??? How ???

[Blademun]

Well, it was just how I was feeling. Reading yours and Vince's conversation. Vince, and the starter of this post, place up ideas that would be REALLY good. However, you come along and shoot it down so unceremoniously I couldn't help thinking about the fact your right in doing so. SInce, afterall, do we really expect Firaxis to be reading this post? Most likely not..not that they never post here, but unless its a 100+ post thread I doubt much attention is given to these things.

So Ironicly, its not his ideas that are stupid, none of the ideas are stupid, they're simply irrelavent. Fun to dream about I guess. THen again, Dreams are for Fools and Visionarys..THe main difference being one acts on them, the other simply runs his mouth.

*Edit* And since I am a fool, and certainly not a visionary, I'll state that I -hate- culture flipping. It is both a detriment to gameplay AND takes away from whatever form of 'realism' *yes, I said the R word.. * this game might have.

[Rasputin]

it was added in i think to stop the early mad conquests without repercussions. if yuo progressively do your conquing you will rarely lose a city as it is now under your expanded culture zone..

[Vince278]

Would Civ be better if borders were handled more like Alpha Centauri?

[Rasputin]

wh oknows, i never palyed AC ....

[Arnelos]

I like the way borders are handled in AC, but it also has some liabilities... such as borders being insanely far away from already established bases.

[spy14]

Could someone elaborate please, as some of us have no experience of Alpha (I heard i'm missing a lot but thats it!!)

[Arnelos]

In SMAC, borders extend out for a finite distance for ANY base (regardless of the time since the city was built or any base structures). Now, the distance was VERY LARGE, but if bases from two different factions competed with one another, the border would simply be the midpoint between the two sides.

Because of this, you could found a base in a forward location and have your borders cover a considerable portion of unsettled land around it... meaning others could not found bases in that area without going to war with you.

However, the other guy (or you if you're in that position) could just found a base right on the border and move the border halfway back on a single turn (since the border would move to the midpoint between the two sides).

In other words... founding brand new bases had the impact of causing drastic movements in the borders if there weren't very many bases around yet... and borders extended very far away from their bases.

In Civ3, borders typically extent only very short distances away from cities and brand new cities have zero culture and thus extend borders exceptionally little. Furthermore, border conflicts between two civs are resolved as much by the culture of each side's cities in the area as by their relative positions.

[Blademun]

SMAC is by far I thin kthe very best Civ game ever made, borders included. I just wish Smac was set to a diffrent storyline. I just really can't get into that future on Centauri deal.

But borders included, that game rocked. Civ3 dosen't even come close..mostly because it trys to hard to limit ME the player. Good for multiplayer that way..I guess..

[Rasputin]

one day i may have to try SMAC

[Ljube]

SMAC is excellent believe me.

Two problems though:

Turns are very long and MP is bug infested.

[Rasputin]

civ 3 can be slow in MP too.. pbem seems t obe the most popular ..

[CyberChrist]

Originally posted by Rasputin
pbem seems t obe the most popular ..

Whatever gave you that idea?