Captured cities don't eventually get radius back

[Skanky Burns]

Its an encouragement for warmonger players. So you captured a city but the nearby cities have too much culture?

Simple solution: Take over the nearby city too. Now the first city you captured gets its tiny radius back and doesn't need to produce too much culture before it has a bigger radius. If there are no foreign cultures near your new city, your culture wins by default.

The lesson is clear. Kill everything that moves and stab the things that aren't moving, just in case.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Kill everything that moves and stab the things that aren't moving, just in case.

That's a worthy quote.

[Skanky Burns]

I'm noticing a theme in you signature quotes...

[wysiwygbill]

Apparently the time a tile has spent within a sphere of influence can mean more than the current cultural values. I guess that just goes to show - if your newly captured city is up against someone elses border then keep going, if already at war with the encroaching culture, and raze the next city. Of course, in single player you can always restore your game and try something else. :-)

Personally, I don't think it's reasonable for a city to not own at least the adjacent squares. This is particularly true since you can't ship excess food to a city with a shortage but that's another annoyance I have with Civ4.

[Drachasor]

[SIZE=1]
Personally, I don't think it's reasonable for a city to not own at least the adjacent squares. This is particularly true since you can't ship excess food to a city with a shortage but that's another annoyance I have with Civ4.

Civ IV would have been awesome if you could ship food around. Then you could truly have specialized cities--cities that feed the other cities, cities the produce, cities that research, etc.

-Drachasor

[shennessy]

Problem:
Cultural borders and national borders are one in the same. Cultural borders seem to work fine in peacetime, but during war their ability to move and consume newly aquired cities "breaks" the benefit of taking over the city.

So we have 3 options:

1. Leave it alone its balanced.
I dont have enough experiance, but my gut feel is this is not the correct option. The current model makes it more effecient to raze an ancient city than to try to control it. Taking over a new city already has a huge revolt time. Taking away all the culture seems to be over kill, and that city could easily flip to the other side even though you have many troops in it. The only way around this is to make sure you completly wipe out all cities of the opposing AI and keep only a few choice ones. You also have to make sure no other cultures are in the area because they too will consume your new land. If you are not at war with this other culture you have no option but to raze the cities.

2. It has a bug in it, and fixing that makes it balanced.
I dont think we have enough info about how its supposed to work to know if it has a problem or not.

3. Its not balanced, we need a tweak to the rules to make it so.
Assuming how its working is not a bug, I would like to see something along these lines:
Cities that previosly had at least their fat cross of area get to keep that after they are conquered and keep that until the war is over. This is the new war zone of control you get for taking out a big city.
After the revolt time is done, any culture that was in the city is cut in half and kept under the new owner, starting with the "oldest" culture. This is to prevent culture flip after your citizens have been pulled into your empire.

Late game wars suffer greatly from the "old" culture problem that was described above. I contend that atleast during wartime, culture takes a backseat to war gained ground and national borders.

[wysiwygbill]

If you give away a city then each tile next to the city goes with it. That should happen when a city comes out of revolt.

However, the tiles around the city will eventually revert back to your culture if you surround it or if it's next to a large city that you own. Neither seems particularly reasonable.

Personally I think a city should always keep it's surrounding tiles unless they are in the actual "fat cross" radius of another city.

[SirSebastian]

Originally posted by shennessy
Strange example...
The US takes over the only city in the country of Iraq. Does Iran get to take over the rest of the country because it has all the culture in the area? Dont make any sense.

Uhhh... it may not make sense to you, but there is a real possibility of this happening. For example:

- In southern Iraq, where they share the same religion as Iran, Iranian influence is strong... some would suggest scarily strong...
- In northern Iraq the Kurds have a psuedo-state. This is the very reason (IMO!!) why Turkey did not allow us to attack Iraq from their country - a re-established cultural center for Kurds in northern Iraq also extends into Turkey, greatly decreasing their cultural influence in parts of their own country. Unfortunately, because we couldn't envelope and destroy the armies of Iraq, many soldiers were... outside of the capital city when it was taken - and still remain.
- In western Iraq, the border with Syria is no longer actually a "border" with Syria... as their influence clearly extends beyond it.


The solution to the conflict in Iraq is therefore obvious: build lots of theaters or send them the next Elvis.