Preventing Culture Flipping in High Corruption Environments

[diablovision]

So I usually have the problem later in the game that I conquer an opponent's main territory that has accumulated a lot of culture and has fairly populous cities. I want to annex these cities as part of my empire, but I don't want them to culture-flip back after a few turns (or worse, after a long time).

Generally, if the cities are close enough to my capital and I am not too large, they will have a fairly low level of corruption and I can build some temples, libraries, or coloseums to start accumulating culture of my own.

However, for those cities on my outskirts, how can I effectively prevent culture flipping? Sometimes I just sell all the improvements for whatever I can get and abandon the city to found my own. But of course, this is not an option with a city that has a Great Wonder, as I'd like to keep the wonder for myself.

Sometimes I would disband units in those cities to build up quick infrastructure, but this can be costly if I disband all of my offensive units and a strategic sacrifice; it can delay subsequent wars until the next round of tech is available; slowing my overall expansion.

Are there some techniques that I can use to prevent flipping?

I have thought about the following:

1. Depopulate the cities of their former inhabitats by building lots of settlers and workers. The new population growth will be my own citizens, reducing the chance of a flip.

2. Population "bomb" them by instructing many of my native workers to join the cities, diluting the effect of foreign citizens.

I haven't tried these.

Do these work?

Are there other techniques??

[Dis]

I reduce the population by taking all workers off the land and starving them down. This is cheaper than rushing workers/settlers.

adding settlers to them might be a good idea (I have never tried it). It would be at least twice as effective as the above suggestion.

[conmcb25]

Starve them down to 1 pop, build a temple or other cultural building epending upon your Civ's aprticular attributes.

If you get that done before it flips, you have a better chance.

But it all depends upon how much more (or less culture) that CIV has.

[gunkulator]

You could always just disable cultural conversions when you start the game.

[Dis]

another thing I like to do is conquer the enemy capitol

[Dis]

Originally posted by gunkulator
You could always just disable cultural conversions when you start the game.

I never do this. Not sure why. It doesn't really factor into my game. But I think it provides a little more challenge for the human player, so I keep it in. I don't want the game to be too easy now.

[Solomwi]

If conversions were limited to non-recently conquered cities, I'd leave it on, as I think it's an interesting concept along non-hostile borders. Watching recent conquests flip every other turn, though, is just kind of like spilling a bag of marbles and trying to gather them all up. It's always a city deep in my new territory, unconnected to the parent civ and any resources, staffed with a rifleman or guerilla. The city's going to be mine again this turn or next anyway, so why bother.

[Theseus]

Starve'em.

Or, better yet, try your hand at Fascism or Communism, and rush cultural improvements like mad... it's amazing what 20+ pop can do for you.

(Nasty warmonger tip of the day: When doing this, seed the build with a captured Worker first. In my head, it goes something like "Alright people, I'm gonna shoot this piece of cr*p worker in front of y'all, so you will work that much harder for me getting these buildings I want built, until you are DEAD DEAD DEAD." It's effective. )

[Solomwi]

That's great except for the "two turns after you take it" flip.

[Dis]

Originally posted by Solomwi
That's great except for the "two turns after you take it" flip.

I've never had a flip that fast.

[Solomwi]

Man, I have, and when I had dominant culture, to boot.

[Kuciwalker]

I just rush libraries and univs.

[JimiD]

My understanding of culture flips is that adding workers and settlers does not have any impact, it is the number of non-native pops that count, not as a proportion of total. This seems to me counter intuitive, and I used to pop bomb captured cities to try and avoid flips. I guess that it is only dependant on total native pops to avoid the human player doing exactly this.

There is a better and more detailed explanation in the strategy guide links and the top of the Strategy forum, and if i could post links to it, I would.

[Tattila the Hun]

Given number of groundtroops should prevent flipping, period. Not just "lessen the chance of flipping".

Something to add to cIV...

[Dis]

Originally posted by The pirate
My understanding of culture flips is that adding workers and settlers does not have any impact, it is the number of non-native pops that count, not as a proportion of total. This seems to me counter intuitive, and I used to pop bomb captured cities to try and avoid flips. I guess that it is only dependant on total native pops to avoid the human player doing exactly this.

There is a better and more detailed explanation in the strategy guide links and the top of the Strategy forum, and if i could post links to it, I would.

settlers and workers should work. But you can't add captured enemy workers- they still retain the original nationality.