Promoting Culture Flip

[Hermann the Lombard]

Am I wrong, or did culture flipping get nerfed after the early Civ3? I remember my first serious game as the Iroquois, and I was able to push my border with culture (and lost a few of my own, too). It was a dynamic part of the game then. I suppose it was too easily exploited, but I didn't know how back then.

[vmxa1]

I don't recall any specific change, but I would not be surprised. I recall lots of flips in the early days.

I had chaulked that up to having been playing at low levels in those days, but the test shows that probably was not a factor.

[joncnunn]

Actually what happened was:

1. AI min distance planting a city near an oppoent's culture increased by one tile.

2. Troops made much more powerful prventing flips.

Sometime between Vanilla 1.29 & Conquests 1.0 they also added a slight relaxing if the nearby opposing city causing the culture has had 3+ expansions already.

So now the rule seems to be in Conquests 1.22 that if the opposing city has not had two or less expansions, the AI may plant a city no closer than two tiles from the cultural boundary, but if the opposing city has had three or more expansions, the AI may plant a city at the cultural boundary.

One big exception: if the AI has no cities, but has settlers, it will plant the first settler it gets toin the queue in any tile the game would actually allow, even if it declares war. I saw this in Meso American conqest when as Aztecs I took that last city belonging to the minor civ south of me, only they had a settler in route to the gaps in northern south america that was inside the next minor civ south territory at the time. They planted it causing war, and that AI soon raized the offending city to the ground, wiping out the civ.