The CIV3 FAQ

[Balazs]

Hi!

I have quite an interesting (or rather disturbing) problem:

I played a lot with C3C about a half year ago and it runned all OK. Then I returned playing Civ2, and now my Conquest didn't run! (I guess not because of civ2).
The autorun starts, the Atari intro runs, than instead of the menu there's a black screen. I think the program itself is running, I can hear the music and I can quit with 'ESC'. Reinstall doesn't help...

Has anybody had the same problem? Or rather the solution?

[Solomwi]

Bruce, that's not a bad primer on it, and I'd recommend everybody get familiar with, if not the actual formula, the variables and how they affect the formula result. This is the calculator thread I was speaking of.

Eddie, more likely they had foreign citizens in them than a spy.

[Napalm Eddie]

I bet my cities had a spy in them. Never experianced the AI using them at all. I've just got done playing through all the Conquests so this is my first full game in a long time.

[BruceTheStupid]

Originally posted by Solomwi
either here or at CFC, there's a very handy flip calculator.....

For others, I don't think this is what Solomwi was referring to exactly, but it's useful for those with an inclination for complex algebra:-
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3faq.shtml#culture
(scroll to near the bottom of the page and look under the "Culture and related questions" heading, and "What is culture flipping (CF)?" question).

This equation purportedly came from Sorenson who wrote this section of the game code, and confirms basically what Solomwi was saying, in that you must have either foreigners in the city, or city radius tiles within your culture border (or both), otherwise your chance of flipping another city is always zero.

[DrSpike]

To provide an example the chance of flipping in a city equidistant from both capitals with 3 squares under your control when you have twice as much culture and the city is insufficiently garrisoned and there is no riot/wltkd is 0.3% per turn.

Simple.

[Solomwi]

I've played once or twice.

All it takes is one or the other, foreign citizens or foreign tiles, not both. I wish I had the link handy, but either here or at CFC, there's a very handy flip calculator, which will give you the percentage chance of a particular city flipping in 1, 10 or 100 turns.

[BruceTheStupid]

Excellent, Solomwi, thanks - from your certainty, I guess you have played the game more than Napalm Eddie and I.

One point of clarification though, you said that if the AI city has none of my citizens and no radius tiles in my borders, the chance of a flip is zero. What if I have one but not the other - do I still have a chance if I've got no citizens in their city, but radius overlap, or vice-versa?

[Solomwi]

1. A city has to have either foreign citizens or tiles under foreign control to flip. So, if the AI city has none of your citizens and no radius tiles in your borders, yes, no matter how superior your culture is, the chance of it flipping is zero.

2. The first priority is distance from the city, or "ring". If the contested square is in your second ring (outer ring of city radius), and the AI's first ring (next to the city), the AI city gets it, regardless of culture. If the tile is in both your second rings, or both your first rings, the city with the higher culture gets it. If the culture is equal, the older city gets it. So yes, your expansion can push AI borders back, but not to the point that you claim a tile that is closer to their city than yours and within their unimpeded cultural radius, by which I mean what their radius would be with no other cities around.

3. Captured GW's never give culture to a civ that didn't build them.

[BruceTheStupid]

I could understand isolated cities flipping if they had been captured previously and still had foreign citizens in them (I've had this happen), or if the other civ had planted spies and you experienced a flip because of propaganda (you'd have to go back to a pre-flip saved game and try exposing a spy to see if they had one in that city). However, if you definitely had isolated cities flip on you with no pressing borders, no overlapped city squares, no foreign citizens and no spies undertaking propaganda, I'd be interested to get confirmation on that.

Alternatively, post me a saved game from a couple of turns prior to when the flip happened, and I can have a look myself........

[Napalm Eddie]

Yeah, I took a bit to warm to Civ 3 as well. Civ 2 was just so well made, I didn't want to change. But I did and I'm glad now. As for your questions, here's my best answers:

Q1: A city could be completely isolated from another civ and it could switch. I'm experianceing that in my current game. Very annoying. I don't know why some cities will switch even when they don't share a border. My solution to the problem: smash the "cultured" civ.

Q2: Your civ's borders can push another civ's back. As far as I know your culture has to be greater than theirs for such a thing to happen. It is possible!!!

Q3: Don't know about this one. It may never or it may just take many turns. I would assume they would produce culture when most of the people in the city are of your civ and not the enemies.

Hope that helps

[BruceTheStupid]

I've been a die hard Civver for toooo many years, and have begun playing CIVIII again after a considerable lapse of time, because originally I was quite disillusioned with the game experience. However, I've come back to it and am getting rather engrossed (divorce number 2 on the way?) although I'm still relatively green as regards the nuances. I've picked up numerous tips from the forums, but I have 3 queries about Culture/"culture-flipping", that I can't seem to find answers to (I have the original game, patch 1.29f);


Q1: If one factor in culture flipping is how many of the AI city's possible 21 "production" squares are within your cultural borders, does this mean that if this number is zero, the percentage chance of flipping is always 0% regardless of how much cultural superiority you have over the other Civ?

Q2: What happens when your city's cultural influence reaches the point where your borders would normally expand, but the border is already butting up against the border of another Civ? If your culture is superior to that of the other Civ, does their cultural border get pushed back? If so, this would seem to increase the odds of a culture flip, but I've never seen borders being pushed back, so I'm not sure this happens (in the real world, I would have thought this would be an appropriate effect).

Q3: Could someone explain when/if/under what conditions a captured Great Wonder begins to produce culture for your Civ, or does it never give you any additional culture points? I have just captured 2 cities with GW's and neither appear to be getting any culture points from them (There was an earlier post on this but I'm afraid I didn't understand the answer) .

[BruceTheStupid]

Duplicate post

[Rommel2D]

In Conquests V1.22, the option says "Civ-Content" on the main menu. Not sure if that's what it was called in the earlier versions, but it was there...

[Napalm Eddie]

Ok, how do I load a scenario?


Ok, I downloaded a scenario from this site. I want to play it. How do I do that? Civ 2 had a load scenario option, does Civ 3?

[playshogi]

Will you be able to do gpt deals in the future if you buy a tech from an AI for gpt and that AI is eliminated by another AI before you finish paying?