Easier to culturally acquire cities -- WHAT????

[Disk Killer]

I'm still at Chieftan so my cultural lead is immense. I'm sure it gets much worse at the higher levels, when the AI will be more competitive, however I believe the basic rules will still apply.

Take cities that enlarge your borders naturally. Don't try to spearhead into enemy territory towards his capital, and then be surprised when computer's encroaching culture captures everything back. Take cities that jut into your natural area of control.

If you must fight a large-scale war, fight equally along the entire border, so you don't jut into enemy territory too much when capturing cities. Takes a big army to accomplish this. Or you have to raze.

Force out traitorous elements by shutting down their bases of operations: The city's farms and factories. [IE starve 'em out, but this sounds more humane, I feel like I'm deporting the bad seeds in my mind]

I'll see how it goes when I hit regent.

[Dis]

war is impossible to wage successfully

funny sh!t there

this is a joke thread

try winning diety without war. I dare you (no diplomatic victory of course)

[Dis]

and you don't have to kill civilians!!!!

if you want to be a nice guy. after reistance has ended, rush build workers/settlers. This will reduce the city to size 1. and you have loyal national workers/settlers. If you want to be cheezy you can then add them back into the city you just used to rush them, and they will become your citizens. I don't do that though, it is a exploit. I will use the workers to add into my other older cities though.

[siredgar]

Starvation is a better tactic!

Cruel, but true...

Just starve the suckers down to population 1 and then move in your own settlers/workers. This, of course, is not the best idea for a large city of population 22!

[Frito]

Originally posted by Dissident
try winning diety without war. I dare you (no diplomatic victory of course)

I agree. Without early war to curve the ai expansion diety is impossible in my mind.

[Torquemada]

As posted by DiskKiller:

Force out traitorous elements by shutting down their bases of operations: The city's farms and factories. [IE starve 'em out, but this sounds more humane, I feel like I'm deporting the bad seeds in my mind]

Actually, if you think how conquest has historically proceeded, up until the late 19th century, siege warfare was the primary method of city acquisition (as opposed to mobile land/air warfare). And as a rule, this involved civilian starvation during the siege itself and civilian massacre via looting and rapine following seizure, e.g. an estimated THIRD of Germany's civilians died during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). So Disk Killer's advice is both astute game strategy and more reflective of history.

[bahoo]

Back on Subject

Yep, there is definately ways too successfully wage war... Raze and follow with settlers, exterminate, what have you.... That's not the point of my post though, I don't want strategies, I want explanation.

The question I ask, is there anyone here who actually thinks your soldiers should up and disappear when a city deposes? And if so what's the logic?

Personally I liked the Civ2 partisan way of things working. If a city wants to depose and you don't want to retreat your forces, partisans should appear and have to actually take the city.

[mtgillespie]

With regards to the idea of reducing cities to pop.1 then adding your own workers. There is a problem with this strategy. If the city has unhappiness due to the previous owners using the draft or forced labour, any workers you add will be unhappy for this reason as well!

[Comrade Tribune]

This is sooooo easy to solve:

-Never leave more than one unit in a conquered city.

-If they revolt, conquer them again. And again.

-Raze the centers of resistance: The one or two largest cities with the highest culture.

-Conquer the entire enemy civilization: No more defections!

[Dis]

why is everyone so upset over losing units when a city reverts back? How can a few guys in tanks defend against a population of over 1 million people attacking them? This is why they are lost.

It would behoove you to take steps to avoid that. And yes you can do it without killing people. Just make workers to get the city down to 1 person.

[bahoo]

Originally posted by Dissident
why is everyone so upset over losing units when a city reverts back? How can a few guys in tanks defend against a population of over 1 million people attacking them? This is why they are lost.

It would behoove you to take steps to avoid that. And yes you can do it without killing people. Just make workers to get the city down to 1 person.

If there's millions of people there that didn't want to be taken, how did the tanks take it in the first place?

If you conscript you get one unit, so I assume 1 unit of population has as many people in it as a military unit.

So say for a size 10 city, assuming they ALL were revolting, I think a half a dozen tanks and infantry could take 10 stick wielding citizens (or maybe they have guns, but even then they should at least have a chance to fight).

[Arrian]

I, too, was puzzled by the "increased chance of city defection" in the patch. I figured they meant for both the human and AI, particularly during war. Now it appears it's just a boost for the human player. Hmm. Frankly, I don't think it should be easier. I've conquered large empires, keeping most of their cities razing some, and usually have 0 or 1 city defect back, on average. It's actually pretty easy (my experience has been on Regent and Monarch levels) to keep conquered cities.

Have strong culture. Starve the heck out of the captured city, and rushbuild culture improvements asap - and make sure it's connected to your trade network so it gets your luxuries. Oh, and DO NOT put lots of offensive units in there! Keep them outside the city (out of harm's way, of course) in case of defection, and then just re-take it.

What I'm trying to say is that I've never had much problem with losing cities to the AI culturally as it is... so this may unbalance the game (in my opinion). Let's see how it works out.

-Arrian

[inca911]

Bueller, Bueller, Bueller...

This really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but I'll restate it again. Cultural reversion must be prevented militarily if the population of the city is large. Do you realistically think that the Germans in WW2 could simply capture a town, leave a tiny garrison and move on to the next town without any worries about the city? Nope. The occupation of enemy land, especially cities, requires a massive commitment of troops and resources. You *should* be limited in your conquest and you should also be forced to leave troops in the cities you capture to prevent their loss. If you want to Blitzkrieg through another civ, you must totally destroy the cities you capture and move on. It's ugly, and you lose a lot of infrastructure in the cities you just burnt down, but it means you do not have to commit troops to maintaining the peace. I have heard comments from several warmongers that they don't like to tie up their units to prevent cultural reversion of cities but they do want to keep the cities intact. Well, you can't do both of these things in the real world either. The fact that a large city that is mostly not of your citizenry revolts shouldn't be an amazing surprise. Granted that 700 years of your rule should help to prevent defections (which I hope is what they have fixed), but in the short term reversion must be dealt with via military force. I have never had a city defect to another civ, and it is simply because I use obsolete units from the unassailable heart of my empire to garrison these newly acquired cities. Yes it does drain you militarily. Yes it does bog down your war advancement some. And both of these things reflect reality and preserve a game balance much improved from Civ2 where you could capture, leave one weak unit, and move on....

[Blackadar1]

Do you realistically think that the Germans in WW2 could simply capture a town, leave a tiny garrison and move on to the next town without any worries about the city?

Actually, read your history - they did. In fact, the battle plan was BASED on this. They'd invade...say Poland and Russia. Then they'd raise conscript armies from each and let them police their own (or sometimes, each other), leaving the majority of the Wehrmacht to continue their advance. The germans didn't have huge garrisons of main-line German troops stationed in every French, Czechosolvakia, Russian and Polish city. They'd use natives, managed by German officers, to keep the existing poplulace in check.

[MrWhereItsAt]

All well and good, BUT...

the game tells me to garrison strong military units in the city to quell resisters. Now, call me crazy, but this turns me off leaving only an infantry or two in a newly conquered city. I have found, with a sufficient cultre, I can with my cavalry, cannons and riflemen (6 units in total) capture an enemy capital near my FP and quell 7 resisters in 5 turns.

How does the game work out resistance quelling? It looks to me like the more units in a city you have, the quicker the resistance disappears. In which case you stand MORE of a chance of getting away scot-free with a nice shiny city by letyting the conquering forces stay until the city gets used to their new masters - logical, I should hope.