New Idea to Prevent Losing Huge Armies to Defection

[nato]

I really dislike losing large armies to cultural defection. My earlier suggestion of using the diplomatic kick-out function on units in a defecting city got mixed reviews ... here is a new idea.

I really don't think anyone enjoys losing very large armies this way. I don't think many people enjoy the solution of garrisoning recently conquered cities with a number of units equal to its population size.

My new idea is pretty simple: if you have 3 (or maybe 4 or 5, the exact number is negotiable) military units in a city, that city cannot defect or revert to a civ that you are at war with.

Cities with less than 3 (or 4 or 5 or whatever) military units are treated normally. All cities still defect as normal to civs you are not at war with.

This way you still need garrisons for conquered cities, but they don't have to be ridiculous 12 or even 20 unit ones. Best of all, your gigantic 30 Tank + 30 Artillery legion will never just vanish.

A cool option would be to be able to enforce this no-convert-due-to-3-troops thing even to civs at peace, but eventually suffer huge happiness penalties ... this would simulate martial law. However that is just a little side idea, not really important.

Anyone like this idea? I think it would be effective, still slow down conquest, and not be impossible to program.

Thanks for reading.

[nato]

I myself am not fanatical about this sort of thing, but I just remembered that someone posted something similar to this in the thread presenting my original idea.

This is a partial quote from Andy:

IMHO the answer is to simply not allow cultural defections during times of active war.

I had forgotten about his post, but after making mine I remembered it, and felt I better credit him with the no defection while at war part.

Thanks Andy!

[GodSpawn]

I'm not convinced. You could then just stay at war with other Civs to prevent cultural assimilation. That's a huge advantage to staying at war. I suppose it depends on how easy you want to make the game.

It'd certainly make it feasible to blitzkrieg an entire civilisation - if you knew the cities wouldn't revert, you'd just keep the minimum number of units in each city that you took, and keep going until the entire civ was eradicated.

You certainly wouldn't want to stop the war after taking 20 or 30 enemy civs - they'd start reverting wholesale! Your only option would be to keep going. Fine, if that's what you'd want to do (but I wouldn't).

[Grumbold]

[double]

[Grumbold]

I think the limit should be the same irrespective of the war situation, but there needs to be a fixed AF or DF strength that will hold a city under rigid military law (so tanks or infantry work better than spearmen). Beyond that point the city might go into rebellion for a turn but absolutely cannot revert to their mother country and take all your troops with it. Personally I would set that limit at around 3 DF per pop point. So city with six foreign heads would need eighteen warriors, five muskets or two infantry to ensure it could not revolt.

On the point o seizing 20 cities, reversion chance is based partly on relative distance to capital so you could sue for peace provided you moved your capital up close. Might lose a few but certainly not all. Even better, wait until you've forced their capital onto a different island

[Soapyfrog]

My solution is to save at the end of every turn, and then if a city defects I return to the end of the last turn and move all the units out of that city.

Technically this is cheating, however I use it as a mechanism to patch what I see is a fairly serious flaw in the game. In any case, I can count the number of times a city of mine has defected on the fingers of one hand after hundreds of hours of play.

[player1]

Originally posted by Soapyfrog
My solution is to save at the end of every turn, and then if a city defects I return to the end of the last turn and move all the units out of that city.

In that case:
I usually put several units more, so city doesn't defect.
It worked always for me.

[Zachriel]

When Rome sent Marc Antony to the eastern Empire to firm up Roman control, Antony and his legions changed sides to Egypt. Then, Antony took lands from Israel and added them to Egyptian control.

When it looked like the Taliban was going to lose, many tribes changed sides to the U.S., taking their armed forces with them.

A decade ago, the Soviet Union disappeared and the original countries from which it was formed reappeared. The Soviet military is currently looking for employment in the private sector.

Once you understand how culture works in the game, it is largely preventable, and can even be used to advantage. Basically, old cities have culture, new or newly-conquered cities do not. Here is an example:

http://www.crowncity.net/civ3/Culture.htm

[Satis5d]

It seems to me that a simple and effective solution to the problem of losing troops to cultural conversion is to have all foreign troops (yours) either expelled to your capital (as spies were in civ2) or expelled to the exterior of the new civ's cultural border (as regularly happens in Civ3 while exploring).

I think this discussion has focused too much on cultural flipping when the real gripe is losing the armies. I think that realistically this is better all around. Sure, a conquered city could revert, and could do it rather quickly after being conquered. However, if the civ that previously dominated that city still has a strong army, they are likely to attack that city again.

Personally, I'd like to see my units expelled to the cultural border but make it easier for the cities to overthrow my rule. It's sort of like the partisans in Civ2; they were annoying, but they didn't completely prevent you from marching on.

Losing your military to a cultural flip is a bad gameplay feature. Even if a percentage of my military defected I would accept that, but not armies and not all of my troops!

[FNBrown]

Just raze the enemy cities as you conquer them, if you don't have the cultural rating or military force to keep them.

[cutlerd]

I just put a single military unit in a city and then station 2-3 outside of it. If it defects...who cares? You lose 1 unit (usually a wounded one) and then you retake the city with those stationed outside of it. I do this every game and it works just fine. As your front expands eventually they stop revolting.

Devin

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Satis5d
Losing your military to a cultural flip is a bad gameplay feature.

No one responded to the cultural flip of the eastern Roman Empire. Marc Antony prefered becoming an Egyptian God and partying with Cleopatra, than staying a loyal and dutiful Roman.

He took the territory and the armies with him when he defected. To recover those lost assets, Rome had to send in the Legions.

It is an irritating development, but certainly not "bad gameplay." This is Civilization, not PanzerBlitz.

[GeneralTacticus]

Antony didn't 'defect' to anyone. He fell in love with Cleopatra and since his troops were loyal to him they joined her. That is nothing to do with the idea of losing all your troops because the people they were occupying revolted. I think that in a *SUCCESFUL* revolt, you men should be either killed and/or booted out, but they should get a chance to fight first. And I like the idea of a certain amount of force preventing defection, but I think they need to give a value to the city. Maybe every two citizens is the equivalent to the second most recent draft unit, with conscript morale, and if the city revolts or you try to raze it, you have to fight them.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by GeneralTacticus
Antony didn't 'defect' to anyone. He fell in love with Cleopatra and since his troops were loyal to him they joined her. That is nothing to do with the idea of losing all your troops because the people they were occupying revolted. I think that in a *SUCCESFUL* revolt, you men should be either killed and/or booted out, but they should get a chance to fight first. And I like the idea of a certain amount of force preventing defection, but I think they need to give a value to the city. Maybe every two citizens is the equivalent to the second most recent draft unit, with conscript morale, and if the city revolts or you try to raze it, you have to fight them.

And yet it's true. Rome lost Egypt and the Legions there. There is no doubt that Antony was seduced by Egyptian culture -- they were to make him a god. He would be immortal. Antony and Cleopatra made a play for power and lost.

[nato]

Grumbold - Thats a neat idea, using the defence factors. Hard to tell if it would be easier to conquer early or later, since both defence values and populations rise. Cool idea although probably too hard to program.

Cutlerd - That is not a bad work around, however it has problems. Any rush built temples or such are destroyed. The enemy gets a free defense unit that has to be killed. Finally, if your cities are so weakly held, they can be easily retaken.

satis5d - What you're describing was my original solution. I was real happy with it since that kick out function already existed, so it shouldn't be super hard to program.

When I posted the idea, a lot of people supported it, and a lot said I just didn't know how to play Civ3, kind of like this thread I guess.

I agree though, that would be my preferred solution.

The issue seems to be that a lot of people don't see the current situation as a problem, and so feel no need for a solution. Unfortunately its probably impossible to get a good idea of how many people agree or disagree.

Zachriel - Cool website, thanks for the link!

There may be few historical examples that can be contrived to fit the current model of defection. However I think those will be the exceptions rather than the rule. I can think of few situations that really match it, since in the game large armies vanish, and that just doesn't happen in rl.

In any event, realism only matters so much. Most of history is boring minutia but I don't want to simulate that.

I want to have a harder time conquering than in Civ2, and I really really want to have to have a garrison to hold conquered land. However, once the defending army has been defeated, you should not need a force LARGER than the army it took to do that to occupy the civilians. That is silly.

Garrisoning generally falls to lower quality troops and smaller concentrations of them. The big main army is busy on the front line fighting other armies, not occupying. There are a lot more examples of that than Marc Antonys.

I think my idea of requiring 3-6 units to garrison each city is LOTS better than requiring "City Population + 1" units.

In sum, I want to have to garrison my conquests. However, I want the relation between my garrison and my conquering army to make sense, and I don't want my units to just vanish.

Thanks everyone for reading and responding.