Culture Flip Formula

[nato]

Thanks for the answer cyclotron, I think thats how I'm feeling too. Oh all that money I spent rushing cathedrals!

About the courthouses, I am sorry to be dense about this ... I see DeepO's answer, and I of course know courthouses are primarily for corruption. I can also see there is nothing in the formula about courthouses...

But do courthouses really have zero effect on culture flipping? I could have sworn I read somewhere that they help prevent it.

So can I stop rush building courthouses in newly conquered cities too (for the purpose of stopping culture flip)?

[Catt]

Fitz, good work. Very helpful.

nato, based on the Soren Johnson thread and the earlier Dan Magaha thread in January (on the strategy page), I think courthouses do not affect culture flipping. I thought I read somewhere that they did as well, but I think what we're both misremembering is that courthouses make cities more resistant to propoganda, which, for gameplay purposes appears as a flip, but which apparently operates on a distinct formula.

Catt

[nato]

Ah propaganda, that must be it Catt. Thanks. So a courthouse is of no help for normal purposes.

Wow, so now not only do I not need to rush build cultural buildings (except maybe a temple for borders), I also don't need to rush build courthouses in newly conquered cities.

I guess I'm no more resistant to culture flipping, but it is a lot cheaper to conquer now!

[Cyclotron]

If you want to actually get use out of your captured cities, however, you will need to rush a courthouse anyways.

[Capt Dizle]

Coracle is correct. Even if the community eventually discovers the correct formula for flipping it will not justify this horrid game concept.

The idea of a province peacefully defecting to another empire (civ) is perfectly acceptable in certain circumstances. The current implementation leading to huge cities flipping and huge garrisons vanishing into thin air is simple the worst gameplay element I have ever seen in a civ game.

Logic dictates that if a city wants to flip it would have to revolt and defeat the occupying enemy troops. Firaxis could implement this by returning partisans to the game.

I also agree with Coracle that borders should not expand over enemy fortresses. A fortress and its ZOC that has any tile in the border of its civ should effectively block the expansion of other civs borders; likewise a colony should do the same irregardless of its location.

[Switch]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I also agree with Coracle that borders should not expand over enemy fortresses. A fortress and its ZOC that has any tile in the border of its civ should effectively block the expansion of other civs borders; likewise a colony should do the same irregardless of its location.

well, that would actually NOT be quite a good decision. Then people could just surround their borders with fortresses and never worry about other civ's exoansion into their territory.

[notyoueither]

Nevermind.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by SwitchMoO


well, that would actually NOT be quite a good decision. Then people could just surround their borders with fortresses and never worry about other civ's exoansion into their territory.

People shouldn't have to worry about another civ's expansion into their territory unless it is by force of arms, if they had fortified their perimeter. And this business of letting settlers come in and found a city in someone else's borders is silly.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by nato
Wow, so now not only do I not need to rush build cultural buildings (except maybe a temple for borders), I also don't need to rush build courthouses in newly conquered cities.

Well, there are special cases in which rushing every possible cultural building is still helpful. If a city flipped to your side, it is very likely that it's culture was rather low (e.g. a temple for 50 turns, meaning 100 culture). To prevent it from flipping back (which happens once in a while), building up your culture quickly can be a good thing. If, in the same example, you rushbuild a temple, library and cathedral, it only takes about 15 turns before your culture outranks the previous culture, after which there is minimal risk of flipping back.

The same holds for conquered cities early on in the game: most of the times there was only a temple inside, which makes it easy to outrank that culture fast.

Big, late game cities do not need rushbuilding after the first temple or library (if you're scientific); it's a lost case after all. There only garrison troops help, or annihilation of the enemy, or ethnic cleansing.

DeepO

[wrylachlan]

is it the number of tiles under the control of the civ you might flip to? The number of tiles controlled by any foreign civ (near a three-way border)? or the number of tiles NOT controlled by you (like if you've advanced 2 or 3 cities into a civ, the 1st city has some no-mans land around it, does this count against you)?

Also, since rushing cultural building allows you to quickly control all the tiles, I would say it is certainly not a waste. Also in the long run it helps with the total cutrure difference.

As for courthouses and happiness structures, these cause WLTKD which cuts down on flipping, so they are important too.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't happy citizens assimilate faster? Which means that happiness can cut down on the number of foreing nationals which means less culture flipping.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Tuberski
Coracle, go play Civ 2.

Or Pac-Man... oh wait, it's not realistic that pac-man can eat all those dots. For him to be able to eat all of them his total volume would have to be greater than the sum of all of them. And Ghosts! Come on folks, lets get back to reality here.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
is it the number of tiles under the control of the civ you might flip to? The number of tiles controlled by any foreign civ (near a three-way border)? or the number of tiles NOT controlled by you (like if you've advanced 2 or 3 cities into a civ, the 1st city has some no-mans land around it, does this count against you)?

It's the number of tiles within your possible city radius. The city radius is the area you could put citizens onto in your city screen (so 21 squares, apart from the city tile itself)
Further, if there are several nationalities of squares and/or citizens in your city, the chance is calculated several times, not once with the total # of citizens+squares. This effectively lowers the chance, as the garrison units you had in the city count double (or triple in case of 3 different nationalities).

And no-mans land does not count in any way... but still you'd better have a border increase just to prevent others from gaining territory, at which point it would become an isssue

DeepO

[Edited to add a paragraph]

[Fitz]

Ignoring all the comments about the realism of the flip ...

Okay, first, I'm basing all this on my interpretations of Soren's comments. If he left out anything (ie courthouses precluding flips) then I haven't included it.

The algabraeic formula is identical to the written one. Nothing removed or "simplified".

Sultan, you've made some mistakes on the troops thing, which I believe to be that you forgot to multiply T by R when rearranging your formula (equation 2 or 3 I think).

If P(robability of flip) = (((N+S)*C*H)-T)*R/D and we want 0 chance of a flip, then

0 = (((N+S)*C*H)-T)*R/D
multiply both sides by D and
0 = (((N+S)*C*H)-T)*R
divide both sides by R and
0 = ((N+S)*C*H)-T
subtract T from both sides and
T = (N+S)*C*H

So that means 1 troops be forign national or square, *2 if more culture from the otehr civ, *2 if in civil disorder, and *1/2 if in WLTKD, just as I said, to prevent a flip.



Courthouses should have no effect other than raising your overall national culture, and possibly towards exceeding another nations culture in that city. Ditto temples. Oh yeah, and eapanding your borders, which can (and frequently does in my games) change the S (squares) factor of the equation.



DeepO, sounds like you got the # of squares thing down.

However, on multiple nationalities, I am guessing it works like this:

Each troops only counts once towards negating chance of a flip. However, each chance to flip is calculated seperately. How the troops are assigned to negating the chances I wouldn't know. Probably equally, or assigned to one until equal negations to the other (ie if one has ten citizens and another 3 squares, first seven cancel the citizens).
Either that, or there is an overall chance of flip determined once, then who the flip goes to is determined next based one chances of flipping to each individually. This makes more sense to me, but don't know if this is the way Firaxis would have done it. The only problem with that is how the formula breaks down to include the distance/culture ratio portions.

Regardless, SOREN IF YOU ARE LISTENING PLEASE TELL US WHICH WAY IT WORKS. Important info.

So, as an example, lets assume you have equall culture and distance to two other civs, the eqyptians and the persians, and you just took the city from the persians. You have less culture than the persians had in this city, it has two persian citizens, three squares are covered by the eqyptians, and there are no WLTKD or disorder effects. You have 3 garrison units there.

Assuming method 1, we can guess that the garrisons will be assigned 2 to persians and 1 to egyptians. Chance of flip to persians: (2*2*1-2)*1/2000= 0.1% Chance of flip to egyptians: (3*1*1-1)*1/2000= 0.1% .

[Arrian]

Courthouses don't produce culture. I do remember reading somewhere that they reduce the chances of a flip, but that could be incorrect.

I applaud your efforts, Fitz, because this is pretty complicated stuff.

Coracle/Jimmy: this thread is specifically for the discussion of the culture flip formula, NOT A DISCUSSION OF WHETHER OR NOT INCLUDING CULTURE FLIPPING WAS A GOOD DESIGN DECISION. Your views on the second matter are well known.

-Arrian

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Fitz
However, on multiple nationalities, I am guessing it works like this:

Each troops only counts once towards negating chance of a flip. However, each chance to flip is calculated seperately. How the troops are assigned to negating the chances I wouldn't know. Probably equally, or assigned to one until equal negations to the other (ie if one has ten citizens and another 3 squares, first seven cancel the citizens).
Either that, or there is an overall chance of flip determined once, then who the flip goes to is determined next based one chances of flipping to each individually. This makes more sense to me, but don't know if this is the way Firaxis would have done it. The only problem with that is how the formula breaks down to include the distance/culture ratio portions.

Fitz, the tiles in the city radius is actually the easiest factor, well, apart from counting the foreign citizens
I just reread the Soren thread to get some clues, but there's not much info about this in it. However, I found another problem (more on that later)

My guess for using garrison is that it counts each time in full. Why would the calculations use a part of the garrison? I see no reason for it... It's easier if you just make the calculation each time, for each nationality, regardless whether there are more nationalities involved.

This would mean that, in your example the chance of flipping to the persians is 0.05%, the chance of flipping to the Egyptians is 0. Which shows that, even with only 3 garrison units and 5 foreign citizens+tiles, the total chance is very low (once every 2000 turns on average!). Compare this to 2 persian citizens + 3 persian tiles --> chance of .35%, 7 times as high.

I don't know which of us two is right, although I do like my method better If however garrisons are divided to counter different nations, they should be divided equally (meaning 1.5 for both Persia and Greece). You can't expect a quite complicated formula to dived the garrisons first, then calculate the chances, the roll the dice... it's IMO one step too much.

But now something else: as I reviewed the original thread once more, I noticed a few descrepancies:

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
The only way a city of, say, size 2 would revolt if you had 14 troops in the city was if their total culture was 3.5 times your total culture, which is pretty unlikely.

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
well, it would be more useful to see a pic (or better yet, a save...) from just before the flip. If there are tiles of Greek territory in the city radius, they count just as much as citizens. So if there were four Greek squares in your radius and four Greek citizens, you would have needed 16 combat (don't count artillery) units (assuming your overall culture is at least equal to their's) to have no chance of a flip. Of course, the probability goes down with each unit added to the city. So if you had 14 units, the probability of a flip was probably < 1%. But it happens...

I should also add that in the scenario I just outlined, if you had twice the total culture of the Greeks, you would have only needed 8 units. If you had 3 times their culture, 6 units. 4 times, 4 units...

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis
The capital factor affects how big the "die" is, if that makes sense. For example, in the case above, there are 4 greek citizens and 4 greek tiles. That equals 8, which is then doubled because Greek culture _in that city_ is greater than Roman culture in that city. So that is 16. Let's say Snoopy has 4 units and has twice as much total culture as the Greeks. That would be 16 - (4 X 2) = 8. So if we "roll" an 8 or less, the city flip.

(only Soren's quotes mentioned, look at the thread for more info)
If you look at the above quotes, you see that it doesn't fit your formula. (close, but no sigar ). My guess is that the totalCultureRatio should shift into your brackets, although I'm not sure to which place it should actually go.

Either it should become
(((N+S)*C*H)-T*R)/D
or
(((N+S)*C*H/R)-T)/D
not
(((N+S)*C*H)-T)*R/D

(with R the totalCultureRatio = yourTotalCulture / enemyTotalCulture)

Possibly it shifts between those 2 formulae depending on whether R is bigger then 1, or smaller then 1, otherwise it's the first one.

This has a grave impact on the chance, and makes R a deciding factor to calculate the number of troops to get to 0 chance. So, depending on your total culture, you should add more (or less) troops...

Conclusion: We still don't know it

Let me know if I'm right on this, or if I overlooked something...

Originally posted by Fitz
Regardless, SOREN IF YOU ARE LISTENING PLEASE TELL US WHICH WAY IT WORKS. Important info.

I couldn't agree more.

DeepO

[edited for clarity]