Unbelievable Culture flipping

[Kryten]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I am supremely confident Firaxis will have this awful problem fixed for PTW. The hue and outcry heard regarding the flippin flip so far would be magnified by a factor of 10 if allowed to go multiplayer.

No one in their right mind would invest time in a MP game only to see it decided not by player skill but by the arcane and inane vagarities of some barely comprehensible, illogical mathematical goobledeegook.

Military units do not go poof.

Please forgive me if I'm wrong Jimmytrick, but you seem to give the impression that the only way to win a multiplayer game is by total military conquest of the world. Is it not possible to win a MP game by one of the various other methods that Civ3 offers, and 'flips' could be used by shrewd players to gain that alternative victory (please feel free to correct me if I've misinterpreted you ).

But I do have a confession. As I posted in the "Decline & Fall of Empires" thread, for the last 6 months I have been a stern supporter of 'culture-flipping' and have argued tooth 'n nail trying to defend it. But I have finally realised that it is flawed, unhistorical, unrealistic, needs to be improved, and is a TOTALLY ARTIFICAL mechanism added to the game for play balance purposes only that has no equivalent in the real world, at least not in its present form (sorry Zachriel ). I realised that I was only defending it beause it's in the game! If some other mechanism had been included then I would probably be defending that instead. The basic idea was good, but the execution of vanishing garrisons, instant 'flips', no warning, and joining the nearest superpower does not fit what happens in the reality, or makes good gameplay.
I am not against 'flips', but I'd like them to be more representative of the events that happen in the real world and less 'artificially created for game balance purposes'.

You could say that I have been "seduced by the dark side"!

[notyoueither]

I hope they leave flipping in and allow some of the garrison to survive and escape to your capital.

Flipping itself adds dimension to the game. For me it's only the disappearing armies that need to go.

[YuMMz]

Zachriel: Thanks for your replies, I still disagree that those 8 egyptian citizens who are way behind on the technological ladder could overrun my infantry and tanks. I decided to do a test and move as many units as I could easily do into the town. I ended up with 20 more tanks in New York for a total of 28 units. New York did not flip, which surprised me, I figured those 8 Egyptians would have no problem killing another 20 untis. I'm going to load and see exactly how many I need to stop the flip. I guess I can work around this culture flipping but I would still like a option to turn the damn thing off for us players who don't like the simplified code that determines whether the town flips are not.

Solver: "1. What do you say to that it's players' skills who determine can they build much culture, while also attending to other needs?"

Cultural building is a pretty decent part of my game and my culture level is usually the highest are second highest. In this situation the Egyptians RARELY built anything cultural. They took some Russian cities early game and held them for over half the game (approx. 90-120 turns and the cultural border around these cities never expanded so in 90+ turns they never built a temple in these cities. Yet somehow New York is awed by their culture? What culture? My culture lvl has to be 5x theirs. So having a good culture lvl doesn't mean much. Firaxis seems to place alot of the flipping chance into Capital distance, which is amazing since it is IMPOSSIBLE to destroy a civs capital until you destroy the civ itself..... Or you can just garrison 20-25 units per city, which would make it pretty hard to keep the war advancing.

"2. Would it be all right if the military units also flipped to the owner, with the city."

It would be alright if some of your forces escape to your nearest city. The problem I think firaxis has with this is it would be too easy just to remarch those forces and retake the city. But they could do something like if a 8 pop city revolt you get 4 defensive units and the original owner has 75% of his force retreat to his nearest town, maybe even 50%. This would make it still a reasonalbe challenge to retake and the owner would not lose all his units unjustly. The military units flipping would be 10x worse than it is now, unless the enemy flipped the city using subversion there is no logical explanation why your military units would suddenly decide to join the enemy who just recently killed their comrades.

[DeepO]

Before you go out experimenting yourself how many units you need, check out the Culture Flip Formula thread. It contains a precise equation how many troops you'll need (which can be huge in certain situations!), plus other tactics on how to counter flipping (on page 3).

Sorry to be advertising my own writing again, but somehow it seems easier to just point people to this thread instead of answering the same question over and over again

DeepO

PS: I agree that the new patch should contain an adaptation of the flipping thing, somehow changing the vanishing troops, but if Firaxis decides to cut the feature completely I'm going to launch a spamwar similar to what flip-haters have going now. Culture is one of the best additions to Civ3, and without flipping there wouldn't be a point in being good at it. Give builders a chance to grow too!

[Coracle]

Originally posted by DeepO . . .
Culture Flip Formula thread. . .
PS: I agree that the new patch should contain an adaptation of the flipping thing, somehow changing the vanishing troops, but if Firaxis decides to cut the feature completely I'm going to launch a spamwar similar to what flip-haters have going now. Culture is one of the best additions to Civ3, and without flipping there wouldn't be a point in being good at it. Give builders a chance to grow too!

First of all, we should NEVER have to bore ourselves with having to figure out a tedious "Culture Flip Formula" for even a single city, let alone many.

EVERY city should supply AUTOMATIC WARNINGS telling us a flip is possible, or likely. We get Treasury warnings when it is low, so do the same for the CF nonsense. It is entirely logical to assume your local governor would have some idea if such a defection is become too likely.

NOTE: "Culture", and "culture flipping", are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

Culture is fine if what it does is create a more stable and productive civilization, and perhaps make a nearby civilization jealous and less happy. Culture is fine for determing some borders is open terrain, or for having more Diplomatic influence.

But CITY borders flipping over some other civ's garrisoned fortress and resource is ridiculous, as is blaming the victim of that flip forever for the war that results.

Cities that have been part of one civ for MILLENNIA suddenly switiching civs is ridiculous.

Cities or towns flipping with a gigantic enemy army two tiles away ready to exterminate them is preposterous.

Disappearing garrisons being unable to knock off some population points or even put flipping cities in disorder is a freaking joke.

The "proximity to the capital" of the flipping city is another joke as the enemy capital JUMPS FROM TOWN TO TOWN every time you capture that capital. Unlike Civ 2, capturing the real capital city no longer matters.

Razing cities (part of the warped braindead CF phenomenon) is absurd in concept, and promotes genocide. A single damaged unit can turn a city of millions instantly into grassland, kill everyone, and process all the corpses (into pet food?). What a laugh.

No one ever asked for this Flipping crap in five years of forum discussions after Civ 2 came out. What we did ask for we didn't get. What we EXPECTED (scenario building; the Multi Cheat function) we also didn't get. MP too.

I want to be able to toggle off this CF garbage. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does it screws up an entire long game. Thank god for autosave.

[DeepO]

Coracle, I don't know why I'm even replying, I know you won't (or at least not with decent arguments). But here goes nothing:

You do not have to figure out the formula for every city, you do not have to calculate anything. The culture formula thread also contains general guidelines, but avoids such general rules of thumb as "use as much troops as there are foreign citizens and you'll be okay" which only work in general cases.

The point of my post was that people should not start experimenting how many troops they need, as it is very hard to observe (adding or subtracting one troop will chance the flip chance, so the next result will be different due to a different random seed). There is a confirmed formula which does calculate it, if people are interested in precise numbers.

Culture and Culture flipping indeed are very separate things, in that one is a abstract concept, while the other is an abstract consequence of it. There would be no point whatsoever if borders wouldn't flip, this means that he who has the first cultural expanding knows his borders are fixed. Instead, flipping borders are now (at least in my games) incentives to do better in my city that in the opposite city, rushing culture so that piece of land becomes mine again.

Further, the aggresive aspect of culture is totally ignored by you, which I presume comes from being a warmonger without the patience to play with culture. I can't count the times I succeeded in getting that border-resource without having to go to war for it, just because I tried to use CF in my advantage. True, it is not so immediate as going to war (in which you know within a few turns whether you win or not), but it remains a nice, good aspect of the game (at least in my opinion). Plus, it gives a different option to gain territory without having to go to war, which, as a builder, is one of the best improvements over past games.

I'm not going to discuss with you whether flipping is historically accurate or not, it has been discussed to death, plus it doesn't matter much.

What auto-warning is concerned: that more or less is a good suggestion. I'd like it, however I can't understand why you would. So far, a lot of your arguments are based on "we should NEVER have to bore ourselves with having to figure out a tedious "Culture Flip Formula"", so why would you need an exact number if you can't reason with it? I hated the decision to keep things abstract, the culture flip formula should have been included in the manual (under a section 'advanced' so that casual players aren't bored to death), like many other more technical things. There should be some option to check the flippercentage, or some warning. There should be battle statistics (like SMAC), which gave strength according to terrain. All these things were left out to make the game more accesible, and I don't like it. But I understand it, if only to avoid posts like 'my flippercentage was below 1% and the city flipped!'

So, when you assess your chance of winning a battle, you not only look at the ADM of the two units, but also to terrain, position, fortified or not. Why would it be so difficult to do the same with culture flipping? There are also a small number of factors involved, which can be easily assessed (except for the total culture ratio, but at least you have an idea), if you more or less know how it works you will never have unexpected surprises. And you don't need to calculate anything either, you don't calculate battle statistics, do you?

Last: you toned down your rant of 'capital distance is everything for flipping', and changed it to 'culture is everything'. You might want to check that thread again, you should change it to 'happiness is everything'. Culture may be the biggest overall factor, happiness is the most immediate cause and solution to flipping problems. Digging into a (simple) formula does have it's advantages, doesn't it

DeepO

[Phil_de_geezer]

I don't mind culture flipping during peacetime as this represents the spread of a certain culture but flipping during a war is daft. A city should only be able to flip back during a war IF the city it left without a garrison.

Another problem with culture is that it tends to benefit larger civs. A large civ with temples in all its cities would be likely to have a better culture rating than a small civ with cathedrals, libraries and universities. I think this is a bit odd as i initially thought culture was intended to help small civs. In this respect i believe culture flipping should be more localised.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Phil_de_geezer
I don't mind culture flipping during peacetime as this represents the spread of a certain culture but flipping during a war is daft. A city should only be able to flip back during a war IF the city it left without a garrison.

If it is left with too small a garrison, it may flip. If there is a large enough garrison, it won't.

[Phil_de_geezer]

If there is a large enough garrison, it won't.

I know the formula and the fact is you need a lot of units to prevent a flip in most cases. It should only be one as i can't imagine any number of civilians overcoming a military unit.

[Capt Dizle]

Military units do not go poof. They might be driven out of hostile territory, but they do not go poof.

I am sure that tens of thousands of gamers have put Civ3 back on the shelf after losing multiple military units to the idiotic poof.

Stop the insanity Jeff.

[Solver]

Tens of thousands? I've lost about two dozen units in my civ games

You're really becoming a sick troll.

[Capt Dizle]

Tens of thousands of gamers, not units. And that is my opinion.

I am not calling you names Solver, why are you calling me names?

[Zachriel]

-ignore-

[Solver]

I'm not namecalling you, I was just refering to you posting about culture flips in some threads not relevant to it. Just look... why do you have to do it everywhere? OK, if you think that flipping ruins the game completely and utterly, post about it in the relevant threads.

Also, I can't imagine tens of thousands of gamers put it back. Do you really think everyone encounters 20 flips a game? I don't even encounter a flip each game I play, and when I do, this is usually in my favor.

[Cyclotron]

jt, let's at least get straight facts before we say things like what you just said. It bothers me that you are "sure" about a figure you have no informaiton about, have never attempted to find, and have no means of knowing. The next time you are "sure," see that you really are...