Culture Flipping:

[DeepO]

Maybe... but culture flipping will always be an abstraction of real life. I wouldn't make it more complex as it is now. Only the 'vanishing' of troops might be something to change, as too many players find it offensive. I, however, don't mind it at all.

DeepO

[Colonel D.]

Its about Political Control

As I have posted recently in another forum, the biggest problem with cities switching sides is that there is utterly no warning. Moreover, what happens to my troops in the city? Did they all just throw down their arms and go home?

As far as I'm concerned a rebellion should require a fight for political control. If I lose that fight, fine. Let the other Civ gain control of the city. But, at least give the player a chance to respond!

IMHO Civ 3 really blew it when they did away with guerrillas. How I think ANY rebellion should occur -- to include the unrest during anarchy when you're changing governments -- is as follows:

Firstly, the rebellion should begin with a city having its population slide into resistance. The more resisters, the greater chance of rebellion. If resisters are not put down over a given period of time -- say two turns -- then each resister should create one, two, or three guerrilla units. The number of guerrila units would be dependent of serveral variables, including: 1) are the resistors receiving outside help from another civ? 2) whether or not there is a police station in the city, 3) how many garrison troops are there, and 4) the degree to which the city's culture is differnt from the controlling player.

Once the guerrilla units appear, they would have the option of attacking the occupying garrison -- in which case, if they won, they'd gain control of the city, OR the guerrillas could move towards friendly territory and join forces with their home culture.

Each time a resister creates a guerrilla unit, that population point would be removed from the city. Thus, the entire population of a city could "vote with its feet" and move away. Guerrilla units would be the only military units capable of adding themselves as population points to a friendly city.

Just a thought. Anyone out there agree?

Colonel D.

[Willem]

I think the most common complaint is that happens suddenly without warning. Now I certainly can't see a notice that x city will flip in y turrns, but there should at least be some unrest etc. to indicate beforehand that there's a problem. Maybe even a series of revolts before the actual event, which one by one destroys the units garrisoned in the city.

[miccofl]

What does it mean by 'espionage feature" and "have enough money'? Culture flipping involves none of these things!

The espionage feature I refer to is: “Use Spy - Initiate Propaganda – select a city to in which to launch a propaganda campaign. It requires the small wonder Intelligence Agency. It costs over 100 gold per pop in a city to perform this mission; it can take up to six tries to flip the city. (If it hasn’t flipped by the sixth try – it wont unless you flip all of the cities around it in which case, try again.) When a civ changes government and descends into anarchy, it’s time to get that spy working. Flip as many of the cities as you can before it changes into a more resistant form of government, but it can cost 20-30,000 gold or more to flip a modest size civ. Yeah, that’s right, flip the whole civ – you know your culture kicks butt when you can flip a capitol.

[Papa Chubby]

It sounds like a pretty good compromise, but there are still some unresolved issues. Like one of the things that makes guerrella warfare so hard to cope with for conventional forces. Is the difficulty in which is associatied with recognising the fighters from the commoner. These two parts seem to be an integrated part of the community during war, and very hard to discern one from the other.

[reefer addict]

[QUOTE]
A better way to work it would be to allow people immigraiting to culturally & economicly superior countries and for cities to rebell and not simply flip

this is how i would have like to see culture used in the game, but its not and i can deal with it.

when i invade a civ intent on taking there cities, i know there will be resistance.if i take a city near there capitol, i dont leave my whole invasion force there. i move right to the capitol and try to take out the main culture producing city they have. if you cant take out there capitol, chances are you will lose cities to a flip. in the begining i lost many cities to flips, now i only lose them if im careless or biting off more than i can chew.

its too bad that people here cant just discuss differant opinions without regressing back to a 3rd grade mentality of "if you dont agree,your just stupid".

[Colonel D.]

Guerrillas and terrorists and spies -- Oh My!

Pappa Chubby,

I agree that it is often a problem for conventional forces to identify guerrillas, so your point is well-taken. As I have waxed prolific in another Civ forum, however, the whole problem with Civ 3 is the entire unconventional and espionage concept is a HUGE devloution from what was so well-done in Civ 2.

Here's what I'd do to fix the situation. Firstly, give me back my diplomats and spies. I want to be able to move my spies and have them be able to "infiltrate" cities and cause all sorts of mischief as in Civ 2. How much more effective would these spies be now that we havethe concept of culture in the game?

I see spies as being instruments to foment or enhance resistance and rebellion in a city. While it is not a given that a spy would successfully infiltrate a city [see my counterintelligence ideas below] if the spy does successfully "infiltrate" the city the city popup screen appears -- although each of its fields of information would be blank. Once here, the spy may gather intelligence (clicking on a field tol reveal what's there -- i.e., all city improvements or the population happiness, for example).

Once a field is revealed the spy may simply leave with that information, or attempt to do more -- at greater risk, of course. In terms of fomenting rebellion, the spy would have to risk being caught while contacting a population point. The more happy the population point, the higher the risk of being caught. Thus, if there are members of the population already in resistance, they would rarely turn in the spy.

Once contact is made with one of the population points a dialogue box would appear with a range of options. The low end would be to move that population point from content to unhappy, or unhappy to resistance -- reflecting agitation and propaganda efforts.

A more risky option would be to seek to get that population point to perform sabotage in the square in which it works -- destroying any tile improvements there. Still another option would be to plant an arms cache there -- (see guerrilla units below).

If any resistors are already in the city, the spy would have several other options available to it. Firstly, the spy could attempt to recruit a terrorist cell. That cell would appear as a unit adjacent to the city (and would only be able to move within the area controlled by that city). The terrorist unit would only be visible to a spy or specialized military/security units. The terrorist unit would be able to perform bombardment missions on its own or any other square controlled by the city. Attacking and destroying a terrorist unit will risk pushing the population point that created it into full rebellion -- a point deeper than resistance.

Rebellion would be yet another option for the spy, albeit one that is very risky. If successful, the rebelling population point would be removed from the city and one, two or three guerrilla units would be created. The number of units created would be a factor of the level of city security (a minus factor) and the number of arms caches available ( a positive factor).

Guerrillas operate as any other conventional unit would EXCEPT they would have the option to retreat after any single round of combat. Moreover, they would never pay any movement penalties for any terrain they moved through or over. Because guerrillas are part of the people, each time a guerrilla unit is attacked there is a chance more people will move from content to unhappy or from unhappy to resistance.

Guerrillas would have an additional defensive bonus in forests, jungles, and swamps and they would be able to be added as a population point to any city of the nation supporting it -- if they could get to those cities. The Guerrillas would have a very low offensive capability, however.

Counterintelligence capability would be the principal defense against spies. Firstly, friendly spies in a city would each have a chance to detect and attack any enemy spy seeking to infiltrate that city. These friendly spies would have their capabilities enhanced by having a police station in the city. This attack would be as normal combat is resolved between conventional military units. [Could play a James Bond theme song during the exchange of pistol shots!] Secondly, spies could attempt to uncover arms caches by interrogating a population point. Each interrogation runs the risk of further alienating/angering that population point, but may uncover an arms cache -- which would automatically be destroyed if/when found.

Spies could also attempt to assassinate the governor. If successful, the probability of a city going into rebellion would increase dramatically -- with each resistor moving into open rebellion and guerrillas poping up everywhere. Or a spy could simply attempt to perform the old sabotage mission herself -- blowing up a city improvement, construction project, and so on.

Also in another thread I mentioned the ability of spies performing lasing missions for stealth bombers -- increasing the probability the bomb(s) will not miss.

As you can see, there is much, much more that could be done with this. Bottom Line is: a city never simply flips to a new owner, but goes into rebellion and is more susceptible to being conquered by conventional or unconventional means.

Colonel D.

[Ming]

Venger and Coracle have both been suspended three days for throwing around personal insults.

Enough of this crap. It is ok to agree or disagree with the value of "Culture Flipping"... but that is no reason to start a flame war. Both sides have valid point of views.

So stay on topic, and stop with the insults...

[Willem]

Re: Guerrillas and terrorists and spies -- Oh My!

Originally posted by Colonel D.
Pappa Chubby,

Here's what I'd do to fix the situation. Firstly, give me back my diplomats and spies. I want to be able to move my spies and have them be able to "infiltrate" cities and cause all sorts of mischief as in Civ 2. How much more effective would these spies be now that we havethe concept of culture in the game?

Obviously you haven't played Alpha Centauri. It became pretty ridiculous seeing half a dozen or more AI spies infiltrate my cities, and getting nothing for all that production effort than basic information.

[GI Josh]

Zouave is Coracle . . . is also Venger? If not, how is it possible for there two be two such unique styles of . . . argument?

CF is a great concept - needs some slight tweaks. It's the "suddenness" of the flip that really unnerves people. Should be a 1-3 turn intermediate phase of civil disorder, during which time for each resisting citizen, there is a chance of the following: produce guerilla (unit with high defense, explorer type mvmt, low offense, invisible flag); destroy city improvements; destroy tile improvements; destroy/flip a military unit within the 21 square city radius (not just within the actual city). After at least one turn - during which you get messages like "Revolting citizens in Satsuma attacked our infantry!" or "Guerrilla acitivity near New York!" - the city can then flip and the remaining garrison is destroyed. Take away the suddenness, which is what makes it seem arbitrary, and I think even Coracle/Zouave/Venger would not object to it.

[Iskandar Reza]

OT:My theory - Zouave is Venger. Coracle is his experimental bot.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Iskandar Reza
OT:My theory - Zouave is Venger. Coracle is his experimental bot.

Whatever...

They're all annoying IMO. And if more people would ignore them like I do, maybe they'll just go away. All they're doing is looking for a soapbox to jump on. Don't give them the satisfaction, and they'll have to find some other way to get people to notice them.

I kind of feel sorry for them really, along with a number of other ranters that have come and gone around here. They try so hard to get some recognition, but their tactics makes people want to shut them out.

[Ming]

Uhhhh... what did I say about sticking to the topic

[N. Machiavelli]

Sadly, whenever there is even a bit of controversy, Venger and/or Coracle inevitably *become* the topic.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Ming
Uhhhh... what did I say about sticking to the topic

What do you mean, when talking about CF, surely talking about Coracle is on topic, no? Without him this thread is about to die... It is not really the first of its kind, these seem to come in bursts... one guy starts it off, another wants to give some reason why he was wrong, Coracle jumps in and flames them all, and all of a sudden there are 50 more responses and 5 more threads on the same thing.

Everybody has given his opinion at least a few times already, this is just repeating arguments. This was a relatively good thread (see? I'm already talking in the past tense here ), as we could see one of Coracle's examples.. now he's gone, and the topic has gone with him.

On topic again (as much as this is possible): Go Borg!

DeepO