One of my cities flipped to the AI which was miles away from my territory....

[Kampus majore]

Has anyone seen this happen:

I have a large country, mainly because I assimilated the Americans into my Apache country (I don't like the name Iroquois and Apache is more apealing). I am now building up culture and my economy. This is necessary because I am way behind in tech for a while now...

Suddenly I have one of my smaller cities flip to the Indians. WTF? They are on an island on the other side of the globe. True, their culture is very high. They have been on a large island alone, so they have been expanding like hell.....

The only reason I can think of is that they used a spy to perform a propaganda action to let it flip.

Anyway I don't think I will finish this game, because I just have discovered nationalism and medicin, while the Indians started building The Manhattan Project and the UN....

The funny thing is that I am still on number 2 on the ranking because of my large country.

I will post a sav soon.

[Tiberius]

Most likely an espionage mission.

...however, there is one thing that I don't know and always bothered me:

Looking at the city flipping formula, it is obvious that for a flip you must have either overlapping tiles (which is not your case) or foreign nationalities. Now, these foreign nationalities, can be from any different nationality than yours or must be the same nationality as the civ where the city is flipping?

If the first statement is true, then maybe your city had some americans that produced the flipping.

[miccofl]

You better expose that enemy mole before you lose any more. You should also build more culture and happiness improvements, it's next to impossible to flip a city (through espionage) once it has expanded it's borders once or twice.

[Tiberius]

Yes, try to expose the indian spy, so at least we will know what was that: espionage or plain flipping?

[Wormwood]

You have some bigger problems than that, if you are one full age behind the AI. It sounds like you're not building enough temples/libraries/univ. etc.

[Kampus majore]

Well, i did some culturebuilding, but obviously not enough and also too late. Also the Great Wonders mostly passed me by beacuse of my lack of tech....

I did have foreign nationals, but only Americans if I recall correctly. I will look into that tonight.

And to Wormwood: Yes, I have REAL problems. I have been building temples etc., but started doing that a little too late. Also the Indians are a real BIG civ. You will see that in the sav I will post soon.

Have to go now, till later!

[Traelin]

Funny, the same thing happened to me last night. I'm the leading civ in the world, but only have the 3rd-best culture. I went on a warmongering run at one point to capture most of the Wonders, and in the process took most of the Indians' cities. Well I went through the process of starving those cities down to 4-6 pop., then rush building improvements. One of the cities I took was FAR FAR away from their "new" borders and was captured a good 100 turns or so beforehand, yet it still flipped! The best way to deal with this is make sure there are no overlapping tiles (of which I had none) and make sure you have two military units for every one foreign national in that city. That'll prevent flipping, which is exactly what I did after I reloaded.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Kampus majore
I did have foreign nationals, but only Americans if I recall correctly. I will look into that tonight.

How do those americans count in the flipping formula, (given the fact that you are Apache and the civ where your city flipped is India), this is the question!

Could you post a culture chart screenshot?

[Wormwood]

In a recent game, I played as Rome, on Huge Earth Map. I controlled N and S America, Greenland, and most of Australia. I had huge culture. I had defeated Persia, in S. America, and they were culutrally right behind me. One of hte cities I captured, Persepolis, which had J.S. Bach's Cathedral, was right in the heart of S.America, garrisoned with 2 MI, surrounded by many other high culture cities, and right next to my newly moved palace one city over. And yet, it still flipped to the Persians, who had one city in "England". Sometimes, you just have to deal with these sorts of things. I promptly nuked the Persian city in "England", in "retaliation" for the offense, and sent my "honor guard" of legions to take the remains of the city. At least it made me feel better

[Mattaba]

Hey is Coracle ill? Normally he would have already posted here .

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Tiberius
...however, there is one thing that I don't know and always bothered me:

Looking at the city flipping formula, it is obvious that for a flip you must have either overlapping tiles (which is not your case) or foreign nationalities. Now, these foreign nationalities, can be from any different nationality than yours or must be the same nationality as the civ where the city is flipping?

If the first statement is true, then maybe your city had some americans that produced the flipping.

Tiberius, sorry to be late in answering. In the formula, the foreign citizens have to be from the same nationality as the country to which you are flipping. If there were a bunch of Americans inside, and a city does not overlap with the Aztecs, it will never flip to the Aztecs. That has to be caused by an espionage mission.

DeepO

[Nikolai]

I remember seeing this in my very first game of Civ3, but then the city was flipping to me! I was in some kind of World War II or III(bad boy in that game? me!), and then suddenly I got a city in the middle of the opposing civ flipping to me... I had a huge culture, but the civ was B-I-G. Naturally, I lost the city very soon. But I won the game!

[ChrisiusMaximus]

It really sucks when you lose good units in a flip,has this happened to anybody.
However revenge is usually sweet.

[sun_tzu_159]

Hi all,
I have never seen a culture flip like that.
I use culture flipping by building cities one square away from an AI city then waiting after pumping in the cultural improvements. Its a good way to take cities without causing a war.

I disagree that all the armies you have should disappear. There should be refugees which you have to take back to your CIV. Maybe a city size 8 flips and 3 pops are now other CIVs, 3 pops are your CIV who like it there. 2 Pops are then refugees, not settlers, that have to go back to one of your cities, may be attacked by other civ if they do not like you but will be close to border or you send a ship if on an island. Maybe also half the armies are saved with half health but have to do battle in enemy territory or as with refugees evacuate by ship or go to your territory.

If another civ really likes your culture you should also receive some of there population in immigration and this does not have to be only close by CIVS. Look at how the world is today, there are millions of people around the world for various reasons not living in there country of birth. This is a very important effect. If the culture flip was measured and visible you could see from the game that more people in your city are from other CIVS. It could just be a list in a drop down menu from the population in city screen. If a warning is introduced that the 'foreign' population of a city is dangerously high then you could build improvements to offset it/introduce a larger military presence.

I am a fan of culture flip but it should have more warning before it happens.

Regards
Sun_Tzu

[Tiberius]

Thanks for the answer, DeepO. Good to know that.

I guess the formula is meant to be simple, but I don't agree with this part of it. Foreign citizens should have a role, even if they are not the same nationality as the country where the city is supposed to flip.

Let me exemplify what I was thinking:
If the turks took a greek city, in civ3 the city wouldn't have any possibility to flip to the romans (let's presume we don't have overlapping tiles), while in "reality" the citizens would prefer to join the Roman Empire (a civ from the same cultural block) instead of the Ottoman rule, don't you think?

Maybe in this case 2 foreigners should count as 1 foreign citizen from the current formula, so there would be a chance for flipping, even if a small one.