Rant: When will Firaxis do something about Culture Flipping

[notyoueither]

I set all pop to specialist and starve the sucker down to 1 pop. Also rush buying workers helps bring it down quick, and is not so blood-thirsty.

I have yet to loose a city with all pop as specialist and only 1 or 2 unit garrison.

Has anybody else?

[Theseus]

Agreed... keep all citizens as entertainers, starve down, pop rush like Stalin... no flips.

[Tiberius]

I don't want to give advices what to do to prevent flippings, there are plenty of them already. I'd like only to say a few words about why I think flipping it's OK and maybe not perfectly, but well done.

CF it is a tool, a help for peaceful players (builders) against warmongerers. You must admit that a disappearing army is a big help So, frustrating as it is, the "vanishing units" phenomenon is there for gamebalance purposes.

... but I do not accept the fact that all units are gone. I do not even know what happened to them. They did not die (or did I see a death animation: NO) they just disappeared, as if they were never built.

They were assimilated by a higher culture. They liked so much the local music, theater and library (and girls, of course ) that they decided to desert.

This is only my opinion, of course.

[Jaybe]

Losing a large garrison to a flip is a risk you take. It may prevent the flip or they may all be lost if it flips. It is also a risk to rebase loads of bombers there so they can strike the next target. Most of the time I take these risks I am successful. On occasion, they have all gone "poof"! Such surprises/tragedies enhance the game, they do not detract from it.

If you are ahead in culture, then the risk is less but it is still there. Overall, it is the risk of CIVILIZATION.

PTW will have the option to turn CF off (I would never do that) and airbases. If airbases go poof if they are in enemy borders, then CF will still be a threat to them.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Theseus
Agreed... keep all citizens as entertainers, starve down, pop rush like Stalin... no flips.

Pop rush? We love our people! We are Caesar. We pay gold...

[Grumbold]

I think the chances of peacetime culture flipping works fine as it is now, with the exception of the loss of troops. During wartime I find it bizarre that cities should attempt to revolt independently of each other and irrespective of the war situation, but accept it is a limitation of the generalised nature of Civ.

In my "perfect" civ game the quality of the unit would count, so mech inf could suppress far more effectively than warriors or pikemen. It simply seems absurd that you need more troops to hold a single city than it would take to eradicate the whole nation should you elect to raze instead. In any attempted rebellion you would be give some options :

- ruthlessly suppress the population (pop loss, atrocity, chance for significant military losses if overwhelmed, may be vetoed by republic/democracy)
- attempt to suppress but retreat if outmatched (chance of unit damage/loss, may hold or lose city)
- retreat immediately (little damage to military, automatically lose city)

[SpencerH]

I've only had one absurd (peacetime) flip of one of my cities in my recent games so its not such a problem for me.

I usually keep conquered cities on full entertainer status until suitably pacified and I have the money to keep em.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
First off, you should have known better. Why would you put that many units in their just conquered capital? I usually put my wounded units in to heal and one unit to hold it and move on. If it flips then no great loss.

Exactly my thoughts. We've all had our first bad experience with placing a ton of our offense in another Civ's conquered city. If this is your first time having it happened and you haven't had a chance to read the culture flipping debates on this board, then chalk it up as a lesson learned. If you knew about it but decided not to heed the possibility of a flip, then shame on you.

I still agree that all the troops in a city shouldn't disappear, but either Firaxis is going to change it or they aren't.