I give up on the French!

[MyOlde]

I've played three games with the French and every time one of my cities has culture-flipped, the latest at about 1400 AD, size 12, with every darned cultural structure there is to build! It was next door, sort of, to the Americans. But what's strange is that I had a smaller city much closer to Washington and it was fine.

Is it something in the French? The commercial aspect? I know it's not the Industrious trait -- I've used that with others.

I even had courthouse in it and my Forbidden Palace!

So much as I like the French and their traits (love the cash!) I'm giving up on them. It's too much work to go that far to have that happen. Unreasonable, too.

Any thoughts?

[vondrack]

Just bad luck, MyOlde. Has nothing to do with the French themselves. Note, please, than courthouse has virtually no effect on flips, as it generates no culture and grants no anti-flip bonus either...

[alva]

I quite like the french, you just had some bad luck. Make sure you build those culture buildings sooner and more of them

[Catt]

Re: I give up on the French!

Originally posted by MyOlde
. . . . with every darned cultural structure there is to build! It was next door, sort of, to the Americans. But what's strange is that I had a smaller city much closer to Washington and it was fine.

Remember that individual city culture plays a small role in flipping chances (its more important role is keeping encroaching borders pushed out). By far the most important factor is ratio of your total culture to the enemy's total culture. Total culture leads are best achieved with early (and often) culture. A few temples pre 1000 BC can really change the dynamic of the later game, but it requires an investment in precious shields in the very early stages.

Also remember that flipping is a die role -- it can happen to big cities or little cities equally as often (assuming equal numbers of foreign citizens, foreign tiles, WLTKD effects, etc.) There is nothing intrinsic to the flipping mechanism that would make your size 12 city much less likely to flip than a smaller city, although distance to enemy palace obviously plays a role.

Catt

[cracker]

The French had nothing to do with the culture flip but the fact that the city flipped to the Americans played by the AI is big hint as to the problem.

The Forbidden Place has little impact on the probability of a flip outside of generating a few culture points.

The Americans have no culture advantage over the French. Both civs have full price temples, libraries etc.

The ratio of the distances between the target city and the two capitals is important in the flipping equation.

The two big factors in this case are probably boundary encroachment and citizen nationality.

For every square of territorial overlap that your city loses to an adjacent american city your chance of a flip goes up.

For every citizen in the city that has American nationality, the probability of a flip will go up.

Often you will be close to the probability of a flip and just will not be experienced enough to pay close attention to the happiness level of the city. When the city grows by one person and you do not have the governor managing citizen moods properly, you can fall into unhappiness and get a flip all in one turn just because you, as the leader, are a sleep at the wheel.

Open the city display screen and look closely at the territory outline to see if you have full control of the 21 square "cross shaped" city territory. You can also use this view if you have forgotten about some american citizens from when you captured the town or forgotten about the nationality of some captured American workers that your joined to the city to increase population and then "Oops, where those American defectors come from."

You have to look forward into the game and see that as you cities may be close to an enemy capital the liability of leaving that enemey core area intact goes way up as you allow that civ to progress and build cultural buildings.

[Cyclotron]

The amount of culure an individual city has actually plays no role at all, and so neither does your forbidden palace or culture improvements (except for the fact that they add to your national culture).