How to avoid cultural flipping when taking over cities

[The Moose]

Maybe there's been a thread about this before, but I've found the following helpful:
If you take over the AI's capital, his palace will (afaik) be moved to the most populous of his remaining cities. So, before taking over make sure this city is as far away from his present capital, preferably on an island half across the world (you might have to pound a few others of his cities to a population less than that). When you take over his capital, his palace get moved far away. His previous core cities are ripe with corruption, so he might be willing to hand them over to you on a silver plate (for a peace treaty).......
I've used this strategy quite a few times and it worked out for me more or less.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I've only played on lower levels, but I find that the easiest way is avoid flipping is to make war using the Powell principle: go in with overwhelming force, or don't go in at all. I've never had a city flip on me once I've garrisoned 6 state-of-the-art defensive units, even if the capital is right next door.

[aaglo]

Yep, you propably need a lot of units in the captured city (to quell resistance and keep city from flipping). Build happiness and culture; temples & libraries & marketplace (provided with trade network - road/harbor/airport).

The foreign population also affects the flipping tendency, so you could starve the native population (this is a bit slow progress).

[fittstim]

Originally posted by aaglo
Yep, you propably need a lot of units in the captured city (to quell resistance and keep city from flipping). Build happiness and culture; temples & libraries & marketplace (provided with trade network - road/harbor/airport).

The foreign population also affects the flipping tendency, so you could starve the native population (this is a bit slow progress).

Actually, having a lot of troops in the city will make it MORE LIKELY to flip. I don't know if this is a bug, a built-in cheat or what but it has been proven over and over by various people on this forum (including myself).

If you stick a lot of nice, valuable troops in a freshly captured city and it flips, reload the game, capture the city but leave the troops outside. Violá! No flip. Weird but true.

The starvation was a good suggestion and doesn't take a long time either. Just switch all the population in the city to entertainment. The city will shrink by one each turn. Just remember to reset the entertainment each turn because the AI automatically switches this when the city shrinks. Thus in five turns, a size 6 city is reduced to a size 1.

Note: this strangely doesn't work when the city is in revolt. For some reason, the revolting citizen refuses to not produce enough food to avoid the population shrinking down to nothing...

[Jaybe]

Resistors don't need food.

[fezick31]

Originally posted by aaglo
The foreign population also affects the flipping tendency, so you could starve the native population (this is a bit slow progress).

That's usually my strategy. Another is to burn the city, and then pull in a settler the same turn and rebuild it. It will grow quickly due to the old improvements, and you get a wealth of slave labor to do work or serve as bargaining chips. It's a bit Shermanesk, but it works.

[ArmaGeddin]

I play on Monarch all the time and I almost never have cities flip on me. I always rush build a temple and a library within 4 turns of capture. I always try to save as much of the population as possible. I garrison troops only until the rebelion has ended and then I leave only one infantry type unit (spearman, musketmen, ect...) as I move on to the next city I plan on taking. I spend about 4 turns on average per city per attack group. So If I have three attack groups I take three cities every 4 turns. I produce infantry units in a steady stream from my core cities to send along behind my advancing attack groups to garrison in cities along the way. And I keep a group of 4 or so workers to follow along behind each attack group to build roads as needed.

My attack goals are usualy small, I almost never take more than 6 cities in any battle before asking for peace. I attack only those cities I need for what ever my attack plan is. ie... Improving my property line. Expanding my empire. Whacking back a large civ by killing his core cities. Taking a resource citiy, ect...

[Traelin]

Re: How to avoid cultural flipping when taking over cities

Originally posted by The Moose
If you take over the AI's capital, his palace will (afaik) be moved to the most populous of his remaining cities.

Actually this isn't true. I demonstrated it in a previous game when I was the Americans. The French capital moved to a less populous city. It must be based on other factors.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

One thing Ive done in a recent game is capture cities then sell every possible improvement to raise some gold before abandoning them after my troops have healed for 1 or 2 turns.

In late game you can raise quite a lot of gold from this especially from an advanced civ.

[dac]

Never tried this before, but here is a link from Firaxis discussing exactly how city flipping is calculated:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=698322#post698322

apologies if I screwed up the link.

[player1]

Simple.

Always starve foregin pop if city is big.
If will quickly regrown later, and new pop will be of you own nationality. Addin your own worker in could be good too.

Also, buy Temple ASAP, in order to expand city culture to radius of 2.

If you are using Desp. Of Comm. then POP rush Tempe. You do two things in cost of one.

[Coracle]

Culture Flipping is absurd, unrealistic, and I will play no game with it. It happens far too randomly, and often ruins the game.

Check this thread to see how ridiculous it truly is:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58421&highlight=It+Finally+Happened

[The Pioneer]

Blah, blah, blah.... aren't you tired yet Coracle? What you should be asking yourself is "Why do I stay with the game so long, if I don't like it?"

Well I had a few captured cities flip back but the it was a rare occasion and an interesting turn of events to say the least. Conquest happens a lot slower in Civ 3 mainly because of the flipping factor. You have to secure your cities before you proceed to the next one. I usually move a lot of units in a city, usually absolete units that follow my attack. I then combine them with a couple newer defensive units.

So long....

[vmxa1]

Flipping is not much of a factor, but you can disable it anyway, what is there to cry about?

[player1]

Originally posted by Coracle
Culture Flipping is absurd, unrealistic, and I will play no game with it. It happens far too randomly, and often ruins the game.

But what that has with this topic.

Since the topic is: How to avoid cultural flipping when taking over cities?