Cities reverting to AI... (RANT)

[Grim Legacy]

The point:

A) My cities, conquered or not, revert to the AI too easily. The rate of reversion is, in light of my efforts, frustratingly high.

B) Actions to prevent reversion do *not* have any effect. Reversion seems to be pre-determined at a given turn, despite alleged 'anti-reversion' actions by the human player.

The case:

Game 1) - Emperor, Large.

I am second in the Histograph, the Russians surpass me by 40%. I engage in a massive war, destroying 4/5 of the Russian civ. The war is on 1 continent (mine) only. Between me and the remaining Russian cities, a wasteland is filled by small temple-bought cities of mine. Below that lies Moscow and Kiev (both have wonders).

I take these cities. Moscow is size 43, 20-odd resisters. I rush in 25 units. I starve the population, railroad is connected to my lands, I rush a settler to reduce the population. End of turn. I rush another settler, move in 10 more units. End of turn. City reverts.

I travel back in time and this time land a lenghty and painful barrage on Moscow to kill the offending population. I take the city at size 19. This time I manage to retain the city longer. I starve it down to size 4 (2 russian, 1 iroquois, 1 persian, LOL don't ask the AI did that) and built a rushed temple. I rush a library after about 7 turns. In the size 4 city, 12 troops are stationed. The city reverts.

Once more I travel back in time (only 5 years this time). I rush the library 1 turn earlier. I move in another 10 troops. The city reverts.

Note that at the same time, the lame persians and babylonians manage to retain 7 russian cities, while having a much lower culture than I have. Doh!

Game 2) - Deity, Large

I am in the earliest stages of the game, all my energies focused on building settlers as efficiently as possible so that I can colonize the land before the AI (Russians and Germans) do. I manage to push my cities out to the Germans, at the cost of Russian territorial success. The Germans have higher culture than I do, but that can't be avoided at this stage.

My building orders are simple at this stage: 2 warriors, settler, temple, settler, worker, library. What more can I do to gain culture and expansion? I can't go any faster. In the time I build a warrior, the AI founds 2 cities...

My city of Avignon borders on the German lands, but not closely -the distance between German cities and Avignon is 4 squares at minimum. Avignon is right below Orleans, which in turn is right below Paris (capitol doh). East and West of Avignon I have my own cities as well.
Avignon has a temple and 2 warriors stationed at size 4. It has 110+ culture.

It reverts to the Germans. !?! I carefully pronounce WTF? and undertake time travel once more.

I rush a library 5 turns before Day Zero. I move in 2 extra troops (4 troops total, size 4 city). I raise luxuries, making ALL citizens happy.

It reverts at Day Zero.

---

I think this is unreasonable. I can't even hold on to my own cities, and I'm *not* neglecting culture -beelining for temples and libraries and rushbuilding them.

I am keen to hear some word of advice, but until I see the Light, I'll whine about it.

[Capt Dizle]

Good post. Nothing I can say however, except to observe that its very strange that Firaxis expects us to pay money and then play this game for enjoyment.

I quit playing when I had to take a break to go to the dentist and realized I had less stress in his chair than in front of my computer.

[Grim Legacy]

Heheh. Well I do admit it is frustrating to lose cities this way. I'm cool with the notion that you have to *work* to hold on to your cities, but when my desperate efforts fail to have *any* effect...

But I found a little comfort in my latest Deity, Large game: I am alone on a sizeable and LUSH continent!!! I've found Eden! I am so gonna be an early Republic in this game, the AI will cry mercy!

So it *is* possible to get a good starting position in Civ3! Don't abandon hope.

[Peets]

I suggest to lower it in the editor!
I saw that on the very high levels it reverts back 90% change
to high if you ask me...

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Peets
I suggest to lower it in the editor!
I saw that on the very high levels it reverts back 90% change
to high if you ask me...

Hrmpf that does sound high.

However, the editor is off-limits. I want to play the game as is. The editor feels like giving up.

I actually thought up a strategy for conquest to be able to grab the wonders after all... hehehehee.

[Ignorance]

Yes this is very frustrating.
Between this and the high corruption rates, I rarely bother trying to keep distant enemy cities.
This is not how it should be.
I don't want to raze every enemy city I capture, but there just doesn't seem to be a way around it.
I have tried it. But when the desert even when I have more culture, all citizens are happy and city is filled with troops, thats pretty much the only option.

[rah]

I have done a little time travel myself to test the mechanics of this and have always been able to Change History and keep the city from reverting.
I took out the French capital in the middle of all their culture. The entire city was surrounded by French cities 20+ in size. I figured this would be a good experiment. (difficulty level emporer, pre-patch)

Paris was about sized 25. When I took it, it had about 16 resisters. 3 turns later it reverted. Went back in time and airlifted in a few more troops, and it didn't revert.

A few more turns later it reverted, extra troops didn't stop it. But then (using the wayback machine only one turn) I switched every citizen that wasn't resisting into an entertainer every turn. THE CITY DID NOT REVERT. Rushed a temple, cath, settler, and starved it down to about size 6 and repopped with my own until I had 50 % my citizens. It never reverted after that, ending my testing.

I have never had one of my own cities revert after the city borders expand the first time. (always play religious as one trait)

RAH

[Skeletal Dragon]

City Conversion seems to be dependant on a few things:

1) City Size (effect is small)
2) Number of Culture Generating Buildings (effect is small)
3) Culture surrounding city (effect is big)
4) Resistors and/or civil disorder(?)
5) Total Culture/Score(?) of Civ (effect is very big!)

Note that these are from trying to convert enemy cities, but they should follow the same mechanics when applying them to your own cities converting. I've found that the city will usually convert in 1-5 turns if at least 2 of the 4 sides of its culture borders are touching another civ's culture borders.

From the looks of the things on this thread, it seems like that Resistors (and maybe Civil Disorder, I don't know since they have not been mentioned) play a huge role in cities converting back. And logically, it would be realistic since a Resisting population would have more of a chance of converting back. I've never had this happen to me since I always make turn the population into all Entertainers to get out of Civil Disorder so I can start rushing Temples and Cathedrals. Maybe its a bug with the check that the game makes with conversion? Maybe if the entire population was made Entertainers, it would find only Entertainers and not Resistors?

The strangest thing happened the other day as I was playing Civ 3. Me (Greeks), China, and the Zulus were under a MPP and my allies just wiped out the Babylonians on another continent and there was a lot of empty space in the territory. Since I was short on Rubber, I decide to make a city by a source of Rubber that was on the empty space. To the south was a new Zulu city and to the north was the former Babylonian capital. The new Zulu city had about 100 culture or so (since it had like border 2 or so), and my city was positioned so that my culture border would touch two of the Zulu city's culture borders. I rushed Temple, Library, and Cathedral (I had a Sistine Chapel ). My city had too much corruption (75% or so?), so I forgot about it for most of the game as I was trying to kill off the Japanese. Then suddenly, after my new city's culture borders increased (I think it was at about 500 or 1000 or so), the Zulu city converts! And the Zulu population was at 8 or so! And very far from my own continent! Wierd, but I'm not complaining I'm guessing that it was partly due to the surrounding Culture and partly due to my high culture as well. (I was leading in both Culture and Score)

I hope this helps.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Maybe I'm imagining things but it seems to me that nationality of citizens plays a role as well. Despite having quelled all resistors and keeping citizens as content, entertainers and/or happies, I think nationals from a given civ are more likely to revert back to the orignal civ than citizens of your flavor of nationality. This naturally means that captured cities are more likely to revert than ones of your own making. Yet another reason for the raze and replace phenomena that seems to be teh most effective means to deal with this. Kinna stinks tho when your aiming for cities with juicy wonders.

Just my thoughts

Og

[MarshalN]

Grim -- try declaring peace. I think it makes a difference there too... if you're at war with a civ where your citizens are originally from, they're more likely to revert than if you're at peace with that civ. I've found that to be true on occasions, but of course, peace is not always possible.

[Chris Woods]

It really needs to be changed that cities won't 'despose' (or whatever) if [city_size] < [number_of_garrisoned_troops]. This would still reflect the difficulty in integrating enemy cities near the heart of their empire by requireing a large amount of troops to be dedicated to maintaining the city while allowing the standard cultural takeovers to be effective. (It's not reasonable to garrison that many troops in every settlement you have.)

As it stands, taking cities is basically absurd. I've reached the point where my settlers almost outnumber my infantry in an offencive engagement and I raze anything without a useful wonder. You can always add the workers you get from razeing the city back into it once things have settled down.

The alternative (with what we have currently) is to genocide the enemy (take or raze all his cities very quickly) thus eliminating him as an option for the cities to revert to. This can be extremly difficult sometimes, and I have often had cities revert back when the AI's nearest city is leagues away and their cultural borders are no where near eachother.

Chris Woods

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by rah
I have done a little time travel myself to test the mechanics of this and have always been able to Change History and keep the city from reverting.
I took out the French capital in the middle of all their culture. The entire city was surrounded by French cities 20+ in size. I figured this would be a good experiment. (difficulty level emporer, pre-patch)

Paris was about sized 25. When I took it, it had about 16 resisters. 3 turns later it reverted. Went back in time and airlifted in a few more troops, and it didn't revert.

A few more turns later it reverted, extra troops didn't stop it. But then (using the wayback machine only one turn) I switched every citizen that wasn't resisting into an entertainer every turn. THE CITY DID NOT REVERT. Rushed a temple, cath, settler, and starved it down to about size 6 and repopped with my own until I had 50 % my citizens. It never reverted after that, ending my testing.

I have never had one of my own cities revert after the city borders expand the first time. (always play religious as one trait)

RAH

In your testing, you had turned every laborer into an entertainer. And this helped.
To my displeasure, I already do this by default, to starve the city. There is a remote chance I left 1 worker to gather shields, though, so I'll check that out.
I may try population migration too, never tried that.

As for my own city that reverted: it had expanded its borders twice already (110 culture)... and there was no disorder or foreign nationals.

I never play religious civs though, maybe that's a big difference there.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Skeletal Dragon

From the looks of the things on this thread, it seems like that Resistors (and maybe Civil Disorder, I don't know since they have not been mentioned) play a huge role in cities converting back. And logically, it would be realistic since a Resisting population would have more of a chance of converting back. I've never had this happen to me since I always make turn the population into all Entertainers to get out of Civil Disorder so I can start rushing Temples and Cathedrals. Maybe its a bug with the check that the game makes with conversion? Maybe if the entire population was made Entertainers, it would find only Entertainers and not Resistors?

Yes resitors play a major role. That's why I always roll in as many troops as quickly as possible. Only after resistance ends can one rush buildings.
Resistors can't be turned into entertainers though.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Maybe I'm imagining things but it seems to me that nationality of citizens plays a role as well. Despite having quelled all resistors and keeping citizens as content, entertainers and/or happies, I think nationals from a given civ are more likely to revert back to the orignal civ than citizens of your flavor of nationality. This naturally means that captured cities are more likely to revert than ones of your own making. Yet another reason for the raze and replace phenomena that seems to be teh most effective means to deal with this. Kinna stinks tho when your aiming for cities with juicy wonders.

Yup -so that's why I was so surprised to see Moscow revert back with 2 russians, 1 persian and 1 iroquois as a population.

I took Moscow cuz it had 3 (!) wonders.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by MarshalN
Grim -- try declaring peace. I think it makes a difference there too... if you're at war with a civ where your citizens are originally from, they're more likely to revert than if you're at peace with that civ. I've found that to be true on occasions, but of course, peace is not always possible.

Yes it helps -makes them happier at least. Thing is, in my examples I was at peace with the civs in question.