Culture-Flipping Exposed

[Alexander's Horse]

Re: Culture-Flipping Exposed

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

6) Lastly, the number of land-based combat units (e.g., any unit with at least 1 point of offensive and defensive capability) in the city in question are subtracted. This factor is relatively low on the totem pole and this shows you why cities can flip even with huge militias garrisoned in them.

That should be a first factor, not a last.

If they had made it that only a city in disorder risked a flip, that would have solved most problems.

[mengo76]

by the way, is anyone 100% sure of how distance is calculated in civ3?

sqrt(x^2+y^2)
or
x+y
or
max(x,y)

and then, do they use normal cartesian plane coordinates (like civ1's map used to be), or do they use the funky grid-at-45-degree-angle? (why does every game nowadays have to have this stupid pretend-its-3d-perspective diagonal grid? does it really add anything to the gameplay? )

this would also help in corruption calculations... maybe i should search for a corruption thread...

[Aeson]

What I'm sure about distance...

Distance is the number of tiles between point A and B, each tile counting either 1 or 2 depending on its alignment. I'm not sure exactly how this is calculated. (X2 - X1) + (Y2 - Y1) doesn't work because of how every 3rd diagonal is treated.

Diagonals (1st,2nd,3rd..12th) = 2,2,1,2,2,1,2,2,1,2,2,1
All Verticals and Horizontals = 1

Diagonal, Vertical, Horizontal are meant in relation to the grid, which is turned 45 degrees. 12 Diagonals was the limit of my testing, because of map dimensions. Testing was done on edited maps with 25 commerce 25 production tiles to more accurately determine corruption percentages, which were used to determine the relation of diagonal tiles to non diagonal tiles. For instance, the corruption (out of 178 commerce) was exactly the same for a city placed 2 horizontal or vertical tiles away from the capitol as it was if the city was placed 1 diagonal tile away. The 2nd diagonal placement the same as the 4th horizontal or vertical placement, and a 3rd diagonal placement the same as a 5th horizontal or vertical placement. All testing was done with only the capitol and first city placement.

[Hurry]

Re: are these calculations right?

Originally posted by duodecimal
Actually, according to the formula, an opponent's city must either have one of your citizens or must have a tile in its radius within your culture in order for it to defect.

Here's a distilled version of the formula as I understand it, specifically in terms of if an opponent's city will defect to you:

( ( Your nationals in city + tiles in city radius owned by you )*

( Distance to opponent's capital / distance to your capital ) *

( opponent's total culture / your total culture ) *

( If WLT*D, 1/2, else if Civil Disorder, 2, else 1 ) *

( If City generated more culture under your control, 2, else 1/2 ) ) -

Number of opponent's combat troops in city

((Citizens+Tiles) * CultureRatio * DistanceRatio * StatusFactor * HistoryFactor ) - Troops

Your formula suggests that a city can only defect to a civ which has culture in that city. Otherwise ( opponent's total culture / your total culture ) would be 0, giving the formula a result of 0. Now, we know that cities regularly defect anyway, so there must be some kind of default value here.


Also, the formula shows that the number of units in the city has a minimal effect on the final value.

[Darth Sidious]

no, with total culture he means total culture from your whole civ. Somewhere later in his formula he states that the chance is either halved or doubled, depending on who created most culture in the city.

totally different matter:
English is not my native language, and i don't know if it's your's. The word "default" you just used in your post, is it used correctly there?
The only meaning of default i know is something like standard value.

[duodecimal]

(( YourNonResistingNationals + ( YourResisters * 2) + Tiles) * CultureRatio * DistanceRatio * StatusFactor * HistoryFactor ) - Troops

Hurry said:

Your formula suggests that a city can only defect to a civ which has culture in that city. Otherwise ( opponent's total culture / your total culture ) would be 0, giving the formula a result of 0. Now, we know that cities regularly defect anyway, so there must be some kind of default value here.

Well, it's not *my* formula, just a restatement to make it seem simpler - though I could have misunderstood Dan Magaha.

There are safegaurds against zero/infinite values...

A civilization always has culture - thanks to the palace. If you just built a city, and your only other city was your capital and it's taken, then the capital is instantly rebuilt and generates culture. This keeps the CultureRatio and DistanceRatio arguments from generating zero or infinite values.

The other two arguments default to one, two, or one-half depending on conditions (though I'm reversing the formula Dan gave us in order to get the number for someone keeping a city).

The only things that will make a formula come out to zero are if you have no citizens and no tiles in the enemy city, or if the number of troops perfectly balances everything else.

As stated by others, there are questions -

Distance - calculated by smallest number of tiles between two points, by Pythagorean theorem? (If so... how are X and Y calculated if it's not also just a tile count?), or Aeson's horizontal/vertical = 1, diagonal = 2 except every third diagonal = 1? I prefer the first one since the other two don't relate to unit movement...

Forbidden Palace - counts in distance calculations, or no? There may have been a lot of other factors causing the reversion in Mongoose's scenario besides distance... I know that in one of my Bab games, I had cities defect that were right next to my opponent's capital. That was on a standard map... I usually play on Huge now and hardly ever see cultural reversion anymore (especially after the patch... ?)

Government type and cultural government preferences - where do these enter into the equation?

National history - Where does the issue of whether or not you have waged war against a culture enter into the odds that a city in that culture will defect to you? I recall vaguely hearing something about this affecting defection chances...

Duodecimal

[bloodlust]

Originally posted by mengo76
by the way, is anyone 100% sure of how distance is calculated in civ3?

sqrt(x^2+y^2)
[...]
(why does every game nowadays have to have this stupid pretend-its-3d-perspective diagonal grid?
[...]

After my observation the corruption-relvant distance is calculated in the euklidic metric (sqrt(x^2 + y^2)).
To calculate, e.g., the placement of my (forbidden) palace I zoom out (z-Key) and look at the small word map in the lower left corner: On standard maps the left and right border (white line) gives the area for the last useful city if you position your screen on the (planned new) palace. In north and south the main screen must corrected 4 tiles in the opposite direction. (click 4 tiles down your planning point for a new palace, then left-top-right is the area of useful cities.) To the corners you have to go slidly inside to form an ellipse of non-corruption.

As it was explained in the civ2-manual the "perspective" grid is isometric, means that the distances measured euklidic matches a distance measured in tiles.
It's a matter of taste if it for you more intuitiv. Guess it is so for the most player.

[DrSpike]

I have observed in my games that having no unhappy people in the captured city greatly reduces the chance of reversion. In fact, creating entertainers till the unhappy people are gone sometimes will stop an imminent reversion. I have seen other posts commenting on this in vel's threads. This factor isn't on the list, apart from wltkd, which wasn't relevant in the games to which I refer. Is this factor proxying for one of the factors mentioned? I don't see which one.

[duodecimal]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I have observed in my games that having no unhappy people in the captured city greatly reduces the chance of reversion.

I bet only laborers are counted as citizens in the equation!

Duodecimal

[DrSpike]

If so, that would explain it. It does seem kinda arbitrary though, as well as nicely exploitable............

[Darth Sidious]

Originally posted by DrSpike
I have observed in my games that having no unhappy people in the captured city greatly reduces the chance of reversion. In fact, creating entertainers till the unhappy people are gone sometimes will stop an imminent reversion. I have seen other posts commenting on this in vel's threads. This factor isn't on the list, apart from wltkd, which wasn't relevant in the games to which I refer. Is this factor proxying for one of the factors mentioned? I don't see which one.

maybe there is another reason:

I guess im not the only one, but when something goes horribly wrong, i tried reloading the last auto save, and then doing it again, a certain battle for example. If you do this, it will always turn out exactly the same.
This means, either the game makes chance calculations one turn ahead and will only use the outcome if you actually take the specific chance (like a battle) or, the game uses the recently happened moves in its chance calculations when a chance has to be calculated.
The last one seems to be true, because otherwise the computer would need to make many needles calculations. And did i experiment a little with it and if you can for example fight 3 battles and if you alter the order, the outcome will be different.

now if you have a city flip, simply reloading the last game and trying again will not help i guess, since as i just explained the outcome will be the same, the same calculation is made.

However, if you make some entertainers, the recent moves are different, and the outcome of the chance calculation might be different.

Don't forget, a city flip is based on chance, it is not something that WILL happen at a certain point. So this way, you just make a new calculation and your city might not flip. The chance in this calculation might be the same as it was in the former calculation though.

I hope this was a little understandable.

This system also makes me wonder how much value chances actually have. since obviously, the chance calculations are not purely random calculations.

[DrSpike]

Darth

My point was the number of unhappy people doesn't seem to correspond to any of the factors Dan outlined, except wltkd, which wasn't in progress in the games I mentioned. In your terms, if what was changed after a reload wasn't relevant to calculating the chance of reversion why was the outcome different?

[Darth Sidious]

if you change something the outcome will be different, because another calculation is made. Not because there are more people happy or something. That was my point

[Hurry]

Darth Sidious, duodecimal: Thanks for pointing out my misreading of the formula.

Now, I want to point out another factor from Dan´s post:

The base values used to determine the chance of city flipping are as follows:

A) The number of foreign nationals in the city in question (resisters are counted twice),

How are population of destroyed civs counted? As your own pop or foreign? In other words, would a city of size 12, with 6 own, 5 destroyed and 1 actual foreign pop in fact count as it had 6 foreign population?

And no, my native language is not english either, so I can´t comment on my use of proper or improper english.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Hurry and Darth Sidious,
I couldn't help but stick my nose in. English IS my first tongue, so I feel obliged to comment on the use of "default" (although English being someone's native language CERTAINLY does not qualify them to say they know anything about that confusing language ).

"Default" has been used by Hurry as to mean a "base" or "starting" value. This seems fine to me, as you may think of your computer's configuration - Windows has a default setting, which is one without the additional drivers etc that your Normal setting has. In theory, you start with a default setup and add things like device drivers to get your normal setup.

I fully expect arguments from native English and non-native speakers alike on the definitions of "default", "setup" and other words I have used like maybe "tongue" - but ignoring boring things like dictionary definitions, to this native English speaker in Kiwiland, your use of "default" was perfectly understandable.

Hmm. I seem to have gone a little off thread topic and hope I didn't waste too many people's time with this rambling drivel.