Trouble with city defections

[Lewsir]

I'm still getting nailed - frustratingly often - with the cities I capture defecting back to their original civs. Can someone help me understand the details of what causes this? I'll take a city and hold it with lots of troups, sometimes 8 or 10, and it will still go back. I had thought it only happened during war, but even after peace is declared I've had cities revert. And it happens even when I have cultural superiority over my enemies. Other questions:

- does the distance from your own cities matter? (I've had particularly bad luck attacking across large expanses of water)
- does adding more entertainers do any good?
- Does the strength of the occupying units matter, or only the number?

[Acemo]

read this

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39825&highlight=culture+flipping

I think this was pre-patch, some things may have changed. Specifically I think units in a captured city will help prevent cultural defection, the readme may have details.

[Skanky Burns]

If you have enough military units in a city, that city is prevented from defecting.

"Enough" units varies though, depending on your total culture, their total culture, population in the city, distance from capitals, ...

[Encomium]

1.17 DID NOTHING

I had TEN full strength veteran and elite units in a town of '5', but it STILL flipped!!

Why?

It was eight tiles from the enemy capital, which was also the ONLY city left in that other civ. I had TWENTY towns/cities.

So garrisons don't matter, and neither does your overall score and power - just the proximity to the enemy capital. And it is a BIG CROCK.

Solution? Anytime a city/town flips I go to AutoSave, evacuate the garrison and raze it the next turn. Although then the AI is so dumb it keeps trying to send settlers to that open space EVEN WHEN AT WAR WITH ME.

[Lewsir]

Firaxis post

I just spotted the post by Dan Magaha of Firaxis over on the strategy forum. It seems to answer most of my questions. And as I suspected, the number of units in the city doesn't do much to influence the probability of a city "flip". To me that's a major problem in the game - made worse because if you do happen to have a lot of units in the city, you lose them all, which can be disastrous.

I would love to see that algorithm modified in a future patch!

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Whilst approaching the enemies capital, you're probably in a winning campaign. Keeping its cities most of the time sucks (excuse me...) as unhappiness is screaming !!! (especially later in the game) Raze them and build a new city. Wonders of course could be worthwhile. Just defend the new conquered city with 2 or three strong defensive units and the others not in but near/around the city. No more need for savings! Flipping back = conquering back! You WILL win ...

AJ

[Rainstorm]

I have the same frustration, it is one of the major reasons I stopped playing Civ 3 for a long time. It just seems that everything in the game works against you successfully conquering other civs. Certainly you can do it, but it becomes so frustrating and time consuming that it drove me nuts. In the early game its not so bad, but the higher tech levels you get the problem seems to get worse. I just don't understand the logic of culture flipping during wartime. During peacetime, a city or two defecting to the dominant culture is fine, but how in the world does it make sense to have a city which I have just taken, reducing it from pop 10 to about pop 2, and filled with my own troops, reverting. What, are my conquering tanks going to let a few disgruntled civilians push them around when we just smashed the enemy's military machine?

I think any kind of reversion during wartime should be divorced from the normal cultural rules. It seems to make a lot more sense to link it to the amount of resistance in a city. That way, if you lightly garrisoned a city there would be a chance for the people to form guerrilla groups and maybe eventually revolt and take it back over. But just a vague cultural reversion that you don't even have a chance to fight? No way.

[Lewsir]

Effect of new patch

I'll put here the same thing I just put in the CIV3 strategy forum:

I haven't actually played with the new patch yet, but would be very interested in hearing from people who have - any insights on whether the patch has much effect on city flipping, especially if you put a lot of units in?

From what I gather from Firaxis, the new patch does increase the influence of military, but it still sounds pretty difficult to hold onto a large foreign city. From the Apolyton news clips Feb 16, they post, from Firaxis:

"Number of units to supress cultural reversion: cities with 2 or 3 foreign nationals and full control of their city radius probably will be under no risk with 4 to 6 units".

If this relationship holds for bigger cities, you'd need around 20 units to be sure of holding a size 10 city. Ugh. Thus it still seems the case that for large cities, either pound them down with artillary ahead of time, starve em out quickly once you get em, or just raze them to the ground. I hate those choices.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

You can read lots more about the effects of patch 1.17f on different threads (also forum-general). But those that feel frustrated about conquered cities flipping back should install it ASAP. Since installment I've never experienced a flip back, before the installment it happened way too often ...

AJ

[Lewsir]

Seems not to be the same as Encomiums experience...I'll check around the website for other tales...

[Blaupanzer]

So far with 1.17f installed, the 2 to 1 (2 land units to each foreign citizen) has worked for me. I have seen the AI experience flipbacks, so that may not be programmed into their logic. The AI who lost the cities in both cases had stacks of troops standing around looking threatening out of the cities. Nonetheless, distance between the city in question and the two capitols does appear to matter a lot more than the respective civs overall cultural scores.

[Lewsir]

capitals

The other thing that bugs me about the proximity to capitals thing is that if you take a civ's capital, it instantly reappears nearby on the map. Taking the capital ought to provide you with at least a few turns of pseudo-anarchy and reduce the probability of flippage, before the new capital reappears. In CIV II didn't you have to rebuild the palace or something to get a new capital?

[Blaupanzer]

In Civ II yes, unless the money was available (1000) to rush it cold at another city. Despite the many similarities, this is NOT Civ II. Nothing in Civ II about culture. Rarely, an AI city would flip to the player (once every 10 or twelve games.) Much different now. The cities flip between AIs, your own cities flip, and Happiness and culture get compared between civs and cities.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Re: capitals

Originally posted by Lewsir
The other thing that bugs me about the proximity to capitals thing is that if you take a civ's capital, it instantly reappears nearby on the map. Taking the capital ought to provide you with at least a few turns of pseudo-anarchy and reduce the probability of flippage, before the new capital reappears. In CIV II didn't you have to rebuild the palace or something to get a new capital?

I guess you're right about the few turns of pseudo-anarchy that should be when a civ loses its capital; it wouldn't be different in real life. An immediate relocation of your palace (meaning your political decision centre) isn't realistic. But in civ3 this effect of relocation also counts for you! If changed you couldn't easily move your capital anymore by the settler-abandon city-exploit, that I find very usefull ...

AJ

[Shaka II]

Re: Effect of new patch

Originally posted by Lewsir

If this relationship holds for bigger cities, you'd need around 20 units to be sure of holding a size 10 city. Ugh. Thus it still seems the case that for large cities, either pound them down with artillary ahead of time, starve em out quickly once you get em, or just raze them to the ground. I hate those choices.

I hate those choices too, but that's what I do (pound them into the ground and/or starve them). They grow back quickly though and I rush buy them temples and libraries (aren't I benevolent ). Still plenty of room for improvement in another patch, but for now, I do what works.