Culture-Flipping Exposed

[DrSpike]

Re: Small poll

Originally posted by Unregistered


Has anybody ever had a city flip that had a garrison of offensive/defensive capable land units greater than the city pop? Or greater than the foreigners pop?

Yes, and yes.

I have had some strange results as well, like a captured city reverting when my capital was closer, they were no squares not in my territory, my culture was greater overall, and I had reached 100 culture points myself in the city. Also, as you report I have had cities hold on for ages when everything in the formula suggests reversion would occur quickly.

[Unregistered]

Re: Re: Small poll

Originally posted by DrSpike


Yes, and yes.

I have had some strange results as well, like a captured city reverting when my capital was closer, they were no squares not in my territory, my culture was greater overall, and I had reached 100 culture points myself in the city. Also, as you report I have had cities hold on for ages when everything in the formula suggests reversion would occur quickly.

Well, I just had Moscow flip back to the russians last nite. It was three times closer to their capital, I had 15 off/def units on garrison duty, the city had 24 pop, 12 of them russian, I had accumulated around 700 culture - but since it was their former capitol I'm sure the russian culture was much greater than that - and there were 4 unhappy pop pts, so no wltkd. Reloaded & placed 4 more off/def units on garrison duty & voila, no flip.

learning continues, thanks for the response.

[DrSpike]

That is interesting, especially if you only went back 1 turn. It seems the advent of the formula will do little to reduce confusion in this area.

[Murtin]

Originally posted by DrSpike
That is interesting, especially if you only went back 1 turn. It seems the advent of the formula will do little to reduce confusion in this area.

Yes. We don't really have much of a formula yet, though. And even if we knew of the exact formulation, the city-flipping would still depend on random numbers, so over a large number of games, involving a large number of cities and a large number of turns, very improbable city flips would still occur every now and then.

Now I'm gonna bore everyone to death with even more formalized speculations.

Definitions:
n = # of non-resisting foreign nationals in city,
r = # of resisting foreign nationals,
t = # of city radius tiles occupied by foreign culture,
p = ratio of distances to respective capitals,
a = weight factor for distance ratio,
q = ratio of cultures,
b = weight factor for culture ratio,
m = city culture memory factor,
s = Disorder/WLTK factor,
u = # of units with A/D values garrisoned in city,
c = weight factor for number of units.

Then I guess the formula would look like
(n + 2r + t) ap bq m s - cu, with a > b > c > 0.

But this looks like it would break Dan's claim that civil disorder or higher city culture memory of the attacking civ will double the chance of a flip, or that WLTKD would cut it in half. The subtraction in the end would spoil that assertion. So maybe it's like this instead:
(n + 2r + t - cu) ap bq m s, with c << 1.

This would enable factors m and s to neatly double the chance. And now you would "only" need to know the value of c in order to know just how big a garrison it will take to eliminate the risk of a flip.

Then there's the question if a, b and c are tuned so that the raw number thus computed can be used directly as a flip probability, or if the raw number is further transformed...

[kittenOFchaos]

I've got a suspicion that the equation is wrong and that military units in the city PROMOTE flipping...

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
I've got a suspicion that the equation is wrong and that military units in the city PROMOTE flipping...

Well, I think that the calculation/code doesn't handle the case of no units on garrison duty correctly. One of my original solutions to the flipping problem (no pun intended ) was to just reload & move the entire garrison outside the city walls and then end the turn again. My original intent here was to just retake the city on the next turn after it flipped, but I never had a case where this didn't prevent the flip on the next turn. However, I view this solution as a pure exploit of the game mechanics & I didn't like doing it. One would think that if a city of size 12 was going to flip with 8 off/def units on garrison duty then it would still flip in the following turn if there are NO units in the city!

One grain of salt here, my sample size is kinda small, so ymmv. I don't think I took advantage of this exploit more than 6 or 7 times before reading the transcript of one of the chats here on poly where Dan or Soren made several comments on how to prevent flipping. & those comments were "wltkd helps", "garrisoning as many units as there are population points helps" and "catapults & cannon don't count as units for this". It's nice to have it laid out a little clearer, thanks Dan!

c ya,

[Murtin]

I've got a suspicion that the equation is wrong and that military units in the city PROMOTE flipping...

Well, I think that the calculation/code doesn't handle the case of no units on garrison duty correctly.

I wouldn't be surprised if the actual equation turned out to contain some wicked non-linearity... and Dan's post accordingly was just a bunch of simplified approximations.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Originally posted by Unregistered


One of my original solutions to the flipping problem (no pun intended ) was to just reload & move the entire garrison outside the city walls and then end the turn again. My original intent here was to just retake the city on the next turn after it flipped, but I never had a case where this didn't prevent the flip on the next turn. However, I view this solution as a pure exploit of the game mechanics & I didn't like doing it.

My take on this is to only keep cities that have wonders, and then to use a minimal garrison inside, and what would have been the garrison just outside. That way if it flips I simply retake it. Eventually the city seems to get the message, or I get bored and raze it. I have never had a city flip more than twice, but of course I am normally relocating the opponents palace further and further away as time goes by.

And remember, only sure way to stop a flip is to remove the civilisation that it belonged to.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
So, in order to gain advantage, I'll trade an AI civ a relatively big city (not too big since I don't want the city to starve when my other cities are pushing boarders against it), so my citizens will outnumber AI citizens. The city should have had temple, etc. for several turns so that my culture will outnumber AI culture. The city should be close to my capital and I have other cities close to it as well. I'll make sure the AI government type cannot sacrefice people for rush building. I'll pick an AI which has a lower culture than mine to make the deal. I'll remove all units from the city so the city is likely to go riot (since it's big). Now the city will flip back to me soon and I gain benefit from trading the city to the AI. Anything missing?

With the 1.16 patch you can't trade a city for anything. All you would gain from the flip was the single defensive unit created in the city at time of flip. There was some discussion on another thread as to whether this could be exploited as a way of creating defensive units.

Also, you don' t need to remove your units, they will be sent to your capital when you give it away, which incidentally I have used to regarrison my capital on one occasion when there was no alternative.

Someone has already dealt with the change of citizenship point, but presumably its culture doesn't get transfered, so there is still a chance of a flip back.

[Xin Yu]

quote:

Also, you don' t need to remove your units, they will be sent to your capital when you give it away, which incidentally I have used to regarrison my capital on one occasion when there was no alternative.

I borrowed a CD from a friend and when the patch was out I had already returned the CD. Didn't have a chance to try it. (uh, yes, I still haven't purchased it). Now, what happens if I have ships in a given-out city while my capital is not a shore city? Do they give me inland ships?

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by Xin Yu
quote:

Also, you don' t need to remove your units, they will be sent to your capital when you give it away, which incidentally I have used to regarrison my capital on one occasion when there was no alternative.

I borrowed a CD from a friend and when the patch was out I had already returned the CD. Didn't have a chance to try it. (uh, yes, I still haven't purchased it). Now, what happens if I have ships in a given-out city while my capital is not a shore city? Do they give me inland ships?

I believe they will be in the nearest coast (not lake) square.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by Dodgy Geezer


With the 1.16 patch you can't trade a city for anything.

Well, I've been able to get cities during peace negotiations w/ the patch. But you're right, I can't get them to offer me anything for a city I'm trying to give away. In fact, if I give a civ a city as an outright gift, even one that had been theirs in the recent past that I've just liberated from another civ, it seems to piss them off. I should say that I applied the patch mid-game, & I've heard that can muck some things up, maybe this is one of those things.

Cheers,

[Dodgy Geezer]

Originally posted by Unregistered


Well, I've been able to get cities during peace negotiations w/ the patch. But you're right, I can't get them to offer me anything for a city I'm trying to give away. In fact, if I give a civ a city as an outright gift, even one that had been theirs in the recent past that I've just liberated from another civ, it seems to piss them off. I should say that I applied the patch mid-game, & I've heard that can muck some things up, maybe this is one of those things.

Cheers,

Sorry, I will clarify my comment. You can' t SELLl one of your own cities to the AI for anything - you can only give them away post 1.16 patch. Yes, you can obtain cities from the AI, which incidentially is a good way to obtain cities with a much lower chance of flipping as they are all your own citizens.

I have never noticed the AI being unhappy about receiving a city, but then I seem to spend most of the game with the AI furious with me = must be my play style! Either way, they don't seem to refuse gifts

[Easy Rhino]

dumb little comment regarding probability.

Remember, if the chance of flipping is "only" 5% or so, that's still checked EVERY SINGLE TURN, so the odds of a flip happening EVENTUALLY are pretty decent.

ER

[dadacp]

no capital = no flipping?

As others have said, it's possible to have no capital by building an attack force with the starting city and and disbanding the starting city before conquering and keeping an AI city. This has the immense benefit of all cities having little or no corruption. It appears as if the distance to the capital is always zero when there is no capital. Does this also mean that cities won't flip back to the AI?