Civ4 RFC/SOI question

[Elok]

Because the dedicated forums aren't too healthy, yadda yadda.

So, I've started a game of Sword of Islam. Steep learning curve (never tried RFC before), but fun. I'm playing as Byzantium, and I just got to the part where the Sultanate of Rum tried to spawn in the heart of Asia Minor. Naturally, when the question "do you want to just fork over these cities to your enemy?" came up, I clicked the "hell no" option, with the result that three of my cities lost 50% culture to the Turks, some of my defenders turned traitor, and scads and scads of horse archers auto-generated on the plains. Thankfully the culture is regenerating at a reasonable pace, and no more horse archers are appearing (damn good thing, since there's apparently no dedicated counter to their unit class), but units in the affected cities are still periodically turning traitor.

Here's my question: how long will this last? If I bump up the culture slider to boost my recovery of the cities' loyalty, will the incidence of treason slow and eventually stop? Or will this continue until I've utterly smashed the Sultanate to bits? They haven't taken any of the three cities yet, but they have Tarsus on the coast and they've founded a piddly little town in a lousy location on the plains. It took me a while to figure out that the spearmen weren't actually getting any advantage against their horse archers. Which makes perfect sense, of course, but in normal BTS some medieval loser with a pike can stand up to a guy with a rifle, provided he's riding a horse...

[ZEE]

lol. elok plays a nerd-game™

[Felch]

What you need to do is distribute cannabis to your traitorous soldiers. It'll boost their morale and make them too lazy to defect. Then distribute semi-auto rifles to anybody who wants one. They're an excellent counter to horse archers. If these don't work, or if they're not possible in the mod, then I blame the government.

[Elok]

My soldiers have access to hemp, opium, and wine (seriously). Not working.

EDIT: Also, no gunpowder yet, it's only halfway through the eleventh century. Historically, I think foot archers were the counter to horse archers; they tended to get better range, and horses make big fat targets. But of the dozens of units in this mod, I found exactly one with a bonus vs. missile cavalry. It's another civ's UU. Grr.

[regexcellent]

The whole thing where your units turn traitor is a mega lame thing that the mod does to force you to let other civs spawn. **** that ****. The solution I use is to kill all the traitor units with fast-moving stuff like cavalry and then disband them before ending my turn. Expensive but less expensive than losing whole armies to the flipping.

[Elok]

Wait, does it not stop at some point? I assume it doesn't continue forever--if nothing else, it should be possible to just take the cities back after the Turks steal them from me. I'm wondering if perhaps I should've simply let them roll over and then taken them; if that would avoid the unit-switching, it might have been easier.

I wouldn't find the switching so very annoying if it didn't happen repeatedly. There's basically no way for Civ to realistically simulate the chain of events that let the Turks settle in Asia Minor--well, there is, but it would be even less fun ("all cities in the following provinces will steadily degrade any and all units you post in them for the next century"). This way is somewhat frustrating, but I can fight it. At least, so far I can.

[regexcellent]

It stops after some number of turns like 5 or 10.

[Elok]

Good, I'm on turn 4 or so. My plan is to jack up culture and keep drafting archers in the city they're pounding hardest--they'll take it eventually, but deserting archers won't help them much and if the city winds up with a population of two they'll get little use from it. I'll deal with the unhappiness when I take it back. Meanwhile, as long as they're using cheese tactics, I can exploit gameplay mechanics myself. Seems the Ottomans won't spawn as long as Rum is around. Guess who's going to be left with exactly one city and no resources?

[Elok]

Yeaaahhh, that didn't work. Seems having only one city makes an empire unstable; they collapsed, so now I'll have to do the same thing versus the Ottomans in a century or two. On the plus side, I now have two sources of horses after taking that last city; I hated having random barb spawns loot my pasture and getting five "[city] can no longer build a cataphract" messages. I think it was about seven turns before the treason stopped, and I don't think I would have lost a single city if I hadn't gotten careless and left Ankyra lightly guarded after the first wave died. Now, when 1200 rolls around, am I going to have my capital flip that way, or am I just going to have a massive invasion to fight?

(I'm aware you guys have no reason to care about my game, just being self-indulgent)

[Lorizael]

Hmm. Am I bored enough to start playing Civ again, or am I just too impatient to wait until classes start up again?