Dear all, a newbie question here.

I have played Civ1 back in 15 or so years ago and there are definitely a lot of improvement from the 1st version.

My playstyle is always the peaceful type but in the desperate need to expand my territory, I have taken the military route and chosen to take down my neighbouring cities one by one.

I have one particularly strategic city that I recently took over and it lies at the border of the next civilisation. Right now, everyone inside the city is unhappy and they refused to work. Everything stands still. And because of that, the culture from another civilisation is just too overwhelming for me. It is a strategic city because it is a base for all my air units.

Questions are:

1. What would you do to make the people happy fairly quickly?
2. Will I lose the city if the city is influenced by the neighbouring civilisation? If so, what would happen to all my military units inside the city?

Thank you for your time.

1. To make the people happy fast, I'd say you gotta quickly build religious buildings and theaters/cultural buildings. This will generate happiness, and will also help make a culture buffer, and that buffer is necessary to make an isolated city in enemy territory functional.

2. Yes, if the people revolt twice the city has a possibility of swapping back. Some military units may likewise convert.

If a city culture-flips to a leader you don't have open borders with, all your military units are displaced to your territory and they recieve a free basic garrison unit in the city.

Overwhelming unhappiness (4-5 angry citizens) often isn't something you can deal with in a brand new, unproductive city, since the hammer output is so low. It often starves until the population balances; after that, a Theater is the easiest way to make people happy: it's a very cheap building, provides culture, and +1 happy faces for each 10% (I believe) on the culture slider.

Hrmm im not quite sure what you mean, when you say people are "unhappy" do you mean they are unhappy as in the city is too crowded and there are not enough happy faces to balance it? or do you mean the city is in revolt where by the people are happy but they just hate you and wont work no matter what you give them? (an unhappy city will have a red angry face next to it while a city in revolt will have a fist). An unhappy city will have only the unhappy citizens not working while a city in revolt will have nobody working.
Since your talking about a conqured enemy city ill assume your people are in revolt in that case you need to garrison alot of troops in the city to stop the revolt (It will slowly die down after a few turns) then you need culture to keep the city from revolting/flipping.
Far and away the best way to do this is to use a great artist to create a great work in the city, in the past ive done this to conqured citites and had the revolt end instantly and the city sky rocket to 50% of my influence.
however an overwhelming number of troops will keep a city from flipping (aftet the 2 revolts) even if it has no culture buffer but you need like 3-4 troops per population point in my experience.

Thank you for all your replies. The last I checked, my city was full of angry people (with the angry face). I probably need to adopt another civic to "buy" a theater for them (or one of the civics that lower the war awareness?) I have not investigated the exact reason why they are so angry but I guess it is because I have been killing their own people.

Or I just need to wait till the effect balanced out.

I must admit that the post-war simulation is kind of real to me.

(or one of the civics that lower the war awareness?)

You mean 'war weariness' I presume.. except for perhaps the US civs, there should be no need to lower war awareness in a civ game. :mischief:

Jeremy.

When you first take over a city, it will always immediately revolt and not have any production or work until the timer counts down to 0. During this time it will not cost maintainance, work tiles, or create any culture, starve or grow.

It has been previously posted on here that recently captured cities do not culture flip back to their original owners, and this has been true in my experience.

If you can, switch to the hereditary rule civic and dump some ground troops into that city. This gives +1 happiness per unit stationed there and should keep people happy.

However, the problem is even if the city is happy enough to work, the enemy's culture may completely overwhelm the city and you may not be able to work any food tiles. therefore the main threat is starving down to nothing.

What I usually do is, if you're gonna go to war, keep conquering that civ, and keep advancing. Your own culture will start to fill in from behind, and you will free up space for important captured cities to start building their borders. You can always also raze useless cities to make room. You can't get peace right away anyways, so might as well conquer as much as you can and then sue for peace as soon as the option comes available.

Yes , one of the best solutions I use is hereditary rule , it really works well to get heppiness instantly. Also to stop it culture flipping > pick a creative leader because they generate culture so quickly , and first thing put a theater in there followed by a court house if you dont have state property to lower the corruption costs.

Also , I noticed if I put a priest in and spread religion straight away , it really helps too. Plus great artists work okay to but I would rather generate great merchants , scientists and engineers.

My situation was that this particular civilisation has about 5 cities. The city that has lots of angry people was the very first city I conquered and it happened after I have cleared up all the rest of the cities. Now my this strategic city is threathened by the culture (or border) of another neighbouring civilisation and I am in dire need to get the people back to work and build something of cultural value.

Mouseover the happy/unhappy faces on the top of the city screen and check why those citizens are unhappy. Is the capured city connected to your other cities - if it isnt do so asap to get the resources there.

A good way to handle problematic culture borders is with Great Artists "Great work" which will add 4000 culture (base pre bonus rate) to a city wich is very useful if you quickly need to establish stable borders in a city (it will also immediately end a revolt in the city). The culture bomb comes with all the benefits attached (i.e. you will immediately gain the defence bonus too).

I have a related question. I took AI capital in my last game, waited through the revolt phase, tackled the unhappiness, made peace, built a few culture-generating buildings, BUT:
even though my culture was higher than the culture of a neighboring AI city, my borders were smaller than AI. I think this is related to population nationality of the city, somehow. I noticed that Indian population ratio grew gradually, and when I reached 50% or so (after dozens of turns), suddenly my borders bulged out (and actually threatened the neighboring city).
Anyone can comment on this?

I can comment that I noticed the same thing; borders are not solely determined by culture.

Borders are largely determined by prior ownership from what I've seen: I've had borders 1 tile away from my city, yet 5 tiles away from theirs, even though my city was producting and had more culture. It had been captured in the past fifty turns or so, however, which I think was a factor.

I tested going into the world editor and setting the opposing city's culture to 0, then back to normal, and the borders regenerated about halfway between both cities. So I think cultural borders have a tendency to favor the current owner, although there might be something else involved.

Another point helps a lot : prepare missionaries when you go to war, to immediately install your state church in your captured cities.

It makes immediately a happy face without having to build anything (and extra revenue if you have the religious wonder ;p).

I actually think military units swap sides if a city culture flips. Or at least some do. I've gotten five units off a culture flip.

You mean 'war weariness' I presume.. except for perhaps the US civs, there should be no need to lower war awareness in a civ game. :mischief:

Jeremy.

that's hilarious...

:lol:

From my own experience, there are several causes to unhappiness in a newly conquered city. The first one usually relates to destroyed happiness buildings, such as forge and market. There isn't much you can do except wait out the revolt period and rebuilding them. The 2nd one is nationality. The enemy still retain their own culture after you conquer them, and around 1/3 of the unhappy faces come from this. Again not much you can do except to build enough culture to overwhelm the previous owner or completely kill off the opposite civilization. 3rd cause is WW. You can build Mt. Rushmore, jail, and change to Police State to counter this. The last one is religion. If there's only 1 religion in the city and that religion happens to be the enemy state religion, you'll get a heavy happiness penalty. Adding another religion not only gives +1 happiness, but also reduce some unhappiness as well. When I am in conquest mode, I like to set around 25% of my production to build nothing but different missionaries. Under free religion, you can get up to +14 happiness from just spreading religions and building cheap temples. Oh, make sure you have airport in all missionary building cities for max efficiency.

On the border issue, culture is the dominant determinant for borders, with terrain playing a small role. However when you build up culture in a newly conquered city, you are not only competing against the nearest enemy city, but the combined cultures of both the nearest city and the conquered city. That's why when the average culture pushes pass 2000, GA culture bombs became much less effective.

When all else fails, practice what I call "ethnic cleansing": pull all your troops out of the city, either gift it to someone far away & weak or wait for it to flip, wait a turn, attack the city, raze it, and drop a new settler in it's place to start over on the same site. :)

When I'm in a war, i move up the culture slider. Once cities stop rebelling, it helps expand the border, then it's easier to get some production out of cities. Theaters are cheap and are often the first building I build in a newly acquired city.

When all else fails, practice what I call "ethnic cleansing": pull all your troops out of the city, either gift it to someone far away & weak or wait for it to flip, wait a turn, attack the city, raze it, and drop a new settler in it's place to start over on the same site. :)

It won't work, in fact this is often a very bad practice in CIV. Even after you razed a city, the culture is still there. What's worse is that you start with a pop 1 city that has 99% enemy culture, very low hammer, no happiness buildings, and no religion. Ethnicity in CIV is not stored with each citizen, but rather calculated with amount of culture in the city square. If you want a pop 1 city, it's better to :whipped: the city down to size rather then raze it and rebuild.