In my current game: Germans w\Frederic - prince - pangea - large map - 7 AI`s - no spaceship - no diplo, I am worrying about a Roman city I rcently took (and kept because of aluminium). The Romans had already CRUSHED 2 other AI`S, and he had both a points lead and a huge power lead on me.
So I had to act before he could put the former American empire in to use against me after he steamrolled them in aprox. 10-15 turns. (The Americans had almost 1/4 of the total landmass btw.)
So I attacked him after getting my dear Panzers, razed 2 of his best cities and kept the one with the aluminium before accepting a peace treaty. The thing is that this city is almost entirely enveloped by his culture, I can only move to and from this city through one of the inner nine tiles and 2 tiles outside this one, leaving just a tiny "culture-bridge". Are there any hope of being able to keep this city, or is it just a question of time before it flips back to the Romans? All the citizens (exept 3) are artist, I have rushed temples. libraries, cathedrals, even the national wonder theatre, my culture slider is at 50% (can`t afford to take it higher).
Could someone please offer me a solution or confirm my fears?

I believe that by default, captured cities can't flip back to their original owner, so you shouldn't have to worry about that.

His cities have has thousands of years to build up culture points in the nearby tiles, so they won't be going over to you anytime soon. Just build some more Panzers and blitzkreig his ass to capture or raze the cities close by and then the tiles are yours.

you can try otherwise to send a cultural bomb in it. It should spread its cultural area and assure you you can still access it even if the surrounding cities'areas grow.

I've dropped two culture bombs on a city in a similar situation... and it still flipped back. The problem is those years and years of culture built up. A new city just can't compete.

Its a subtle flaw in my book, mostly because it forces conquerers into one of two choices: burn the city or keep attacking the other cities to convert/burn them.

Even worse when the culture surrounding your newly captured city is from a 3rd civ...

I've dropped two culture bombs on a city in a similar situation... and it still flipped back. The problem is those years and years of culture built up. A new city just can't compete.

Its a subtle flaw in my book, mostly because it forces conquerers into one of two choices: burn the city or keep attacking the other cities to convert/burn them.

Even worse when the culture surrounding your newly captured city is from a 3rd civ...

I agree with you. You shouldnt have to raze 2 or 3 adjacent cities in order to keep the one you want...

There is a third option, rather than conquering/razing more cities:

First, plan ahead, way ahead and make sure you have at least one city on all of your borders that has a lot of cultural output. This will push the border in your favor when you capture a nearby enemy city long before that city can really expand it's own culture. It doesn't need to be some "super-culture" city, it just needs to be good.

Next, before you go to war adjust your culture slider (if you can) up to about 10 or 20% and leave it there. This will help your borders expand into the "void" and it will give you additional happiness bonuses from theaters (and collesiums if you go to 20%) to combat war weariness.

EDIT: Ok, so the following step falls under conquering/razing more cities, it can be skipped if you really want to :)

And finally, try to take more than one city at a time when making your initial push. If they have two border cities, take them both otherwise the other will simply expand it's culture towards you. Don't wory about how much it will cost you initially, that is a short term expense and unless it's a small, poorly placed city you'll be better off keeping it than burning it to the ground. Before you agree to a peace treaty, push just a little further in and raze a city or two just beyond the ones you captured. Those are the cities that will have the biggest impact on the borders that you are concerned with. For added effect push some mobile units (e.g. knights) one more "layer" in and raze all of the food production tiles that you can.

The thing is its not the border cities that flip back. They've (typically) already been under pressure from my civ.

Its when you're getting close to the core or are taking down cities on culture borders with 3rd party civs. There's no reasonable way to preload your culture or to compete with the existing culture. Its a sad fact that in a war along a 3rd party border you're better off razing the cities then taking them, building them up for a short while and then having all that work flip to someone else. Unless of course you choose to attack the third party - but then we're back at the forced choices of attack farther or raise now...

bleck

I agree with bobrath that it is a subtle flaw in the game. It turns going to war with another Civ from a sparring match into an all or nothing affair. There should be some provision that a city as least controls the area directly around it. All too often it is exactly as bobrath describes; you take a city and as soon as you decide to keep it all the territory around it flips to your opponent or a third party. Aggravating as hell and the only good way to combat it is to take more cities.

I tried this once in noble and it appeased the "wanting to switch back to the motherland" *****ing. This might be coincidental...who knows!!!

Switch to slavery and pick something to build and kill off your population...pick cultural buildings. After each "kill" check to see to what degree those little red faces are reduced. Then do it again. Later let the population grow, should be your nationality pop growning now.

I would like to know if this is a solution or just happened this one time for me.

cheers

Aside from destroying the nearby citites - I go with the starve it down to 1 approach - then keep a good sized garrison in it - then finally start building up culture via buildings and/or specialists. Some locations are very hard to sustain which is actually a reasonably accurate representation of the situation if you dont achieve further victories to push the other culture back. I didnt like culture flipping in civ 3 but i think its a decent implementation in civ 4.

I really dislike starving citied down to pop. 1. This is because population is such a huge component of final score. The only exception I make is for cities that are so overwhelmed culturally there aren't enough tiles to feed all the citizens. In that case, I'll force every citizen in the city to be an artist (I usually run caste system.) On the turn the city comes out of anarchy, you'll get the 4 culture from each of those citizens and the city will starve down by 1 population. If there still aren't enough tiles to work, I repeat the process on the following turn. I find that it's usually possible to get at least a few more tiles in this way.

I agree with what some of the other folks have said though. The culture thing can be especially annoying when you're fighting an artistic civ. Thanks to their automatic +2 culture per turn, even their crappy border cities are usually size 4 culturally. This means that almost any city you take from them will be in the cultural borders of another, so you almost have to wipe them out to accomplish anything.

Supposedly the more units you keep in a city the less likely it will flip. One time while I was crushing the Incans, I razed onr of their frontier cities and captured the other. The indians sneaked a settler and planted a city right by my border, before the newly aquired incans cities got their culture back (one was the capital with a few wonders).
Soon the indian cities was reduced to one tile and it's indian population dropped to 20%, then the AI moved in 35 units in his size one city and the population picked up and in a matter of turns it was back above 50%.

Supposedly the more units you keep in a city the less likely it will flip.

Yeah, but even then you just get a city with no workable tiles around it because it's enveloped in another civs culture, so it's pretty much useless, and almost invariably starves down to size 1. You get the same problem when culture flipping other civs cities - I don't think a city has ever been bigger than size 1 or 2 by the time I flip it, because you gain control of the surrounding tiles much quicker than the city flips to you. (Due to the city's military presence prolonging the time to flipping.)

I really think a better model of culture is needed, but right now I'm not too sure what it is. I imagine having an empire-wide as well as (or instead of?) a city-specific culture value could help a lot.

Sounds like part of the culture reflip problem comes from the population being mostly not your own and the slavery/starvation helps with that aspect.

Leaving a large garrison is all fine and dandy... but I've had large garrisoned cities flip. There's a dynamic here, I just don't "get" it yet...

Sounds like part of the culture reflip problem comes from the population being mostly not your own and the slavery/starvation helps with that aspect.

Leaving a large garrison is all fine and dandy... but I've had large garrisoned cities flip. There's a dynamic here, I just don't "get" it yet...

I'm inclined to wonder if the real issue here is inadequate documentation from Firaxis on how culture and city flips interact.

I was happily minding my own business, secure in the knowledge that I'm the biggest super power, when it came to my attension that the Indians has just over taken me.

Ofcause, this could not be tollerated. I invaded their country, and razed most of their cities (Including a holy city, he he!) In the void, barbarian villages appeared. I even gave the americans a setler to share in the spoils of war.

However, when I started to claim the terratory by building completely new cities, I found that the indian nationality/culture STILL dominated the area. (Up to 80%!) Even in my newly found cities, the Boers are no more than 22%. Should I've destroyed the indian cottages? Is there any way to fully assimilate the terratory and take it out of the Indian sphere of influence.

(Note, some of these cities are VERY far from the Indian border. This is not the usual cross border cultural mix.)

I was happily minding my own business, secure in the knowledge that I'm the biggest super power, when it came to my attension that the Indians has just over taken me.

Ofcause, this could not be tollerated. I invaded their country, and razed most of their cities (Including a holy city, he he!) In the void, barbarian villages appeared. I even gave the americans a setler to share in the spoils of war.

However, when I started to claim the terratory by building completely new cities, I found that the indian nationality/culture STILL dominated the area. (Up to 80%!) Even in my newly found cities, the Boers are no more than 22%. Should I've destroyed the indian cottages? Is there any way to fully assimilate the terratory and take it out of the Indian sphere of influence.

(Note, some of these cities are VERY far from the Indian border. This is not the usual cross border cultural mix.)

Starve their population and when your city's are just at the end of his culture reach (far away), i find you can beat their culture building/spawning culture, cause he won't grow another culture level before you do a couple of times. You can't push away all his culture, but enough to have some space. Only when his other city's are far away.

Ofcause, this could not be tollerated. I invaded their country, and razed most of their cities ....

However, when I started to claim the terratory by building completely new cities, I found that the indian nationality/culture STILL dominated the area. (Up to 80%!) Even in my newly found cities, the Boers are no more than 22%. Should I've destroyed the indian cottages? Is there any way to fully assimilate the terratory and take it out of the Indian sphere of influence.

(Note, some of these cities are VERY far from the Indian border. This is not the usual cross border cultural mix.)

The key here is your statement

> razed *most* of their cities

Even though that area is now far from the new smaller indian borders, those squares still remember all the culture that they had acquired from when the Indians were there. The solution is the usual process of building as much culture of your own as quickly as you can to displace it, or just wipe India out *completely* in which case the problem immediately disappears.

you can try otherwise to send a cultural bomb in it. It should spread its cultural area and assure you you can still access it even if the surrounding cities'areas grow.

A culture bomb is almost certainly be noneffective in that situation. A bomb is best used before you spend the time and resources to rush multiple culture buildings. Ideally, when you first capture the city.

After rushing (which is what he said he did), the city has established a new culture. A bomb will probably take him form 2000 to 6000 culture, with no effect. Possibly, it'll push him over one level, but with the pressure on it, it's unlikely he'll see any change in borders.

Wodan

Yeah, but even then you just get a city with no workable tiles around it because it's enveloped in another civs culture, so it's pretty much useless, and almost invariably starves down to size 1. You get the same problem when culture flipping other civs cities - I don't think a city has ever been bigger than size 1 or 2 by the time I flip it, because you gain control of the surrounding tiles much quicker than the city flips to you. (Due to the city's military presence prolonging the time to flipping.)

I really think a better model of culture is needed, but right now I'm not too sure what it is. I imagine having an empire-wide as well as (or instead of?) a city-specific culture value could help a lot.
I've been wondering whether it would be better to split the current system... to have a "political border" along with a "cultural border". That would solve the problem of not being able to work any tiles.

Wodan

I've been wondering whether it would be better to split the current system... to have a "political border" along with a "cultural border". That would solve the problem of not being able to work any tiles.

I have been wondering about that myself, a 2 border system might solve that entire problem, and add a whole new aspect to the game.

I've been wondering whether it would be better to split the current system... to have a "political border" along with a "cultural border". That would solve the problem of not being able to work any tiles.


Totally agree. In fact if I was looking forward to Civ 5, one of the things I'd like to see is a much more realistic model of culture and borders. The way it works in Civ 4 is probably not bad for ancient times, but doesn't remotely reflect real life in the modern world, in which borders are (mostly) agreed internationally and people do not for the most part choose to change their national affiliation because some country built a theatre ;) . A well-designed more realistic model would be a very nice new element to the game - eg.
* Oppressing people could turn them against you
* Adopting multiculturalism could inspire people in your borders to stay loyal to you even though their real nationality lies elsewhere
* If you know people in some other country don't really want to be in that country, you could smuggle arms in to help them revolt
* United Nations could be used to agree and enforce international borders.
etc.

Not really sure (yet) how those could in the game work but just throwing out idea.

But I guess this is really going off topic for this thread so I'll shut up now ;)

Course then you'll have to make the Quebec scenario work somehow...

Hate being Canadian (or at least disagree with the rest of the country being Canadian).
Won't ever go to America (ie culture flip)

So do they (in your civ 5 world) form their own country? IE Balkanization...

Course then you'll have to make the Quebec scenario work somehow...

Hate being Canadian (or at least disagree with the rest of the country being Canadian). Won't ever go to America (ie culture flip)
Ever read "Night Probe" by Clive Cussler? Very interesting. Totally fictional, though there's something behind the thought of it.

Wodan

Course then you'll have to make the Quebec scenario work somehow...

Hate being Canadian (or at least disagree with the rest of the country being Canadian).
Won't ever go to America (ie culture flip)

So do they (in your civ 5 world) form their own country? IE Balkanization...

I haven't thought it out that well :) - it's just idle speculation on the kinds of things I'd like to see. But yes it has crossed my mind that groups splitting into new civs could be interesting (In my case, coming from the UK, my local equivalent would be something like Scotland going independent). I suspect it'd work best with a more complex model of relationships between civs - something that allows for semi-independent status of some groups, paralleling eg. colonialism or devolution/autonomy. Pursuing the speculation, if that kind of thing was dependent on discovering late-game techs, it could perhaps add a whole new diplomatic dimension to the late game (which frankly I tend to find pretty boring in Civ 3 and 4 - all your boundaries are settled. Unless you go to war, nothing really happens. There's nothing to explore etc.)