Culture Flips

I think I'm going to disable cultural conversions in the future.

It's not that they are severely debilitating my civ's progress [I'm the Hittites this time], but I'm tired of the randomness and arbitrariness of the event.

Other posts in this forum would lead one to believe that flips are somewhat predictable, but I'm not seeing that in practice.

Proximity to foreign capital...nope, the last remaining Babylonian city is the last one they built, and it's 16 tiles away from the flipped city...and it's about to be captured.

Unhappy population...nope, the two citizens were "Happy"...and so were lots of my peeps as there were two or three celebrations in my honor just prior to the flip.

Presence of enemy units...OK, there was a bleeding galley passing through trying to make its way back to the last remaining city, but I had more than enough "strong" military units in and around the city. Besides, I reloaded the autosave to see if the citizens were "unhappy" (they were NOT--they were "happy") and ended the turn...well, that city did not flip even with the bleeding galley there, but another captured Babylonian city even farther away from the surviving city did flip and I had MY galleys next to it as well as "strong" units in and around it.

Go figger...this is very frustrating for a linear thinker.

Flipping is a random event.

What *causes* flips is one of two things:

Foreign nationals in the city
Tiles in the fat cross being in control of another civ.

If the citizens are all your nationality and none of the tiles in the fat cross are in control of another civ, the city won't flip.

if either of those things are true, it might flip. And, like a spear beating a tank, the city that is least likely to flip might be the one that does.

All those other things - proximity, presence of enemy units, happiness, resistance - those are modifiers.

Thanks, AT.

The only common element in my tale of two cities was that the happy, well policed, well garrisoned, non-proximate citizens were all foreign.

So...if I load captured cities with my citizens, will that stop this silliness...or will the presence of one happy foreigner be enough to trigger a flip.

And another thing, the first time I saw your identifying icon, I had to laugh out loud. As a former banker, I associated it with ATM's and human tellers, and a certain natural tension between the two.

I'd recommend two things to help against flips: (1) starve cities down; and (2) get either MapStat or CivAssist II. The first will reduce the % of foreign nationals in your cities and the second will tell you what the flip chance in your cities is. (Mind you, I'm really not very good at stopping flips, but I am pretty good at repeating the advice I've read.)

If you have any foreign citizens, there is a flip chance. On higher levels, people tend to deal with that with 1 of 3 strategies:

Raze and replace: Raze every core AI city and replace it with their own settlers. Makes the AI REALLY mad and means you can't keep wonders, but drops the flip risk to zero and creates lots and lots of slave workers, who require no upkeep.

Starve the city: Turn all citizens into specialists and get the resistors down to zero. The city will soon starve down to 1 citizen, which has a pretty limited flip risk, and new citizens will be your nationality.

Accept the flips, and retake the cities: requires a fairly mobile military and probably rails to take the city back - remember that the AI will get 1 defensive unit of the best that city can build for free.

I usually go with the accept the flips and retake the city strategy on emperor or demigod, and will start raze/replace on deity, until the AI is about gassed, then I'll start accepting flip risks again. I'll starve a city when I want a wonder/imrpvoement.

On Sid, it's raze/replace all the way. Sid AI's build culture frighteningly fast - for a Sid AI, a temple as less expensive than a sword is for us, and that's without being religious!!

Over in the general questions, in the FAQ that GingerAle pulled together, there is a section on culture flipping which talks about the formula and has links to utilities you can use to calculate it.

btw - you *can* take the risk of a flip in any given city to 0, if you station enough units there. That number might be very, very large, however.

AutomatedTeller said:

btw - you *can* take the risk of a flip in any given city to 0, if you station enough units there. That number might be very, very large, however.

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Yeah, and the ugliest thing is that if you have a large number of units there but not enough, you lose a large number of units if the city does flip.

Desertsnow said:

Yeah, and the ugliest thing is that if you have a large number of units there but not enough, you lose a large number of units if the city does flip.

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Now that is annoying. In the Rise Of Rome scenario, I was conquering Carthage, I took Nora, immediately put 2 legionaries and 5 spearmen on it, and next turn, it flipped.

Desertsnow said:

Yeah, and the ugliest thing is that if you have a large number of units there but not enough, you lose a large number of units if the city does flip.

Click to expand...

And that is why I turned cultural flips off.

Civ Assist will tell you how many is needed. For core enemy cities (near their cap, with lots of culture and resistors), you will need a huge amount... 20, 30, 40 is not uncommon on higher levels)

aluka said:

And that is why I turned cultural flips off.

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Same here. If I'm playing for fun (I always am) I turn cultural flips off, because come on. Come on. It's one of those features that just makes you wonder what they were thinking.

conquered cities won't flip the very next turn (it is written somewhere here, probably in War Academy).
so garrisoning with lot of units right after capture might reduce number of resisting citizens (bombarding city before taking works better).

question : does culture flips add to war weariness??

It's not very realistic if a city flips. Because in real life you wouldn't find a city were the people just suddenly turn to different cultures.

Aceman101 said:

It's not very realistic if a city flips. Because in real life you wouldn't find a city were the people just suddenly turn to different cultures.

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right - but imagine city/country that has been occupied for some years and still You get some uprisings.
it's not turn to different culture, it's rather will to free from occupation to return to mother country or to be again independent.

pol1, that would be an appropriate feature to lend some realism...EXCEPT...my foreigners were HAPPY with me...and what if you have ten of your nationality and only one foreign, and the city flips...and the only remaining city of that foreign nationality is a battered, cultureless city on an island far, far away from your flipping city?...and...you're just about to complete the Forbidden Palace in that flipping city...or incidents equally frustrating...

Culture flipping is probably the thing that upsets people the most about CivIII and is probably the most commonly turned off feature. I always play with it on, but then it's not usually much of an issue on lower levels and it's one of the things that makes higher levels more of a challenge.

I'd never build FP in a captured city of a non-dead civ, though, if culture flips were on. But that's a lesson I, too, had to learn the hard way.

I have to admit - it's kind of fun to try to flip opposing civ's cities

AutomatedTeller said:

I have to admit - it's kind of fun to try to flip opposing civ's cities

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I love flipping rival cities. By the same token, seeing my own cities flip is frustrating as hell, especially if I have an amassment of military built up in it.

that is the thing that gets me - the losing a huge stack of military. I suppose it can be justified be thinking that it woul d take a really, really, big army to actually wipe 1M or two citizens determined to take them down, but still.

I guess I'd prefer an interface that teleported the forces back to the capitol. even if it redlined all of them. Or one that booted them to the nearest friendly square - redlined, if necessary. The vanishing of 20-30 units, including elites and armies, though, is annoying from a playability point of view.

Or even a reasonable fraction of their total number, redlined if necessary.

Mesquite Thorn said:

pol1, that would be an appropriate feature to lend some realism...EXCEPT...my foreigners were HAPPY with me...and what if you have ten of your nationality and only one foreign, and the city flips...and the only remaining city of that foreign nationality is a battered, cultureless city on an island far, far away from your flipping city?...and...you're just about to complete the Forbidden Palace in that flipping city...or incidents equally frustrating...

Click to expand...

i have to admit that it also had happened few times to me. in one dg game byzantines had very high culture before war. and later were left with some towns far away, yet still few cities flipped... (one at least twice). that was few dozens turns after driving them off the continent.
taking them back isn't usually difficult but another short war period might bring back war weariness problem and necessity to MM cities.

if it is possible i prefer to take all cities and not to worry about flips till war is over. i try to retake them asap to reduce pressure on others.
if the war is long i will try to move more carefully (bombing them down as much as possible) through enemy's land and/or raze and resettle.

btw : AI gets best defender (one that they can produce) after flip, is number of units dependent on size of the city or diff level?

I hate it too. I was playing and all of a sudden my most remote city was flipped;no rival units or rival cities for like 40 tiles. my advisor said it was because of culture, but every civ was "in awe of" my culture rating.