Culture-Flipping Exposed

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

Firaxian
Joined
Jan 12, 2001
Messages
309
Location
Hunt Valley MD
In response to the requests I received earlier this month with regards to how "culture-flipping" works, I sat down with Soren, the lead programmer on Civ III, and he explained which factors influence the probability of a city "flipping" and what the relative weight of each factor was.

The base values used to determine the chance of city flipping are as follows:

A) The number of foreign nationals in the city in question (resisters are counted twice), and

B) The number of the 21-tile city-radius squares of the city in question that fall inside your cultural borders.


These numbers are then further modified by a variety of factors, applied multiplicatively. Here those are, in order of importance:


1) The ratio of distances to the respective capitals of both cities. Basically, if you're closer to your capital than the other city is to its capital, you've got a better chance of getting a flip.

2) The ratio of total culture points of both civs. Obviously, the better your culture is versus the opponent civ, the better your chance of getting a flip are.

3) I didn't even know this, but apparently each city has a "memory" and remembers the total amount of culture generated by any civ who has ever occupied it. This is the 3rd most important factor, because if the "attacking" civ has more historical culture in the city than the "defender", the chance of that city flipping to the attacker are doubled. This is one reason that conquered cities often flip back to their previous owners.

4) Civil Disorder in a city doubles the chance of that city flipping.

5) We Love the King (or whatever) Day in a city halves the chance of that city flipping.

6) Lastly, the number of land-based combat units (e.g., any unit with at least 1 point of offensive and defensive capability) in the city in question are subtracted. This factor is relatively low on the totem pole and this shows you why cities can flip even with huge militias garrisoned in them.


Hope this helps.


Dan
 
The distance to the capital, is this in tiles or something else?

If you have your capital at (5;15) and the other civ the capital at (46;30) and the city in question is at (26;10) what are the distances?
 
Originally posted by Gramphos
If you have your capital at (5;15) and the other civ the capital at (46;30) and the city in question is at (26;10) what are the distances?
Click to expand...
Is it
Is it ROOT((26-5)<SUP>2</SUP>+(10-15)<SUP>2</SUP>) = ROOT(441+25) = 21.587... and ROOT((26-46)<SUP>2</SUP>+(10-30)<SUP>2</SUP>) = ROOT(400+400) = 28.284...
or something else?
 
I would assume this is measured in tiles, based on the pathfinding algorithm's determination of the shortest path from the city in question to the civ's capital city. It may be even simpler than that, I'm not sure.


Dan
 
Thannks for the research and report, Dan. I am sure many of us appreciate it. We pretty much had an idea that many of these things worked this way, and having it confirmed is good.

Knowing how it works helps build strategems. Having a city flip back to its original culture occasionally is not really a surprise. Having a city on the periphery flip to the closer and stronger culture is not really a surprise, and adds a certain chanciness to the game.

Having a foreign city, close to your capital, surrounded for centuries by your culture, and having the opposing culture "in Awe" of your culture, you would expect to gain that city. For me, it rarely happens.

Having invested much in a captured city over centuries of game play, and having all the factors mentioned in place, it is a surprise when that city flips back. I mean, like having library, temple and marketplace built, population raised back from 1 foreign to pop 12, and the other 11 being your people added or born, having held the city longer than it was in its previous country. Now this does not happen often, but it does happen, and makes investing in this city very risky.

WLTK does not seem to do anything at all for me. I have read posts saying it does for others. Maybe I have a flawed installation or flawed patch update?

Again, thank for the report.:goodjob:
 
Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
I would assume this is measured in tiles, based on the pathfinding algorithm's determination of the shortest path from the city in question to the civ's capital city. It may be even simpler than that, I'm not sure.


Dan
Click to expand...
Is being on another continent increasing the distance very mush?
(i guess so, and that makes my calculation bad;))
 
Thanks Dan. I love to have theories confirmed.:)
 
Does the Forbidden Palace hold any weight in the algorithm, or just Capitals?


Jonathan
 
Originally posted by FM_Freyland
Does the Forbidden Palace hold any weight in the algorithm, or just Capitals?


Jonathan
Click to expand...

Good question. I would like to know for sure, but I think it has no effect. In fact, I have heard on this forum of a couple people who had the city with the forbidden palace revolt.
 
Dan,

The complete loss of troops when a city flips is absolutely one of my biggest complaints in the game. It is illogical and forces one to design their tactics around the farfetched possibility that that a nearly worthless city of 2 happy citizens of another nation will destroy half or one-third of one's army. I know that simply ejecting the army just so they could retake the town on the next turn isn't an adequate solution, but I think you need to allow some large portion of the units to surive, perhaps reappearing in the nearest friendly town. Or, you could have them captured and revivable only if the city can be taken back again within a certain period of time.

Either way, PLEASE address this issue before Civ IV. This is the one element of the game where I consider it totally legitimate to "cheat" (i.e., reload and remove the troops from the city just in time to avoid destruction). If you have any sensible explanation for how two happy zulu farmers can destroy five tanks, three artillery and four infantry units... I'm all ears.

P.S. why do A.I. troops seem to ocassionally survive the flip?
 
3) I didn't even know this, but apparently each city has a "memory" and remembers the total amount of culture generated by any civ who has ever occupied it. This is the 3rd most important factor, because if the "attacking" civ has more historical culture in the city than the "defender", the chance of that city flipping to the attacker are doubled. This is one reason that conquered cities often flip back to their previous owners.

This is the one I've been describing as likely, and is the source for the most aggrevating flips - the ones one or two turns after capture. This is a really poor concept in game design, especially when coupled with the "lose all units" factor, as the inteligent tactic is to park your army ina freshly taken city to quell resistance and heal - doing so with these rule means you will lose armies.

It also encourages a very early aggressive military, or genocide. The first option takes cities before they reach the threshhold where flipping immediately after capture is likely, the second eliminates flipping entirely. Neither makes for a good game of Civilization, as neither have much to do with behaving civily.

I strongly recommend removing this factor, and increasing the weight of soldiers in the cities.

BTW, to all those who gave me crap for saying culture flips do not work the way they were described in the manual and civ-o-pedia, I TOLD YOU SO!!! :p
 
The first couple of times I lost a stack of troops to a culture flip pissed me off royally. However, now that I know the rules, it is simple enough to station the majority of troops outside the city and only garrison one or two. Troops can heal outside of the city more safely than inside because of the flip chance. Now that I know about resisters counting double towards flipping, the best way to go when capturing a large pop city is razing.

In a recent game I captured a pop 14 city and because it had the Hoover Dam and some other goodies, I did not raze it. Big mistake. Three turns later it flips and immediately has a garrison of three enemy units. I think the garrison for a flipping city depends on population because small cities usually only get one free unit. Anyway, I can not take the city back in one turn. The next turn AI airlifts about five units in via the airport and I am toast.
 
I'm ecstatic to see Firaxis "come clean" on the city flip factors. A couple of things are missing, so I guess we can assume they play no part, despite what some of us had assumed:

Happy citizens (besides the potential for a WLTKD);

Courthouse? I was sure that the Civilopedia or manual said that a courthouse helped against flips, but I can't confirm that at work! ;)

Other improvements, like Temples or Marketplaces? I guess their only effect is to start slowly building your culture in the city towards that "memory" number it had accumulated with its former civ. My conquests in the Late Industrial/Modern age often have thousands of points of accumulated culture, so a temple would do absolutely nothing to decrease the chance of the city flipping back to the enemy! That's a huge surprise.

Proximity of the Forbidden Palace? The Civilopedia states that the FP "confers all of the benefits of a second place". Should we assume that the distance used for the flipping calculation is the shortest distance to either of your palaces? That can be a huge deal.

Big culture-producing cities that are nearby? A lot of people assumed that a cultural dynamo at the border would put pressure on the cities around it. I'm glad to have that refuted!

Over-large garrisons? Some testing (trying to be careful about random seeds) had suggested that having a garrison that is larger than the pop of the city actually increased their chance of flipping!


The Civilopedia states that the following factors increase the chance for city flipping:

- Presence of foreign nationals in the city
- Propaganda used against the city
- Civil disorder
- Nearby foreign territory
- Proximity of the foreign capital

I guess that needs to be amended adding the doubled effect of foreign Resistors, the cultural memory effect, and the effect of the total cuture ratio between the two civs? Clarifying the "nearby foreign territory" one would also be helpful.


Thanks again though! :goodjob:
 
the forbidden palace is useless against flipping, because i recently lost a freshly hurried FP to flipping. the good thing was that i immediately got another leader from the next battle. i took the city, hurried the FP again and it stopped flipping. come to think of it, i got 3 leaders in about 4 turns that time, so maybe the computer felt sorry for me :rolleyes:

so in conclusion the FP does nothing because a city with it will flip too, the best option if you want to keep the city without reloading, is to hurry your palace there, let's see the farmers trying to kill the royal palace guards :)
 
Thanks for the info dan man
I have to agree with Jeff here, he loss of all units when a city flips is the biggest unchangeable flaw in the game (I regard the low ship movement rates as the biggest flaw).
I have however suggested how it could be changed in this thread here which I am shamelessley trying to premote so that someone from firaxis actually posts there :) (whaddya think of the ideas?????):http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13538
 
Big culture-producing cities that are nearby? A lot of people assumed that a cultural dynamo at the border would put pressure on the cities around it. I'm glad to have that refuted!
Click to expand...

Read the post carefully. A big culture city does help, as it pushes the culture borders inside other cities radius, that reducing the number of squares that an enemy city can take away from your 21.
 
Originally posted by BillChin
The first couple of times I lost a stack of troops to a culture flip pissed me off royally. However, now that I know the rules, it is simple enough to station the majority of troops outside the city and only garrison one or two. Troops can heal outside of the city more safely than inside because of the flip chance. Now that I know about resisters counting double towards flipping, the best way to go when capturing a large pop city is razing.

QUOTE]

The loss of that garrison is the biggest problem people appear to be having with the flipping. Since the real deadly flips occur during war, taking out a huge portion of your attack force this can be a problem. I think a possible tweaking of the rules here might help with things. One possibility may be to just expel the garrison (possibly wound them, probably also with some kind of pop loss). This would represent that you have not been able to secure the city yet and on your next turn you can try again.

Another idea might be to during war to increase the effect of military troops in cities and decrease the cultural ration things. This could represent martial law in the city (another reason for war weariness amongst your population).
Click to expand...
 
i think we all like culture flips A LOT!! .. exept the fact that u lost your entire army and get very VERY pissed off .... if my troops put up a bit of a fight i would be satisfied .... even if some of them turned and some stayed loyal ... even if i got a warning the turn before ... and i got the option of executing the leaders of the resistance (which make people hate u more) or pulling your troops out ..... or something damn it .... losing my whole army really is total BS ... takes the fun out of the game BIGTIME!!!

oh btw ..... thanks so much Dan .... the culture flip stuff all sounds very reasonable and is a blast to play .... exept for the losing unit part .... this bites so hard
 
I see no need to change the rules. It is easy enough to play within the current rules. Just station the majority of troops outside the city just taken. If there is danger of enemy attack, wall off the city with pickets. If the city flips, these troops can usually retake the city. Though I did give the warning about big cities getting a big garrison immediately after a flip, a 14 pop city got a three troop garrison.

If anyone loses a big stack of troops fully knowing the rules, there is one person to blame and it isn't anyone at Firaxis. This simple workaround, putting troops just outside the city, makes flipping a minor annoyance 90% of the time. Now that the factors are outlined, most players can get a good feel for the chances of a flip after a very few games.

QUOTE]

The loss of that garrison is the biggest problem people appear to be having with the flipping. Since the real deadly flips occur during war, taking out a huge portion of your attack force this can be a problem. I think a possible tweaking of the rules here might help with things. ...
 
Gah, I'm so sick of this stupid argument that bad programming and game design is excusable so long as there is a work around. By that logic, they shouldn't have fixed the broken air superiority missions - after all, you could just NOT build fighters. The over powerful corruption problem should not have been fixed - after all, you could just build 8 cities only or live with the consequences. Hey, if your game locks up irrevocably because you killed the last settler of an extinquished civilization, that's YOUR fault - you know it can happen so if you let the civ pop out a settler, its your own problem.

If you have to do something stupid and anti-logical to play a game, its probably not a good game. At least that aspect of it. Parking an army of 12 outside a size 6 city just captured because you fear a culture flip that simply makes those units vanish from the face of the earth, with no chance of controlling the flip, or predicting the flip - well, that's just dumb gameplay. It needs to be fixed.
 
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