Revolting cities

No, not the kind that make you sick, but the ones that are on your borders. What is the critera that helps you turn a city to your culture?

I've been trying to figure out a strategy for converting cities and so far I haven't figured out what the dominant factor is.

Normally I'll plop a city down as close to the border as I can, then pump the city full of libraries, universities, markets, you name it. But for the life of me I can't determine where I should concentrate to maximize the conversion of the opposing land.

You're doing what you need to, already. You can increase the "culture slider" and that'll help too though it'll affect your entire Civ (not just the city you want to pump).

Best thing is to concentrate upon the "cathedrals"... the religion buildings that give +50% culture.

Wodan

I wasn't sure about the cathedrals and whatnot as it looks like they are for civs or cities with a single religion only. I'm pretty lax about religion, is religious freedom holding my civ back in terms of takeover or is it helping?

The strength of their country relative to you and the size of the city you're trying to flip could be factors. When I was going for a cultural victory my cultral cities were next to a large number of foreign cities. The thing was that each nation was fairly powerful and the cities were quite large. Even with my borders going right up to their city limits, not one city flipped to my nation.

Now, in the game I was playing last night I was going for a domination victory. My cities were by no means cultural powerhouses (I think my capital had 2,800 culture at the time). I had been at war with Germany for some time and had reduced them to four cities. Two of those cities were in the tundra along my northern border and the smaller of the two, a size 3 city, reported a pro-Japanese revolution! A few turns later, as I was moving on the last large German city, they flipped to my nation. This is the first and only city I've ever had flip to mine and it only began its revolution when Germany had been severely weakened. This leads me to conclude that all the culture in the world isn't going to make a huge difference in the chance for a city to flip to you if the city in question belongs to a civ that is significantly more powerful then you.

I often employ artists on my border cities; and use the "free speach" civic.
I'm pretty sure that cathedrals and what-not work just fine even if you do have religious freedom. Kind of like temples and cathedrals in civ3.

Eigenvector said:

I wasn't sure about the cathedrals and whatnot as it looks like they are for civs or cities with a single religion only. I'm pretty lax about religion, is religious freedom holding my civ back in terms of takeover or is it helping?

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I don't think it's affecting you either way, except that it's more difficult to build missionaries under Religious Freedom.

The more religions you have and the more temples to all those religions in your empire, the more of the "cathedrals" you can have.

Just think about the +50%. Imagine having multiple +50% bonuses in your border city.

Now, say your typical city is producing 50 culture. Answer this question: do you want to to build some building that will give you +3 or one that will give you +50%? (50% = +25).

So, now your city is producing 75 culture. Now, say you build another cathedral in the same city. See where I'm going?

Don't forget to build temples in your -other- cities, because each cathedral needs 3 temples to support it, it appears.

After you've built all the cathedrals you can, NOW is the time to build that library. Because the +3 with a couple of 50% bonuses already there is now a +9 or +12.

Wodan

Eigenvector said:

I wasn't sure about the cathedrals and whatnot as it looks like they are for civs or cities with a single religion only. I'm pretty lax about religion, is religious freedom holding my civ back in terms of takeover or is it helping?

Click to expand...

One of the factors that influence city flipping is religion. If the city shares your state religion, then it is much more likely to flip. If you don't have a state religion, flipping will be more difficult.

Basically, send a missionary to the city you want to flip and concentrate on culture in your nearest city. Build every building that produces culture, and if you don't have any left, switch to producing culture itself. A great artist can also help a lot, especially in the early game.

Psyringe is exactly right. Forgot about that.

Wodan

On the topic of how to flip cities, has anyone managed to flip an opponent's capital, in particular if it is their last remaining city? I'm not sure if it is even possible, as I had the capital completely surrounded by my own cities pumping out culture to the max, and even after the border had receded completely to the city itself and had my state religion it refused to flip. I eventually gave up and took it by force.

Yes, I've flipped the capital city, whether it was the civ's only city or not. The first time, the Romans had been in a losing war with another civ, and the capital flipped to me, wiping out the Roman civ.

The fastest way to massively increase culture in a city is to move a great artist there and create a great work - IIRC 4000 culture added immediately.

Its a good idea to take great artists with you when invading so that you can grab a lot of land from the enemy quickly.

Sir Janus said:

The fastest way to massively increase culture in a city is to move a great artist there and create a great work - IIRC 4000 culture added immediately.

Its a good idea to take great artists with you when invading so that you can grab a lot of land from the enemy quickly.

Click to expand...

That is my favorite starategy in the middle ages, you run out of expansion room so do the non War takeovers. HIGHLY EFFECTIVE. I have taken the muslim Holy City on warlord useing this method.

Another thing is that if the city you want to flip has your state religion, you can check how strong your influence is, by moving the mouse over the city. It will tell the percentage of local influence, and I think it has to be below 50%, if you want the citizens to revolt.
Same goes to individual tiles as well. If the local influence is below 50%, your borders expand, and you gain control over that tile. However Im not quite sure how this whole influence thing is calculated in civ iv. If you use a Great Artist for example, mature borders will not expand immediately, it takes quite a few turns, to bring local influence down below 50%.

Since I play on Warlord my culture is usually pretty close to dominating. Most if not all of my border towns are at about 40%. I wasn't sure if there was some other factor that kept them from "turning the corner" so to speak.

I've seen cities revolt then go right back to the native civ so I must be on the cusp, I just need another culture boost to tip the scales.

I think number of owners units in the city may effect it too. In one game I had a small mongolian city completely surrounded by my land and with only 1% mongolian population and I wouldn't flip. It did have a lot of mongolian units in (maybe 15) so I thought that may be the reason.

I've only played one game so may not be typical but cities have gone down to below 28% (Spanish) - with only one tile left - before rebelling. Then the military units in the city seem to fight each other before, a few turns later, seeing the light and transferring allegience.

There again, Gibraltar is still British and think how much cultural pressure it has to fend off (and I do not recall Gibraltar being famous for its Shakespearean theatre).

I like being able to see my influence on the other cities, especially when I take a look and see that their presence in the city is 0%. I took down a lot of Mongolion cities with my German empire when the Mongolian influence in their own cities was 0% or only a mere 7%. It's a nice way to start a 'war' of sorts. I didn't feel like getting into a heavy, drawn out war, but after I culturally took down four of their cities, there was just one or two cities left so I brought out the artillery, the bombers, the panzers, and the gunships and whittled their defenses down before conquering their civilization.

If there are enough military troops stationed in a city, the city may not flip immediately, but simply had a revolt. That's probably a warning sign for the leader to rush some culture production stuff or a Great Artist if they want to keep the city. I thought someone said that if there's 3 revolts, the city is pretty much guaranteed to flip.

This is slightly off-topic but has any cities flipped to another country in real-life?

If that were so I am thinking that the converted city's original country would try to snatch it back by force, unlike the passive approach taken by the AI. In all of the games I have played where such an event occured the AI does completely nothing at all.

AFAIK you always get 2 revolts before a city flips.