Culture Flipping...

Does anyone else turn this off?

I find it really annoying and unrealistic, I mean your military units are in a newly captured city, then then in the next few turns it magically flips back to them, your units disappear/go back to the capital(Can't remember which) and they get a free defender unit. Same with random flips because the other civ has better culture, I mean the people of Oporto would'nt suddenly decide they like Spain more and the whole city becomes apart of Spain.(Just an example, I'm not saying Spain has better culture than Portugal lol)

Discuss

i think it's sour grapes.

nobody complains about mgls and sgls being "unrealistic".

nobody complains that finding dye causes your entire population to become happy is unrealistic.

nobody complains that pyramids makes your pop grow twice as fast is unrealistic.

besides all that culture flips are one of the most realistic additions to C3 compared to C2.

It is annoying,, but it is part of the game. Another brake designed to slow the speed of conquest. Wipe out the country that is the culture threat and your cities won't flip. Raze captured cities, build your own. Turn it off if those options don't appeal to you. If you want realism, pay attention to the news, pretty soon culture flipping will seem fun, compatively speaking.

I happen to like culture flips because they all come my way

if you garrison enough troops, more than citizens of foreign country plus any tiles in the cities 20 square boundaries that can be worked by another city of the country who owned the city they cant flip.

so either leave loads of troops in to prevent flip or just one and park a few attackers outside to take it back,

i play on monarch level and dont raise cities

I leave it on, and expect it to happen. That way, when it does happen I (usually) have a contingency plan.

It so annoyed me after the first few games, I turned it off & haven't missed it. May turn it on some day, but don't feel the need at present.

kk

In a recent game i was outside washinton which had the temple of artemis, and my many mounted warriors had done some damage, but the Americans had a lot of defenders, unfortunatley musuli was also at war with the americans and he took washington.

now at this time in the game while i did not have education i really wanted toa to push my borders out in captured french and american cities, so i was considering dow on hittites, but thankfully within a few turns washington flipped back to americans and toa was mine hehe, unlike mursuli i garrisoned a lot of units in this important city

so flip saved me a premature war with hittites

Its not that annoying if you know what to do about it. Some of the tactics I employ against culture flipping:

-Bombarding cities down to a manageable population before capturing.
-Pushing back the enemy border quickly through rapid conquest (the farther away the enemy cities are from the city in risk of flipping, the less likely the city will flip)
-Gifting cities to an ally and letting them deal with the risk of flip/recapture.

I notice that the culture flipping in a captured city usually happens when the city is a neighbor of the rival's capital. I guess it's the cultural influence of the palace. I maintain high levels of culture in all my games, but when the captured city is right next to the other side's capital and far from mine, I expect a flip. Usually within a turn or two after the peace treaty.

I am wary about stationing too many of my units in there, because if it flips I'll lose them all at once.

So here's what I do: I rush a Temple in every captured city immediately after the resistance ends. If the newly captured cities around it have culture, that helps. It's the totally cultureless cities adjacent to the rival's capital that are susceptible to flips. By rushing a Temple ASAP, I prevent flips very effectively. How I know this, many times when a captured city has flipped, I back up two turns and rush the Temple so that it's completed the turn before the flip was going to happen. And when I do, it never happens. If I don't, it is bound to flip.

I also keep plenty of gold in reserve in my treasury for needs like this. Also, I disband my less valuable units in captured cities if the war is over, to speed production, lower the rush cost, and incidentally save money on per-turn support costs.

A courthouse is also effective to prevent flipping, and so is WLTK day. If you can't rush a temple immediately, at least try to arrange citizens to have the most entertainers, so there will be no complains, at least while the city is at risk of flipping. I've left cities with only 2 garrisons to guard it and they almost never flip, as long as they have the fireworks on. WHo cares about culture (musseums, libraries, going to church or college) when the party's going on in the streets?

Another thing to consider is the population of the captured city. When there are large numbers of rival citizens, their population exerts some flipping pressure, as they "yearn to be with" their original civ.

By assigning a lot of entertainers, as Rodrig0 advised, you not only improve their mood, you take citizens off of agricultural squares and starve down the population, making it easier to keep the city. They may be starving to death, but hey at least they die with smiles on their faces.

Another way to reduce population is by bombarding a lot before taking the city, which is likely to kill off citizens. I always feel so evil when I do that, though. Then when you build the population back up, the new ones are your folks.

I don't really like to rush improvements in cities that I conquer to prevent culture flip. Usually, the cities that I capture just end up as farms and since I don't play for cultural wins, I don't really need the culture. Temples/courthouses will just eat up the maintenance money in the long run and if the city does flip, its easy just to recapture it.

I don't play for a cultural win, but I do like to be the best culture in the game. So that all the flips go my way. Strategically, the border expansion fills out the space between your cities to give you a solid territory, which makes a difference in movement and strategy. The bigger area covered by your territory counts toward your total score; for that matter your culture directly counts toward total score too.

I prefer just using settlers to get more territory and fill in gaps in your borders. Settlers can be built more quickly, and can grab territory almost immediately after being built. Temples are more expensive and on top of that, you have to wait for the culture to build up before you get the border expansion.

Its nice to have your enemy cities flip to you but in my experience, you only get the really crappy AI cities and the amount of culture that you need to have in order to flip cities is not worth it.

What can I say, I'm just a culture lover. I like to have culture in every one of my cities.

As my quote from Sappho's poem expresses-- in translation:

Some say the finest thing on the dark earth is a cavalry corps; some say infantry, some say a navy.
But I say that it's the heart's beloved.

Theodora said:

What can I say, I'm just a culture lover. I like to have culture in every one of my cities.

As my quote from Sappho's poem expresses-- in translation:

Some say the finest thing on the dark earth is a cavalry corps; some say infantry, some say a navy.
But I say that it's the heart's beloved.

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Yowza! But if you start talking about wine-dark seas or rosy-fingered dawns, I may lose it entirely

kk

Snarkhunter said:

Yowza! But if you start talking about wine-dark seas or rosy-fingered dawns, I may lose it entirely

kk

Click to expand...

yeah... what he said