The conquest of large cities: how to solve the cultural backlash?

TrailblazingScot

I was kittenOFchaos
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Jan 6, 2001
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I was playing today -I should have been doing my dissertation...aren't I a bad kitten- as Russia on a huge map with 16 players...(korn rules -so to make privateers worthwhile- and monarch difficulty)

Well, to cut a long story short I have just suffered a painful war...the iroquois WERE a backward people that on their small continent had 13 luxuries of IVORY alone...never mind some other stuff!

I was rushing my tech towards military traditions to allow me my lovely cossack unit :D Once I had the tech I was churning out cossacks galore and by the time I got the tech for galleon I had 8 cossacks to ship out.

We came we saw we kicked their ass (as I had the Aztecs...and again some A.I followed suite with me to declare war on this weakling of the hurd)...we took a city with no less than 7 ivory...it had a naval port etc and so my empire could rejoice!

HOWEVER even with my 8 unit garrision 2 turns later the resistors overcame my garrison force -there were 9 resistors- and so I lost 8 cossack units which had gloriously crushed their conscript riflemen.

Subsequently I launch other invasions and burnt cities before I revolted to become Communist and thus ended the war with a donation of tech to me...



WHAT I AM ASKING FOR:
What sort of size of garrison do I need to prevent cultural take-over when I invade new cities...since this city was on a relatively far-off continent my culture from nearby cities wouldn't count for anything...

As it was I was unable to quickly move on and take out this civilisation...admittedly this has made things more interesting, but it has made me very cautious about capturing large cities and not just razing them to the ground.
 
I've heard that garrison size matters, but I'm not convinced.
Basically (and to avoid a reload cheat) I /never/ leave large numbers of units in a newly captured city of significant size for more than two turns (or until just after the resistance is defeated). I get them healed up, and move them out. I garrison the city with no more than 1 unit. I expect it to revert.
The best defence against reversion that I've found is to either rush cultural improvments ASAP and/or take out all their nearby cities. Basically in an all-out conquest I expect to see a couple of their cities revert. I always keep units available for retaking them...
Hope that helps a bit.

- Stravaig
 
This is kind of odd. On two occasions, I've had massive amounts of superior units in a newly captured city, and it revolted, after reloading (alright I sometimes cheat like that) I took out all my units but one from the city so I would be able to retake it later. However, that time the city didn't revolt. Any suggestions or similar findings?
 
How odd...
 
There are a few things you can do to prevent this.

Cities have a 20% chance to flip if there are more resisters than there are happy faces.

There are 5 things that can make happy faces in a city. Garrison troops (if your government will allow it), entertainers, luxuries, wonders and improvements.

When you take a city look at the city screen. Count all the happy faces you see. They will all be shown in the city screen in the area where you get them (luxury box will have some, troop area might have some, city radii will have some). The absolute BEST thing you can do to prevent culture flips is have the city hooked up to luxuries when you take it over. For this same reason, when you do a amphibious assault overseas, you need to build a harbor first as this will give you the luxuries and more happy faces much faster than a temple. Temples are for expanding your borders more than they are for happy faces.

If any of your garrisoned troops do not have happy faces next to them in the city window, take them out. If the city flips, you'll loose them. For example, as a democracy, having troops stationed in a upset city does no good, they do not produce happy faces.

It's really pretty easy to prevent once you realize how it works. I wish I could take a screen shot to show you but if you just look at the city screen you'll understand how the smiley faces work.

I rarely have a city flip and when it does happen I'm not surprised. You can easily tell.

There are however those very rare and occasional flips that happen when you least expect it and those usually happen because the citizens became unhappy and you didn't notice. But with only one enemy troops in the city, it's easy to retake and pay closer attention to the people the second time around.

You'll notice that the computer cuts a lot of roads duting wartime. There is a reason for this, it's to make sure your cities aren't connected to your resources or culture when he takes it (among other reasons).

Endureth
 
Well in my case I had a harbour in that city so there was no problem with importing luxuries (I guess I was unlucky...I'll have to get more experienced to see what things influence "flipping" of cities).
 
According to Soren Johnson, a developer of the game, there is five things that reduce the chance of city defections. They are,
I quote him:

1) Troops in the city. As a rule of thumb one troop dissuade one citizen from thinking of defecting.

2) No civil disorder.

3) We Love The King Day.

4) Culture. Defections measure the culture of the two civs in the city itself and as a nation overall .

5) Distance from respective capitals. This one is especially important. It is more attuned to relative, not absolute distance. The point is that the closer you get to his/her capital, the harder it is to keep cities. Sort of like a spring.



--
Roman.
 
Garrison size doesn't matter. I have had population 2 cities depose 12 units in garrison. And let me tell you, that hurt. What I do now is garrison one unit inside the city (generally the cheapest, lowest-tech unit in the invasion), and just station the rest outside the city to retake it if it deposes me. But if one city deposes you, odds are good it will keep happening. Nothing more frustrating than retaking the same cities 2 or 3 times, losing more units to the overthrow than you've lost in actual combat. At that point it's time to think seriously about razing cities and creating new ones. Another thought is to move in workers of different nationality and have them join. You can either starve out the native population, or turn them into workers, but the point is to mix in people from nationalities different than the conquered population's.
 
Garrison size doesn't have a direct corrolation but an indirect one. If you have lots of units garrisoned in a captured city, the units will quel the resisters and if enough happiness is provided, stop the civil disorder, which is proven to lead to defection.
 
Originally posted by kittenOFchaos

WHAT I AM ASKING FOR:
What sort of size of garrison do I need to prevent cultural take-over when I invade new cities...since this city was on a relatively far-off continent my culture from nearby cities wouldn't count for anything...

As it was I was unable to quickly move on and take out this civilisation...admittedly this has made things more interesting, but it has made me very cautious about capturing large cities and not just razing them to the ground.

If you're out to kill the entire civ, don't bother garrisoning (at least not seriously, like sending the entire army in there) and if you do, send the wounded units in. When the cities flip they get a defensive unit so if it flips, just smack him up and move back in until the civ have been erased.

Also cut off resources to the city if possible. Can't have a stronger unit defending if the needed resources aren't avail.
 
This worked for me last night:

I was in Communism at the Regent level and had just captured a size 8 city. Since it was on another continent I wanted to rush-build an airport. Cracking the whip eliminated 7 of the Iroquois citizens and left me with a size one city. Then I just airlifted workers and military units to repopulate with my own citizens and defend the city (which was only 6 tiles away from their capital). The rest of the way they fell like dominoes.
 
I'll echo mostly what I've read above.

I never leave stacks in captured cities, EVER. I used to leave them inside to heal up, now I return them home to a friendly city, or leave them in a security fortification to heal via Battlefield Medicine. The only units that enter captured cities are the tanks (I always conduct warfare in the Modern Era) that scored the capture, who move out immediately the next turn, and the two Infantry/Mech.Infantry that will garrison it for me. With the utter unpredictability of reversion I refuse to put anything more into the city, even if it would increase the reduction of resistors. I FULLY expect to have to capture each city twice, and my general rules for captures (first or second time) are to pound on the city as much as I'm able to destroy improvements and reduce the population.

The reason I prefer to reduce the cities relates to some of the things I've read about how culture and cultural flips work. Some of that material indicates part of how the flips are determined revolves around how many 'foreign' citizens remain in the city, another part points out that culture created 'fresh' in the city since you occupied it further solidifies your control. My default build order for captured cities is Temple - Library - Cathedral - Factory, and these are rushed as soon as the city leaves Resistance status. I will often one-turn rush these by disbanding a handy and expendable military unit in the city to put shields in the box so I can rush-buy cheaper.

I capture cities primarily because I want to maintain the road network around it (upon capture I can move through the city's area using the roads/railroads), to control wonders, and to take control of resources. The best thing would be for me to raze each city and replace it with a settler unit, but that's additional micromanagement to an already heavily micromanaged playstyle for me. I raze any cities in bad areas I don’t want to deal with (and often have my allies drop settlers into those areas the next turn, founding cities in the newly opened space), and also raze at least once 'ring' out from my captured borders any Opposition cities. I've read other material that indicates close cultural borders from the Opposition Parent civilization increases the odds of a cultural flip; razing creates a 'buffer zone' that seems to help a bit.

But yes, expect captures to revert, especially if they're still in contact with the original borders. The flip is just another chance to kill more population points out of the city before recapturing it.
 
I try to make sure that my cities on the fron have high culture. That seems to help from defections. Also, the first thing I tell the city to produce is a temple. It wants to build the best defensive unit by default..I toggle that to temple...and rush build it if possible. That seems to help out quite a bit.
 
If I capture a city that looks like it has a good chance of reverting, and I don't want to raze it and start a new one I just sell it off. Catch up on the techs I might have missed or get some much needed gold in my treasury. If I'm having a problem with an enemy I might use the captured city to quickly bribe another civ to come in and help me take him out.
 
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