Minimum City Borders Option

Awhile back we had a discussion about not being able to get the 8 tiles surrounding the center city tile to flip from Culture. It stemmed from a discussion about City flipping or rather the Total Lack of city flipping in AND and in C2C. At that time in C2C when you built a city next to an AI, that had gotten it's culture to the point it's city radius was the Fat X, that you could rob some of those outer tiles with your new city. All Cities were guaranteed their base 9. AND, because of this imported code from C2C, was allowing the same thing to happen.

From these discussions 45*38'N made a New Option: Minimum City Borders. And at 1st, here with AND, you could lose tiles in the main 9 to strong cultural influences from neighboring AI by selecting that Option. But something has changed and I didn't catch when or how. The Hover Over in Game Set Up for Minimum City Border Reads,"8 tiles around any city can never be conquered via cultural influence". This is the complete opposite of our discussions and, at least on my part, the understanding that this Option turned On would allow a dominating culture to eat into those 8 tiles and eventually allow that city to be flipped by culture.

Was I totally mistaken on what 45* instituted? Or has there been a mix up on the Hover Over for this Options meaning?

The consensus for this Option (in those discussions) was to allow those 8 tiles and eventually the main city tile to susceptible to cultural influence.

@45*, Afforess, What happened?

JosEPh

It's always been like that Joseph. I've simply changed default condition back then. When I introduced that option I've made by default that you CAN eat those eight tiles too. If you don't want it and prefer to always be in control of those eight tiles, you check that option before you start.

So I've had it backwards. Check the Options box if you want C2C's culturally impenetrable 9 tiles for your or AI city.

Could've sworn when you put that Option in, it did just the opposite, and finally allowed those base tiles to be susceptible to influence.

So we still have no means available to flip a city by culture? Like vanilla BtS and RoM allowed, even though you say we can by not selecting that Option. Have you been able to flip any cities?

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

So I've had it backwards. Check the Options box if you want C2C's culturally impenetrable 9 tiles for your or AI city.

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Exactly.

JosEPh_II said:

Could've sworn when you put that Option in, it did just the opposite, and finally allowed those base tiles to be susceptible to influence.

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Believe me, it's always been like that.

JosEPh_II said:

So we still have no means available to flip a city by culture? Like vanilla BtS and RoM allowed, even though you say we can by not selecting that Option. Have you been able to flip any cities?

JosEPh

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To tell the truth, no, I haven't been able but I've also never tried. And actually I don't remember how it worked in vanilla BTS. How did it happen? Did you get a question before that city flipped? Or did it simply change ownership?
I remember getting a question "Your city wants rightfully to join XY Empire, will you allow this?" or something like that. I've always answered no anyway, and never got problems. But I've always thought this was part of Revolutions. How did it happen in vanilla BTS?

You overwhelmed a neighboring city by having a much higher Culture level. You would start to have tiles from the other city "convert"/"flip" thru culture to your empire. And eventually you could create enough cultural pressure that the base tile would "convert" or Flip to your empire. And that city would become your's to control. No Pop up questions.

One of the many "tactics" used back then was to send an GA to the city next to the one you wanted to flip by culture and use the GA to create a large Culture increase in that city ( a great work of art). This was referred to as a Culture "bomb". RoM even had Entertainer units that could do a smaller version of what a GA could do by culture spread. But ppl began to say the AI coudn't do the same thing as the player and it was deemed a cheat. When in fact it was not a player cheat as the AI was weighted in it's decision making to use GAs for this purpose too. Along with the other choices a GA can provide.

So by stopping this from happening, city flipping by culture ceased to exist in many mods, including AND.

JosEPh

To tell the truth, no, I haven't been able but I've also never tried. And actually I don't remember how it worked in vanilla BTS. How did it happen? Did you get a question before that city flipped? Or did it simply change ownership?
I remember getting a question "Your city wants rightfully to join XY Empire, will you allow this?" or something like that. I've always answered no anyway, and never got problems. But I've always thought this was part of Revolutions. How did it happen in vanilla BTS?

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In vanilla BTS, when a city wanted to change ownership it would offer the civ it was revolting to the option of accepting it or reburking the "rebels". The problem with keeping those cities was that you would slowly lose more and more tiles as your culture became less prominent. There would also be revolts sometimes, eliminating production and commerce for a turn or two.

I always keep minimum city borders on, even though I play a culture heavy style. The idea of being able to control the area right up to another city never has appealed to me, but I would like to see culture flipping come back.

When did "culture-bombing" go away? You can still gain territory ahead of time by sending in a Great Artist and I've had enemy forts within my own lines defect to me when my culture on the tile became too strong for the forts to hold out.

If anything is stopping cities from flipping (in my experience only), it's been paranoid AI stacking scores of troops in a single city to keep it peaceful through effective martial law.

The minimum absolute borders actually caused me to play RI and standard BTS more often than AND after a certain point. I hated it that much

I love dominating the AI and their cities with culture almost as much as with traditional swords-n-guns. Which is why I've always made it a point to get the Sistine before anyone else, and declare on any AI that gets it before me - Friendly or not.


I've had a city crippled in BTS by an AI-popped "Culture Bomb" from a G.Artist, so they know how to use it - just not as well as a human would, but isn't that the case for everything?
It's Treasures and other mod-based units the AI never seems to use.


As for city flips... I've gotten one a few hundred revisions ago, but in the past fifty revisions I think I've only gotten maybe a revolt or two and not much else. I've been putting massive pressure on a few of Darius's cities in my current game, but he's got enough military in them to ensure there's no city flipping going on.

Where did my massive love for conquering the AI via culture start?
http://www.garath.net/Sullla/pahatty_1.html Right here
A whole game devoted to conquering the world with culture and nothing else. Always Peace game, so the only city-taking that he does is with overwhelming culture.


As said earlier, when a city 'revolts' to you, you can either keep it or disband it. If your culture is strong enough - and in my cases, it usually has been - then keeping that city is rarely a problem, with the possible exception of the additional maintenance hurting your economy.

Someone recently asked me what the BTS game option "City flipping after conquest" does.

It turns out that if that option is enabled, you can flip a city after it has had more than NUM_WARNING_REVOLTS revolts (whatever that global define value is in the XML). Those revolts have a percent chance of occurring each turn once there is a foreign nationality that is > 50% of the city owner's nationality.

Except this mechanic is disabled if the Revolutions mod is on. Maybe people are noticing culture flipping stopped working because Revolutions?

Joseph definitely isn't using revolution, I guess

Edit: anyway I think it's disabled when revolution is On, because Rev should include it somehow with the revolt mechanics. Or am I mistaken?

I don't use Revolutions either and I always enable both culture-flipping options. As I've said elsewhere, culture wars are my preferred method of combat.

triplebassist said:

In vanilla BTS, when a city wanted to change ownership it would offer the civ it was revolting to the option of accepting it or reburking the "rebels".

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Wait a minute, this is not what Joseph was saying. He says that city simply become yours. So, are you both telling what you remember but you're not sure or what? It can't be both things at the same time... I think I'll have to try and see myself.

My mind may be playing tricks on me, but I do remember of experiencing both ways of a city flipping to me in CIV.

Afforess said:

Someone recently asked me what the BTS game option "City flipping after conquest" does.

It turns out that if that option is enabled, you can flip a city after it has had more than NUM_WARNING_REVOLTS revolts (whatever that global define value is in the XML). Those revolts have a percent chance of occurring each turn once there is a foreign nationality that is > 50% of the city owner's nationality.

Except this mechanic is disabled if the Revolutions mod is on. Maybe people are noticing culture flipping stopped working because Revolutions?

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Mmm, I've checked that part of the code and there's something I'm not sure of. It's too late here but I hope I can check tomorrow or in the next days.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13441657 said:

Wait a minute, this is not what Joseph was saying. He says that city simply become yours. So, are you both telling what you remember but you're not sure or what? It can't be both things at the same time... I think I'll have to try and see myself.

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I don't remember any pop up but that does not include the message at the top of the main screen. It's been years since I've had a city flip by culture in either AND or C2C. The last time I had a game where I was getting them was back around RoM2.4 or 2.5.

Now that I've re-read triplebassist post it's stirring up those old memories. And I think I have to agree with how he has it stated. Of course I always accepted the city and never rebuked the rebels. And I had no problem with my culture dissipating away to where I lost control of the city and it flipped back. I always built culture producing buildings 1st over production and held the city with units if the original empire became belligerent over losing out.

Lawdy it's been a long time ago when that was one of my regular ways to play. Over 5+ years ago! And I still miss it too.

If it wasn't for all the rapid changes going on in AND,C2C, and keldath's Barsoom I'd probably be back to playing RoM 2.0 or RoM1.03. I still have almost all of the RoM series still on my HD. Those were the days. <sigh>

JosEPh

There is definitely a pop up to ask whether you want the city to join your empire.
Sometimes I rather raze it to the ground...

platyping said:

There is definitely a pop up to ask whether you want the city to join your empire.
Sometimes I rather raze it to the ground...

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I usually keep 'em, but when the maintenance costs are too much, the city is put to the torch unless it's a good site.

platyping said:

There is definitely a pop up to ask whether you want the city to join your empire.
Sometimes I rather raze it to the ground...

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You're right, I've done a test with plain BTS; when a city wants to join your empire you get asked if it's ok for you. If it's not, the city gets razed. But there definetely is a popup.

Edit: and also Afforess is right, if Revolution is running, there's no city flipping; now the question is: why? Is there any other mechanics when Revolution is running? And why isn't Joseph seeing any city flip since he never uses revolution? Is it possible that it's because AI is keeping a lot of units in its cities to prevent revolts?

Also, higher pop cities are harder to flip, rather than some backwards tundra.

Of course, if your culture covers the tiles that bring food, naturally, population will drop. Recently, I've been fond of a new strategy, which just annihilates enemy cities without even firing a shot (mostly. early game is still a bloodbath).

45°38'N-13°47'E;13442509 said:

Edit: and also Afforess is right, if Revolution is running, there's no city flipping; now the question is: why? Is there any other mechanics when Revolution is running? And why isn't Joseph seeing any city flip since he never uses revolution? Is it possible that it's because AI is keeping a lot of units in its cities to prevent revolts?

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Probably because Revolutions replaces city flipping with rebellions, a more advanced concept. City flipping is a very simple concept of revolts, and Revolutions is the full implementation of rebellions.

So it doesn't make sense to allow city flipping, as the city would revolt and join you (or rebel factions) anyway.