Culture Flipping - Historical Examples

[GeneralTacticus]

okay, true nobody cared for the Mongol's culture... and probably everyone in the Mongol Empire couldn't wait to over throw these overlords... but hold on a second! The Mongols wouldn't of even had an empire to begin! It is virtually impossible to go on a conquering rampage in the game with low culture rating - unless as mentioned many times in this thread - you leave a HUGE garrison in each city.

If my culture is weak - I should be able to offset this with a powerful army - period.

BTW, the Mongols lost in the end because of internal fighting - once the conquered people saw the weakened Mongols they didn't hesitate to revolt... Military Revolt btw

The Mongols blitzed their way though the Civs they fought, thus eliminating enemy influence from their city radii. This also had the effect of driving the enemy capital further away, reducing the risk of flipping. They also razed numerous cities.

Conquering at the speed the Mongols did is not possible in Civ 3, due to the inability to use enemy roads that Coracle seems to hate so much. However, it would NOT be good for game balance if you could replicate what the Mongols did: imagine the reaction if you could spend hours and hours building up a huge Civ (China) when someone suddenly came out of the blue and rolled over your empire before you could properly react?

[TETurkhan]

Just the thought of something exciting like a Mongol Invasion gets me pumped...

i think it would be great to see some devistating all out invasions in the game - something to make you go Oh SH*T! WTF! DA*N! I am TOAST!

You know there is lots of fun in just surviving!

[GeneralTacticus]

Just the thought of something exciting like a Mongol Invasion gets me pumped...

i think it would be great to see some devistating all out invasions in the game - something to make you go Oh SH*T! WTF! DA*N! I am TOAST!

You know there is lots of fun in just surviving!

If you want that to happen give the barbs a good unit for their 'advanced' setting, remove your bonus against them, and leave a few encampments alone near your borders (on Raging). Wait to enter the Middle Ages, and you will have 48-72 barbarians swarming over your border. This is effectively what happened to the Chinese, except the barbs then turned into a Civ of their own.

[Zouave]

Originally posted by teturkhan
okay, true nobody cared for the Mongol's culture... and probably everyone in the Mongol Empire couldn't wait to over throw these overlords... but hold on a second! The Mongols wouldn't of even had an empire to begin with! - The way the game is set up it is virtually impossible to go on a conquering rampage with low culture rating - unless you leave a HUGE garrison in each city.

If my culture is weak - I should be able to offset this with a powerful army - period. . .

Yes, I've cited the Mongols many times. Their overwhleming military strength intimidated cities they moved against, and some of them simply surrendered and begged for mercy - you can call that a form of "Flipping". And it was due to MILITARY power and the Mongols' terror tactics and slaughter of those who resisted. It was not due to their number of temples and libraries.

But in Civ 3 you can move against a town with a hundred knights
and it still will not surrender even if garrisoned only by a warrior.

It makes no sense whatsoever.

[Flavor Dave]

Originally posted by whosurdaddy
Also, if another civ accepts a city culture flipping towards it, it should be an act of WAR. Countries do not just annex large tracts of other countries during peacetime without any repercussion.

To reiterate a point I've made before (and I think on this thread), I don't understand why they didn't add "independent" city states. CFs in times of peace would go independent, and might fully flip later.

[Flavor Dave]

Originally posted by Zouave
But in Civ 3 you can move against a town with a hundred knights
and it still will not surrender even if garrisoned only by a warrior.

I've never played Black/White, but I'm aware of the basic concepts.

It would have been nice for Civ 3 to adapt some of that programming.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by teturkhan

BTW, the Mongols lost in the end because of internal fighting - once the conquered people saw the weakened Mongols they didn't hesitate to revolt... Military Revolt btw

That is usually what city flipping represents. The Mongols had sufficient forces to conquer, but not sufficient forces to garrison such a vast empire. Without a cultural vision to present to their subjects, their empire quickly (by historical standards) disintegrated. Indeed, many descendents of the Mongols stayed in power -- but only after adopting the culture of their subjects. Turns out it was the Mongols who were assimiliated.

[Kryten]

To Zouave:-

Are you still going ahead with your project to reduce or even eliminate culture-flipping? If so, could you please post your findings as I for one would be very interested in anything you discover. This is because somtimes culture-flips lead to 'orrible distortions when creating historical scenarios, so I too would like to have the ability to disable or remove this feature. For example, I wouldn't want any cities to flip in a WW1 or WW2 scenario. And I certainly don't want Muslim cities flipping to the invading Christians in a Crusader scenario!

If you do find a way, then there will be other times when I'd like to apply your discoveries in reverse and INCREASE the chances of culture-flips! For example; I'm currently creating many new units for Exsanguination's 'Alexander the Great' scenario, and increased culture-flipping may be an ideal way of representing the fact than many Persian controlled cities, and the whole of Egypt, opened their gates and 'flipped' to the invading Macedonians without a fight in spite of their garrisons, which deserted to and were disbanded by Alexander because they were useless or he didn't trust them (the people of these cities were not queuing up to embrace Macedonian/Greek culture, it's just that they hated Darius and the Persian culture so much that they were willing to view Alexander as a liberator).

Another time I'd like to increase it will be in a scenario I want to create about the Roman Civil Wars of the 1st century BC, where most of the cities of Greece, after a century of Roman occupation, 'flipped' to Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus in 87 BC, while at the same time at the other end of the Mediterranean the Roman general Quintus Sertorius and the surviving veterans of Marius 'flipped' and joined the Spanish tribes, creating a new independant kingdom which held off all Roman attacks untill his assination in 72 BC.

As you can see everybody, sometimes culture-flips are required, and sometimes they are not.
So neither side in this long ongoing debate is 100% right or a 100% wrong.

(BTW, I ment what I said....I WOULD like to find a way of reducing flipping for some scenarios. It's just that I'm so busy creating new units that I haven't the time to do the experiments myself. So please, let us know what you find. Cheers )

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Kryten
For example, I wouldn't want any cities to flip in a WW1 or WW2 scenario. And I certainly don't want Muslim cities flipping to the invading Christians in a Crusader scenario!

I agree that being able to control city flipping is essential to the creation of scenarios. I disagree about turning off flipping for a Crusader scenario. That was the ultimate problem facing the Crusaders. The Christians never successfully converted the people in the conquered territories, and as soon as the garrisons became too expensive to maintain, the people reverted.

[TETurkhan]

I wonder why the culture flipping feature doesn't have an on/off switch? Sure would kill this thread if there was

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Zachriel
I agree that being able to control city flipping is essential to the creation of scenarios. I disagree about turning off flipping for a Crusader scenario. That was the ultimate problem facing the Crusaders. The Christians never successfully converted the people in the conquered territories, and as soon as the garrisons became too expensive to maintain, the people reverted.

Hmmmm....we have (very breifly) had this discussion before. I see your point; the Crusaders would probably be on the losing side of a flip, but never on the gaining side. But it would need very careful balancing by the scenario creator. After all, it wouldn't be much of an historical scenario if the Crusaders had to keep huge garrisons of 20 or 30 units in their cities. As you said, the main thing about the crusades was how small the christian armies were. But ok; I cheerfully withdraw the Crusades as an example of a scenario where culture-flipping is not desired, and I put in its place....

.....the American Civil War (which is another historical scenario which is also under construction in Customization Forum). Again, culture-flipping, like respawning civilizations and pollution, would distort this scenario and so should be switched off. (I assume Kentucky would best be representented by a neutral 'nation').
But Alexander the Great would be best with it switched on (and even increased).

Sometimes flipping is a good thing, and sometimes it's a bad thing. It all depends....

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Kryten
I see your point; the Crusaders would probably be on the losing side of a flip, but never on the gaining side.

I believe the Crusaders drastically reduced the population of cities they conquered, especially Jerusalem. That works in Civ3, too.

http://jeru.huji.ac.il/ef1.htm

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Flavor Dave

To reiterate a point I've made before (and I think on this thread), I don't understand why they didn't add "independent" city states. CFs in times of peace would go independent, and might fully flip later.

YES! This is precisely what is needed. Call to Power I found to be a horrible game, but even it had this feature.

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Kryten
To Zouave:-

Are you still going ahead with your project to reduce or even eliminate culture-flipping? If so, could you please post your findings as I for one would be very interested in anything you discover. This is because somtimes culture-flips lead to 'orrible distortions when creating historical scenarios, so I too would like to have the ability to disable or remove this feature.

Yes, please, I would like to know as well, I've tried almost everything I can to no avail. I mean, I wouldnt want Cherbourg flipping to the Germans in a ww2 scenario, taking with it the entire D-day invasion force.

[Zouave]

All I can say is I am playing with those values and after awhile I will become convinced if it works. Just one flip proves it DOES NOT work. It will take a number of games and many captured towns and cities not flipping to convince me. Patience, patience.

It would be nice if Firaxis deigned to tell us, but I likely wouldn't believe them anyway based on their track record.

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Zouave
All I can say is I am playing with those values and after awhile I will become convinced if it works. Just one flip proves it DOES NOT work. It will take a number of games and many captured towns and cities not flipping to convince me. Patience, patience.

Just go into a new map, and create 2 civs with several cities apiece, one for you and an enemy civ. Edit the culture for all the cities to give both sides substantial culture. Give both sides 20 or so people in all their cities, and give yourself a large army (give no units to the enemy).

Then start the game, and immediately take one of the enemy cities with some of your units. Then simply wait 20 or so turns to see if the city flips (having captured a size 20 city, most likely with that many foreign nationals it will flip in a matter of a few turns).

Then u can play around with as many options as needed in the editor and begin the scenario over and over again to see if you can avoid the city flipping.

Here's the things I have done so far -----

I've tried reducing changing assimilation rates to 100% in the editor, so foreign nationals would hopefully assimilate immediately, thus reducing the chance of a culture flip, but this doesnt seem to work at all.

I think it turns out that foreign nationals will only assimilate once u have more pop in the city than foreign nationals, and therefore u still have to starve foreign citizens, etc. in order to begin the assimilation process.

As far as stuff in the culture tab, all u can do is set resistance chance to 0% so that hopefully u can begin adding your populaton members to the city in the hopes that the foreign nationals will begin to assimilate. But this still does not do much to help either.

Despite all of these measures, my cities will still flip to enemy control in test scenarios that I have run. So basically, unless someone here is a programmer and figures out a way to mod the game with some special program or something, I believe that there's not much that can be done about culture flipping in the present 1.29 editor (gasp!).

[Reichsmarshal]

Originally posted by Catt

I'm not sure I fully understand point 4 (as I think total civ culture plays a fairly strong role in the CF calculation), but more or less agree that total civ culture should play a strong role in the chance of a flip.

I seem to have worse flip problems when fighting civs that have slightly lower culture, however possess a powerful military and great production/science. I believe they should increase how much it is based on culture and reduce how much it is based on anything else. The military advisor describes it as "they admire x civ's culture and so the people of x city deposed the governor and join someone else".

Culture flipping mitigates (but does not eliminate) the benefits of the above approach - it serves to help balance the military / cultural / scientific aspects of the game, just as the threat of military destruction serves to mitigate the benefits of going all culture all the time, at the expense of national defense. CF operates as a deterrant (one of many in the game) to turning Civ 3 into soley a war game (there are better war games available). Your examples of how to "fix" CF work against the mitigating effect that CF provides.

CF imposes penalties on those who neglect culture -- and sometimes these penalties are harsh indeed. Extensively softening the potential penalties, through predicitve indicators which allow easy counter-tactics (only when needed ) or preservation of "flipped" units, works against what one can argue is the primary raison d'etre of culture flipping. Why preserve culture flipping as a game concept at all if you want to take these steps?

As it currently is culture flipping is unbalancing because of the staggering amount of units that can be slain this way. If multiple cities flip simeoltaneously it can severely hamper the war effort. I also believe that the destruction of all culture improvements in the city is completly absurd. It makes liberating the city much less useful. In the real world cities don't always lose their cuture all because they were captured. Just look at Paris or a ton of other cities.

The fact that they get the city back, a free unit, and you have to lose units all over again taking it back is enough.

[Reichsmarshal]

Originally posted by Zouave



You miss one thing. CF is "a war tool" you refered to. The insanity of "razing" is a demented cousin of CF and should be eliminated after the Ancient period. As the game is now, CF is indeed a war tool, and thus instantly razing big cities with disappearing populations and the tile becoming grassland is oftimes necessary.
Razing in the Modern Era is crazier than CF itself.

I completly agree. The problem is that culture flipping incourages razing even further than it naturally would be useful. In mulitplayer razing will cause some serious balance problems. Also the fact that you lose all culture improvements when capturing cities is another problem (unrealistic too).

[Damien]

Zouave,as i said b4,my home city(Le Havre,Normandy) which was the 1st french harbour was razed within a night by the british air force.

Razing is far from being unrealistic.

[whosurdaddy]

Originally posted by Damien
Zouave,as i said b4,my home city(Le Havre,Normandy) which was the 1st french harbour was razed within a night by the british air force.

Razing is far from being unrealistic.

Much of it may have been destroyed, but it was not razed in Civ terms which means being wiped out of existence with no trace left behind. Le Havre is still around today, isnt it? Nuff said.