Tile culture flipping in C2C

[Taffer323]

I've been searching around for this on the forums but haven't been able to find a good answer; what determines when a tile flips from one civ to another in C2C? I know there are a lot of changes to how cultures and borders work in C2C but I'm struggling to figure out how it works in my game.

I was playing as the Inca when Portugal declared war on me, and after a long bloody struggle I ended the war after taking a few of his cities. But after ~20 turns of peace, the cities I took are cut off from the rest of my empire by his culture. I pumped all their production into culture and culture buildings, and I was able to get >50% my culture on most of them; but the tiles remained unchanged.

• Both of us have the Open Borders border policy, so no fixed borders shenanegans
• Multiple tiles have >50% Incan culture but still belong to Portugal
• None of the aforementioned tiles are within the influence of one of any Portugese city.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[Joij21]

C2C has mechanic called fixed borders. Basically if a civ researches a certain tech, and then activates a certain border civic, they gain fixed borders. This means you cannot culturally flip their tiles to your culture as their borders are now "fixed" as in predefined. Its meant to represent how nations beyond tribes don't allow their borders to change due to cultural influence like in the real world.

The only problem in C2C is that the whole system is kinda wonky in how its done so you can only claim land if you conquer a whole nation. Unfortunately due to civ4's ancient game engine its unlikely the mod developers would be capable of implementing a claim system like in Paradox games.

If it annoys you, you can disable this in the options menu if you start a brand new custom game. Otherwise you will have to finish off the Portuguese once and for all.

 

[Taffer323]

C2C has mechanic called fixed borders. Basically if a civ researches a certain tech, and then activates a certain border civic, they gain fixed borders. This means you cannot culturally flip their tiles to your culture as their borders are now "fixed" as in predefined. Its meant to represent how nations beyond tribes don't allow their borders to change due to cultural influence like in the real world.

The only problem in C2C is that the whole system is kinda wonky in how its done so you can only claim land if you conquer a whole nation. Unfortunately due to civ4's ancient game engine its unlikely the mod developers would be capable of implementing a claim system like in Paradox games.

If it annoys you, you can disable this in the options menu if you start a brand new custom game. Otherwise you will have to finish off the Portuguese once and for all.

I thought the fixed borders mechanic only applied if you have relevant border civic enabled? And (unless the UI is lying) we both have the "Open Borders" policy which I thought didn't have fixed borders? And on top of that, I'm 90% sure I saw some of my cities flip tiles to him in the renaissance era before the war.

 

[Joij21]

I thought the fixed borders mechanic only applied if you have relevant border civic enabled? And (unless the UI is lying) we both have the "Open Borders" policy which I thought didn't have fixed borders? And on top of that, I'm 90% sure I saw some of my cities flip tiles to him in the renaissance era before the war.

Open Borders gives you fixed borders, it just lets all the immigrants in, so you get higher disease and crime risks. Also if one side has fixed borders and another doesn't, then the side with fixed borders is capable of swallowing up the non fixed one, while the non fixed can't swallow up the fixed one.

As for city flipping, that is a completely different mechanic. If the culture of your city gets over 50% your own culture then there is a chance of a cultural revolt. If the city revolts two times in a row, then the city flips to the civ that has the new majority culture within it. This is not dependent on the status of tiles but rather culture itself, so in essence foreign culture can still splooge over to your cities and flip them even with fixed borders.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Both of us have the Open Borders border policy, so no fixed borders shenanegans

As Joij21 explained, Open Borders refers to the security policy of the border. Most more civilized civics recognize fixed borders.

As for city flipping, that is a completely different mechanic.

Not entirely disconnected - it cannot take place if the other culture hasn't captured at least one tile in the immediately adjacent tiles to the city. Otherwise you're right.

 

[Yudishtira]

Fixed Borders allows you to 'occupy' a tile regardless of culture, by keeping at least one unit there. Unoccupied tiles are constantly changing ownership even with fixed borders.

This does not explain why a (substantial) minority of (unoccupied) tiles stay owned by a civ with minority culture in them.

In my save, I took my occupying units away when I saw I had 5% higher culture than anyone else in the tiles. But the tiles reverted to the neighbour, so that that city has three adjacent tiles with a clear majority of my culture, but is surrounded by foreign-owned tiles.

On the other hand, several cities conquered by me brought me many of their neighbouring tiles that I had negligible culture in.

 

[Joij21]

Fixed Borders allows you to 'occupy' a tile regardless of culture, by keeping at least one unit there. Unoccupied tiles are constantly changing ownership even with fixed borders.

This does not explain why a (substantial) minority of (unoccupied) tiles stay owned by a civ with minority culture in them.

In my save, I took my occupying units away when I saw I had 5% higher culture than anyone else in the tiles. But the tiles reverted to the neighbour, so that that city has three adjacent tiles with a clear majority of my culture, but is surrounded by foreign-owned tiles.

On the other hand, several cities conquered by me brought me many of their neighbouring tiles that I had negligible culture in.

This is probably some mechanic that always guarantees a city to have it's radius of tiles as always the owner if not occupied by an enemy. Taffer must have the option where the starting radius of a city is 0. This would probably explain why all the adjacent tiles around his newly captured cities are of his enemies.

 

[Thunderbrd]

This is probably some mechanic that always guarantees a city to have it's radius of tiles as always the owner if not occupied by an enemy. Taffer must have the option where the starting radius of a city is 0. This would probably explain why all the adjacent tiles around his newly captured cities are of his enemies.

There is a game option for that. Minimum city radius or something along those lines. It also makes it impossible for cities to revolt and join other nations over culture influence.

 

[Yudishtira]

This is probably some mechanic that always guarantees a city to have it's radius of tiles as always the owner if not occupied by an enemy..

No it's not. In particular, in the first example I gave, my city has no adjacent tiles, despite having majority culture in three of them. And in the other example, the tiles that were assigned to my ownership were not all adjacent to cities, and in no case did a city receive all its adjacent tiles.

Taffer must have the option where the starting radius of a city is 0. This would probably explain why all the adjacent tiles around his newly captured cities are of his enemies.

Adjacent tiles to newly-captured cities usually have much more of the enemy's culture than of yours, and thus remain owned by them. That's normal, and independent of the zero-starting-radius option (which is for newly-founded cities in any case).

Some tiles, as I said, are owned by civs with minority culture in them, and these cases are the ones that need explaining.

And just to reiterate and confirm, this has nothing to do with Fixed Borders either. That was a complete red herring imo, and I'm glad to see it appears to have been abandoned as an explanation by all concerned.

 

[Thunderbrd]

That's normal, and independent of the zero-starting-radius option (which is for newly-founded cities in any case).

just to point out, zero starting radius is not related to 1 min city radius

@Yudishtira: Are you Taffer323? Is this your save? Are you saying that without the minimum 1 tile radius option you are having the tiles around a city stay with the owner of that city despite having more cultural influence from a different player than the owner of the city?

This all has become a very befuddled mess of a discussion so I'm trying to at least sort out what the problem is here. Personally I don't care a smidge about how culture ownership works and find it the biggest pain in the ass in the code so am desperately hoping someone else takes ownership of this issue but there's no save to look into and there's very vague discussion on if there is actually a bug or not.

 

[Joij21]

And just to reiterate and confirm, this has nothing to do with Fixed Borders either. That was a complete red herring imo, and I'm glad to see it appears to have been abandoned as an explanation by all concerned.

I don't think anyone so far has discounted the fact that it could be fixed borders causing the problem. Also by occupation are you referring to influence driven war? Tiles in that case only flip if you win battles on a tile, not occupying them.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Honestly who knows what fixed border is supposed to mean now. I wasn't here for all the arguing that took place over that and Koshling set it up to try to be somewhere in the middle of warring factions. Me, as I recall, the original concept of fixed borders was that culture would no longer flip border claims on lands owned by a nation with fixed border status in their civics. This, apparently was somehow wrong to many, despite the idea that legally established borders that would NOT flip by culture was the entire original concept of it - so that more advanced civics would fix borders as they are in RL. Then onto that they had added military claiming land and again, wouldn't matter what culture was there or not if a military unit had claimed it - then they could go on and keep claiming more without having to stay there. Like how it actually works in RL.

If Fixed Borders doesn't work this way it confuses me as to what it means at all.

@JosEPh_II You've tried to explain to me before what the outcome of all that conflict was and why. Sorry I'm not remembering very well. Perhaps you can explain it again?

 

[MattCA]

here's a small part of it. GET_PLAYER(getOwner()) is the owner of the plot.

if (GET_PLAYER(getOwner()).hasFixedBorders())
{
//Can not steal land from other, more dominant fixed border civilization
bool bValidCulture = true;
if (eBestPlayer != NO_PLAYER && getOwner() != eBestPlayer)
{
bValidCulture = !GET_PLAYER(eBestPlayer).hasFixedBorders();
}
// Koshling - changed Fixed Borders to not unconditionally hold territory, but only
// to hold it against a natural owner with less than twice the FB player's culture
if (bValidCulture &&
getCulture(getOwner()) > iBestCulture/2 &&
(isWithinCultureRange(getOwner()) || isWithinOccupationRange(getOwner())))
{
return getOwner();
}

 

[Yudishtira]

I thought the fixed borders mechanic only applied if you have relevant border civic enabled? And (unless the UI is lying) we both have the "Open Borders" policy which I thought didn't have fixed borders? And on top of that, I'm 90% sure I saw some of my cities flip tiles to him in the renaissance era before the war.

Multiple civics in multiple categories give Fixed Borders, and you only have to have one of them. Please upload your save with instructions how to find the phenomenon that you're complaining about.

here's a small part of it. GET_PLAYER(getOwner()) is the owner of the plot.

if (GET_PLAYER(getOwner()).hasFixedBorders())
{
//Can not steal land from other, more dominant fixed border civilization
bool bValidCulture = true;
if (eBestPlayer != NO_PLAYER && getOwner() != eBestPlayer)
{
bValidCulture = !GET_PLAYER(eBestPlayer).hasFixedBorders();
}
// Koshling - changed Fixed Borders to not unconditionally hold territory, but only
// to hold it against a natural owner with less than twice the FB player's culture
if (bValidCulture &&
getCulture(getOwner()) > iBestCulture/2 &&
(isWithinCultureRange(getOwner()) || isWithinOccupationRange(getOwner())))
{
return getOwner();
}

Thanks Matt. But does anyone else think that needing double the culture is completely OTT here? By mid-game it could be completely impossible to get double the culture due to overflows. Even where just a simple majority is needed, I have a documented case where a city took 1164 turns (Eons admittedly) to get its first adjacent tile.

Suggest 20% more is far more sane.

 

[Toffer90]

By mid-game it could be completely impossible to get double the culture due to overflows.

Plot culture cannot overflow anymore, I added in a pretty solid protection against it some weeks ago.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Plot culture cannot overflow anymore, I added in a pretty solid protection against it some weeks ago.

Would you expound on this please. A bit more detailed explanation of the process.

Are you saying that the culture battle (between adjacent empires) for one plot can not now add or subtract culture to it's adjacent plots? And if so, why did you feel this was necessary?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Would you expound on this please. A bit more detailed explanation of the process.

Are you saying that the culture battle (between adjacent empires) for one plot can not now add or subtract culture to it's adjacent plots? And if so, why did you feel this was necessary?

By overflow, he's talking about integer overloading, no rule changes, just a potential bug for the late game fixed.

 

[Toffer90]

Would you expound on this please. A bit more detailed explanation of the process.

Are you saying that the culture battle (between adjacent empires) for one plot can not now add or subtract culture to it's adjacent plots? And if so, why did you feel this was necessary?

When a players culture on a plot reach 1 000 000 000, all players culture on that plot is divided by 10.
Overflow happens at 2 147 483 647, and one would have to punch more than 900 000 000 culture to the plot each turn to ever be able to overflow the total culture on the plot.
Pretty sure it's not possible to have that much culture per turn put into plots... if it is we need to reduce the culture output of cities in late games.

 

[JosEPh_II]

When a players culture on a plot reach 1 000 000 000, all players culture on that plot is divided by 10.
Overflow happens at 2 147 483 647, and one would have to punch more than 900 000 000 culture to the plot each turn to ever be able to overflow the total culture on the plot.

Do we have games that get to those Culture levels? This feels like a revisit to what koshling was trying to do when Afforess' additional Culture levels were added to C2C many years ago.

 

[Toffer90]

Do we have games that get to those Culture levels?

It's inevitable to reach those values since the game can be played an infinite amount of turns.