Well, that's a first...

[snoproblem]

I've been playing Civ V for nearly a year now.

I'm playing the Byzantine Empire, and up comes that screen that appears after conquering a city - the one where you choose to puppet, annex, burn-baby-burn etc. Confusion sets in, as I wasn't warring against anyone at the time.

As it turns out, one of the Korean cities revolted, and elected to join me!

I had no idea that sort of thing happens to the AI's - how rare or commonplace is it?

 

[consentient]

"you (or the AI) chance losing Cities if other Civs are causing your Civ to go through Civil Resistance or a Revolutionary Wave, which produces a very high level of Unhappiness. If the Civ does not have enough Happiness remain in the positive, it may begin losing Cities to the preferred Ideology. They will join the Civ that is of the preferred ideology that has the closest City, so that may explain why you may be the biggest Tourism generator but have another Civ of the same Ideology getting all the Cities. The Civ gaining these Cities will get to select what to do with them (Annex or Puppet)."

From:- http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/ideology/

 

[Sherlock]

In 800 hours I have never seen that happen once.

 

[docbud]

I've had it happen a few times. I usually sell the city to someone else.

But sometimes I'll be a jerk, and sell it back to the original civ just to keep him in revolt. Then several turns later it will revert back to me, and I sell it back. Rinse and repeat.

 

[johnnybaseball]

I was in a 22 civ, domination only game, and it was between me and Ethiopia, each of us having dominated our respective continents. My ideology was causing massive unhappiness, until one of my cities (I believe it was Monty's capital) flipped to Ethiopia. It relieved my unhappiness, and allowed me to move forward on more strategically important cities. I don't think I've ever had anyone else's city join my empire, though.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I've had it happen several times. It's rarely convenient. I steal the Works of Art, then raze or sell the city.

 

[consentient]

In my first Deity win, a strange warring Freedom game with Germany, I flipped more than 10 Zulu cities and razed them out of pure spite.

 

[reddishrecue]

That happens.. If it happens to other players where you see that a city revolts then why it wouldn't happen to you also.. ?

 

[stormtrooper412]

I've seen an Ottoman city flipping to a runaway cultural India, and that was it

 

[Tabarnak]

In 3000 hours of mp games played i never seen that once. Oh wait...yeah...some bastards in public games might actually give cities to another player before they quit just for fun. But the real fun fact is if you accept such deal you might retreive yourself with more unhappiness than you can think and scrap your own game!(making you quit right after...)

 

[Convict]

I've had it happen several times. It's rarely convenient. I steal the Works of Art, then raze or sell the city.

I have had it happen quite a few times but more often I do the hard yards and it goes to some hanger on Civ.

I do much the same as above, except I get the population down to 1 hen sell the city. Or gift it to someone I don't like.

 

[reddishrecue]

Gifting unwanted cities to civilizations can get them to like you.

 

[joncnunn]

I've been playing Civ V for nearly a year now.

I'm playing the Byzantine Empire, and up comes that screen that appears after conquering a city - the one where you choose to puppet, annex, burn-baby-burn etc. Confusion sets in, as I wasn't warring against anyone at the time.

As it turns out, one of the Korean cities revolted, and elected to join me!

I had no idea that sort of thing happens to the AI's - how rare or commonplace is it?

This is new to BNW.

It directly relates to how unhappy an AI allows its citizens to get when under a lot of ideological pressure.
Like everything else related to the AI, flavor dependent.
Decreased likelihood on very high difficulty levels as a side effect of the large AI happiness bonuses on the top two difficulty levels.

 

[Kirin Rider]

I have not seen this much until my last two games.

In my last game I was playing as Poland and going for a Science win, but I decided to fight wars to cut my neighbors down to size. I devastated Austria, Denmark, and Russia, keeping their capitals (full of Wonders and artwork) and a few other good cities as puppets. Even though I was concentrating on science I was still a cultural runaway because of my massive core cities and the looted artwork in the conquered puppet cities. Spain, on another continent, was doing all right except for lackluster tourism and culture. Everyone on Earth went Order except for me (Autocracy) and Netherlands (Freedom), so they all hated me but couldn't resist my tourism. Seville, a size 21 city, revolted to me, but I didn't want it because it was far away and badly placed - it reached only one of two Great Barrier Reef tiles. So I gave it to Portugal, who freaked out and slowly burned this huge city to the ground - incurring lots of unhappiness in the process.

Meanwhile the Netherlands had their own problems - I was drawing their people towards Autocracy, while the rest of the world pulled them toward Order. I was moving a scout through their lands when I saw them fighting off several barbarian infantry that were attacking Amsterdam. It was like a real life mutiny or putsch attempt by disgruntled military officers.

An even more dramatic thing is happening in my current game. I'm playing Japan and going for a cultural win - I had a godly tundra Crab start on a Small Continents map and managed to get a great Shinto religion and build every artistic Wonder. I was first to Ideology and took Freedom. Russia and Indonesia took Autocracy, various civs took Order, and China and Germany took Freedom. Before too long though, several civs began to suffer massive happiness problems from being pulled in different directions. I have the most tourism by far, but Russia has decent tourism as well - Orthodox religion with Cathedrals and Sacred Sites. I saw a message saying something like, "Revolution! The people of Germany have risen up and demanded that their leaders adopt Order!" What is really crazy is that this happened to China about six or eight times in a row. Seriously - on each new turn the Chinese people would revolt and the government would flip back and forth between Freedom and Order. Finally most of the world has settled down with Order, and their unhappiness is at manageable levels. It is as if the world ideology situation was inherently unstable, and could only stabilize once most civs picked one thing and stuck with it - in this case, Order.

 

[vesp3r1987]

will this happen only cause of ideology (and lack of happiness) or poor economy can trigger it too?
Im curious because at some point mostly when i enter industrial era i notice most of my enemies have low happiness compared to me (i have f.e 22 and they have around less than 3) also some of the empires are shown with negative income of gold and often ask me for funds and i refuse. So will that empire start loosing cities cause of the money lack and will they go to the richest empire or the closest one?

 

[claudiupb]

It is caused by ideology, if a civ has at least 20 unhappiness, it has a chance of losing a city to the closest civ that has a different ideology pressuring on the original owners ideology (or the civ that is pressuring the most i don't know exactly).

I had this happen lots of time on Emperor difficulty, but it's pretty inconsistent because usually AIs will flip ideology if they have too much pressure. On harder levels it's pretty hard to see because AI are almost always happy, and usually they will have a decent tourism output, so unless it is pressured by another AI it will be pretty hard to go over 20 unhappiness.

A way to force it (so for example you get a good city for free) is giving bad cities to the targeted AI in order to increase it's unhappiness (assuming it is already in revolutionary wave). If you do it right and the AI does not flip it's ideology you might get a city, but again this will probably be something achievable on Emperor or Immortal.

 

[reddishrecue]

This mechanic seems completely random to me because any civilization could take a revolting city. It must have to do with the influence that a certain civilization has towards the civilization that is having the unhappiness issues and not only that but there are other civilizations that could be content and influential as well towards that revolting civilization that can cause such a revolt. Its hard to tell who the city will revolt to because the city could also revolt to other civilizations that aren't as influential as the leading influential civilization.

 

[redwings1340]

I've had it happen a few times. I usually sell the city to someone else.

But sometimes I'll be a jerk, and sell it back to the original civ just to keep him in revolt. Then several turns later it will revert back to me, and I sell it back. Rinse and repeat.

That's brilliant and terrible. I really hope the city population gets a cut of those sales. That's like the best large scale con job in history.

 

[Volcanon]

It's rare for the player to get it, but I got multiple cities from Attila because I was going for cultural victory as democracy and he was autocracy. Eventually he lost all of his cities to me or Korea. Never changed ideology. Then he declared war so I killed him.

 

[snoproblem]

UPDATE: Another Korean city just 'defected' to me, and it's bigger and richer than the first. This has given me a whole new appreciation for the cultural and ideological aspect of the game.

In other words - yay, free cities!