Culture Flipping: Is it even in the game anymore?

Ive been playing thse games since Civ1, but ive only recently started playing Civ4. Right now im struggling to get up to Noble, and i really appreciate all the articles and tips ive found here and on the main site.

But in many articles, ive found references to culture flipping, and how an early culture rush can help you gain more cities. I always really enjoyed this tactic in Civ:Rev, and have been trying to do the same in Civ4. But so far... nothing. Ive built cities as close to enemy cities as possible, and built monument,library,temple etc. or even wonders in the city next to theirs, but the best ive ever gotten was that the enemy city lost the land in between and some of its own land as well, the city remains firmly in the hands of my enemy, and in diplomacy he wont trade me for it, regardless of how much his city is starving or how friendly we are.

Am i doing something wrong? Should i use more great artists for culture bombs as opposed to settling them? Should i send in spies to take out their culture buildings? Or is it just me and is culture flipping of enemy cities a LOT harder then it is in Civ:Rev (like most things are... i played the highest difficulty level there without breaking a sweat).

Thanks in advance from a veteran newb.

The AI seems to be a lot better at defending against culture flipping in BTS than in Vanilla. I frequently flipped multiple cities per game in Vanilla, but in BtS I usually don't get more than one or two marginal cities. I've noticed through espionage that the AI will start building culture in cities that are in danger of flipping and send great artists.

That could be it. I play BtS, and maybe the strategy articles ive read were written for vanilla?

Use spies and espionage points to help to flip cities. As you're knocking down your opponent's culture in their city (from the spread culture mission), you'll be claiming more and more contested tiles. Just make sure that you've patched to the latest version of BTS, as the spread culture mission was seriously nerfed in the previous patch.

Species5618 said:

Or is it just me and is culture flipping of enemy cities a LOT harder then it is in Civ:Rev (like most things are... i played the highest difficulty level there without breaking a sweat).

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You shouldn't compare anything in Civ 4 to Civ:Rev. They're totally different games. Culture flipping is not impossible but it's not common either. You're best bet is to not worry about it and treat any flips that do occur as a bonus. Don't use flipping as a basis for your strategy as it's not really that effective, compared to the alternatives.

Culture flipping works fine in BTS. You have to work to make it work though.

First you have took pick an appropriate leader for it. Pericles is probably the best, being Creative and the Odeon providing 3 extra and 2 extra Artist slots. Most other Creative leaders are also good, specially Zara, Sury and Louis, as is Qin (Industrious and +25% from the Pavillion).

Then you have to pick which cities to attack culturally and settle close. Close as in two tiles away so your culture covers your opponent's city after the second border pop. (Settling cities close kind of naturally gravitates to a Specialist economy, so keep that in mind.) If you can settle it so it can also flip a nice resource, even better. When you settle a city like that, get the culture buildings in ASAP. Which order that goes in exactly depends on the game situation. If the AP is of your religion and you have the Sistine Chapel, chop a Monastery. Otherwise, chop a Theatre and a Library. Granaries can wait. Keep an eye on new city locations and have a Settler/Missionary/Units team ready to settle them as soon as they become available. Also keep in mind that a cultural revolt in one of your enemy cities might temporarily open up a spot to settle in. Spread your state religion to the city you are trying to flip, it doubles the chance.

Tech: Drama (Theatre) and Music (Great Artist and Sistine Chapel) are the priorities. The Sistine Chapel is what really gets the culture pressure going in the Middle Ages, and it's essential. After that it's Civil Service so you can chain irrigate to some of the less than optimal city sites you might end up with, then Liberalism for Free Speech.

Diplomacy: you're going to get -2 to -4 with all your neighbors due to the cultural pressure, so you have to mitigate that. Religion usually does the trick, but if you have a neighbor with a different religion, they are mostly likely going to attack you. Useful side effects of a cultural pressure game are that your cities have high cultural defense and there is quite a bit of land to cross for your opponents forces from the border to your cities, so you have a few turns to organize your defense and it is manageable if your army is in a decent shape.

Keep in mind that with enough garrisoned units, the city is immune to flipping. If you get city investigation through espionage, you can see what the chance of revolt is by hovering the mouse over the culture bar at the bottom. If there's no chance displayed, despite you having greater than 50% of the city's culture, then there are too many units in the city.

You'll either have to declare war, or try to arrange for them to go to war with someone else to draw those units away.

Cultural flipping is well and alive in BtS ( really, read this thread, it is very instructive ). The only diferences between Vanilla and BtS is that, as stated above by others, BtS AI actually knows some tricks to prevent culture flips ( the more common, and that, by acident , no one mentioned so far, is to pile units in the threathned city.... a big number of units in a city prevents revolts, and a city can't flip without a revolt ) ,but there is the compensating fact that in BtS there is much more potential in a city, via the reworked Sistine and the corporations. In the game i quoted above the poster was doing some hundreths of culture per turn just because of corporations and Sistine specialists.....

BtS also nerfed the culture bomb.

Thanny said:

Keep in mind that with enough garrisoned units, the city is immune to flipping. If you get city investigation through espionage, you can see what the chance of revolt is by hovering the mouse over the culture bar at the bottom. If there's no chance displayed, despite you having greater than 50% of the city's culture, then there are too many units in the city.

You'll either have to declare war, or try to arrange for them to go to war with someone else to draw those units away.

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Bribing them to attack another neighbor (or the other way around) is a very useful tactic besides luring garrisons away, as any cities conquered will lose their cultural buildings and the culture level of the city will reset to one. Garrisons become more of a problem in the later game, where there is more production and the units are more effective at preventing a revolt. In the middle ages it is expensive to have to garrison 8-10 units to keep a city that can't work much land due to cultural pressure.

And I think you can still reassign cities via the AP even if they have too many units in them to flip. (Another reason why a Specialist economy ties in well with a cultural pressure game is that you will have more votes in the AP compared with a cottage economy.)

The only thing that would help that hasn't already been said is try and get them to become your vassal. This has always stopped their borders from "fighting" mine, so I guess it will work for you too, and your borders expand greatly into theirs. This allows your borders to easily surround their city, making it more likely to flip.

Later in the game, you can build culture. Once, playing as the Dutch, I built a dike (coastal cities), factory, coal plant, forge (all the production buildings) and Mining Inc, and was building culture in recently conquered cities. I was pumping out well over a 100 per turn, enough to flip a city that had been captured by the mongols about 10/15 turns later.

EvanMeisterX said:

The only thing that would help that hasn't already been said is try and get them to become your vassal. This has always stopped their borders from "fighting" mine, so I guess it will work for you too, and your borders expand greatly into theirs. This allows your borders to easily surround their city, making it more likely to flip.

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I think (not 100% sure) that the first cultural revolt in a vassal city will immediately cause it to flip, rather than just going in a few turns of revolt and only flipping on the second revolt event as usual.

r_rolo1 said:

Cultural flipping is well and alive in BtS ( really, read this thread, it is very instructive ).

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He choose all his opponents and founded the three early religions. Not likely to happen in a regular game...

It's only a prince game, it's possible. I am still heading to culture conquest w/ all the religions/wonders/etc.. It's just way, way too slow.

Better said, it is a prince game played by someone that posted and won a OCC-AW in Deity With careful management it is quite easy to found the 3 early religions on prince if no AI starts with myst and/or you have some good early commerce tile in the starting BFC ( lake, oasis .... ) combined with some luck ( if you go to budhism and a AI decides to try hindu from the boot you have virtually no chance )

I know, I've founded all 7 religions on two occasions in the capital. I selected opponents the 2nd game however. Still not really regular.

Grey Fox said:

I know, I've founded all 7 religions on two occasions in the capital. I selected opponents the 2nd game however. Still not really regular.

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Why does it need to be regular? Not like you need 7 religions to flip AI cities and the thread is very informative even in games without the ballbusting restrictions and necessary concessions (no-mysti-AIs) he had.

Grey Fox said:

He choose all his opponents and founded the three early religions. Not likely to happen in a regular game...

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Don't need to. Under regular rules that game would have ended in a cultural victory ages before it finished the way it finished. The purpose of a cultural pressure game is not to flip all your opponents' cities like in that one. the prupose is to flip enough of them to get in a state where you can win by different means (usually cultural or diplomatic)

Badtz Maru said:

The AI seems to be a lot better at defending against culture flipping in BTS than in Vanilla. I frequently flipped multiple cities per game in Vanilla, but in BtS I usually don't get more than one or two marginal cities. I've noticed through espionage that the AI will start building culture in cities that are in danger of flipping and send great artists.

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True, but you can now send in spies to influence the culture...
In a city that was more recently founded, on your borders perhaps, you can easily take the enemy's cities from him... older the city, the longer it takes...

True using the spies to influence culture, and of course, helps if you are a CRE civ...