100% effective city-flip counter and HUGE AI CHEAT

S

simwiz2

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i was playing the americans, standard map 6 civs, and the babs declared war on me. Their empire was nowhere near me, but they had settled a string of cities along my border, and had a lot of longbows moving about there. None of these outpost cities had ANY culture at all, though their civ as a whole had a bit more culture than mine.

Anyway my knights and cavalry slaughter their longbows and spearmen, and take all the cities. I get ready to rush temples, but there are 5 of the cities and i am nearly broke from recent unit upgrades. 2 of the cities will have to wait for temples. One of them (we'll call it Babylon)has 2 musketmen (vet) in it, the other (we'll call it Thebes) has 4 musketmen, 12 knights, and 2 cannon in it.

A few turns, the cities are being happy-starved, and "Thebes" flips. Reloading is justified in this case. So i reaload, and try to change the random seed by moving my workers to different squares, changing production, etc. Doesnt work. So i take all the units out of "Thebes" and onto the open plains so i can retake it and raze it. AND IT DOESNT FLIP!!! :confused: Confused, i reload and this time move my units to "Babylon". BABYLON FLIPS!!!! Then i reload again and move my units to one of the cities with a rushed temple, now with 4 CP. AND THAT CITY FLIPS!!!! :mad: What an annoying cheat, with the AI using a game concept to target the human's massive armies.

Can anyone do some more tests on their games to confirm this? I would but my computer is too slow to reload games more than i have to :rolleyes: and i want to know if anyone can confirm my results.
 
Ha! And I thought Culture Flipping was a joke before reading this post.

Now, garrisons not only do not stop flipping, they are so inneffective they help PROMOTE it!! And then they disappear into thin air!!

I once had a town of '3' flip on me with seven veteran and elite units in it, all full strength. They'd have slaughtered the population in reality.

Culture Flipping remains an effin' joke in Civ III and it needs to be FIXED.
 
"I once had a town of '3' flip on me with seven veteran and elite units in it, all full strength. They'd have slaughtered the population in reality. "

This gives me an idea, if it is possible. What if when the city tried to flip, your troops gave you an option of simply policing the revolts (with a slight chance to prevent the flip) or you can choose for them to use brutality to prevent the flipping (which would cause population loss/city destruction, possibly a few lost units, but still better than losing your entire army to one city). The only problem with this is it might have to be added by Firaxis themselves, I doubt you could add something like this with just mods (unless you did some real major editing with more than just the editor that come with it).
 
The AI is not cheating, and putting units there does not promote it. It is probably just a case of the random number generator throwing you a bit of bad luck.

Look at it this way, you might have a 0.5 change of winning one way, and a 0.75 chance of winning another. This doesn't mean in the first case you can't roll 0.4 and win, where as in the second case you get 0.9 and lose.
 
I have seen the same thing happen more than once. Of course, I can't see the dice rolling in the background, so I can't promise the the random number that caused the flip didn't get used up somehow directly or indirectly by moving units around.

Soren (through Dan) stated that garisons have a (smallish) positive effect on flips. They represent Firaxis, and it sounds like Soren is the guy who should know the numbers inside and out. If a large garrison actually has a negative effect (some poorly thought out logic about resentment) as some suspect, you'd think it would be worth mentioning! Soren also stated in a chat on Appolyton that movement does not burn up random numbers. (It did in Civ II, but now there's nothing random about it.)

So my operating assumption for now is that some random rolls are being burned up related to resistance surpression (borrowed idea). Redistribute the garrisons or remove them altogether, and less or more dice are used in those calculations (especially in this case where several cities may have needed checking.)

If you still have your saved game, you might want to investigate this. Is there any resistance squelching going on? You could also check whether the random numbers are falling the same way in each test by setting up to make an attack at the start of your next turn, if that's an option. If it hits, misses, hits, hits, misses, misses, misses after each reload, that's pretty good evidence that you are on the same random "track".
 
I dont have the saves anymore, because it happened about a week ago, and my game is into the modern age and i had to clean out all the "old" saves to make more room on my pitiful 4 GB hard drive :(
 
Originally posted by Zomboy
"I once had a town of '3' flip on me with seven veteran and elite units in it, all full strength. They'd have slaughtered the population in reality. "

This gives me an idea, if it is possible. What if when the city tried to flip, your troops gave you an option of simply policing the revolts (with a slight chance to prevent the flip) or you can choose for them to use brutality to prevent the flipping (which would cause population loss/city destruction, possibly a few lost units, but still better than losing your entire army to one city). The only problem with this is it might have to be added by Firaxis themselves, I doubt you could add something like this with just mods (unless you did some real major editing with more than just the editor that come with it).
Click to expand...


Such basic logic is likely too much for Firaxis to understand. :(
 
I would just like to say that I'm tired of people complaining about city-flipping. It wasn't even possible to flip a city in Civ I or Civ II. It's natural that the first go around that they aren't going to have it perfect. So I think you people should cut them some slack, and LIVE WITH IT! It's a game, not a life. There are more important things than a UNREAL size 7 city with 9 UNREAL units in it going to another UNREAL enemy country.
 
It happened to me too.
If it's a rule, then in order to prevent flips leave no garrison.
Use their cheats against them :lol: .
 
Never had that happen. I normally leave 2 or 3 units for garrison, bring up infantry or paratroopers to hold the city after taking it. If infantry, just one. Occasionally one flips.. no big surprise. I can afford to lose one infantry unit that way.
I did some testing against babylon, or at least was going to try different things and see what flipped. Not much of a test, since nothing at all flipped, no matter what I did. I even left my invasion force divided in two cities when he sued for peace. Had about 40 units in one city and 45 in the other. Then also did not flip.
I am back to my original theory. The rules, as posted by Dan :goodjob: pretty much confirm what we had figured out.
Then a random factor is applied, of course. Can't have it absolutely predictable.
There must be a wild card, if a city hits a certain number it flips if there is the least chance. This is rare, and naturally disconcerting when it happens., maybe something like hit exaxtly 777 on your random roll, or something.
 
culture flips are usually bad right? ... check out my save game ... i have TOTALLY protected my citys against culture flip!! ... with this knowledge i can RULE the world!!!! .... actually it is a bug i just found ... but finally one on my side :D
 

Attachments

Selous,

thanks, but I am getting SO tired of finding bugs in this game, and then either being screwed by them or using them to cheat with.

BTW, the rules book claims that large garrisons can significantly reduce flipping. The reality, as admitted by a Firaxis person on these boards, is that they rarely help.
 
the proposed bug is that if u finish building a improvement the same turn that the city flips .... then it dos not actually flip ... is there in the save game ... i replicated it a few times ... it is a plain jane game ... no mods at all (exept for graphic ones ... but they are for me anyways) ... the southern most city flips to the ruskies as soon as u end the turn .... and it also finishes building a aquaduct .... and u also retain control .... i would call that a bug
 
Originally posted by EmperorSnefix
. . .It's a game, not a life. . .
Click to expand...


Is this what the Firaxis apologists are going to say over and over every single time yet another bug or piece of illogical nonsense is revealed in Civ III?? I guess so. You guys really need to try Fantasy games not those that porport to simulate reality and history.

I didn't wait all these years and pay good money for all these anomalies and bugs.

Towns with more military units in them than population should not flip, as one example. If they tried to the garrison should kill them. Even a game notice of "town attempted to defect and the garrison massacred them all" would be more logical than what Firaxis gives us where large veteran garrisons can disappear like a whiff of smoke! :crazyeyes
 
I find declaring peace causes cities to flip that wouldn't whilst at war.

Take town, declare peace, town flips.
Take town, stay at war, town is still yours.

No other moves or combat random factors used, unless their is some combat that I didn't see.
 
I agree that it makes no sense for the garrison to dissappear. What is the reasoning behind this? What, did they make like Kaiser Zoza, or what?

First time this happened to me, I attacked Berlin with a 12 pop, took them out, left 6 calvary to recuperate, and a musketman. Went to their next pop12 city, but Berlin flipped, and Im down 7 guys. WTH?!

Now I just starve them, and keep my guys on a hill or mountain.
 
Originally posted by Selous
the proposed bug is that if u finish building a improvement the same turn that the city flips .... then it dos not actually flip ... is there in the save game ... i replicated it a few times ... it is a plain jane game ... no mods at all (exept for graphic ones ... but they are for me anyways) ... the southern most city flips to the ruskies as soon as u end the turn .... and it also finishes building a aquaduct .... and u also retain control .... i would call that a bug
Click to expand...

Your save game crashed CivIII on my computer. Nevertheless, what you describe definitely sounds like a bug. Can anyone get the file to work and confirm?
 
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