A word of wise for your first armies

[jdladson]

Short and sweet, never EVER EVER put an army into a foreign civ's city after 5 turns of capture, because after that it (in my experience) the city is much more likely to flip. If my army gets damaged, i usually stack it with another army in the field and heal, i know it takes longer, but then i havent lost 20 turns of production to a culture flip. I wait untill my 1st wave is stalled, sending in my second wave to finish them, then when they are finished, i move in to the barracks cities and heal them, ready for my next conquest of a poor 3rd world country.

 

[gmaharriet]

Short and sweet, never EVER EVER put an army into a foreign civ's city after 5 turns of capture, because after that it (in my experience) the city is much more likely to flip.

The only time that conquered city is 100% safe from a flip is on the in-between-turn immediately after conquering it. The next turn it is better to pull your units out for recapturing the town after it flips.

 

[NickyH]

I agree that you shouldn't leave troops in captured cities, especially not important ones, but one thing I like to do is to put obsolete units there to quell resisters. When there's railroads and tanks around, I use cavalry this way, since they're not upgradeable. If I'm not misinformed, the risk for flip is lower when you have a decent amount of troops in the city. I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong about that.

 

[Aabraxan]

You are correct in the belief that having military troops in a city reduces the flip risk. However, truth be told, it takes an ungodly number of troops to eliminate the flip risk. If you have MapStat or CivAssistII, I think they'll tell you how many troops it takes to keep a city from flipping.

 

[JDAllison]

Yeah, the number will surprise you. I generally leave one or two in there, especially if I think the AI will try to retake the city, but having lost some good units to flips, I now respect the advice to move them out. Besides, I want as many units on the front as possible.

 

[NickyH]

I see your point. Unfortunately, I can't use MapStat or CivAssistII, as I'm playing on a Mac.

And before risking even obsolete troops, there is of course some other things to consider, like their ability to deter your opponents from attacking, since this seems to be based more on on the quantity than the quality of the troops. And if you still want to get rid of old troops, there is always the option to disband them in order to rush buildings in cities with high corruption/waste.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Leaving a couple of troops in a city makes sense - that way, you can get rid of resistors, which will allow you to rush a culture improvement and, perhaps, expand the borders. Or rush workers, which reduce the number of aliens in a city. Both of which can help keep a city from flipping.

 

[The Professor]

I'm sure there's a thread that shows the probability exactly, but I do know that for every units you leave in the city, one resistor has a chance of ending resistance. So, if a city has four resistors, you need to have at least 4 units in that city to have a chance to end the resistance. As mentioned, the safest turn to do this is right after you take the city, so I usually try to put as many troops as possible in a city the turn I take it, and then move out anything I would hate to lose the following turn.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I will leave non-elites in a city to heal and hopefully reduce resistors, if I want to keep it. I won't leave a stack in their, and if CivAssist gives a ridiculously high probability of a flip, i won't leave anything.

 

[bustedsynapses]

I often wonder if I'm playing the same game as you guys. My experience is that too many troops causes a flip. I once had a game where I was dominating a world, and some little nation picked a fight. The cities were big, though, so there were lots of resisters. I parked over 30 units in the town to suppress it, and to heal the units. City flipped before the resistance was suppressed.

I find that, yes, an Army in a town will encourage a flip. The citizens don't like an Army encamped in their city. I also find that having just 2-3 units rarely causes a flip. The game is geared to make it hard for you to win by making it hard for you to suppress a town. Ironically, just a couple units will sometimes suppress a town more rapidly than a large force. Again, the citizens don't like jackbooted oppressors in their town. The more you have encamped, the less they like it. That's my experience, anyway.

 

[Mursi lives]

The flip risk decreases when you put more troops.
The city flipped not because you put 30 units in it, but because it was very close to the capital of that little nation and very far from yours.

Of course, it was very far from your capital because you were dominating the world and had already conquered all closer cities. And you were able to put 30 units also because you were dominating the world. So in a sense you were right

 

[bustedsynapses]

Sounds good in theory, but in practice, if you have an Army in there, it tends to flip more readily. If you have way too many troops, I find the same problem. I find smaller garrisons to be more effective, and there's less downside. I've saved and reset any number of times using different force mixes to test this. Sometimes, you can't avoid the flip, but other times, less troops work better. Just a tendency I've seen. There may not be enough situations to provide a proper statistical base. There may be other factors involved, too, like refusing peace, cultural groups, etc.... I don't know on those, but I suspect. I also think that if you're winning too handily, the program will do something to put a huge roadblock in your way, like flipping a town with 30 units in it.

 

[Theryman]

Busted, that is just the human mind trying to create patterns where there are none. The game is not designed to try to screw you over- what fin would that be? Except for a few AI advantages, the game is completely fair.

 

[NickyH]

Now we're getting off topic, but there are two AI advantages that don't seem fair to me: That they now where all resources are from the beginning, and that they now how many troops you have in your towns. (At lest that is how I believe it works. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

And yes, you are right about how we read things into random occurrences. When I started playing Civ, I also thought that the game would "put a huge roadblock in your way" when things were going too smoothly, but as I've read more about the mechanics I understand that is not the case. (I recommend reading articles in the War Academy about game mechanics, as much is explained there.)

 

[PaperBeetle]

I fully support the flipping-mechanics-are-honest theory. I came to terms with flips long ago, and now I play with no thought for them. If you play always trying to minimise flip risk, you will tend to notice the times when you got caught out losing an army to a 0.1% chance. On the other hand, if you play "flip-riskily" you will notice the times that a dozen of your best troops lounge around in recently captured Babylon+Colossus+Glib for a century without defecting. I recently got dowed by a deity AI, who promptly lost two of his towns flipping to me on the very same interturn. I bet he immediately logged onto forums.CivAIs.com to complain about the crooked flip chances