AI cultural borders barely change even after razing half their cities?

[Arikdrago96]

I am playing as the Vikings, on prince difficulty, on the RAF big Europe 50 Civ map. My neighbor is New Zealand. I have invaded them three times, each time razing four to five of their cities. New Zealand does not have fixed borders.

The problem is the last two times I have invaded them their borders have barely shifted at all. I razed all their cities bordering my territory, I razed their capital, the first time razing their capital and then the next city that became their capital, and I barely had room to build another city to secure an oil resource. Half the tiles of that city are still in their borders.

This third and current time I have invaded them I razed the cities north and south of my city, and then marched to raze their third capital and another city to the east of my city. I have cut their empire in half. They have one city to the north and the rest lie to the south, yet despite all of this all the land in between is still under their control, and almost half of the times in my oil resource city are still under their control.

I have never ran into this before. Also, they have been willing to capitulate the last ten turns, but I refuse to except it until my city has some more breathing room. I’m at a loss what to do except to wipe them completely off the map. Any ideas what could be causing this?

I’m mid game, just researched and modern infantry and modern grenadiers. It’s not religious, almost the whole world has gone secular, and I razed their holy city during this current war.

 

[<Nexus>]

Is "Influence Driven War" checked in BUG menu? IIRC that makes a big difference. I would expect the above described when IDW is off.
...but I haven't played a game without IDW for ages, so I may be wrong.

Anyway, post a save game.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

It's been like this for ages now. Conquering a city is not enough to subdue the whole territory around, especially if the conquered civ had a strong culture and it's still alive. It's supposed to make conquest harder. You'll have to invest in culture, the more if the conquered civ is using the same strategy. Eventually the culture which grants them ownership on a tile will fade, the faster the more cultural pressure you apply of course.

 

[Arikdrago96]

Is "Influence Driven War" checked in BUG menu? IIRC that makes a big difference. I would expect the above described when IDW is off.
...but I haven't played a game without IDW for ages, so I may be wrong.

Anyway, post a save game.

IDW is enabled. Wouldn’t play without it. I’ll have to post a save tomorrow.

 

[Arikdrago96]

It's been like this for ages now. Conquering a city is not enough to subdue the whole territory around, especially if the conquered civ had a strong culture and it's still alive. It's supposed to make conquest harder. You'll have to invest in culture, the more if the conquered civ is using the same strategy. Eventually the culture which grants them ownership on a tile will fade, the faster the more cultural pressure you apply of course.

I figured it might be something to do with them having a strong culture. They were at the top of the leader board the whole game until I invaded and started razing their cities. The reason I invaded them was bc their cultural border were pushing into my territory gobbling up the land in between two of my cities, stealing some of those two cities tiles, and I needed an oil resource.

It just caught me off guard bc I’ve never experienced this before. I steamrolled through Italy and Poland in my first two wars and their borders dropped occordingly. Of course I just picked up AND again after two years so I’m sure there are some changes that I am unaware of.