And so I turn OFF cultural conversion

[Kiech]

After many fun games in Vanilla civ popping enemy cities to come into my fold, I am now FORCED to turn off 'allow cultural conversions' in my games. From what I thought were the simple rules of flipping a city have now changed for the worse. Here is what I THOUGHT the rules were:

The city must 'share' tiles with another city.
It is caused by propaganda/unhappiness.
Related to the distance of each civ's capital.
Related to the amount of culture each civ has.
The ammount of Culture dumped into each city.
Dependant on the 'culture' of the actual citizens.

But silly me! I should know that my enemy civ, which is currently OCC, very far far away, producing LITTLE culture, can flip one of its previous cities that it hasn't controlled in over a hundred turns!!! It doesn't matter that I invested cathedrals and universites into the town. It doesn't matter that in fact that I built almost EVERY SINGLE IMPROVEMENT in the town. It doesn't matter that I passed up the other civ culturally quite some time ago and replaced most of the citizens with my own.

They just want to 'flip' back and really, really annoy me. The only ACTUAL counter I have found is to wipe the civ off of the face of the planet, because god forbid I should leave the city with only 6 or so defenders after a long development phase. Bah.

 

[dgfred]

In alot of my games I turn off culture conv, that really pisses me off.
Since one of my Armies flipped I seldom turn it back on .

I often turn off Diplomatic victory also . How can I have a diplo victory
when I have all the AIs ALL game ?

 

[smackster]

I wish the advisor would give us a clue, "Rome has a slight flip chance" etc. That would make it clear, you could keep working on it until you didn't get that message. But I think without flips, quick dominations become even easier than they are.

 

[Yaype]

Losing a city to a cultural conversion is perhaps one of the most annoying aspects of the game, but at the same time, I keep it on, and I hope they keep it in Civ4. It just presents an element to the game that would be missing without it (or some other form of resistance). As smackster said, domination victories would just be too easy without the risk of losing cities.

 

[dresdor]

I like culture flipping. It annoys the hell outta me when it happens, but I keep it. There is no "god" mode for Civ 3, so why bother "cheating" in that way?

NOTE: I use cheating in a very loose way here, sorry if you don't consider it cheating, but I do.

 

[Szpoti]

The city must 'share' tiles with another city.

That is not true. Athens once flipped over back to Greeks when I was at war with them however their closest city was on a remote island. I was very surprised coz there was absolutely no connection bw those cities. The same happened again with Japanese. Another story: a conquared city of Persians flipped over however it was already surrounded by other conquared cities which were producing culture already for me and shared all its borders with "my" new cities.
On the other hand - once I had a dominating culture and next to my borders Romans founded their distant city. Culture ratio bw me and Romans was like 10x1 so I expected the city to flipp over to me every turn which has never happened (maybe 50 turns). What's more, it "stole" one tile from my nearest city. Both capital cities (mine and Romans') were similary faw away on other continents. Culture conversions are a mystirious thing, but I would miss it, so I never turn this option off.

 

[ozo]

Szpoti: Kiech didn't say those were the rules, he said he THOUGHT those were the rules. He commented on that remote island-thing himself too.

 

[al_thor]

But silly me! I should know that my enemy civ, which is currently OCC, very far far away, producing LITTLE culture, can flip one of its previous cities that it hasn't controlled in over a hundred turns!!!

Yikes! I've had 'bad' flips before (I'm sure most players have), but NEVER to this degree. Very bogus indeed.

Does it matter what government you and your former enemy are in? For instance, if you are in Monarchy and he is in Democracy. Is there a better chance of the flip because he is in a more 'desirable' government (from the peoples point of view)?

Either way, this flip should NOT have happened. If you build Temple, Cathedral, Market, that should be enough to stave off any flip IMO.

 

[Szpoti]

Especially after "hundreds" of years. By that time the citizens should have changed their nationality anyway.

 

[Kiech]

I was in a Democracy, I forget what the Carthigans were using.

 

[MSTK]

I would say propaganda, but
1) AI rarely use it in my experience
2) You were in Democracy

 

[Kiech]

Heh, my new bible:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/FlipCalc.html

 

[WackenOpenAir]

In the case you describe, you probably had no units in the city.
With that distance and i assume only 1 foreign citizen and better culture, 1 or 2 units should stop the city from flipping.

Also, after it has flipped, the AI now has a city with many of your guys, inside your territory (so possibly your tiles in the radius) with you having more culture and a closer distance. It should be a matter of turns before it flips back to you.

 

[morchuflex]

Heh, my new bible:

http://www.civ3duelzone.com/FlipCalc.html

Great stuff, but where the heck can I find the amount of the enemy's total culture? I can't seem to find this information anywhere...

 

[smackster]

Great stuff, but where the heck can I find the amount of the enemy's total culture? I can't seem to find this information anywhere...

On the score graph, there is an option for a culture graph. You can only know approximately what they have by measuring the size of their block of the graph.

 

[morchuflex]

But then, how can I fill the correct information into the flip calculator? The only civ whose total culture I exactly know is my best rival (on the F8 page).

 

[narmox]

lol wait a minute. You had no trouble with culture flip as long as enemy cities flipped to you, but you get angry when your conquered cities flip back. tsk.

 

[smackster]

But then, how can I fill the correct information into the flip calculator? The only civ whose total culture I exactly know is my best rival (on the F8 page).

Measure it on the screen, no I'm not joking. You just want to know the comparative ratio (not sure I know what that is, but it sounds good).

 

[Kiech]

lol wait a minute. You had no trouble with culture flip as long as enemy cities flipped to you, but you get angry when your conquered cities flip back. tsk.

I don't mind if my cities flip to the AI, its just rare cases like this particular one seem to happen to me much too often.

I had 4 defenders in the town when it flipped...one might have been artillery, I forget. Luckily, my tanks were able to take it back, but I had to rebuild the culture buildings all over again.

 

[rcoutme]

One of the things that you will find hard to determine is how much culture the city previously had. This actually does affect the calculations (IIRC). Thus, a city that had the Pyramids and Great Library for 2000 years is going to be one hard b*****d to keep away from the AI.

On the other hand, creating Cathedrals and temples is less useful than libraries and universities (as the latter give more culture) and creating marketplaces is only good for the happiness factor.