Another Broken Vassal Issue

[obsolete]

Alright, I kept capturing Zulu's captial from one city to its next location. All the way from one end of the continent to the other while capturing each city.

Well, FINALLY after he had NO cities left, and was still using longbows to defend vs my 100x cavalry did he agree to capitulate. WTH? I felt like finishing him off anyway, but decided to let him live only for the +1 happiness factor, though it probably wasn't worth it even for that.

Well, his capital was right next to Japs. So guess what? After enough time, Zulu's capital flipped!

Luckily he had built a tiny little outpost on a block of ice in order to gain some marbol just before (lol). So he actually was able to have another city left to move to.

Now this is where the next weirdness happens. I get a message from him he is breaking the capitulation agreement because I can not protect him.

Hmm...... can you say... BROKEN??

I had the continent pwned. Even Japs was one of my vassals. I had a rediculous power rating in comparison, and he is saying I can't... protect him?

It is not MY FAULT that one of my vassals culture-flipped his capital. Why am I being EXPLOITED by losing my hard earned (vassal) because of some event that is not even related to my protection?

Firaxis, you need to fix this.

And out of curiosity, had Zulu not made his city on that block of ice for the useless marbol, would he be out of the game altogether? Or is there some sort of check that prevents a capital from flipping if there is not any other city to move it to?

 

[Sjaramei]

I've never seen something like that.. funny. What difficulty is this? Culture flipping capitals have never happened in any of my games. (unless i was the one doing it)

 

[popejubal]

Well, his capital was right next to Japs. So guess what? After enough time, Zulu's capital flipped!

Luckily he had built a tiny little outpost on a block of ice in order to gain some marbol just before (lol). So he actually was able to have another city left to move to.

Now this is where the next weirdness happens. I get a message from him he is breaking the capitulation agreement because I can not protect him.

Hmm...... can you say... BROKEN??

I had the continent pwned. Even Japs was one of my vassals. I had a rediculous power rating in comparison, and he is saying I can't... protect him?

Um, yeah, it is your fault that his capital culture flipped to the Japanese. If you hadn't had both the Zulu and the Japanese as Vassals, then he could have declared war on the Japanese and I think that you know quite well that there would have been no culture flipping if he had declared war with his one single city against the Japanese (whom you had probably been feeding military techs to if you were actually using him as a real Vassal).

Why are you being "exploited" by losing your hard earned vassal?

BECAUSE YOU LET HIS CAPITAL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM!


Sure, there isn't anything that you could do to protect him, but isn't that kind of the point?

If you can't even help him defend his capital from Japanese cultural agression, then what good are you as a master? He's better off without you even if you did declare war on him. You let him lose more than 50% of his land and certainly more than 50% of his population after you had promised to take care of him.

 

[obsolete]

Welp, this was so stupid, I blitzed my modern armour and took his iceberg capital in 2 turns anyhow and that was the end of it. Naturally I took the declare war option as soon as he broke away.

There should be another option maybe... where the AI is made aware if he tries to break free I will knock the f##ker out. So useless this whole thing was.....

 

[Naismith]

Um, yeah, it is your fault that his capital culture flipped to the Japanese. If you hadn't had both the Zulu and the Japanese as Vassals, then he could have declared war on the Japanese and I think that you know quite well that there would have been no culture flipping if he had declared war with his one single city against the Japanese (whom you had probably been feeding military techs to if you were actually using him as a real Vassal).

Why are you being "exploited" by losing your hard earned vassal?

BECAUSE YOU LET HIS CAPITAL BE TAKEN AWAY FROM HIM!


Sure, there isn't anything that you could do to protect him, but isn't that kind of the point?

If you can't even help him defend his capital from Japanese cultural agression, then what good are you as a master? He's better off without you even if you did declare war on him. You let him lose more than 50% of his land and certainly more than 50% of his population after you had promised to take care of him.

Well, that's one way of looking at it, but I respectfully disagree. The protection you provide to a vassal is military, not cultural. If you could gift him culture-producing buildings, then maybe it would make sense for him to hold you responsible. (I kind of like that idea, actually.) Of course, there's the other aspect - by breaking away with one small city left, he has done nothing to enhance his position, and instead practically guaranteed his own demise.

I had a similar thing happen to me. I took Napolean down to one city, which was isolated from the rest of his empire and mine, so I accepted his capitulation. His capital got squeezed down culturally by some nearby Chinese cities, he lost 50% of his territory, so he broke away. I think he had a couple of longbowmen, which didn't do well against my tanks.

 

[Mutineer]

Actially it is Not true.
You Can protect him from loosing capital culturally.

The only thin you need to do is to move bunch of your units in it.

All units, yours or any other civ withopen borders provide happiness if he is in HR or cultural revolt supression in any case.

 

[madscientist]

I never really have an issue with vassals although I know alot of others do. I have noticed the Shaka is one leader who despies being a vassal and i have had to either wipe him out of do what you did, beat hime to almost nothing and take his capital. My guess he automatically bolts for freedom whenever he gets the chance. Very odd about the Japanese culture flipping the city unless Tokugawa used a great artist in the adjacent city.

 

[KMadCandy]

And out of curiosity, had Zulu not made his city on that block of ice for the useless marbol, would he be out of the game altogether? Or is there some sort of check that prevents a capital from flipping if there is not any other city to move it to?

there isn't a check like that. it is technically possible to flip a civ out of existence culturally. [umm, where flipping is legal of course. meaning those checkboxes at the start "no city flipping from culture" unchecked, and "city flipping after conquest" if it applies to that city]. it can be difficult because they by default garrison all of their units there, they have no place else to put them. then again, with only one city they generally can't make a ton of troops, and if the city isn't an old one, they don't have a lot of culture there as a basis to start with. it can happen. even old capital with their from-the-start culture can flip. but it's pretty rare, and you have to dedicate some serious effort to it.

i had one cultural-victory-by-accident game (not really, i call it that since i decided to go that way very late) where i settled by george early on, to block his land. i pushed culture into that city so that i could keep "my land" behind it to myself of course, and realized eventually i could hit legendary with that and two of my first cities. so, i bothered and harassed him more, but we never had a fighting-with-troops war. flipped 3 or 4 of his cities, and had his capital down to 2 workable tiles forever and a day. on the exact turn that i won, no kidding, his capital had its first revolt . i did wonder how long it would take to flip, but didn't do the "hit enter" test to wait and see. that's the closest i have come to flipping an old, never-conquered-in-war capital city. in my case, it wasn't his only city but we didn't have open borders so he couldn't move any troops in from elsewhere.

what muti says is true, anybody's units count as garrisons. which i think is truly bizarre, why should my own troops convince isabella's people that they don't want to join the glorious Candyland Empire but instead should stay under her lackluster leadership? but i did in fact use my troops that way in one of my (many) weirdo games.

this game is odd!

 

[obsolete]

From what I remember in Civ III, troops in cities help to prevent flipping, but this was only in borderline checks, which were over a thousand to one shots. So it was pretty much redundant.

Especially stupid considering when a city flipped, if you had 1000 units in it, they all disapeared!

 

[Mutineer]

First, in Civ4 units do not dissapear if city flip.
SEcond about 3 mex infantry put flip chance down to 0, any initial flip chance.

 

[Bhruic]

You think that's bad? I had another Civ down to 1 city (I can't recall which Civ offhand). I'd taken a lot of cities from them, so their last city had pretty impressive cultural borders. So I get them to capitulate. Next turn, it rearranges the borders to give me more land (which is the correct thing to do). But the rearrangement causes them to end up with less than 50% of their "original" land. So of course they are able to break the capitulation. Pure stupidity.

Bh

 

[obsolete]

LOL! Love it.

Anyhow, true in Civ IV you dont lose untis anymore by flipping, but that's not 100% true. If you lose a city by an attack, I believe all airpower is moved to the nearest city, but ships is another issue.

I used to think captured ships warp into the next closest harbour too, but as I recollect, a member mentioned he lost all his ships after losing a city. I assume if the enemy BLOCKADES the harbour at the same time the city is taken, that by default the boats THEN end up being scuttled as they realistically can't possibly warp past a naval blockage.

This is my guess, does anyone know for sure on this issue? If that is the case, then what happens when your port is blocked by an enemy naval unit, and your city just happens to flip by culture. Then the ships must also be scuttled, assuming the game doesn't crash at that point

 

[SoxSexSax]

Had Ghengis as a vassal, Catherine declared war on me and captured one city from me, Ghengis decides to help out by RAZING it...on the same turn my reclaim stack arrived for the siege.

TY Ghengis, great help you were!

 

[obsolete]

LOL, I guess that DOES make sense. If he razes enough of your cities he can break the agreement from the master

 

[anima36]

on aircraft loses i was playing earth18civs and i was persia i controlled most of asia and europe and northern africa, i turned my attention to japan, now genghis was the last major civ left in the old world, with the depleted chinese as his vassal, he was pleased with me because i had brought him in on several european campaigns and the largest of my russain campaigns i did not have open borders but he accepted when i asked and i stationed all my aircraft in a coastal city where all japanese mainland cities were in range, i declare war and next turn a jap frigate sails into this city and all my stealth bombers disappear.

 

[darkkai64]

and that is why you always have at least 1 defensive unit before declaring war

 

[obsolete]

Ok, last vassal issue...

I am BEATING the crap out of Louis. I have taken his major cities AND capital. I'm also with 50 cavalry and he's just barely got mustkets now (a total of 1 or 2). And since I already have Pinch, good luck to him.

He STILL won't capitulate! I check every turn, take all his other cities one by one. No, he wont' capitulate, "I am doing fine on my own". Then suddenly, he vassalizes to ... get this. The weakest and most backwards AI on the whole continent???

Huh...

So now I got 2 little pip-squeecks I'm beating the total crap out of. I really don't get it, but... to sum things up..

I took every city but one of Louis, while beating the crap out of his new Master at the same time. So THEN....with 1 city left, he breaks off from his last master, and RE-VASSALS to the only other AI on the continent, and STILL won't capitulate to me, despite I was basically sitting in lead position of the entire world.


Hmmmm.. Something not right there. I had to end the game by #1, totally eliminating Louis, and #2, forcing his first master to capit to me, and then #3, forced his last master to capit to me. Both his masters were about as dumb as he was.

I don't get it.

O_o

 

[Charou]

It does make sense to me.
The weaks get united against the strongest civ.
Quite understandable.
It is in the code, the computer tries to give you a hard time (doesn´t sound so hard from what I hear).
On top of that Louis is on proud AI when it comes to capitulation to the player.

Don't be frustrated.

 

[obsolete]

If there really is code for uniting the weak against the strong, then why the hell do the AI just sit there and let ghandi spin out of control, and do nothing about it? Even when trying to bribe them to war I get the "We fear they are too strong" excuse. That's another thing that always bugs me.

 

[Charou]

If there really is code for uniting the weak against the strong, then why the hell do the AI just sit there and let ghandi spin out of control, and do nothing about it? Even when trying to bribe them to war I get the "We fear they are too strong" excuse. That's another thing that always bugs me.

Good point.
I guess they don't behave the same when it comes to non-AI civs.
But you knew that, right ?
The diplomacy in the game is biaised (tributes, requests to go to war ).
Not so hard to overcome.