TheNiceOne
Emperor
Ozymandius, your post is a very good summary - or rather conclusion.
Armies and Culture Flips
- Thread starter Greg Loader
- Start date
Admiral Rimmer
Chieftain
The way I see it, these points of view are missing the mark a little - from the posts so far, I can see that one group is having problems with a CF, and by moving units out after a reload, prevent the CF.
I think Cracker and the others' points are that it is not the actual moving of the units that prevents the CF, but the random element of reloading and trying again.
However, no one is accusing the experiences of Tassadar, Mad Bomber et al of being "delusional" - we believe your experiences are true, it is just that the main REASON behind your experiences is not moving troops, but the random element caused by reloading. The troops moving out and " preventing" CF was just coincidental.
Confused? You will be...
I think Cracker and the others' points are that it is not the actual moving of the units that prevents the CF, but the random element of reloading and trying again.
However, no one is accusing the experiences of Tassadar, Mad Bomber et al of being "delusional" - we believe your experiences are true, it is just that the main REASON behind your experiences is not moving troops, but the random element caused by reloading. The troops moving out and " preventing" CF was just coincidental.
Confused? You will be...
Mad Bomber
Commander
I agree with your assesment of the situation, except that certain members have accused us of not having these experiences or worse, not understanding ways of combating culture flips.
My main points on CF's are
1) IMO AI cities are more resistant to CF's
2) I get angry when cities flip & there is NO LOGICAL REASON for the flip.
3) The doubting thomases want us to post a saved game everytime these absurdities happen. If we do they won't believe us, & if we don't then they say it must not be true!
4) There are so many complaints on CF that CF threads may be considered a "dead horse" thread. If absurd CF's are not happening then why are so many people upset?
5) The ways of combating CF's that work are morally reprehensible. (starving, razing, destroying civ's) I don't want to turn in Chairman Mao, but in CIV 3 you have to! Rushing a temple & other cultural improvements do not help for hundreds of years, if at all (because the city retains its origional civs culture) unless the city was newly built. I have seen no conclusive evidence that the city's garrison plays a role in CF, nor do I wish to garrison a city with the numbers recommended by some (36 units! Bah! Go ahead & flip then!)
Well, at least I'll be able to turn it off in PTW, which may justify it's $40 pricetag.
Then this thread will finally die......[dance]
My main points on CF's are
1) IMO AI cities are more resistant to CF's
2) I get angry when cities flip & there is NO LOGICAL REASON for the flip.
3) The doubting thomases want us to post a saved game everytime these absurdities happen. If we do they won't believe us, & if we don't then they say it must not be true!
4) There are so many complaints on CF that CF threads may be considered a "dead horse" thread. If absurd CF's are not happening then why are so many people upset?
5) The ways of combating CF's that work are morally reprehensible. (starving, razing, destroying civ's) I don't want to turn in Chairman Mao, but in CIV 3 you have to! Rushing a temple & other cultural improvements do not help for hundreds of years, if at all (because the city retains its origional civs culture) unless the city was newly built. I have seen no conclusive evidence that the city's garrison plays a role in CF, nor do I wish to garrison a city with the numbers recommended by some (36 units! Bah! Go ahead & flip then!)
Well, at least I'll be able to turn it off in PTW, which may justify it's $40 pricetag.
Then this thread will finally die......[dance]
Ozymandius
Prince
Admiral Rimmer:
The random seed is preserved when I reload. If I take the same action ie do nothing, the city flipped; moved troops in, the city flipped, moved unit out & no flip occurred. It will not happen everytime a city is about to flip but it has happened often enough for it to be noticed. There must be something?? in the code that gets the citizens upset if there is a foreign presence in the city. What bothers me is that the citizens were all happy with 8 luxuries to entice them while their empire was nearly anihilated.
The random seed is preserved when I reload. If I take the same action ie do nothing, the city flipped; moved troops in, the city flipped, moved unit out & no flip occurred. It will not happen everytime a city is about to flip but it has happened often enough for it to be noticed. There must be something?? in the code that gets the citizens upset if there is a foreign presence in the city. What bothers me is that the citizens were all happy with 8 luxuries to entice them while their empire was nearly anihilated.
I won't butt into the "dead horse" discussion ( ), but I just want to point out a possible error/misunderstanding in Admiral Rimmer's post.
The act of reloading does not change the random number seed in Civ3. The random number seed is saved with the rest of the game. (Note this is default behavior. You can disable it in Preferences.) What is happening in the case described is the movement of the units from the city change the seed.
), but I just want to point out a possible error/misunderstanding in Admiral Rimmer's post.The act of reloading does not change the random number seed in Civ3. The random number seed is saved with the rest of the game. (Note this is default behavior. You can disable it in Preferences.) What is happening in the case described is the movement of the units from the city change the seed.
Greg Loader
Warlord
QUOTE]Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
Greg: it has been found that the random seed is somehow affected by the troops in the city. Normally, you'd expect to get a certain random number - if it is bigger than the treshold the city flips. Absurdly, lowering the treshold can prevent the flip - don't ask me, why.......
sometimes, it suffices to do a map exchange with someone to prevent the flip, sometimes you can do a thousand things and it still happenes. idiotic. [/QUOTE]
Lt. Killer, thanks. This makes sense, however, I didn't realize it was so easy to change the random seed carried over from the previous turn! I almost wish I didn't know this.
Venger, I have had this happen as well. If the seed is high enough, somone's going to flip.
This leads to another question, does anyone have experience of more than one city per turn flipping? I don't recall this ever happening, and suspect this may be hard-coded.
Jerucondis, good point, but, I was in Democracy when this happened, though I have considered this at other instances. Being in Democracy also keeps me from rushing improvements in resisting cities, so I have resorted to disbanding foreign workers in the city (2 shields each) to build a worker or cultural improvements. This plus starvation is my modus operandi for dealing with CF in these cities.
TheNiceOne, I think Lt. Killer's explaination, and go weissen's, Tassadar's, and Ozymandius' examples of the same experience was sufficient to explain this. If you REALLY want a saved game, e-mail me, and I'll look for it.
************************************************
Finally, for the record, I view irrational CFs as just a strange part of the game. The same way I view irrational people as part of the world. In the game I have to deal with CF's, but thankfully, in reallity, I can usually just ignore irrational people.
Greg
PS Thanks to all who posted advice.
Greg: it has been found that the random seed is somehow affected by the troops in the city. Normally, you'd expect to get a certain random number - if it is bigger than the treshold the city flips. Absurdly, lowering the treshold can prevent the flip - don't ask me, why.......
sometimes, it suffices to do a map exchange with someone to prevent the flip, sometimes you can do a thousand things and it still happenes. idiotic. [/QUOTE]
Lt. Killer, thanks. This makes sense, however, I didn't realize it was so easy to change the random seed carried over from the previous turn! I almost wish I didn't know this.
Venger, I have had this happen as well. If the seed is high enough, somone's going to flip.
This leads to another question, does anyone have experience of more than one city per turn flipping? I don't recall this ever happening, and suspect this may be hard-coded.
Jerucondis, good point, but, I was in Democracy when this happened, though I have considered this at other instances. Being in Democracy also keeps me from rushing improvements in resisting cities, so I have resorted to disbanding foreign workers in the city (2 shields each) to build a worker or cultural improvements. This plus starvation is my modus operandi for dealing with CF in these cities.
TheNiceOne, I think Lt. Killer's explaination, and go weissen's, Tassadar's, and Ozymandius' examples of the same experience was sufficient to explain this. If you REALLY want a saved game, e-mail me, and I'll look for it.
************************************************
Finally, for the record, I view irrational CFs as just a strange part of the game. The same way I view irrational people as part of the world. In the game I have to deal with CF's, but thankfully, in reallity, I can usually just ignore irrational people.
Greg
PS Thanks to all who posted advice.
TheNiceOne
Emperor
If you understood me this way I apologize, I don't doubt the eperince about reloading and avoiding flipping, although I don't believe Tassadar's statement that CF is designed to hurt you as much as possible.
My main points on CF's are
1) IMO AI cities are more resistant to CF's
From my experience, I disagree. My CF ratio is at least 5-1 in my favour. Granted, I usually have higher culture, but I also tend to have a lot of cities with foreign citizens close to enemy capital...
This isn't easy to check out though...
2) I get angry when cities flip & there is NO LOGICAL REASON for the flip.
I can understand that. I also think the russian communists got quite angry when all of eastern Europe flipped to west...
3) The doubting thomases want us to post a saved game everytime these absurdities happen. If we do they won't believe us, & if we don't then they say it must not be true!
I want a save game to try to find out how and why the flip is affected by moving units in and out...
4) There are so many complaints on CF that CF threads may be considered a "dead horse" thread. If absurd CF's are not happening then why are so many people upset?
I haven't meant to say that "absurd" CF's are not happening, but I really doubt that CF is programmed to kill as many human units as possible.
5) The ways of combating CF's that work are morally reprehensible. (starving, razing, destroying civ's) I don't want to turn in Chairman Mao, but in CIV 3 you have to! Rushing a temple & other cultural improvements do not help for hundreds of years, if at all (because the city retains its origional civs culture) unless the city was newly built. I have seen no conclusive evidence that the city's garrison plays a role in CF, nor do I wish to garrison a city with the numbers recommended by some (36 units! Bah! Go ahead & flip then!)
I mostly agree here, but save games with "absurd" CF could be a help to analyze the role of garrisons.
P.S. Greg Loader: I would like a save game from you. Maybe you could attach it here, or mail it to me at: oleboe@sol.no
Catt
Emperor
I doubt I still have a saved game, but some time ago, under v1.21f, I was conducting a successful ancient age war against the evil Russians and the recently conquered Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg both flipped back to Cathy on the same turn. They were promptly re-conquered of course
.
Mad Bomber
Commander
I did not mean to include you in the comments on my last post, they were directed at others. I agree with you that Tassador is wrong in asserting that CF risk will increase with more units, I think Tassador is simply seeing the result of the random seed and also he is putting 2 many units in the cities. But this post has gotten out of hand.
On #1 I usually have a 2 or 3 to 1 cultural advantage over a civ, but I will only flip on average 4 cities in a game. I will admit I play the Americans & they are not adept at CF because of their CIV traits so I may be in error on that one.
On #2 Eastern Europe did not flip to Russia, Harry T. gave it to them.
Edit: Ok you were talking about 1991 not 1945
on #3
You would need to save the game BEFORE the flip to find out why it flipped, so unless you autosave.....
on #4
I don't get mad because I lose some units, I get mad because I had a city flip that should not have. (City on my continent flips to a civ w/ only 2 cities remaining & is half the world away!)
ON #5
again need a save before the city flips to get any info from it.
Hopefully we can move past CF's when PTW hits the shelves, then we will be arguing about "reputation hits" & "cheating":
On #1 I usually have a 2 or 3 to 1 cultural advantage over a civ, but I will only flip on average 4 cities in a game. I will admit I play the Americans & they are not adept at CF because of their CIV traits so I may be in error on that one.
On #2 Eastern Europe did not flip to Russia, Harry T. gave it to them.
Edit: Ok you were talking about 1991 not 1945
on #3
You would need to save the game BEFORE the flip to find out why it flipped, so unless you autosave.....
on #4
I don't get mad because I lose some units, I get mad because I had a city flip that should not have. (City on my continent flips to a civ w/ only 2 cities remaining & is half the world away!)
ON #5
again need a save before the city flips to get any info from it.
Hopefully we can move past CF's when PTW hits the shelves, then we will be arguing about "reputation hits" & "cheating"
:Greg Loader
Warlord
TheNiceOne, I reviewed my game from the winning screens, and then loaded a dozen saves to no avail. (I originally reloaded from an autosave, which has been auto-deleted by the game) I apologize that I cannot come up with a savegame of this.
I think I will not start a discussion thread of this sort without a savegame, in the future, as someone suggested. As well, I think I'll be a little more dilligent about saving games when I note things of interest (such as the above).
Thanks
Greg
