Best ways to prevent cities flipping?

[Butzull]

Hi all,

At the moment I'm playing my first ever Emperor game. I'm doing quite well, I'm the largest Civ on an Archipelago map. However, because of the step-up in grade I focused on expansion and military, paying for techs and only paying minimal notice of culture.

Now however I'm fighting against another Civ, I have about 38 cities to their 10 or so, but a few of my cities are intermittently flipping to the other Civ as they have a significant culture lead on me (wouldn't surprise me if they had double mine).

I can't determine rhyme or reason for it too. One of the cities that flipped used to be theirs which is understandable, but another was a third party civ, not on their island and connected to my capital (although admittedly distant from it).

For the long-haul, I guess cash-rushing culture buildings will help empire-wide, but what is the best "defense" near my front with this other civ? I read somewhere courthouses help, should that be the first thing I rush in these frontier cities? Is there an ideal cash-rush bvuild order for cities I'm worried about?

I understand having troops in the city helps too, but do I need a sizeable presence in each city (risking losing them on a flip), or does one unit in each suffice (assuming diminishing returns for further units).

Lastly I guess, should the units specifically be strong defensive units, strong overall units, or does the strength not matter, merely the number of units?

Thanks in advance for all help and suggestions,

Butz. groucho

 

[rysingsun]

I understand having troops in the city helps too, but do I need a sizeable presence in each city (risking losing them on a flip)...

Butz. groucho

i dont know but ...

i never put a lot of modern units in a city that i think has a good chance of flipping. sure they might reduce the chance of a flip, but if it does flip you will be pounding your head. when invading i tend to worry about the resistors after the war is over or after the afflicted city is at least well behind the front line. keep the troops out of cities youve just taken that share a culture border with the enemy. if they flip they are easy to retake but you sure dont want to lose a stack of 10 tanks inside one. rushing a temple or library in new city has several advantages. it expands the culture border. it supposedly reduces the chances of a flip. but rushing a whole gang of culture buildings to me sounds expensive. that same money could have rushed military units that would have served you better.

if you are that far behind in culture at this late age just learn to love it because you will not change that quickly and you will not change it cheaply. you will change it after a long long time if you go on a building spree of building every kind of culture you can think of all over your empire, and again i say for all the cost wouldnt it be easier just to build military enough to wipe out your enemy?

correct me if im wrong but you can put a stack of 50 in a newly conquered city and still have it flip back. dont risk it!

(edit) i think its ONLY the number of units. i find obsolete warriors if i still have some lying around to be ideal for fighting resistors.

 

[Butzull]

An additional question along the same lines is:

Are the ONLY cities which are candidates for a flip those that either,
a) Share a boundary with another civ, or
b) Have foreign nationals of the civ with the higher culture rating regardless of sharing a border?

Oh, and thanks for the quick response rysingsun. My issue is that in this game I am starting to get some pretty severe war weariness, I don't have the troops to overwhelm them quickly, and if I make peace I don't want to have cities flip and not be able to take them back without taking the rep hit from breaking a peace treaty.

I think my lux slider is already up around 50% to combat the WW. Another step or two and I'll be running at a loss.

Butz. groucho

 

[Sargon of Agade]

My experience: I was at war with Byzantium as Greece, I had much higher culture and was at war during middle ages, Trebizond, one other and Constantinopolis all flipped during the war, but when I loaded the game back again and put an army in the city and took out all but one of the other defenders(I had seen tribezond flipp so I had atleast 4 in each city after conquest) and the army I guess was enough to change from flip to no flip. I then played off the game where it flipped and had to deal with a huge, two infact SOD, one Ottomon and one Babylonian, the Ottomon was 150 units in one square, I had bombers which they didn't but they declared war on me right after I finished conquering the Spanish, it was only their second war and they were in Demo, I had so many more points then anyone else(About a thousand over the Ottomons, only them and the babs were left at that time) I really didn't want to see how to defeat 150 units, and I counted, so I declared victory... This was my first Civ3C, I hadn't played Civ since the "Ask for maximum amount of GPD and upfront and all their cities while at war and they'll accept!?" days of civ, but that is another story...

 

[Stoo.W]

forget culture improvements! If they only have 10 cities left then just wipe them off the face of the planet. Cities aint gonna flip if they're all dead. MMWWWAAAAHHHHAA!

 

[Stoo.W]

OH yeah, and if you build settlers and workers in newly captured cities then it will reduce the amount of foreigners in your new cities. The less the foreigners, the less the risk of flipping becomes. If you get a city of pop. 20 for example, its probably just better to take the city and then abandon it and get a settler in quick to start the city again from scratch. The land will be improved and your new city should grow pretty quickly while having a slimer chance of flipping! also, have lots of troops in newly captured cities for the first turn after capture to get rid of resisiters and ensure that the city doent go into civil disorder. civil disorder is usually just before the city flips!! flips used to happen to me a lot, but now I dont think I have had one flip for aound 8 -9 games!!!

 

[Stoo.W]

forgot something else. - if you burn a city to the ground (when your gonna resettle to avoid the culture flip of big foreign cities) you get a reputation hit. But if you take the city and then abandon it instead, i dont think you get the same reputation hit. I might be wrong on that though!

 

[bouncelot]

If you use mapstat, it can use spoiler information to tell you what the flip risk is. Using that info, it also tells you how many troops you need to prevent the flip.

The best way to prevent flipping is to starve the population down (make sure there's a food deficit, build settlers/workers, pop rush if you're in the right type of government to do so). Cultural buildings are a long-term solution to flipping. I think you are safer if your accumulated culture in the city exceeds the AI's accumulated culture in the city. Also, make sure that the AI doesn't control any of the squares in the city's radius, as this increases the flip risk.

 

[bozo]

What I do is :
- reduce as much as possible the number of citizen by starving the city and producing workers / settlers
- don't put more units than the number or resitants : you don't have more chance to flip the resistant if you have more units 1 unit can flip 1 resistant
- bring some setlers or workers (of your nationality) and add them to the city : the proposrtion of foreigners is a factor that increases the flip probabilty. By adding people of youyr citizenship, you reduce seriously flip probabilities once you have more than 50% of citizen of your tribe.
- I have noticed that very few cities flip in the the first 3 turns so use theses 3 turns to heal units that need it and than don't stay in the city to avoid loosing them
- make sure the cities doesn't revolt. If so the city is more likely to flip
- I have noticed that empty cities almost never flip so once your units have healed you can leave the city unprotected and finish the war and then solve the resistance by putting units in the city after peace is signed. Resistants tend to become friendly more easily when war is over
- build cutural improvements to reduce middle term flip probabilities

But if your are really behind the best option is to raze the city it gives you a lot of worker, sets your units avaiable for war and you almost have no flip problems.

 

[Renata]

If you do a search you should find some information on culture flipping; there have been studies done on what all the factors are. If I remember correctly, they are:

# of foreign citizens of the civ you're doing the calculation for (why starving works well, and part of why raze-and-replace works even better)

# of military units of your own in the city (workers, artillery and such don't count, but other than that all military units are created equal -- your ancient conscript warrior is just as good as a modern armor)

Number of tiles of your 21-tile radius are covered by the culture radius of the civ you might be flipping to (the biggest reason to rush one (and only one) culture building in a captured city -- to get that first expansion. AIs typically build so far apart you will recapture most or all of your 21 tiles by doing this)

Relative culture *in the city* (not civ-wide) -- how much culture have you produced there versus how much the original civ produced? This is an all-or-nothing calculation, IIRC; either you have more or they do. In most situations, and certainly in any city captured after the middle ages, you will *never* catch up, so don't waste your cash rushing more culture than you need to expand your borders.

Relative distance to capital. Is the city in question closer to the capital of its original owner or to yours? Another all-or-nothing factor.

# of citizens in resistance. The more, the greater the flip chance. Another reason raze-and-replace is an attractive option.

That's all I remember. I don't remember if civ-wide culture comes into play at all. I *think* it's only a factor in resistance time.

If you're capturing large cities near an enemy's capital in the later stages of the game, consider not garrisoning them at all, whereever possible, until the entire civ is dead. Some will flip, definitely, but it's a relatively trivial matter to go back and wipe out the single defensive unit they will have gotten on the flip. Once the civ is gone, you can move in stacks of units and end the resistance quickly without having to worry about flips.

I'm not sure why your 3rd party city flipped; there isn't enough information in your post to say.

Renata

 

[Arathorn]

forgot something else. - if you burn a city to the ground (when your gonna resettle to avoid the culture flip of big foreign cities) you get a reputation hit. But if you take the city and then abandon it instead, i dont think you get the same reputation hit. I might be wrong on that though!

You are wrong on that. Abandoning a city with more than half the citizens "foreigners" causes an attitude hit just like razing a city does. Note, though, that neither affects your reputation (ability to trade gpt), just the AI attitude (gracious to furious).

I've found raze'n'replace, in general, to be an effective way of minimizing flips. That and not building cities where cultural overlap is likely.

Arathorn

 

[Stoo.W]

You are wrong on that. Abandoning a city with more than half the citizens "foreigners" causes an attitude hit just like razing a city does. Note, though, that neither affects your reputation (ability to trade gpt), just the AI attitude (gracious to furious).
Arathorn

Well whadda ya know! Good about the attitiude hit and not a reputation hit though so i'm still gonna do it with all enemy cities over size 10! Lets face it, you can afford the attitude hit because by being at war with a civ, that civs attitude will probably be v.bad for the whole game! (and who cares when they're dead!!)

 

[Grogs]

correct me if im wrong but you can put a stack of 50 in a newly conquered city and still have it flip back. dont risk it!

Yes, you are correct. There are a lot of factors involved (see Renata's post) in the flipping calculation. One great thing about Mapstat is its flipping calculations. It can tell you (along with many other things) the probability of a particular city flipping and the garrison required to prevent a flip. I have seen this number (the required garrison) go into the hundreds. If, on the other hand, the required garrison is only 2, you may want to put 2 units in the city to be sure. I have never seen a city flip that wasn't listed on the 'Flipping' tab in Mapstat.

@bouncealot: Mapstat uses spoiler info *only* if you go into the preferences and tell it to do so. It's designed to be used in GOTM's, so great pains were taken to make it spoiler-free by default. I find the flipping calculations to be very accurate even with spoiler info turned off.

 

[bouncelot]

@bouncealot: Mapstat uses spoiler info *only* if you go into the preferences and tell it to do so. It's designed to be used in GOTM's, so great pains were taken to make it spoiler-free by default. I find the flipping calculations to be very accurate even with spoiler info turned off.

As I've not yet played a GOTM, I switched the option on when I first got Mapstat, so I've not yet looked at how well it works without it.

 

[TimBentley]

Here's a link to a flip calculator, which is helps me in determining the effectiveness of a cultural improvement to lower foreign tiles or the flip chance of foreign cities: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53157

And here's the exact formula:

How many units do i need to suprpess a culture flip?

• the full formula (this is from Sorenson, who is responsible for this programming):
  
  P=[(F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty) - G]/D
  
  where:
  P = probability that it will flip this turn
  F = # foreignors, with resistors counting double
  T = # working tiles under foreign control (out of the max of 21, no matter what the cultural boundaries are atm)
  Cc = 2 if foreign civ has more local culture than you, 1 otherwise
  H = .5 for WLTKD, 2 for disorder, 1 otherwise
  Cte = Total culture of the foreign civ
  Cty = Total culture of your civ
  G = # garrison units
  D = factor based on relative distance to capitals
  
  Now reorganizing this gives the required garrison as:
  G = (F+T)*Cc*H*(Cte/Cty)
  
  As you can see there is a nice set of extra factors there. Now when you take a city Cc is likely to be 2 for a long while. And then there is the culture ratio. And this is a true ratio so it could be 1.1:1, 2:1, 5:1 depending on how much culture each of you has.

• 
  
  D = 2000 times the relative distance to the capitals (distance to AI capital/distance to your capital)
  
  MapStat's flip calculation without spoilers has always worked fine for me.