Capture City

[Roi Danton]

Hi,

I'm playing civ IV for some time now but I think I'm still a noob.
I'm trying to find out how the game works but I really don't understand how can I influence other city's to join me?
I set up a very easy game and advancing very fast to the future age.
My ai players were ages behind me with arrows.
But now, nearly any of my border cities is asking me if they could join the other side.
All players on my continent are a vassal of me.
Why want these cities the other side??
I've an ai city direct at my border since the very beginning but there are on 39% members of my folk in it. What do I need to do to influence the ai cities that they want to join me??

I hope you can help me!

Thanks for your answers.

Roi Danton!

 

[Verge]

Build up your culture on your border cities, and send troops there as well to maintain order.

 

[Roi Danton]

Build up your culture on your border cities, and send troops there as well to maintain order.

There are at least 20 units in every city. There is no revolt in the city.
And the city's are only producing culture since there are no buildings left to build and I had researched everything.

 

[Verge]

Posting screenshots or saves would be useful then. Might be a problem due to vassal states, but hard to say for sure.

 

[Mista]

I am puzzled by this. I expect captured cities to ask to return, but some of my own cities want to switch. Running top culture with libraries and theaters in every city, universities in most. I have no revolts, just the request.
But what really puzzles me, when I explore and found new cities in new lands, they seem always to want to switch to some other culture on the very next turn. Makes me think of the line in "The Thin Red Line", 'My wife left me for anyone else.'

 

[Roi Danton]

I am puzzled by this. I expect captured cities to ask to return, but some of my own cities want to switch. Running top culture with libraries and theaters in every city, universities in most. I have no revolts, just the request.
But what really puzzles me, when I explore and found new cities in new lands, they seem always to want to switch to some other culture on the very next turn. Makes me think of the line in "The Thin Red Line", 'My wife left me for anyone else.'

Hehe I understand.
But after your wife left you, there will always this question:
"Why?"

I will post screen shots when I find out how.
There is a large city of me. Level 21 and there are at least two cities near level 20 between the next border. Everything is green in the city and no thread but they still want to switch to one of my vassal states.
I'm now trying to flood them with spy's, contaminate their water etc.
Their cities are melting but no one is willing to join me
What a bad day...

 

[CivCorpse]

Hehe I understand.
But after your wife left you, there will always this question:
"Why?"

I will post screen shots when I find out how.
There is a large city of me. Level 21 and there are at least two cities near level 20 between the next border. Everything is green in the city and no thread but they still want to switch to one of my vassal states.
I'm now trying to flood them with spy's, contaminate their water etc.
Their cities are melting but no one is willing to join me
What a bad day...

Don't send spies...send tanks. Oooops you vassalized them. So much for that option. I really hate the vassal system. The vassals do not behave as vassals, just small countries you're not alowed to attack. A true vassal does what the master says. If i am your master, and I say give me "Astronomy" then you should dang well better give me astronomy. There should be a trade option "Give me this or I will cut you loose from my protection" after beating them senseless they should fear you.

 

[Roi Danton]

Don't send spies...send tanks. Oooops you vassalized them. So much for that option. I really hate the vassal system. The vassals do not behave as vassals, just small countries you're not alowed to attack. A true vassal does what the master says. If i am your master, and I say give me "Astronomy" then you should dang well better give me astronomy. There should be a trade option "Give me this or I will cut you loose from my protection" after beating them senseless they should fear you.

Right! The damn vassals do nothing for me than stealing my citys!
I should really prepare some tanks..

 

[Roi Danton]

There are some enemy cities which had now 78% inhabitants of my folk.
Does someone know when actually a city switches the side?!

 

[PJyang]

There are some enemy cities which had now 78% inhabitants of my folk.
Does someone know when actually a city switches the side?!

If AI has enough troops stationed to keep the order, even a city with 100% of your population may not have a chance to revolt. It is your vassal's city so You can simply investigate the city and point the cursor on the population bar to see if there is % chance to revolt.

You asked why the border cities keep asking to join your vassal. Oh guess you maybe refer to the stupid advisor pop-ups? If so, you can simply refuse by selecting no. It is totally different from the city flipping thing. A city flips when it is under great culture pressure and it lacks military-order-keepers. If this happens, it simply joins the other side and you will not get the pop-up asking you to give the city to its stupid 'rightful owner'.

 

[KMadCandy]

there are 2 different things. there are those pop-ups about the cities wanting to join the other side PJyang mentioned, those are a bug, just ignore them.

city flipping due to culture is different. this thread explains all the math behind it. that article was written for vanilla, and i don't think the mechanics behind it have changed for warlords or BtS (except for the "masters own the tiles in BFCs" rule for vassal situations). but like Verge, i don't know whether the civ being your vassal changes the situation at all; that article wouldn't say so since vassals didn't exist then. if it's a city you captured and later gave back to them, i'm kinda but not really sure you cannot flip it away from them now. if it's a city they gave to you in a peace treaty, i think maybe they cannot flip it away from you, but i don't even know why i think that so it's probably wrong.

ignoring vassals completely, talking about a normal situation going by that article: a city can't flip to you until you have more culture in it than anybody else does. note that means you don't always need to have more than 50% (like if the city's under pressure from 2 different civs, it might be 10% third guy, 48% you, 42% him, that's eligible for a flip to you. if it's 39% yours but all the rest is the other guy's culture, it won't even have any chance to revolt to you until you get over 50%. and then once you get 50%, it does a random roll each turn to see if it revolts, depending on the chance (explained in the article). the first revolt, it won't flip to you, that's just a warning to the owner. if a second random roll that goes through, you would get the option to keep the city (and you get to keep the cultural buildings too, since it's not a military capture, very nice) or raze it and just keep the land that you now own). if you choose to raze it, you do not get any negative diplo penalty for razing a city.

that article explains what makes cities more likely to flip, so that you can understand the math and learn how to better protect your own from flipping (stack troops in there is the quickest and easiest) and encourage other cities to flip to your side if circumstances line up right (if your state religions are different, spread your SR to that city is quickest, the chance that it flips to you gets doubled).

If AI has enough troops stationed to keep the order, even a city with 100% of your population may not have a chance to revolt.

yup. the AP can sort of get around that in some cases, by using the "Assign city XYZ to its rightful owner" resolution. the city has to belong to a voting member and the "rightful owner" is the person with the highest culture in it (again, not necessarily 50%) and has to be a full member; works out best if that's you and you happen to be AP Resident . i've used spies to make the current owner a voting member by changing them to free religion in two cases to get cities that way. sometimes the current owner does defy it a couple times before they give in. when using the AP vote, you don't get the choice to raze the city, you have to keep it if the vote passes.

 

[Mista]

I've had the option of restoring a city to its 'rightful owner' when I ran the AP, but I have not discovered a way to make a request myself, for this or any other thing. I just wait to see if the AP will give me an option.

 

[KMadCandy]

I've had the option of restoring a city to its 'rightful owner' when I ran the AP, but I have not discovered a way to make a request myself, for this or any other thing. I just wait to see if the AP will give me an option.

yeah the AP is weird, and very different from the UN. for the UN, there are vote possibilities that are "legal" all the time; the no-nukes vote, single-currency vote, etc don't depend on what's going on in the world. so each voting cycle there's a list of options the SecGen can pick from.

for the AP, the voting cycle is longer than the UN in the first place. i think it's every 10 turns, vs. 4 turns for the UN. but you can get situations where there aren't any possible votes for the AP Resident for dozens and dozens of turns! no cities to assign since only the current owners have majority culture in them. no "declare war on the infidels" or "stop the fighting" because there aren't any wars going on. no religious victory because not all civs have the AP religion, or because one team has enough votes to win so it would break that new 3.13 rule. and on and on. so there can be centuries upon centuries of nothing to report, and nothing to vote on.

that's what i was referring to when i mentioned the spies i used. i used them to change circumstances so that the vote i wanted became legal . in my case, i did have majority culture, but the city i wanted to "assign to the rightful owner which is of course KMad" was owned by a full member of the AP, so that made the vote illegal. i changed to Free Religion or a non-AP religion, and used spies to "influence civics" or "influence religion" and change the current owner to also be in FR or the heathen religion. that demoted the bad guy to voting member, but because i was spiritual, i was able to switch back to the AP religion and back to being a full member quicker than they were, yay for no anarchy! i switched in time for the vote, and got the city. that works really well if you have the Cristo Redentor, since you only have to wait one turn to switch back.

 

[Roi Danton]

Thanks for your answers and specially for KMadCandy.
This answers my questions very well!