Captured cities reverting back

[Guest2002]

G'day

I need some help here: I've just started playing civ3 and when I capture enemy cities, I put in stacks of military units into that city to quell resistance. But sometimes they revert back and I lose ALL of those military units. When that happens it's extremely frustrating, is there anyway to reduce the chances of that happening? I even pay to rush cultural buildings (temple etc...) as soon as I can and it still reverts sometimes.

cheers.

 

[Mathias]

Make sure the citizens are not unhappy. This usually means starving the city down to a manageable size. Don't put stacks of units in for police, two or three should be enough. If you want, keep a stack near the city to retake it if it flips back. Most importantly, your civ's total culture should be more than your enemy's. This may be less obvious, but if your enemy's citizens are "admires of" or "in awe of" your culture, they may be happier under your command.

 

[NTJedi]

First and most importantly buy a library and if you have extra cash then buy a temple... this increases your cultural influence.
Second make sure the people are always happy and/or content... even if you have to starve them where 2 or 3 die.
Third if the captured town/city is in a safe location then use weak and unimportant military units inside the town... such as ancient spearmen. If towns do flip then all units inside VANISH... this is a serious design flaw which can seriously change the outcome of the future if large stacks are lost.

The vanishing of units is a design flaw because:
1) There are no warnings for where or when this tragedy can strike.
2) ALL military and non-military units inside the town vanish without any chance to fight or escape... they do not even join the revolting town... they simply VANISH.
3) The book and the developers have not provided any explanation as why these units vanish during a cultural conversion.

 

[Globetrotter]

First of all, welcome to CFC, and happy new year

There have been a lot of threads that deal with this issue.
You can check the link downbelow. It contains even the formula of the probability of having the city reverting back to the enemy.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=38242

 

[cromagnon]

NTJedi, I don't see it as a design flaw; it's more of a calculated risk you have to take into account.

Following Mathias' and Gothmog's (from Globetrotter's link) guidelines, you can estimate whether or not a newly captured city is at risk of culture flip and plan accordingly (as you explained with building a library). I personally prefer to build temples, even if I am not a religious civ, because it add happiness as well as culture, both of which contribute to the culture resistance.

As for an explanation for why all your units disappear, it's simple: there is a massive uprising, and your units (yes, cavalry and tanks included) are destroyed or disbanded during the revolt.

 

[NTJedi]

cromagnon.....
okay... so lets say you have 50 tanks passing thru a town size 2... where those 50 tanks spend ONE TURN. During this one turn the size 2 town revolts.
You lose all 50 tanks... and the town takes zero loses. Congrats you've just lost 90% of your offensive force... and guess what here comes your little brother (playing the zulus) with his 40 tanks!

If you don't see a design flaw here... then you're mixing your medications!

 

[NTJedi]

I posted this in another topic... yet it obviously needs to be posted here too.


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People please be more realistic and consider what would really happen to military units during the cutural conversion of a city.

1) Some military units would die in battle and the town would suffer a population loss.
2) Some military units would have escaped outside the town borders.
3) A few military units would have even joined the towns rebellion.
4) Some non-military units would have joined the towns rebellion.
5) Some non-military units would have escaped outside the town borders.
6) If the town has lots and lots of military units the town would remain in control, take population loss or go into civil disorder.
7) NEVER WOULD A LARGE STACK OF MILITARY UNITS VANISH WHEN THE TOWN TAKES ZERO LOSSES DURING A REBELLION.

 

[Globetrotter]

I agree that when a city flips, then you should be able to recover at least part of the garrison, especially in the above case, to make it more realistic... Some units could be lost and the remaining could just be pushed out of the city.

 

[NTJedi]

Thanks Globetrotter for looking at the entire gameplay picture. There's a handful of gamers that love the game so much they refuse to see even the greatest flaws.
Every game has bugs and design flaws.

 

[sabo]

Any time I capture a city now with 6 or more pop I always starve them down. I hardly ever have cities flip on me now and I normally don't play religeous civs.

 

[NTJedi]

sabo10...
I usually have only one or two cities turn during a huge multiplayer game. The biggest force which I have lost during a cultural conversion was 4 Sipahi's.

The problem with cultural conversions is that no matter how small the town or how large the military force... all units inside the town are lost during all cultural conversions.
Myself or an opponent(human or AI) should never lose a huge stack of military units from a small towns rebellion. This is not a natural part of game history or even in our history.

 

[sabo]

Thats why I'm glad we can build airports now jedi, you should never loose an airplane through flipping any more.

 

[Globetrotter]

Originally posted by NTJedi
Thanks Globetrotter for looking at the entire gameplay picture. There's a handful of gamers that love the game so much they refuse to see even the greatest flaws.
Every game has bugs and design flaws.

It happened to me and i got pissed.
I lost 12 Infantry to a flip!!!

 

[cromagnon]

NTJedi: You're right, and I like many of the suggestions for a more realistic conversion. Possibly even have the city take a population loss based on the number of units?

But in a large number of revolutions (granted, these are internal revolts and not those by a foreign city), there have been examples of tank commanders being ordered to disperse a crowd but instead refusing to kill their countrymen and instead laying down their arms.

 

[Koronin]

Dude no offense, but that's stupid. Your example doesn't consist of 50+ tanks in a size 2 city.

If you capture a city, you sure as hell better eliminate the competing cultural influence from adjeacent cities. If you can't capture them all, raze them. But don't leave a newly captured city vunerable to much more powerful cultural influence, even for one turn.

After more than a year of playing Civ, I may have lost newly captured cities once in about 1000+ plus times since playing that way.

Originally posted by NTJedi
cromagnon.....
okay... so lets say you have 50 tanks passing thru a town size 2... where those 50 tanks spend ONE TURN. During this one turn the size 2 town revolts.
You lose all 50 tanks... and the town takes zero loses. Congrats you've just lost 90% of your offensive force... and guess what here comes your little brother (playing the zulus) with his 40 tanks!

If you don't see a design flaw here... then you're mixing your medications!

 

[Koronin]

It is VERY much a part of Civ3's game history.

Don't bring RL history into the equation, that's not applicable to a "game"

Originally posted by NTJedi
sabo10...
I usually have only one or two cities turn during a huge multiplayer game. The biggest force which I have lost during a cultural conversion was 4 Sipahi's.

The problem with cultural conversions is that no matter how small the town or how large the military force... all units inside the town are lost during all cultural conversions.
Myself or an opponent(human or AI) should never lose a huge stack of military units from a small towns rebellion. This is not a natural part of game history or even in our history.

 

[hbdragon88]

Rush a temple in that city QUICK - spend 240 or 480 gold - and keep most of your units outside of the city. And if it revolts make sure that you have the unit to be able to defeat the defending unit inside. When there's a culture conversion the receipent of the city they get the a defending unit in there.

 

[Globetrotter]

Originally posted by hbdragon88
Rush a temple in that city QUICK

Problem is, if you have resistors in the city, rushing won't work...
Otherwise, i would rush settlers/workers out of the city, which will lower the pop, + starvation...

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by NTJedi
Thanks Globetrotter for looking at the entire gameplay picture. There's a handful of gamers that love the game so much they refuse to see even the greatest flaws.
Every game has bugs and design flaws.

I have posted in the other current CF thread (Incredibly pissed ) so I won't repeat it here why its mostly your own fault when you loose a city, but I will answer your above comment:

No, the CF effect aren't very realistic, but hardly anything in CIV3 is realistic. What matters is how it functions as a game. If you change CF so that only a few citizens is lost or so that the military units are moved outside the city (and a few guerrilla units are placed inside it) or similar suggestions, then you may have succeeded in making the game more realistic, but at the same time you succeeded in making CF totally unimportant and thus taking away one important aspect of the game.

I think the flaw with CF is that only hardcore players know much about how CF actually works and how you can know when a city is safe. A valuable imporvement would be to display two numbers in the city display:
* Number of military units needed.
* % chance of flip next turn.

If more players could know those two numbers, then they would know when it would be stupid to place 10 military units inside a city as well - and they would know that loosing them was their own fault, or the result of bad luck after a calculated risk.

 

[NTJedi]

cromagnon
there have been examples of tank commanders being ordered to disperse a crowd but instead refusing to kill their countrymen and instead laying down their arms.

Yes... with this scenario the military units would either have joined the towns rebellion or have left the borders of the town and possibly return to the palace. During the game of CIV_III all units vanish... this bothers me because it makes no sense at all.

Koronin
Don't bring RL history into the equation, that's not applicable to a "game" .

Koronin... this is a game about the history of civilizations. A game which has many of the same wonders which exist in our real life history. A game which has many of the same military units which existed in our real life history. A game where many of the same technologies existed in our real life history. The list goes on and on and on which supply more then enough reasons.

hbdragon88
Rush a temple in that city QUICK - spend 240 or 480 gold..............

thanks... part of my current strategy is buying a library as soon as possible since it gives 3 culture instead of 2 culture. I usually play a culture with scientific... so librarys are usually less expensive too.

by TheNiceOne
If more players could know those two numbers, then they would know when it would be stupid to place 10 military units inside a city as well - and they would know that loosing them was their own fault, or the result of bad luck after a calculated risk.

It does not make any sense that 10 military units would vanish during the cultural conversion of a small town when they could easily conquer the town after the conversion by sitting outside it's borders.


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I enjoy playing CIV_III and I'm not attacking the game... I'm only saying that the game has a serious design flaw which should be fixed. Huge stacks of military units should not always vanish during a towns cultural conversion.