City Flipping

[Wem]

I started to really pull away from the other civs in terms of culture around 1500. In a couple hundred years, my borders expanded three tiles into American territory, and nudged up against Boston. Since then I've been keeping an eye on the amount of my citizens living in the American city, and it's steadily counted down from 100% American to now 47% American. But it hasn't flipped.

Infact, my territory now borders Boston on five tiles! The city is adjascent to a coastal tile and thus only 2 other American controlled tiles. I now have Philadelphia bordered right againt the city's tile and cut off with only one land tile of its own, and down to 55% American. New York is down to 52% American.

Why are these cities not coming under my control? I was really expecting that once I had the ratio in my favour Boston would flip, like the land tiles do.

Incidentally, this American civ is ranked 5th in scoring and moderatlely high (I havent checked in a while but probably 5th of 12) in culture, so maybe that has something to do with it. I am magnitudes above every other civ in culture, GDP, crop yield, total score, everything except power - where I'm in the middle of a pack of 5 civs, and the American one has more. (I have few military units, focusing more on advancing my country, but those units are far more advanced than any others due to my teching up)

Is there a good way for me to gain control of these cities peacefully? I noticed you can't seem to spread propaganda in this latest iteration of the series.. is that right? I've focused entirely on culture along my borders, building pro-culture buildings first, and having artists create major works and take up residence in my border cities.

What else can I do?

 

[ToFro]

It's hard to flip old cities. If Boston has been around since BC, it will take some time before it flips. In fact, you should keep pushing that cultural border until it has completly surrounded the city, and it has no tiles left to work.

As for the percentage, sometimes a city won't flip before it reaches 10% or lower. Cities usually revolt before flipping, so if you see Boston revolting, it will flip within a near future.

Culture flipping cities in civ 4 is not easy, especially not old cities.

 

[DaveMcW]

The only other thing you can do is build closer to Boston, preferably within 3 tiles. The power of your city's culture decreases as you get farther away.

Or you could just use your superior tech to build an army and take it by force.

 

[Artanis]

I started to really pull away from the other civs in terms of culture around 1500. In a couple hundred years, my borders expanded three tiles into American territory, and nudged up against Boston. Since then I've been keeping an eye on the amount of my citizens living in the American city, and it's steadily counted down from 100% American to now 47% American. But it hasn't flipped.

Infact, my territory now borders Boston on five tiles! The city is adjascent to a coastal tile and thus only 2 other American controlled tiles. I now have Philadelphia bordered right againt the city's tile and cut off with only one land tile of its own, and down to 55% American. New York is down to 52% American.

Why are these cities not coming under my control? I was really expecting that once I had the ratio in my favour Boston would flip, like the land tiles do.

Incidentally, this American civ is ranked 5th in scoring and moderatlely high (I havent checked in a while but probably 5th of 12) in culture, so maybe that has something to do with it. I am magnitudes above every other civ in culture, GDP, crop yield, total score, everything except power - where I'm in the middle of a pack of 5 civs, and the American one has more. (I have few military units, focusing more on advancing my country, but those units are far more advanced than any others due to my teching up)

Is there a good way for me to gain control of these cities peacefully? I noticed you can't seem to spread propaganda in this latest iteration of the series.. is that right? I've focused entirely on culture along my borders, building pro-culture buildings first, and having artists create major works and take up residence in my border cities.

What else can I do?

That percentage you're looking at is the big key: it has to be below 50% for a revolt to even become a possibility, which is why Philadelphia and New York aren't trying to flip yet.

Boston, on the other hand, won't have a very high chance to flip because 47 isn't that much below 50. I'll also bet that Boston has a pretty big garrison: combat units stationed in the city will reduce its chance of revolting. Even if you had 100% of that tile, it'd be possible for the AI to dump enough units there to completely prevent a revolt (although this would take a LOT of troops!)

You might get the AI to give/sell them to you if you make it not worth the effort to keep them (which you seem to be doing)...but I seriously doubt you'll be able to with cities as old as those three are. Your best bet to take the cities is to build up an army and plenty of siege engines, then march that army and those siege engines directly up to the cities' gates. With your culture pushing so far into otherwise-American turf, it will be possible to simply start a war with your units directly next to all three cities, bombard their defenses, and overrun their garrisons before the Americans can move a single unit.

 

[GreyFox]

On a similar note, how do you prevent your cities from flipping? I have noticed in a recent game of mine, after capturing a Japanese city (Osaka) that is near the Persian border, it kept wanting to join either the Persians or Japanese (I thought that shouldn't be possible!). My cultural border of the city is so pethetic that I have only two tiles to work in, and its impossibly long to build temples/theatres/library to expand the culture. The pop is 2, so no whipping. Its medival age, so no UniSuff. I don't see I have much choice except to (a) let the city go, or (b) declare war on Cyrus my friend, or on the Japanese again.

One thing I noticed is that my troops stationed on the city suffered injury during the revolt. Seeing that I figured that I need more troops to be stationed there.

My questions are:

(1) what would people recommend I do to Osaka?

(2) I thought I read somewhere that conquered city would never flip back to the original civ. Why do I still see "Japanese Revolt" in osaka?

(3) Is it wise to move troops injured due to the revolt out of the city,while replacing them with fresh troops?

(4) Is it possible for a troop to die due to a city revolt?

(5) What happen to my troops if the city do flip?

 

[Artanis]

On a similar note, how do you prevent your cities from flipping? I have noticed in a recent game of mine, after capturing a Japanese city (Osaka) that is near the Persian border, it kept wanting to join either the Persians or Japanese (I thought that shouldn't be possible!). My cultural border of the city is so pethetic that I have only two tiles to work in, and its impossibly long to build temples/theatres/library to expand the culture. The pop is 2, so no whipping. Its medival age, so no UniSuff. I don't see I have much choice except to (a) let the city go, or (b) declare war on Cyrus my friend, or on the Japanese again.

One thing I noticed is that my troops stationed on the city suffered injury during the revolt. Seeing that I figured that I need more troops to be stationed there.

My questions are:

(1) what would people recommend I do to Osaka?

(2) I thought I read somewhere that conquered city would never flip back to the original civ. Why do I still see "Japanese Revolt" in osaka?

(3) Is it wise to move troops injured due to the revolt out of the city,while replacing them with fresh troops?

(4) Is it possible for a troop to die due to a city revolt?

(5) What happen to my troops if the city do flip?

1) Conquer Japan .

If you don't want to do that, you can open Osaka's city screen and hover over the nationality bar in the lower-left. The popup will have a %age on there telling you what the chances of a revolt are. Dump as many troops as it takes to make that %age go away.


2) It'll keep revolting because you don't have enough troops to keep it from doing so. Those revolts just won't cause a flip.


3) Not really, no. That's still your territory, and thus those units will heal back to full in a couple turns. You might want to send fresh troops anyways though (see #1).


4) Not that I know of.


5) AFAIK, they just kinda sit there in the city...unless you don't have Open Borders with whoever it flips to, in which case they'll be teleported out of the new owner's territory.

 

[Stalker0]

I find in general I can only get a decent chance at culture flips early in the game when cultures are still young. Once the borders start firming up it becomes a lot harder to move them.

But try going early drama and some early c bombs, and you can nap a lot of cities peacefully in the early game.

While we are on the subject, does anyone find cathedrals and the hermitage useful in non culture win games? As I mentioned, by the time you start getting these, it is really really hard to culture flip a city, so I'm not sure if its worth it.

 

[Oryctolagus]

does anyone find cathedrals and the hermitage useful in non culture win games? As I mentioned, by the time you start getting these, it is really really hard to culture flip a city, so I'm not sure if its worth it.

In one of my games (Noble Genghis Khan) I conquered Barcelona and signed a Peace Treaty with Isabella, as there were 2 or 3 shrines and the Angkor Wat in the city and I couldn't defend it. It was on the other side of the Arabian territory and Mecca had the Legendary status already, so I controlled only the city tile. There was an Arabian revolt soon, but I managed to build the Hermitage and other cultural buildings there to save the city from flipping. But I also used the "culture bomb" (borders didn't move).
It's hard to culture flip a city late, but it's possible. I even flipped Timbuktu, the Malinese capital, playing as Frederick (on Noble). It happened in the 1990's or even later, I don't remember. Musa had the bad luck to start on a peninsula near Berlin and I blocked his expansion for a long time. When it flipped it wasn't even completely surrounded by the culture of Berlin.

 

[Artanis]

I find in general I can only get a decent chance at culture flips early in the game when cultures are still young. Once the borders start firming up it becomes a lot harder to move them.

But try going early drama and some early c bombs, and you can nap a lot of cities peacefully in the early game.

While we are on the subject, does anyone find cathedrals and the hermitage useful in non culture win games? As I mentioned, by the time you start getting these, it is really really hard to culture flip a city, so I'm not sure if its worth it.

My strategy generally involves lots of killing, but I still find Cathedrals to be very helpful. If you have a State Religion, they can get 3 more to a city that really needs it, and the +50% culture is useful for helping to push back the borders of third-party interlopers trying to crowd out your newest "acquisitions".

As to Hermitage...I haven't found it all that useful. It's good for pushing back borders, yeah, but it's hard to get it built in the time span I need it built. The few times I have used it, it became pointless within a few turns of being built anyways because I had used that time to build up an invasion against the encroaching country.