City Without Workable Tiles

[Marshall Thomas]

In my last war with Sitting Bull I was on the verge of taking his capital, when the war ended because Sitting Bull capitulated to Ghengis Khan (who was in the mutual war with me against Sitting Bull). I know that when two allies are both taking cities in a war that the losing nation might capitulate to either one.

But because the last big city I took was next to Sitting Bull's capital (which was generating an enormous amount of culture), I couldn't work but one or two tiles. My city was rapidly starving even after it came out of unrest. I reluctantly put my cultural slider up to 100%, wasting ten years of much needed research. I sold all of my luxury resourses for gold per turn because with the cultural slider at 100%, happiness was, of course, no problem. But even with the additional GPT from resourses, all of my commerce which would have gone to research went to culture. And in the end, while the 100% culture did gain me some important additional tiles in other areas -my newly conquered city changed very little and still had almost zero tiles. It had a population of 15 when I conquered it, now it is either a 2 or a 3. And without any workable tiles, it cannot grow at all.

I know this situation has to have happened to many other players. Anytime your enemy capitulates to a nation other than your own and you just took the city nearest to his capital, I guess this situation occurs (assuming you're far enough into your campaign that capital cities have plenty of culture -by the way, I'm in the early 20th century). I know that when an enemy capitulates to you (or the AI), you automatically aquire all of your newly conquered city's tiles. So in my case, Ghengis Khan doesn't have my "no workable tiles" problem.

My question is simply: what should I do? what should I have done right when this situation occured? What were (and are) my options? Is this a good time to liberate a city? I've always wondered when the liberate city option was a good strategy.

Finally, just out of curiousity: What does this situation represent historically? Even in the most abstract way. I know Civ 4 is a game and not a historical simlumation, but almost every aspect of it has at least some foundation in history -even if it's implementation is highly abstract.

Thanks in advance for responses

 

[OTAKUjbski]

Sounds like the occupation of Berlin after WWII in a way.

There isn't much (if anything) you could've done in that city.

In fact, 100% Culture might've had little/no effect, since the Culture slider only affects commerce being produced by the city (which was minimal due to unworkable tiles).

If you were running Caste System, maxing out the Artist specialists would've likely been a better choice.

Given the proximity to Sitting Bull's capital and the situation, Liberation is probably the only viable option.

 

[ezwip]

Instead of turning your culture slider all of the way up you could appoint your citizens as art specialists. This will give you pretty much the same effect without crippling your entire economy. Send spies over towards that capital and pump it full of your culture. Most likely this city will never bounce back fully, but you will eventually get some workable tiles out of the deal.

I would only liberate the city if you don't have any other cities near it, because if you do they'll end up in a pretty simliar same situation. The AI for whatever reason pulls culture right out of its buttox. I couldn't tell you how many times I've gotten into a war just to end the cultural attack on my borders, only to find out they had only a granary.

 

[Woodreaux]

As morally repugnant as this sounds, the ensuing starvation is sometimes inevitable. When a very large city comes out revolt, there often be a large number of citizens refusing to work. The bigger the city, the greater the number of 'We yearn to join our motherland'. Also, if the prior owning civ was running State Property while you aren't and the surrounding tiles are full of workshops, you could have a food problem also. Even if you have adequate food available, cities captured deep within the enemies' cultural heartland will often revolt until you've build up enough .
I've pretty much accepted that captured cities will take a long time to become as productive as home grown or flipped ones. In general, as noted above, if I'm running Caste System, I'll put every citizen I can spare on artist duty. If not, I prioritize building and producing buildings. However, I won't bring down my entire national economy to speed up captured cities recovery by 2 or 3 turns, it's a loosing proposition.
The other option, the more evil option, is to continue the war against your former brother-in-arms. Just continue conquering the original enemy's cities until you've secured the cultural boundaries of the cities you highly value or until the protracted war threatens your security, or domestic tranquility.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

If I liberate the city, then the successfull war effort was completely in vain. But actually, with it's population all but gone and no tiles to work to increase it's size- the war effort was certainly a costly waste. All my war effort did was greatly strenghen Ghenghis Khan. I'm "friendly" with Ghenghis, but he's still competition for final victory. And thanks to my success against Sitting Bull, he is empowered to say the least. When should you liberate cities? So far, it's never seemed worth it to me.

I suppose the origin of my mistake occured before Sitting Bull capitulated to Ghenghis Khan... instead of me. I was in the war before Ghenghis Khan joined in. In fact, the war began when Sitting Bull attacked me. Is there anything I could have done to increase the chances that Sitting Bull would have capitulated to me, and not to Ghenghis Khan? I checked every turn to see if capitulation was an option, but it was always red.

 

[JujuLautre]

If I liberate the city, then the successfull war effort was completely in vain.

I would like to say that there was a mistake much before. If your plan was to take that city, you should have known about that problem and so that it was not a good option. Going to war is not only about getting some units ready and bonk some heads, it's mostly about having a plan; for before, for in the middle, and for after.

Take this as an advice obv, not anything else

 

[Dagorath]

Did you have any corporations in your empire? Setting up branches could have dramatically boosted the cities and output.

Civ Jewelers: +4 per resource
Creative Constructions: +3 per resource
Sid's Sushi: +2 & + 0.5 per resource
Cereal Mills: + 0.75 per resource

 

[Fireseal]

Build many units and station them in the city so it won't revolt. Then sack the capital!

 

[Marshall Thomas]

The city isn't revolting (at least not yet). Actually, I forgot to mention that my entire army that was about to attack Sitting Bull's capital is trapped in my newly conquered city because the city is surrounded by Sitting Bulls cultural tiles. So revolt is impossible. Because I was just at war with him, I can't get an open borders aggreement. My trapped army really does make up over 90% of my entire military. If I'm attacked by another AI while my army is trapped, I'll have no choice but to declare war on Sitting Bull (and his powerfull master Ghenghis Khan) in order to free my army and defend my homeland. I think that such a war would mark the end of my chances for winning this very competetive campaign. I'm playing on a huge map with 26 civs.

 

[vra379971]

You have 90% of your army TRAPPED and your saying a declaration of war would doom you?

Pal, you're doomed already ;p

My best suggestion is build some defences, then war smartly, and divide and conquer. With sieges and a nuke or three if you can.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

My army is trapped, but fortunately I'm not currently at war. If I don't get an open borders agreement from Sitting Bull before another AI declares war on me, ...well I'll have to call in the World Builder. All I'd do is change one or two tiles to my culture so that my army can get back by train. It's strange that Sitting Bull won't give me open borders, even though I'm "friendly" with Ghenghis (his master) and now I even have a defensive pact with him.

I think that when a hostile nation capitulates, this is meant to represent a change in leadership for the capitulating nation. With a new government in power, this could easily explain swift changes in relations. That's why capitulating nations don't always hate the country they capitulated to. I don't think they should hate that nation's allies either.

 

[Kesshi]

My army is trapped, but fortunately I'm not currently at war. If I don't get an open borders agreement from Sitting Bull before another AI declares war on me, ...well I'll have to call in the World Builder. All I'd do is change one or two tiles to my culture so that my army can get back by train. It's strange that Sitting Bull won't give me open borders, even though I'm "friendly" with Ghenghis (his master) and now I even have a defensive pact with him.

I think that when a hostile nation capitulates, this is meant to represent a change in leadership for the capitulating nation. With a new government in power, this could easily explain swift changes in relations. That's why capitulating nations don't always hate the country they capitulated to. I don't think they should hate that nation's allies either.

Marshall Thomas,

If I understand the game mechanics, and the situation properly, if you were to liberate the city, you couldn't exist on his boarders, thus your army would be kicked back to the closest place that which you could exist. Hopefully not imbetween two other civ's boarders somewhere...

Would that solve your problem?

Of course, you would only employ this IF someone handed you a DoW.

 

[bardolph]

If you plan to liberate the city, make sure to slave/starve it as much as you can before you do so.

You can always just go back to war, let him reconquer the city, and pillage every tile you can get your grubby lil' hands on...

War Weariness shouldn't be a problem, since you were prepared to run the culture slider at max anyway (usually a poor solution, since the city in question wasn't producing much commerce anyway).

Or you can just Raze.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Thanks for your responses.

If I liberate the city, my army will be back in my territory.

I set the culture slider to 100% also to increase the culture of my nearest city to my newly conquered city (the one without workable tiles), in hope that it's culture could "break through" to some of the Sitting Bull's tiles which surround my new city. This city has a good amount of culture. In addition to moving the slider up to 100%, I also switched from Bureacracy to Free Speech -adding 100% culture output to all of my cities.

I'm still a little confused about how culture works. When I hover over the culture output in the city screen, I see a tooltip which tells me how many turns until cultural expansion. But if this tool tip says that it's several turns away, does that mean that no tiles around that city can switch to me until those number of turns pass? Also, does the culture of cities at the centre of my country make any difference at all?

 

[Bhruic]

I'm still a little confused about how culture works. When I hover over the culture output in the city screen, I see a tooltip which tells me how many turns until cultural expansion. But if this tool tip says that it's several turns away, does that mean that no tiles around that city can switch to me until those number of turns pass? Also, does the culture of cities at the centre of my country make any difference at all?

Firaxis made a huge mistake, imo, with the way they handled culture. Or, more specifically, the fact they use the same label ("culture") for two different phenomena.

Cities have culture, and that's what you are used to looking at, based on your above description. You can see the culture that is being produced, how long it takes to upgrade to the next cultural "level", etc. But there is another type of culture, and that is the culture that each tile has. This culture is the accumulation of all cultural points that have been put into that square.

To give an example, let's say that you have a new city that is generating 1 point of culture each turn. After 10 turns, the city itself has 10 culture points. Also, each of the squares around the city has 10 cultural points. Now, when the city hits 10 points, the borders expand (assuming normal speed). At that point, each square 2 spaces away from the city is getting 1 culture per turn, and the squares right next to the city are getting 21 culture per turn. Don't worry about the numbers. The point is, that those tiles are actually gaining culture faster than the city itself is (the city is still only getting 1 per turn). And this continues for the entire life of the city, as long as the city's borders touch that square.

It gets worse. As the borders expand, you are going to end up with tiles that have multiple cities influencing them. So the culture is going to be increasing from two (or more) different sources.

The whole upshot of this is that by the late game, other Civs are going to have an incredible amount of culture generated on each of their tiles. So when you take a city over, you are going to have almost no chance at all to flip those tiles to yourself - it would take hundreds of turns. The only option you have is to make sure that the tiles no longer fall within the borders of the enemy.

Bh

 

[Marshall Thomas]

Thanks for the explanation. That's not quite how I thought it might work and it certainly explains what I've been seeing in my current game.

I suppose that any border city you take from a neighbouring A.I. is destined to have this workable tiles, culture problem -assuming you captured it during the later eras and it didn't become your vassal. Such cities could be considered "buffer or safety zones".

In the case of capturing a city right next to an enemy capital which produces vast amounts of culture, is there really any value in liberating? I know that such cities are doomed population wise (and as a result produce only trace amounts of commerce and hammers), but the city can still pay for it's maintainence and acts as a buffer/safety zone. Also you rob your enemy of a city that wouldn't have this workable tiles/cultural problem if it belonged to him. I guess that the most important goal is to try to do everything you can to ensure that the enemy capitulates to you and not your ally if you plan on getting that close to the enemy capital.

 

[Rince]

And this continues for the entire life of the city, as long as the city's borders touch that square.

What happens to the tile culture once a city looses influence over a tile, e.g. when it is razed? Is the culture reset to zero or does is stay constant?

Rince

 

[Bhruic]

What happens to the tile culture once a city looses influence over a tile, e.g. when it is razed? Is the culture reset to zero or does is stay constant?

The culture remains constant.

Bh

 

[Navarre]

You could also give the city to a fourth civ just after closing your borders with it. This way, your army will be sent back, and you'll be able to spoil SB and (hopefully) Genghis relations with another civ. Pick a powerful civ far away to hurt its economy while you're at it.

"Foutu pour foutu"... If this city does you more harm than good, at last try to take something out of it when you "liberate" it. Most of the civs probably won't accept the city, but you might found one greedy enough. If you're lucky, the close borders tensions will make the other AI declare war on SB, thus Genghis, and all your main opponents will be fighting each other, allowing you to take a lead in techs or declaring war on whoever you want.

 

[KMadCandy]

I've pretty much accepted that captured cities will take a long time to become as productive as home grown or flipped ones. In general, as noted above, if I'm running Caste System, I'll put every citizen I can spare on artist duty. If not, I prioritize building and producing buildings. However, I won't bring down my entire national economy to speed up captured cities recovery by 2 or 3 turns, it's a loosing proposition.

a lot of people think of sistine chapel as a culture victory wonder. i love it for military purposes. sistine makes even those one citizen specialists produce 2 each, and you can run those guys in cities with no building infrastructure and under any civic. you'll be forced to in cases without enough workable tiles. it won't make your captured city go legendary of course, but it's completely passive once you have the wonder and it can really help bunches. in this case, not so much, but i'm just throwing it out there. i used to just capture it, but with the AI attempting culture victories now, sometimes i go to the trouble to build it myself.