Completely suppress a city's cultural reversion with military units

[Beard Rinker]

But with how many units? That is the question.

I took a city last night and had approximately 4 mechanized infantry, several artillery, fighters and a bomber at the city. The city population was about 12 with maybe about 6 resistors and it flipped.

Soren Johnson at Firaxis says this change is only to prevent situations like loosing 20 units in a population 1 city.

Has anyone any experimented with how large a city you can hold is or how many units it takes to hold it?

 

[narmox]

mayube artillery and fighters and bombers don't count?

 

[Beard Rinker]

Yes artillery, bombers, fighters probably don't count. I don't think I could have prevented a size 12 city from flipping as this new feature is only intended to prevent the REALLY annoying flips.

What I am curious about is how many units per do you need to prevent flipping and how large a city can you reliably hold.

 

[BillChin]

From http://apolyton.net/civ3/
>>>
From Soren Johnson
Number of units to supress cultural reversion: cities with 2 or 3 foreign nationals and full control of their city radius probably will be under no risk with 4 to 6 units
>>>
I posted a few other tidbits under the thread
"More on patch 1.17f"

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

If you see my post "Culture Flipping Exposed", you'll note that the only troop factor in the equation is offensive land units (i.e., land units with an attack and defense). Pre-patch, the total calculation for flipping always left some chance for a city to flip, even if you had a million units garrisoned. Now it is possible to get the chance down to zero by putting enough bodies into the city.

Dan

 

[Mapache]

Even with the 1.17 patch I had a culture-flip after war. 5 Legionaries were lost. There was only 1 discontent citizen due to the oppression of its former owner.

 

[alja]

I hope you are just making fun!

Don't tell me this is true!

I consider 5 ground units (more than) enough to keep a small city under control....

 

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

It all goes back to the factors I listed in that thread. Note that ground units are one of the LEAST influential factors -- if the city you captured had a lot of culture in it from its previous owners, you will need a LOT of units to completely suppress any chance of it flipping.

Also remember total culture counts here, too. So if you're warmongering and have very low total culture this will hurt you in city-flipping calculations.

OTOH, if the city is equidistant between the capitals of the two cities in question, neither of you have ever produced any culture in it, and your total cultures are on par with each other, you might only need a couple of units.


Dan

 

[MindRunner]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
It all goes back to the factors I listed in that thread.

[...]

OTOH, if the city is equidistant between the capitals of the two cities in question, neither of you have ever produced any culture in it, and your total cultures are on par with each other, you might only need a couple of units.
Dan

1. Could you please post a link to that thread?

2. What happens if you capture the enemy city of a capital? Will that affect the way they resist in other cities?

Thanks for your effort on a saturday!

 

[NY Hoya]

silvagem the thread is here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14337

 

[Panda]

Originally posted by alja
I hope you are just making fun!

Don't tell me this is true!

I consider 5 ground units (more than) enough to keep a small city under control....

Looks like you considered wrong

 

[alja]

guess you are right

I have found several complains in different forums about flipping cities (size 1) with 5 guarding ground units in this city. :-(

Come on Firaxis! Don't announce it fixed when it's still the same old story. Or do you call this a fix?

Let's wait and see if this is just another bug in the patch.

I would like to have a statement of Firaxis about this specific problem and which unit/size ratio they consider to be stable in a city. I know a lot of people personally who have stopped playing cause of this hazzle, including myself.

 

[alja]

anyway, gives me time to finish baldurs gate 2 and play starcraft while they work on the next patch so I am totally relaxed -beside the fact that I have payed 50 bugs for a game I have played just about 20 hours, 15 of them being frustrated.

 

[Carbon_Copy]

Where is the BENEFIT of holding onto cities? Sure, now you can completely prevent any city you capture from flipping, but why would you WANT to? The AI is a complete whip/draft-a-holic, and with the new unhappiness rules (along with the longer whipping/drafting penalty), any city you don't capture as soon as you enter the AI's "threat radius" of 2 squares is going to be worse than worthless for a long time. Rather than encouraging capturing over razing, they took capturing COMPLETELY OFF THE TABLE for any conquest happening while the AI is in Despotism or after the AI has learned Nationalism (drafting), since you are effectively forced to turn the remaining population into specialists so they don't riot over the *AI'S* whipping habits. So if you don't do your war of conquest in the middle ages, you had better come up with a lot of settlers.

So if you aren't capturing Sun Tzu, The Pyramids, or the Hoover Dam, just don't bother trying to hold onto it and raze that city. The easy and correct way to fix this is for citizens to not riot about whippings or draftings that happened during a previous administration. They could still keep the "memory" of drafting or whipping so as to deter further abuse from the current rulers, but the negative unhappiness due to the AI's actions has GOT to go.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Carbon_Copy
they took capturing COMPLETELY OFF THE TABLE for any conquest happening while the AI is in Despotism or after the AI has learned Nationalism (drafting),

There is at least one counterexample to your assertion.

I conquer and subdue my new cities and towns. I have never razed a city. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

That may mean you need to investigate alternative strategies. There are several good threads available.

 

[Marzipan]

I think most people are ok with cities flipping, but what is bugging people is that it doesn't make sense to lose all your forces when this happens. If flipping wast changed to make it so that your units are ejected from the city instead of lost, I think it would make a lot of people happy and would make more sense too.

 

[MikeV]

Originally posted by Carbon_Copy
So if you aren't capturing Sun Tzu, The Pyramids, or the Hoover Dam, just don't bother trying to hold onto it and raze that city

Does anyone know if the following will work: raze the city, then re-build the Wonder in one of your own cities?

Or, does it count the Wonder as having been built if any civ has ever built it?

 

[Rustus Maximus]

I think once the Great Wonders are destroyed Mike, they are gone for good...small wonders can be rebuilt.

And Marzipan is right, the loss of the entire garrison is city-flipping's biggest problem...

 

[MindRunner]

My dear fellow Civ Fans, I’m afraid you are missing the point about city flipping.

I haven’t played a lot of Civ 3, but from what I’ve learned so far, your global culture is perhaps the most important way to avoid losing a city by *culture* (don’t forget about that) to another civ (City Flipping, as its been called).

I can tell you just this case:
I was playing by the Romans. I conquered a few French cities, and then I destroyed that Civ. But it was curious, that although I took all the cities by force, including their capital (Paris), which was the 5th biggest city in the world (according to the top 5), with a size of 10 with 8 resisters (8!!!), I managed that and all other cities without much problems.

You know why? I had about 2,5 times more global culture than the French. And that can only be the only reason, because the Japanese who also a few French cities, and had almost the same global culture as the French, lost one city about 10-20 turns later, by city flipping.

How can you explain that?

Now take into consideration, that I was outside of my own continent, I didn’t have a big number of military units (between 1 and 3 per city). By contrast the Japanese were of that Continent, and even had their Capital city about a mere 15-20 squares far! And they had lots of troops stationed there too, because they were just around the corner.

I guess that building Temples, Cathedrals and Colosseums even when you don’t to please your citizens, is always a good bet. At least it has been to me. And I like this way of playing.

If you only like to conquer without building, than perhaps Civ is not the best game. Perhaps games like Command & Conquer, Starcraft and the likes could please you more.
But please, don’t stop playing this wonderful game, we would miss you!

 

[Greadius]

Your global culture is almost definately the most important factor.

In my current game I'm conducting a war on a continent on the other side of the world. I have taken and held on to every city I've taken so far except for one because my culture is amazing relative to theirs.

Of course, I still don't like culture flipping without a fight