Converting conquered cities' culture

[drlake]

There are some significant downsides to having a city with a foreign culture in it, including increased unhappiness (want to rejoin our motherland), the possibility of losing the city by it revolting to a neighbor, and increased vulnerability to espionage.

So, how can I reduce the "foreign" presence in newly conquered cities? I realize conquering the entire civilization is the way to deal with the issue once and for all, but that isn't always viable. Likewise, I can give the city back to a civilization I vassaled, but that isn't always desirable because the city itself may have value.

It seems like the quickest way to get the population converted to my culture is the same one I used in Civ3, which was to get rid of the existing population, in Civ4 by either whipping it down or starvation. As the city grows, the new population seem to be mostly my culture, though I haven't watched this carefully.

So, is this really the set of options I have? Am I missing something in my analysis?

 

[budweiser]

I think you can run spy missions before hand to up your culture. I havent tried it though.

You could raise the city and then make your own new city.

 

[kossin]

Civ IV culture is in tiles, not population. Best thing to do is of course take cities around the one you conquered, but that just moves the problem elsewhere.

Whip away unhappy citizens (granary, forge, culture buildings), build culture/run artist scientists until you've reached at least 100 culture in the city. Depending on the era it might even be better to get culture to 500, i.e. 3rd culture pop.

 

[Wreck]

Whipping the citizens does not affect the cultural percentages. As kossin says: it is embedded in the tiles. Whipping them is just a way to keep the unhappies down, and use the best tiles for production.

The only way to move the cultural percentage your way is to produce culture, either in that city or in nearby cities with sufficiently popped borders. That can take a while.

Of course, the ultimate solution is the er... Final Solution: genocide the culture. When you take the last city of a civ, all of its culture in tiles vanishes immediately. Personally, I really, really hope that they get rid of this "feature" in Civ5 because it is 100% unhistorical and induces unrealistically genocidal wars. And it's nasty. But meanwhile... kill 'em all.

 

[budweiser]

What happens if you pillage the tiles? Does the culture go away?

Genocide still happens, even today. You even have absolute destruction of major cites as recently as WWII. Look at Stalingrad, complete rubble. The sight was just rebuilt right away.

 

[kossin]

No... it's in the ground, not improvements.

 

[TCMIV]

Eliminate the civ that's got the dominant culture

 

[Udey1]

Whipping the citizens does not affect the cultural percentages. As kossin says: it is embedded in the tiles. Whipping them is just a way to keep the unhappies down, and use the best tiles for production.

The only way to move the cultural percentage your way is to produce culture, either in that city or in nearby cities with sufficiently popped borders. That can take a while.

Of course, the ultimate solution is the er... Final Solution: genocide the culture. When you take the last city of a civ, all of its culture in tiles vanishes immediately. Personally, I really, really hope that they get rid of this "feature" in Civ5 because it is 100% unhistorical and induces unrealistically genocidal wars. And it's nasty. But meanwhile... kill 'em all.

Correct. I often do this on purpose just to speed up things and increase the efficiency of the cities for drafting/happiness afterward.

In all three recent Deity universities (Lincoln, Justinian University, and this current one) I do implement complete kills. From a mechanical standpoint Civ 4 makes it silly not to do so.

 

[MkLh]

Generally there is no way to overcome the conquered city's original culture (except completely killing the enemy and early wars). You can build every culture building possible including Hermitage, cathedral, have Sistine Chapel, build culture rest of the game etc. and still the cities will be mostly in enemy culture for rest of the game, with a high probability of revolting.

 

[drlake]

Well, that's a rather depressing set of answers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Eliminate the civ that's got the dominant culture

This is the best option. There are 3 others that work very well:

1. Punt the original owner off the continent. His tile culture will remain, and you'll have some motherland , but enemy-dominant tile culture only manifests if at least one city's borders would stretch that far anyway. Occasionally, there is some kind of middle ground terrain (chunk o desert or peaks for example, or a big lake) feature that allows you to do this functionally without removing him from the continent, but such is not common on normal map scripts.

2. Take the guy as a vassal, and any cities in his land get their full fat cross. They will, however, still revolt unless you garrison them enough, but if you do garrison then they are functionally full-BFC cities.

3. Take the city fairly early, and put some solid culture buildings there. Cities that haven't been 40% or more very long generally have not accrued insurmountable tile culture; if you set up +5 or +10 culture/turn in such a city, then your culture/turn plus the bonus culture for multiple border pops should allow that city to quickly switch to > 50% yours. Once the city has 60%+, though, it starts getting very hard to do this.

 

[drlake]

Hmm, so vassal the foe, gift back cities I don't want, keep the ones I do with big garrisons, and problem largely solved? I'll still have to put up with the motherland unhappiness, but that's a minor concern.

 

[Udey1]

Hmm, so vassal the foe, gift back cities I don't want, keep the ones I do with big garrisons, and problem largely solved? I'll still have to put up with the motherland unhappiness, but that's a minor concern.

Yes and you have to waste combat troops you built to be city police. rather a bad thing if you had other nations to conquer. This is a rather big problem, getting worse since the cities you really want need huge garrisons for long periods of time.

The only time it doesn't make sense to do a CIV-wipe is when they have some island cities and you don't have a navy. Then kick them off the continent like TMiT said. Then you don't have to trouble yourself with large garrisons.